Carol and I popped out this morning to say farewell to el perrito, Scamp, and to see the Bérnia. Last night Chris told us that Scamp had been sulking for a day or two after we left to take up residence with Geoff and Pam for our second week. I don’t usually have that effect on dogs. It’s a mark of how unsettled the weather has been that we have been here fro two weeks and have not been up to the Bérnia once. I can’t beleive it. Today with cooking duties looming, we didn’t have time to walk around it but we could, at least, drive up to it to see it. We left Geoff peeling 66 large raw prawns for the evening meal with Chris and Yvonne while he waited for his gas delivery.
Guess what? Quite correct! It seems that the Spanish phrase, “your gas will be delivered mañana” didn’t actually mean tomorrow. To be honest, I didn’t really think that it would arrive. Now we had a conundrum, though: a six-person dinner party to prepare, all of which would need to be cooked on a hob, and no gas.
Well … not quite no gas. Geoff did have a different gas cylinder in a room heater. That cylinder would also fit his gas BBQ which, mercifully, had a gas ring beside the BBQ part. He rigged it up. The strong wind seemed intent on making life even more difficult but Mr. Travelling Chef performed the near impossible by cooking two different meals (Pam didn’t fancy too much spice so I made a different prawn dish for her) largely on a single modest gas burner. I say “largely” because Geoff discovered that, although there was insufficient gas for either boiler to ignite and stay lit, there did appear to be some driving their gas hob. I was reticent to use it lest it run out completely half way through some critical stage but I did manage to make the “Cajun napalm” inside under control.
We had a great evening bidding fond farewell to our excellent hosts for the two weeks and the meal seemed successful.
Having been in this slightly challenging position now myself, I appreciate even more the absolute feast for 20 people that was prepared by a couple of Thai ladies using only two burners on our converted rice barge when we visited Thailand in 2006. I always knew they had done brilliantly but now I know they performed a minor miracle.
Tomorrow we do battle with Alicante airport to fly home.
I hope Geoff’s gas turns up very soon.
Leave a Reply