Temps de Flors

To Gerona, to visit the Temps De Flors, a sort of combined flower show and open doors event where the shops, streets, public and private buildings are decked with flowers and flower sculptures for eight days.

It also turned out that there was an exhibition of photographs by Steve McCurry, fascinating, wonderful pictures including the Afghan Girl that must be the most reproduced image of my lifetime. The whole exhibition was breathtaking and fortunately darkly lit so my unmanly show of emotion was well enough concealed.

As for the flowers, today the event was drawing to a close, the flowers were looking a bit bedraggled and the crowds were frantic, with that sort of desperation one only finds in the last days of spring sales and the rush for the last train.

The cafes and bars were all heaving, a crisis denial along the lines of "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we follow Greece down the pan", the shops all stayed open until midnight but seemed short of custom, and our attempt to kiss the bum of La Lionesa was thwarted by a group of ignoramuses who had decided to plant themselves on the steps and refused to move.

After following another ritual embedded in our nuptial bliss, that of visiting every shoe shop in the city without buying anything, we finally descended on our favourite tapas bar, a Basque owned restaurant called TXASTXRS or something similar where we pushed our way to the front of the queue waited patiently for a table and munched our way through delicious dishes of spiny snails, octopus bits, pigs feet and the reproductive organs of several unnamed and unnameable species.

I wasn't allowed to go to the fun fair, the pleasure prevention officer decreeing that the joy of shopping for feminine frippery in the company of three such charming adherents was more than enough excitement for one day, especially taking into account my general state of wellbeing and evident frailty. So home we sped.