 Changing Places Week 129 - W/C 3rd August 2008
Let's have dinner at Cas Xorc said a visiting friend anxious for a girls bonding night. The setting in the mountains on the way to Deya is second to none and the carpet of lights of Soller and the Port complete the picture as the mountains grow dark. This was us on Monday night and before we arrived we had to run the gauntlet of the Restaurant Waiting List!! Fully booked in that exquisite place but `we'll put you on the list and call if we get a cancellation' were the instructions from the restaurant manager. I thought that life was a tough in the hospitality sector right now but our evening disproved it. The experience was worth the waiting list and it was easy to put the world to rights up there in the stars.
Simply Red at the Bullring on Sunday night meant that I was having all my treats in one week. The building is stunning and the enthusiastic crowd were glad to see Mick Hucknall and hear him sing all the old favourites. He used to run round Primrose Hill in London near my old office and the vague North London association was enough to make me go and see the concert. The group of reps sitting in front of us started a Mexican wave and the crowd responded good naturedly. Everyone was out to have a good time and the stars shining above us in the perfect round that the bullring made was a wonderful ceiling above our heads. I am really into the beauty of the stars since I moved here. London nights give you stars but visits to places like East Anglia let you see what the sky is like without light pollution but a Majorcan night sky is something else - quite breathtaking.
Diana Krall is the other treat of the week - Tuesday Palma and on Saturday she is back in North London singing at the Kenwood Concert. The connections are all getting a bit blurred, have I really relocated from North London to North Majorca or is it really the same place? The Arena in Palma best known for its cycling events is not the same as lying on the lawns of Kenwood on Hampstead Heath with a picnic courtesy of Waitrose and the continuous pop of a champagne corks! Diana Krall has a husky magic voice that sounds good wherever she performs and the Palma audience certainly thought so.
Mick Hucknall and Diana Krall are the famous names of the week but spotting celebrities on holiday is a Soller sport. `Don't look now but isn't that whatsisname from the TV' or `just look at that she doesn't look as tall as she does on the films'. Coming from our bit of North London we are well used to the celebrities looking for anonymity in the designer shades and Jimmy Choo's and in the summer they join us here for a bit of `look -I'd be disappointed if you didn't- but don't speak and definitely don't touch'. It's alright though because August madness has gripped us, it's too hot to give a damn so let them pose and enjoy the moment that we enjoy year round.
How many ways can you use a water melon? They are the only successes in our garden this year. The tomatoes got the blight, we blinked and missed the apricots, and the beans went from young and tender to old and woody overnight - not a good year in the Roberts vegetable patch. Water melons galore take the place of everything else and we have a `glut' situation. Dinner with those two gourmet chefs Paul Brennan and Peter Bradley (who are also our friends) in the hills behind the Port of Soller taught us to use water melon, feta cheese and pumpkin seeds for a stunning starter. So any day of the week the watermelon will be used for that recipe or something similar. We are just resisting the urge to use them as footballs but as I said earlier August madness has definitely set in. The promise of a little less heat in September is my final treat of the week - excuse me while I sleep off the excesses of this one.
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