We woke this morning to the short, inane “tune” of a mobile phone playing distantly but audibly and incessantly.  Its short repeated music phrase was not aggressive but it was insistent and it was amazing how awake one was after ten minutes of that mindless sound.

As no earplugs were to hand the only reasonable response was to get up.  Which we have now done.

Early rising today is no bad thing as a degree of washing and cleaning is necessary as preparation for our next guest.  The washing machine is churning away and the tumble dryer is adding an extra few degrees to an already warm morning.

It is truly amazing how virtuous one feels after emptying the dishwasher; emptying the washing machine; transferring the load to the dryer and then reloading the washing machine.  My cup of tea seems well deserved after so much effort!

It is worth considering how much extra effort would have been needed to achieve what I have completed in a few minutes were I to be magically transported back to Cathays in Cardiff where I remember my earliest days.

The twin-tub and Flatley dryer were later innovations in my house, but I do have early hazy memories of a barrel like washing machine where the swirling mass was periodically poked with a wooden stick almost as if the clothing was part of a giant stew. 

I have very clear memories of the mangle which I sometimes helped to turn.  I particularly remember towels which used to emerge from the rollers like stiff pieces of coloured cardboard – a process which never failed to delight me.  The washing line was stretched across our back yard and I remember that as something which meant that my play was severely restricted.  I did not help with the pegging out of the clothes, as I was too small (!) to reach the line – but I do remember pegging the pegs onto the end bits of each other and attempting to see how many pegs I could keep pegged in a line before they all snapped off into their individual entities.  Now that’s entertainment!

There are many who would say that using an expensive electrical drying machine in a country where strong sunshine is plentiful is a grotesque waste of money and that naturally dried clothes are so much better somehow than those forced into an artificially tumbling drum.  To those I say, so sue me!  I am sure that Our Oscar had something glitteringly witty and interestingly perverse to say about “natural” which I can’t at the moment bring to mind, but I am sure that I agree with whatever it was.

There are ten short days left to this year’s summer holiday.

That sentence in its stark awfulness makes chilling reading – and given the beggared holidays that we have during the rest of the academic year is about as long as the time that we have for the Easter and Christmas holidays respectively.  And we don’t have half terms!

I noticed in one of the parks in the centre of the town that the trees which shaded it had dropped many of their leaves which were sere and brittle underfoot: a harbinger of autumn!  Sigh!

 

Meanwhile the washing and the drying churn on with each machine having new loads to cope with.  And there is still more to go.  There is something very domestic and traditional about doing the washing on a Monday; and later there will be the cleaning. 

I hate it!

It has been a muggy day today and Toni has spent some it reclining trying to get rid of a suspect tummy. 

I sincerely hope that he is fighting fit by the time Emma arrives tomorrow evening!

The Sun Shines!

The Pauls have been fortunate in that every day that they have been here has been fine.  Which is more than I can say for my sojourn in the UK earlier in the holiday!

Their growing desperation to change colour puts me vividly in mind of my own frantic behaviour towards the end of a 14 day stay in sunny climes when the growing realization that tanning opportunities are decreasing by the second.

As last night’s festivities included celebrating in a flowingly liquid way overcoming the grasping evil of the Stunted Dwarf thieving manager of the restaurant we went to, there seems to be a disinclination on the part of our guests to spring from their beds and soak up the rays.

Going to a major supermarket on a Sunday morning reminds me of the worst excesses of M&S on the lead-up to Christmas, where hordes of women-type people of both sexes sweep through the store in a ruthless fashion that makes Genghis Khan look like a member of the St John’s Ambulance Service – and that is a very carefully chosen simile.

 

Suffice to say that the experience is something on a par with what experimental mice undergo in the most severe laboratory conditions so there is an incentive to drag oneself out of bed at an unearthly hour to get any goods that you need before the masses surge into the buying area.

Driving to our local small supermarket in Gava was akin to a general inspecting his troops nodding with approval their preparations for the battle as the visiting family platoons of holiday-makers begin their preparations taking various pieces of important equipment out of their cars and amassing the vast quantities of food in plastic containers that is an essential element in the Spanish Family on the Beach.  Laden with parasols, chairs, beds, balls, hats and enough food to feed a normal division they make their sullen way to the beach resenting every footstep because they have not been able to park within millimetres of the sand and sea.

By the time I returned all parking spaces within easy reach of the house had been taken and the more outré parking spaces (zebra crossings and tangentially to rounded corners) had begun to be taken up as well.  I therefore had to use the parking of last resource: the driveway.

It’s hot.  Very hot.  And the Third Floor is like a “microwave oven” according to the Pauls, though Paul Squared has been tempted to lie out there as a sort of “last chance” quick-tan expedient!  A dangerous choice, but one I took myself on every occasion on the last day of a holiday when I was living in Britain!

The day will not end with the taking of the Pauls to the airport; we then have to go to Terrassa to collect the various goodies that Toni’s mum has brought back from her holiday on the island of Majorca.  I am hoping that she has brought back some of the excellent spicy cheese wrapped in vine leaves that we tried the last time someone came back from a visit to the island bearing gifts!

Alas!  Toni has been stricken with some sort of tummy bug (possibly aggravated by his unaccustomed second glass of wine last night!) and we did not go up to Terrassa.

The Pauls have been taken to the airport and we had our evening meal accompanied by that wistful sadness that comes when friends have gone home.

Still, we are looking forward to our next guest due next Tuesday.  Time marches on!

Right triumphs!

Before dismissing Old Wives’ Tales or so-called “received wisdom” with the contempt it usually deserves, one should always think of the bread poultice. 

Why would anyone put a piece of bread on an infected part of ones body and then allow the preparation to go mouldy in the fond hope that it would somehow help? 

Yet, and yet, that mould contained a primitive form of raw penicillin which may well have played some real part in making the ill better, in spite of the homely quality of the advice.

Today, the inheritor of the Old Wives’ shawls is the mighty Internet (Microsoft insists that I spell it with a capital “I”) and I have to pay my obeisance to this all-powerful dispenser of knowledge and publically thank it for telling me about insect stings.

The second head of English with whom I worked has since retired and has become, for me, a nodal point for the distribution of jokes, pictures and wisdom from his many contacts via the Internet to me.  I then resend them to a chosen list of lucky recipients.  I do a little light censorship and some messages (for various reasons) stay with me and end their electronic journey here in Castelldefels; others wing their wireless way o’er land and sea spreading joy and irritation in equal measure.

One of the more informative messages recently (and appositely) sent to me concerned insect bites. 

Relief, almost magical in quality, was promised if the bite was immediately treated by the application of a small denomination coin pressed to the puncture point and held in place there with a plaster or piece of Sellotape for 15 minutes.

The affirmative evidence from relieved suffers was so similar to all those patently false endorsements for questionable articles in even more questionable publications that one felt that this was an elaborate and rather pointless practical joke.

However, some mosquito bites are so painful and so compulsively itchy that I have known people (well, me) actually consider cutting out the infected portion with a penknife - as pain is preferable to irritation which cannot be satisfied with any amount of scratching.  So, putting a coin on the wound seemed like a worth-a-try form of non-invasive self-help.

And, by god it works!  It really does!

Given a choice between Toni and my good self, the mosquitos behave courteously towards a visitor and bite the native.  Toni can be punctured like a pincushion while my skin retains its unblemished sheen.  A couple of nights ago, however a rogue and racially insensitive insect bit me in five places down the length of my vein from the base of the thumb on my right hand to the inside face of my elbow.

The telltale itching soon raised five sizeable blotches of blistered flesh and sleep was impossible.  With the light on the damage looked much more impressive than the fingertip exploration had indicated and I decided to Take Measures.

I stomped up to the Third Floor and then, armed with my trusty tape dispenser I stomped my way down to the kitchen and raided the Oxfam bottle for coins which I then taped (artistically) down my arm and waited for 15 minutes.

Apart from feeling like a very badly made-up character in some sort of fancy dress party who had decided to go as the financial crisis as a man down to his last pennies, within 15 minutes when the coins were removed the itching had gone and by the next day there was no visible evidence that I had been bitten!

I think that I will have to put Sellotape around the house with a coin in place looking rather like votive Tibetan prayer strips so that guests can use them when and where to lessen the insect incursion!

My delight is directly proportional to the efficacy of the “household hint” – I haven’t felt this satisfied since someone pointed out that you could freeze cartons of milk.  The usefulness of that particular hint was related to the UK before I got used to UHT milk.

You can get “real” milk in Spain but it is not as readily available as the UHT stuff.  I have now reached a level of adaptation where I can drink the fat-free UHT stuff (I hesitate to call it milk) by itself – even when it is not ice-cold!  A degree of acclimatization that I never thought that I would achieve!

I now vaguely recall an e-mail about the cucumber which listed all the remarkable qualities of this vegetable which Dr Johnson dismissed as something which “should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing” – on the evidence of the usefulness of the coin for insect bites perhaps I should look again at the information about the cucumber and take it to heart!

No sooner said than done!  A swift search and this site listed a few of the qualities of this obviously amazing and under-rated vegetable!  http://food.sulekha.com/recipes/post/2010/04/cucumber-some-amazing-uses.htm

We had a night in with tapas provided by Toni, though we will be going out for a “proper” meal on the last night of the Pauls’ stay this evening.

The intensive sunbathing continues today with the Pauls’ realization that they only have one full day left to change the colour of the epidermis from what Paul 1 laughingly described as “60s white” (as a homage to Delongi Nespresso) to a more appropriate form of second decade beige.  Or not.

They have been fairly dutiful in their going to the beach and have lain like sacrificial offerings on the sand, even venturing into the sea from time to time.

Lunch was tapas with a few glasses of beer and this evening is our last night out having a “real” a la carte meal in the restaurant next up from our normal eating-place.  Ceri had an excellent steak there and I think that the Pauls are looking to emulate that meal.

Well, we didn’t make it to the restaurant.  That isn’t strictly true, we actually did get to the restaurant and were not able to sit outside and had to go inside and, in spite of the open walls of glass allowing the cooler evening air in, it was unpleasantly hot.

And none of the waiters seemed to care a damn about taking our order.  One of them actually passed us and said, “¡Hola!” and then walked on!  We waited ten minutes and apart from the screaming kids and the chattering, over-talking Spaniards and Catalans we were alone and were left alone.  So we left.

We almost decided to go in to the centre of the beach area but, on further consideration we decided to go to a restaurant not far from our house which offered a rather more professional service.

And things went well for the first two courses, and very tasty they were too.  Even the sweet course went well.  Everything went well right up to the bill.

The bill came to €129 and Paul (god bless him!) in a magnanimous gesture decided to pay.  He had taken out €200 from the cash machine and in an excess of generosity and a lack of arithmetic he put the whole of the €200, in four €50 in spite of the fact that he should have put only three of those notes to pay for a bill under €150.  But he didn’t and when his change came back it was from a total of €150 as the amount offered. 

Paul had been robbed of €50.  When the stunted dwarf with a moustache who had taken the money was tasked with theft he stoutly denied that he had seen the €200 which Paul had counted out onto the bill.  The stunted dwarf had overlooked a simple but important fact: although there were three Brits in the party our fourth member was Spanish.  His protestations of innocence were more than met by the vociferous replies from Toni.

Eventually the Stunted Dwarf capitulated and said that he would return the €50 and “half your meal will be free!”  I can’t help feeling that if he had right on his side there is no way that a true Spaniard would willingly give up €50 and I fear it was more to do with being found out because he did not know that there was a fluent Spanish speaker rather than hapless foreigners to deal with.

We went on a triumphant march to the nearest bar and had a very satisfying drink toasting the linguistic victory of Toni against the grasping hands of unscrupulous restaurant managers.

A very satisfying end to a decent evening.

Regained Days

We have managed to visit a few more of the tapas restaurants and get some more stamps on the sheet.  I have now reached double figures and am almost half way through the 30 participating establishments.

Yesterday the three of us went out on the town and walked to one of the restaurants listed on the ruta de tapas and were told in no uncertain manner that as it was August and the height of the season there was no way that a mere tapa was going to be served when full-meal customers were available to be fleeced.

In spite of my showing the gentleman who was refusing to serve us that the printed information stated clearly that the tapa would be served until midnight, our requests were refused and I hereby mark the name of the restaurant with a black mark in the best traditions of Julius Caesar – “Thus with a spot I damn him!”

The succeeding visits were more successful with some very interesting tapas including tuna with caramelised onions; an elaborate construction on ryvita using orange marmalade, apple compote, Spanish ham and blue cheese with a tiny olive and flavoured with balsamic vinegar; scrambled egg with cod (my personal favourite) and lastly a rather strange mini pastie.

We used the occasion to visit bars, ostensibly so that we could keep tabs on how Barça were doing in their match with hatred rivals Real Madrid.  We also drank.  A lot.

By the end of the evening we were wholeheartedly into the game (which started at the unearthly hour of 11 pm!) and I noted with some amusement that the Pauls were joining in the shouting and outraged exclamations of contempt at the antics of the Real Madrid players with what I can only describe as a strange sort of “foreign” overlay on their native accents!

As is traditional in our joint forays into the unknown (to me) night-life of Castelldefels we were royally ripped off in the last watering hole we frequented and were grossly overcharged for our final drinks of the evening.  Though, I suppose it is fair to say that we were in no real condition to evaluate the exact relative charges!

I must say, on past performances, that I was justly proud of the fact that I had safely in my wallet at the end of the evening the information about the ruta de tapas together with my collection of almost 50% of the stamps necessary.  The fact that I had this important paper, together with possession of my wallet was something of a triumph!

The next day was something of a non-event with a late start coupled with an extended siesta leaving room only for a lunch (with fizzy water!) and later at night an Indian meal.

Today, as the saying goes, is another day – and this time I have got up early to ensure that I gain the benefit from a full day’s holiday!

Out and about

This morning, instead of the baying of the dogs, we have the rather more plangent sound of the pool being dredged with the outsized net capturing all the pine debris that accumulates over time.  From the starter chopstick-like needles to the disturbingly larvae-like seeds it is all cleared away and with random handfuls of god-knows-what chemicals the pool is pristine for a few hours until various unsavoury bodies immerse themselves in the limpid waters.

Our visit to Sitges will afford an opportunity for Paul 1 to get himself a pseudo-identity card to replace the need to carry his passport to act as surety for his cards.

One of the few tangible benefits to emerge from my stay in The School That Sacked Me was one of my excellent colleagues telling me that she had an official-looking card made from a colour photocopy of a couple of pages in her passport.  I have used the resulting card to accompany all my bankcard transactions and, generally, it is accepted as proof of identity. 

I do also have a tattered A4 page of Spanish manufacture which gives my Spanish identity number.  This is also accepted, but each time I unfold it, it gets a little nearer to total disintegration – and I have no idea how to replace it.  And, as this is part of the Madrid government’s paper chain I shudder to think of the bureaucracy involved in its replacement.  The only document I have which is in an even worse state than my Spanish identity paper is my driving licence which is in such a poor condition that even the DVLC made an attempt to stick the thing together again on one occasion with official document quality Sellotape!

Sitges seemed to be hotter than Castelldefels, though that might have been because we were on a beach protected from breezes and unwelcome gusts.  The sea was a calm as a swimming pool and the water, therefore, clear.  There is a long walk through shallow water until you are out of your depth – but with such a shallow shelving seabed the water is pleasantly warm.

Lunch was not the disaster of our last foray into restaurant meals.  This was in our sure and dependable restaurant to which we always go in Sitges and for the princely sum of €9 we had an excellent three-course meal.  The wine was red, but in an open bottle without a label and was suspiciously “light” – but at the price who could complain!

Our return home was the excuse for a siesta and our waking was an excuse to indulge in our berating of the excesses of the neighbours!  A summer-long hobby!