Here we are in Sanxenxo once more for the annual chess jamboree, otherwise known as a tournament, at the Hotel Carlos I Silgar. At the moment it looks as though we might be having the usual chess tournament heatwave. This worries me not at all as the pool here is very fine. In our hotel room there is a book called "La Dieta del Doctor Cidón Madrigal". On the first page is a sort of introductory quotation. Who wrote it, I do not know. It is anonymous and reads as follows: "La obesidad es una condena. A través de una buena alimentación recuperaremos la libertad". This translates more or less as, "Obesity is a prison sentence. through a good diet we shall regain our freedom". I have not read any further. I presume there is one of these in every room. Or have they singled us out for some unknown reason?
The supreme irony is that the food here is very good but they serve copious amounts of it. Lunch and dinner are both made up of three courses and then there is a dessert. Today for example they offered a kind of crayfish kebab with rice, then potato croquettes, followed by veal steak with chips. By my reckoning, that's three portions of carbohydrates in one lunch! Not a green vegetable in sight! Oh, and the traditional "flan", creme caramel, for dessert.
And they leave books about obesity in the rooms!!!
We only have half board and can choose between lunch or dinner. In the restaurant they are constantly surprised that we ask what the three courses are for the day and then choose to have only two of them. As it was, today we made the wrong choice. The kebab was lovely but the croquettes, although home-made, were disappointing. We should have opted for the veal, even though we eat very little meat. As regards dessert, neither of us really enjoys "flan". This goes back to our student days when some of the boys in the student pension where we stayed in Murcia used to have flan-eating competitions. These were rather reminiscent of the scene in the film "Cool Hand Luke", where the Paul Newman character declares, "I can eat fifty eggs". Enough to put you off certain foods for life. So we had to sweet talk the waiter into bringing us ice cream instead. Oh, I know there is sugar in ice cream but we had not eaten all our croquettes!
In the local paper yesterday we read that the birth rate in Galicia is falling dangerously low. Not only that but the Pontevedra province, where we spend most of our time, has fallen behind Coruña province! Now, I can quite understand that if you have no job, if you are well qualified but have no prospects of a job other than giving out leaflets to persuade people to visit the Islas Cíes, if you find yourself beyond the age of thirty and still having to live with your parents, then you will put off having children. It's the only sensible thing to do.
However, in the hotel where we are staying there is an abundance of children, many of them quite small babies. Not only that, but many of Phil's younger chess playing friends seem to have reached the point in their lives where they marry and produce offspring. Babies all over the show! It did strike me, though, that perhaps the kind of people who can afford to summer in this hotel (which is rather grander than any we stayed in during our younger days when we were encumbered with two offspring) can probably afford to have children. It's a theory!
Here's another one. Yesterday evening we strolled out. Families were out and about, going up and down the promenade. In some cases, a tiny child was walking with the parents. Phil commented that Spanish children seem to start walking at an earlier age that British ones. Is it the famous Mediterranean diet? I doubt it but there were certainly tiny people, who looked to be no more than twelve months old, walking along at the end of a parent's finger. What could be the cause of this precocity?
This morning at the pool I had a moment of enlightenment. There were several young families with sitting-up babies, around sixth months old. I even had confirmation of the age because I chatted to one fond daddy as his child gurgled in the water. All these infants, too small to be standing or even pulling themselves up onto their feet independently, were at some point "walked" by their proud parents, held up by their tine, fragile arms, little legs going like the clappers.
This is all well and good but I was always advised that it is actually not the best thing for the development of strong and, more importantly, straight legs. Maybe it leads to early walking though. Are these parents uninformed or are they competitive and want their child to walk first? Who knows?
It may, of course, answer another question of mine. Why is it that so many young Spanish blokes appear to be slightly bow-legged? Just take a look when you walk behind them. Especially if they are wearing shorts.
Of course, it's just a theory but the premature encouragement to walk might have something to do with it.
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