After several rough weather days this week, the wind strength dropped overnight and the cloud cover dispersed. Only when it rained heavily midweek was the cloud cover as low as it usually is in Cardiff. On very windy days the cloud cover has been higher. Generally it's been less gloomy than at home, but the return of the sun is welcome, penetrating the house and warming the lounge in the morning, so heating isn't needed. Something to enjoy while it lasts.
After breakfast I completed and uploaded next week's prayer video and edited my Sunday sermon. Lunch consisted of the second portion of chicken in a sauce cooked yesterday with potato, carrot and judia plana, which Google translates as 'flat bean'. It's a variety of long broad bean pod harvested before the actual beans within grow to maturity and the pod becomes stringy, a favourite veg of mine when I'm in Spain.
Clare and I chatted after lunch. She recounted the performance of 'The Scottish Play' she watched last night at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Set in our times with guns instead of knives and swords and Macbeth was played by an Irish actor, and scenes at the start and finish intended to make a statement about the universality and continuity of treachery and conflict in human relationships, I guess.
Then I went for a walk down to the far end of Los Boliches, aware that the wind had picked up again. The sea was as turbulent as it was on previous days, if not more so. There were no surfers waiting for waves in the waters of Playa San Francisco, just too dangerous for sensible people I thought. But not for kite surfers however!
Three of them took maximum benefit from the cross wind traversing the bay, to drive their surf boards across the top of three metre high waves, occasionally being lifted from one to fifteen metres into the air before hitting the sea again and only rarely going under rather than continuing to surf the waves. Amazing to watch. Like snowboarders who fly high riding the half-pipe or a downhill obstacle course, their confidence and control is very impressive. I can't imagine how they achieve such athletic excellence without paralysing or killing themselves.
On the return leg, I stopped to buy some toiletries at the large Los Boliches Mercadona on the ground floor of a huge apartment block. It's like a maze inside with many different sections. Then I stopped at the smaller Las Salinas Mercadona down the hill, to buy a stick of pan rustico. I bought one a few days ago for a change from half-rye sliced bread I usually buy, and enjoyed the flavour. Made of strong white flour, it's more substantial than its French or British equivalent.
The air temperature today was decent fourteen degrees, but the strong wind was chilling, and when I got back I felt like cooking something to warm me up. The pan rustico went nicely with a tapa I invented for supper, of spicy chorizo chunks, fried in olive oil with garlic, cherry tomatoes and sliced mushroom.
Finally, I listened to Janacek's opera 'Jenufa' on Radio 3 while writing and editing pictures uploaded when I got in. Then an hour's reading before turning in for the night, feeling the benefit of so much fresh air, sun and good food.
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