Refuge from toxicity

One of the great things about living in Spain is that the weather here is, generally, a lot better than anywhere else I’ve lived.

I say ‘generally’ because, around here in Valencia, when it rains it really chucks it down, for days at a time. But when it’s fine, it’s really fine.

Trouble with that is that it appeals to more than us humans. For instance, this is a nation in which there flourishes a particularly dynamic race of masonry ants. Now, I’m strongly in favour of learning to share our planet with other species. Call me prejudiced if you like, however, but I’m really not keen on having the bricks our house is built of reduced to long, thin trails of red dust.

This means getting the pest control man in. In what feels delightfully paradoxical, he helps keep our house free of pests by using thoroughly pestilential products. One of them, as well as being lethal to unwelcome creatures, would undoubtedly not do our health any good either. We had to get out of the place for a couple of hours.

Ah, this is the life.
Just the retirement earned by a long mousing career

That was no problem for Misty, the cat. Of the four countries we’ve obliged him to live in, Spain seems to be the one he likes best. A fine place for his retirement, he seems to feel. Especially in the summer, when he shows no reluctance at all to staying outside, even overnight. During the day’s even easier. He just had to choose which particular patch of sun he felt most comfortable lying down in.

That just left us and the dogs. What we needed, we felt, was a bar or café, with a garden where we could spend an hour or so, nursing a drink, in pleasant surroundings.

Not as simple as it sounds, though.  It was like when someone asks us to recommend a hotel near where we live. I don’t know any hotels where I live. I live there, after all.

When we were in town, with loads of cafés or restaurants nearby, we knew plenty of places to go to. But we moved out here to be somewhere quieter. There just aren’t any cafés around the corner, and we don’t know that many even a drive away. After all, being out here, and this was one of the aims of the move, means that if you want a drink in an attractive setting, you can have one at home.

Which, as I’ve explained, wasn’t on just then.

Fortunately, we did know one place not that far away, a restaurant with a bar and a garden. It’s lovely once you’ve arrived, but getting there’s not much fun. In particular, one of the places you have drive down is in a such a state that you have to worry whether your car’s axles will stand it. Or, even more worrying, your neck. Really, I think of that stretch as a series of potholes with a few bits of roadway mixed in.

Still, it was just the place for us. Except for the sign we saw as we drove in. “Strictly no dogs”.

I suggested we drive on, looking for somewhere else. But Danielle thought I should go in and ask first. I realised she was right – after all, the worst they could say was ‘no’, which would leave us no worse off than if we left.

And this is another thing I like about Spain.

It may be down to Catholicism. Or perhaps to the Mediterranean way. It’s an attitude I’ve met in Italy and France as well. Regulation is seen as a guideline. Something to be approached, but not to be adhered to slavishly.

It can be irritating, as when people don’t respect social distancing or drive down our street at twice the speed limit. But it can be a joy at other times. Especially as a contrast to the “more than my job’s worth, mate,” I’ve met all too often in England.

You see, Protestants, or possibly Northerners, follow a harsh, unforgiving God. The “vengeance is mine” kind of God. Not so much the more broadminded God of “why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

“Ah, yes,” they told me in the bar, “dogs are strictly not allowed. But that’s because the owner has a large dog that wanders around here off the lead. But he’s away right now. So, just for once, and on a completely exceptional basis, you can have your dogs here while your house is being fumigated.”

A pleasant place, good company, a large G&T
make for a fine place of temporary refuge

Given that on top of that, they poured the gin for Danielle’s gin and tonic by eye – none of those cheapskate measures or anything – this place turned out to be just what we needed to pass the time of our exclusion from home.

Luci found the place perfectly satisfactory

And the dogs liked it too.