PROSPERO & THE FLYING PIG

This morning I chewed the cud with my good friend Prospero.

Actually we chewed a mollete filled with jamón serano y tomate in the Bar Vecina – but same difference.

I have often said that Prospero is wiser than his years. As of today, his birthday, he is a year older and therefore the two are probably on a par.

Certainly Prospero is older than me – but he still has his own teeth. If they are not his teeth then his denture maker has a cruel sense of humour.

Prospero is the chronicler of all that happens of interest in Jimena de la Frontera – and on frequent occasions records events that are of no interest at all but, yes its one of my buts – he makes them sound fascinating. Journalism, cerveza cero cero and cafe con leche are in his blood.

There is a very curious thing about birthdays. I remember at my first job in London being bemused when it was a person’s birthday – and they had to buy the cakes!

Come my 21 st birthday, which was many years ago, I found myself paying for numerous rounds at the Coach & Horses in Soho before I was finally thrown out for squirting the soda siphon over one and all.

Now I always thought that this perverse ceremony of the birthday boy or girl having to pay was some weird English tradition.

Not so.

For this very morning Prospero insisted that he had to buy the birthday breakfast – in the Spanish tradition.

Sadly soda siphons are now museum pieces just like Prospero - and I guess me too.

But I have to tell you that at 10.40 this morning a pig flew over the Bar Vecina.

Read all about it in Jimena Pulse.