Big four-oh

In La Cañada’s ‘Irish’ pub

It was quite a celebration. Not just a simple birthday, at least not in the sense of a specific day. More a serial celebration over the best part of a week.

I’m not talking about my birthday, although that kicked the process off. My celebrations, in which I’m always proud to say that the whole nation of Australia joins, under the mistaken apprehension that they’re marking their national day, were happily confined to the date in question. Let me stress that ‘happily’: it was just right, with excellent food in a lovely setting with wonderful company.

But I wasn’t the only one to have a birthday with a zero in it. Just three days after my 70th came my son Michael’s 40th. He’d joined us for the celebration of both.

The aim, you may remember if you read my last post on the subject, was to go for a Chinese meal on his birthday and follow that up with a visit to the Irish pub next door. Danielle and I had seen the pub several times but never gone in. Michael, however, had tried the place with his sister-in-law Sheena, with whom his last visit had overlapped. They’d liked it and he wanted to go back with us.

Eventually, the day dawned. Danielle baked Michael the cake he wanted, a Black Forest gateau, which he enjoyed, as did several of our neighbours: Danielle doesn’t hold back when she’s baking and likes her cakes to be generous.

Michael with his cake

But then there was a bit of a debate about the evening meal, in the Chinese restaurant. It quickly emerged that no one really felt like it. Michael, who likes to adapt his desires to the reality of circumstances, quickly modified his ideas. We’d go to the pub that night and a Chinese meal another day. 

It was only an Irish pub in a loose sense. It had clearly been decorated by a company that has a kit of ‘Irish pub’ accessories, delivers it and puts the contents up. But it seems to be pretty hazy on geography. For instance, one of the items up on the wall was a first aid kit box (yes, you read that right: a first aid kit box, and before you ask, your guess is as good as mine) from Redruth Rugby Football Club.

Now, I know a Redruth in Cornwall, which is in England, but to my knowledge at least, there’s no Redruth in Ireland. Or if there is, it’s not important enough to have a rugby club.

What I’m absolutely sure of is that the football scarf up on the wall, adorned with the words ‘Aston Villa’, is associated with one of the longstanding traditional English football teams, in this case in Birmingham. Nothing Irish about it.

What’s more, of course, this being a village on the outskirts of Valencia, everyone on the staff is Spanish, not Irish. To start the evening, I had an Orujo, a well-known drink in the Spanish province of Asturias, completely unknown, I’d guess, in Galway or County Down. 

I didn’t want two and wasn’t sure what to follow it up with. 

“I’ll have a Bloody Mary,” I eventually decided.

No good.

“They don’t do cocktails,” Michael told me.

But having thought about it, he went on, “Hold on a moment.”

I followed him back to the bar.

“Do you have Vodka?” he asked.

“Yes,” came the reply.

“Do you have tomato juice?”

“Yes,” again.

Now came the difficult one, the one where a positive reply was far less likely.

“Do you have tabasco?”

“Yes,” the manager told us, to our surprise.

With Michael in the pub. Note my supersized Bloody Mary

Well, a really good Bloody Mary has more ingredients than those, but they’re enough for a basic version. And, since the barmaid had never made a Bloody Mary before, she just kept tipping vodka into the glass until there was enough there for at least three strong ones. I had to get a second tomato juice just to make it drinkable.

We had a good time. Michael reckoned it was one of his best birthday celebrations. There was a price to be paid the next morning but, hey, it was fun while it was happening. “Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday,” the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam tells us, “why fret about them if today be sweet?” Damn right too, even though when tomorrow managed to get born, it provided a little to fret about. 

That left the matter of the Chinese meal. Our Chinese restaurant is shut on Mondays and Tuesdays, the two days following the pub trip, so we decided to head into Valencia itself for lunch in a restaurant called “The Spicy Soul Hotpot”. It doesn’t offer souls, but the rest of the name is accurate. We hesitated between ‘medium spicy’ and ‘very spicy’, having ruled out ‘super spicy’. We opted for and enjoyed ‘very spicy’, but I’ll just say that next time we’ll go for ‘medium’, to spare our throats.

Michael with the hotpot

Then came the end of Michael’s stay and we still had the bottle of Cava, Spanish sparkling wine, I’d put in the fridge to cool for our celebrations. So we got it out and finished it off, much to our enjoyment. That marked the third celebratory event for his fortieth and, therefore, a full week of festivities starting from my seventieth.

A birthday week. Highly pleasurable. And it kept going for far longer than a mere birthday day.