It's Saturday afternoon at around 3:45 and it seems like not much is stirring. The sun has been out the last couple of days, and the temperature's up in the mid 20s so the city has been transformed. Instead of groups of Spanish tourists wandering from church to cathedral in raingear and wearing fishing hats, they were wandering in sunglasses and everyone else (it seemed) was out on the streets earlier. The tables outside the cafes were busy, people were smiling and chatting. On Saturdays the market is busy early but no one else seems to be about until 11, then at around 12 there's a secret signal (I assume) and everyone else heads out to shop, to chat, to see and to be seen. Then at 2 everything shuts, that is, everything that hasn't already shut, and the streets become quiet, the traffic dies down, the pavements empty. The smell of grilled fish or the cooking of chickpeas wafts out from windows, open behind half closed shutters. It's getting on for lunch time.

I bought a load of salad stuff among other things this morning, it's warm enough so that my body actually is craving salad rather than hearty bean based stews. I'm lucky I was able to buy anything because a couple of days ago I had a brainstorm and managed to mangle my PIN and I still can't remember it (they're sending a renotification). Luckily Brian, Liz's dad was able to give me my PIN for my business account (which was back in Greetland) so I'm solvent but for a while there I thought I was going to have to make €50 go an awfully long way.

The upshot of that is that I splurged on cheese. The cheesemonger knows I'm working my way through the Asturian cheeses and today I picked this one, the Beyos goat's cheese (there's a cow and a sheep version too). Señor cheesemonger said it was really good but quite strong, to which I said that was fine. It´s got the texture of a dry cheshire cheese but very definite goatiness and it´s pretty tangy and salty the way a nice cheddar can be. So overall a thumbs up for Beyos.

In an hour or so the yoot will begin congregating for their Saturday afternoon yootfulness, I´m going to sit on the terrace and enjoy the peace while it lasts.  ¶ 5:38 PM