Evening. Here we are then at the
second weekend of the English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook summer
sketchpedition. It’s Saturday! That’s about the only thing I don’t like about
the school holidays – Saturdays somehow become less special. Still Saturday –
Sabado – it is, and so let me ask you this. What do I normally do at least once
on a Saturday whenever I’m staying in San Isidro? How very dare you! No, not
that, I meant we go to the market in Catral.
First of all, though, we passed
through the market to grab a coffee and a tostada in a café close by the
church, which you can see in the sketch below. The Café Plaza – named after
Port Talbot’s sadly dilapidated art deco cinema, I believe – was an interesting
place. The coffee and tostada were delicious, but it was one of those places
which has led me to formulate a theory, which I am sure that posterity will dub
Clark’s theory of inverse volume. Basically it means that the smaller the
volume of a café or bar in Spain, the greater the volume at which the locals
within it will talk. And there’s a certain type of Spanish chap who is very,
very good at speaking at full volume. Every bar/café has at least one, and the
Plaza, in its small space, had 4, two in front of me, and two behind. By the
time we came out I did feel a little bit like I’d been beaten over the head
with a blunt instrument.
Now, just in case you’re starting to
think that I’m being unfair to Spanish men, fear not. Now I’m going to have a
go at the English as well. I like to think of myself as an equal opportunity
critic. A practical move we could take to lesson the toll being taken on John’s
feet was to provide some cushioning and protection for him, and so we visited a
chemist just off the main square. Now, if alarm bells happen to be ringing in
your mind following my experiences in the chemist in San Isidro, well, I can
understand that. However, this chemist, being in cosmopolitan downtown Catral,
was well used to dealing with British customers. Which was just as well. There
was a queue ahead of us, all of us being held up by a senior citizen, whose
accent irresistibly reminded me of The Last of the Summer Wine. See what you
think about what he was talking about.
“What I want to know is, why are you
closed sometimes?” When met with confusion from the pharmacist, he elaborated,
“What time do you open?”
“Half past eight.”
“I was here at nine and you were
closed.”
“Ah, well, it’s the summer . . . “
Trust me, that is a perfectly adequate excuse in Spain.
“This was in the winter.” – and so on
it went. The poor girl was berated for the fact that they closed during siesta
time, and weren’t open the second after it ended, and so it went on. Eventually
the miserable old devil gave up – maybe he was starting to feel all the daggers
that everyone had been looking at him , although since everyone in the queue
was British, we just silently wished him a bout of amoebic dysentery rather
than saying anything to him about it.
The market. Right, would you like the
glass half full appraisal, or the glass half empty appraisal? The half full
appraisal was that there was quite a lot more stalls there than there was when
I visited last year. Last year it was a couple of weeks later in the year, and
a lot of the stallholders were on holiday. The half empty appraisal was that I
just wasn’t really that interested in what was there. Fruit and veg stalls,
sweet stalls, and above all else, ladies’ clothing stalls. Now, don’t get me
wrong, I appreciate that ladies need to wear clothes, and ladies clothing
stalls would seem to be a reasonable solution to that problem. But, how should
I put it, to me, when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
Still, looking on the bright side,
the fruit and veg stall did at least allow me the opportunity of making a Spanglish pun. It helps if you know
that the Spanish for spinach (hmm, the Spanish for spinach? The chalice from
the palace and the vessel with the pestle come to mind.) – the Spanish for
spinach is espinacas. Hey – stop making up your own puns! Jen pointed out the
spinach on the stall which was looking very sorry for itself, and said,
“That spinach looks like I feel.” To
which I replied,
“Espinackered. “ No? Well, please
yourselves.
That, then, was about it for today. Just
Sunday’s and Monday’s instalments to go in part one of the trip, good people. I
hope to see you then.
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