As you might have guessed, I am not a fan of this (non-)sport. I know it demands a lot of skill and so on but I really fail to see the point. And then, isn’t it more than a little sexist? Where do you find the male synchronised swimmers? Come to that, where are the male acrobatics competitions? There too, young women show off their artistic skill and contort their bodies in time to music.
Anyway, there I was, trying not to be distracted by this stuff on the television screen when I realised that the lady at the table next to mine was taking it all very seriously indeed. She criticised the manner of entry into the water, the various jumps and throws involved, even the costumes. Goodness me, someone actually likes this stuff! How amazing!!!
I think the best I saw was a Coca Cola advert some years ago. One summer in Spain Coca Cola offered a free waterproof music player if you collected enough ring pulls off their cans. The advert showed a synchronised swimming team in the water. The commentary was going on in that special sing-song tone that is used for some, usual female, sports reports. Suddenly the commentator reported one of the swimmers shooting off on her own and doing her own dance to her own music. She had the music player, of course. Priceless!
When we last travelled to Pontevedra, at the railway station I met an old friend from the Italian class I used to go to here in Vigo. She told me she was off to Sanxenxo but that the group still met at a cafe down on the Paseo Marítimo. The reading group at the library had been discontinued last January because of cuts. Not just the Italian book club but all the languages. What a shame! It was one of the ways that I got to know a whole lot of people when we first lived in Vigo. In the broader scheme of things, I wonder how much money they actually saved by doing that.
So I decided to look up the remains of the group and went off on Wednesday evening to find them. We had a nice chat about royal babies and the fuss made about them, among other things. Then one of them lent me a book to read for next week. She’s already read it so it was no hardship.
It’s a detective story, set in the city of Urbino at the end of the 18th century. The blurb on the back describes it as “un thriller storico”. So, you see, the Italians do it too: borrow words from the English. They have a perfectly good word for detective stories: un giallo. This means yellow and is used because of a famous publishing company who printed their detective stories with yellow covers.
So I’ve taken a little break from reading Max Aub’s books about the Spanish Civil War. I’ll get back to them.
In the meantime, here is an example of Mr Aub waxing lyrical about food, in this case egg and chips.
“Nothing more difficult than what seems simple.
The whites of the eggs must be fried until golden and crispy while the yolks must remain soft, under a thin white coat. The edges of the egg white should bear a similarity to a baroque sculpture.
And with the chips this is what should happen: they must be soft in the middle and about to change from golden to sienna coloured on the outside ...”
There you go. Food is important. Even the simple stuff.
It is interesting that when someone is a hopeless cook, in English we say he can’t boil an egg while in Spanish they comment, “No sabe freír un par de huevos” – He can’t fry a couple of eggs.
On the subject of food, here are a couple more examples of the great free tapas you receive in some places in Vigo.
This is what we were served this evening in the Nuevo Derby. I didn’t bother photographing the second lot that went with our second drink but it was equally substantial.
And here is what we got last night in the Failde. Practically a meal!!! I shall soon stop cooking altogether.
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