I had two lunches yesterday. The first was an invitation to visit and eat with an Elderly British couple. We had fried turkey breast and a glass of white wine. Followed by an ice-cream on a stick. We talked about the weather (it's been a mixture of sunny and wet days this week).
I then made my excuses and drove along the beach to a restaurant which is opening soon for the season. It was a Spanish friend's birthday and an enormous table for thirty or more had been laid. People came and went as more and more platters arrived from the kitchen. I was sat next to two local people I knew slightly, with a Danish couple seated opposite.
I discovered that the Danes had recently bought a house in the pueblo. I was going to trnslate something for them but discovered that they both spoke fluent Spanish. 'Oh, we learned it when we decided to move here', they said.
How very un-British of them, I thought.
My neighbour passed me endless pieces of meat, sausage, morcilla, alioli and salad. The man on my other side was more concerned about my glass. I had at least three drinks in front of me at one point (although, looking at the picture now, I seem to have been the only one). Pedro was running around telling everyone to eat and drink more, as his sister looked on approvingly. A cousin invited me to go hang-gliding over Easter and a young woman asked me about journalism, as she was studying both this and the English language, and was soon to leave for Malta.
The Spanish, of course, know how to eat and enjoy themselves.
I skipped dinner, by the way.
There's a thread on Facebook with British residents discussing local Mojácar restaurants, which is the best of them and so on. Very positive. There must be a hundred places, with local and foreign cuisine: Spanish, Basque, Madrileño, French, Brazilian, German, Greek, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Indian, American, Italian, English, Irish and Argentinian.
The choices for best place, though, and seen through British eyes, seem odd. The cheapest and worst are mentioned regularly with enormous enthusiasm, while some will only eat in those family-owned place with ridiculously large menus. Menus where one has to take out one's specs ('glafas' as a bilingual friend calls them) and read with a glass of wine to hand.
Me, uh, I'll have what he's having.
Eating out should be a leisurely mixture of good food, good wine, good company and good service. You are paying for some entertainment and some theatre.
Skimp on these and - if it wasn't for the washing up - you might as well have stayed home.