Sanxenxo Progress.

Well, the chess player had a nicely winning position against the Portuguese prodigy last night and messed it up. As you can imagine, he was not pleased. He needed a couple of cañas to bring him round after such a shock. At the moment he’s slogging it out against another whizz kid but this one is at least on the verge of manhood – aged about 20 I think. 

The sun keeps on shining here. The temperature gauge on the prom read 27° at lunchtime. It’s quite a shock to the system after the rather chilly damp weather of last week. But am I complaining? Not one bit. I’ve got my sun hat and my sun glasses and there’s the pool to fall into at regular intervals. Life is good. 

Lunch was also good today: crepe de mariscos followed by chipirrones. 

 

There was something heavy and meaty to follow that but we opted out. I notice that we are not the only ones who do this. The Catalans on the table next to ours regularly ask for a salad instead of one of the courses. 

 Part of our routine is to pop out to a cafe round the corner before the chess match starts: a little cortado starts the chess brain working. There I found this cartoon in today’s paper: 

Liverpool has just paid £9 million pound for Iago Aspas, a Celta de Vigo player. Maybe they are singing the Liverpool song because they expect other to follow him from Celta’s Balaídos stadium to Liverpool. This is what happens, you see. You manage to stay up in the first division and along comes someone to make you offers you can’t refuse for your players. It’s a funny old world. 

I mentioned the Australian PM, Julia Gillard yesterday. Well, it turns out her party has given her the sack, voted her out of office and replaced her with Kevin Rudd, the bloke she ousted last time round. Is it the knitting, I wonder? Or is it because Russell Crowe spoke out in her defence and said that she should be treated with respect? 

In the pool yesterday I heard a small boy talking about what games he plans to get up to when his cousin Pelayo arrives. My ears pricked up because I remember a rather annoying Pelayo from last year. Well, not so much an annoying Pelayo as the annoying mother of said child. She was one of those Spaniards who pronounce the letter Y like the “dg” in English words such as “hedge”. So her son’s name became Peladgio. And she said it a lot. It was all, “Peladgio, come here”, “Peladgio, don’t do that”, “Peladgio, do this” and so on and on and on. And they spent a good deal of time in the pool. 

Despite all my finger crossing, as we strolled out yesterday evening, in search of consolation cañas, I saw ahead of me a family with one child in a buggy and another curly-haired, blonde child of about 6, a proper Little Lord Fauntleroy of a child. It was, however, the mother I recognised first from her rather self-important way of walking. Yes, it was Peladgio and family. 

 I suppose that if we can come back here year on year, then so can they. I would prefer them to keep out of my way, though. 

They’ve not shown up yet at the pool. So there is still hope.