Sunday 28 August 2011 – I wake and am happy, there’s a breeze today, a small one but a breeze non the less. Despite getting back in the early hours, I only slept briefly, and I find myself at a loose end at 06.30. I take advantage of the coolness, and slip into the garden to eradicate a few weeds, before breakfast.
Eartha Kitt sings ‘C’est Si Bon’ as my egg poaches and my bacon sizzles in the pan. There’s a few things, that when they appear in the shops that fall into my basket without thinking, and one of those things is bacon. Okay it’s sliced so thin you could take a photograph through it, and it’s nothing like the middle bacon back in the UK, but it’s not pumped full of water and when crispy is divine.
The morning is taken up with mindless internet surfing, Facebook watching and email writing. Benito, a cat with dreadful facial injuries a few weeks ago comes in for his lunch; I’ve been feeding the feral
I shower and head off to Christine’s for dinner. Upon arrival she warns me she’s made a Yorkshire Pudding for the first time, and if it’s a disaster I can’t laugh or tell anyone on Facebook. We watch a little TV as we wait for the potatoes to roast and the YP to do its thing in the oven.
Stuffed after eating, we are watching TV and in that general state of repose post lunch, when we are shaken by the sound of a cannon going off, then another followed by another, the town shakes with the vibrations. We guess it’s a precursor to tonight’s festa, and Saint’s procession.
We have a beer later down at the festa, (costs twice as much here), a band plays as the locals follow four men carrying a Saint’s effigy. The religious ceremony is quite upbeat, with the jolly sound of the band playing what I can only describe as Catholic Ragtime.
Now it’s not the sight of locals in their devotion that catches our eye, nor is our interest taken by the male compere who bears a striking resemblance Eamonn Holmes, for us it’s the old lady that is purchasing a slab of pizza. She looks to be in her late seventies, and doesn’t have a single tooth in her head: I suspect they’re in her handbag. We are transfixed as she tears off the corner, pops it into her mouth, gums the tomato and cheese topped foccacia for a while, then sucks the living daylights out of it. Each mouthful follows the same ritual – tear, pop, gum, suck – and it’s a long slow process. After ten minutes she’s only an eighth of the way through, by my calculations it’s going to take her at least an hour and half to eat her slice, taking in sips of water and jaw resting.
We leave the event and stroll up to the small corner bar, where we sit and watch as the town winds down, before the evening draws to a close. Because the roads are closed off, the only way home is through the snaking side streets only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. So with Britney Spears singing ‘Big Fat Bass’, featuring Will.i.Am, I hold my breath, put the car into gear and hope no one is coming in the opposite direction. I didn’t meet any other cars, just streams of pedestrians that didn’t care if they were walking in the middle of the road – Who could blame them though, they’d all had a good time out, just like me.
But part of me wonders if there’s still a little old lady, sat on a plastic chair, and gumming a piece of pizza?
wish I had done my hair and put some lippy on...but man THAT YORKSHIRE was a triumph to my culinary skills...( or not as the case may be!!!!)
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