A couple of quiet days as we are both busy at work now and life in Valladolid has settled into a routine. I wake early in the mornings and make myself a cup of tea and scrape together a bit of early breakfast. We work steadily through the morning. There is a hammock slung at the door, and we take it on alternate days. It is surprisingly comfortable to work on a laptop in a hammock. Around noon, as we are both perishing, we go out for lunch, often to nearby Yerba Buena which has light, tasty Mexican food. At this time it is usually very hot, under fierce sun. On returning we work some more. Sometime during the afternoon as it starts getting hot and sleepy we go down to a cafe down the street where I have a small Mexican cappuccino (with about a tablespoon of cinnamon in a small tea cup) and the GF has a cold brew which seems differently served every time. With it we have a cake. By the time we finish the late afternoon has set in and our street become shaded and cool, and people come to life, walking faster, staring curiously at us. I have been photographed several times in my hammock, looking very picturesque, I daresay. At night I cook dinner (after lunch we get groceries, from the market if we are feeling ambitious and from a roadside stall if not). This is a slight struggle as there is only one hob. Though today we went to a tortilleria and purchased a kilo of tortillas, so I think we have discovered a new staple food even if our kitchens in other flats are more generous. Then the Gentleman Friend washes the dishes and one of us goes to refill our drinking water. Since this is a bit of a hassle, whoever has the hammock that day gets the water. We go to the nextdoor cafe also owned by the people who own the flat where the woman behind the counter gets very grumpy indeed, as they get those five gallon water containers that she decants into a plastic jug and then pours carefully into the narrow mouthed water bottle provided. It’s a terrible system, and I keep thinking that if I ever pass a hardware shop and remember to ask for a siphon I’ll buy it for her as a gift. She is so very grumpy about it.
After dinner and evening showers, we settle down with a cup of tea, some chocolate (two squares for me, four for the GF) and listen to one of the years’ best compilations the GF has been making on my urging. We are now in the mid 90s, and the songs evoke that sad passionate hopeful teenage time so strongly that it enters my dreams and makes me want to cry. And the next morning we start again.
It feels like it has been thus for an eternity, and will be so for an eternity more. On Saturday we go.