A weird and strangely off-putting sort of day

Managed to rouse myself in time to get out of bed, and that’s the most positive thing one can say about this morning. I re-read what I had written last night and, as I think most other sentient or wise-thinking human beings would do were they in my place, deleted it.

So, I got dressed, walked out the door and went to Hardy’s here in Calahonda, on the main strip. It’s very much an English caff, run by Norf’Landoners. Asked for a coffee and two boiled eggs, if that was possible.

“Sorry, we don’t do soft-boiled eggs. We’ve got hard-boiled eggs, though, with mayo, if you like.”

“…”

“We can do scrambled, if you like.”

“Do you have eggs?” I asked.

“Yes, I told you, we can do you hard-boiled eggs with mayo, scrambled eggs, the full English comes with a fried egg.”

“But you haven’t got boiled eggs on the menu?”

“No, sorry about that.”

“But, can I just ask,” and hating myself already for broaching the subject (or should that be ‘poaching’), “if you have hard-boiled eggs, why can’t you do soft-boiled eggs? Don’t you have a timer? Is that a different Michelin star category?”

“Just don’t do the eggs, that’s all.”

It was the continuation of an already shite day. That things were not going to get any better was confirmed by Liverpool’s capitulation at Nottingham Forest. Hard to dislike Steve Cooper, but I wish he had got his marquee win against someone else. It’s hard with a thin squad, and probably unfair on Elliot and Carvalho to expect them to incisive when it is part of a learning process and they are at the very, very beginning of their careers. When we have a fullish team, we beat Manchester City; but when we are without TTA, Matip, Konate, Nunez, Diogo Jota, the Portuguese wizard, Thiago, and have others playing injured or with knocks, we lose to a competent, yet very limited side. Hmm.

I went off and did a walk along the boardwalk. It has been hazy and very humid of late, and I was a little disappointed to find my knee was painful. Not as bad as it is in Canada, admittedly, but it was undeniably sore and I stopped a couple of times to stare at it, as if willing it to improve. It didn’t. So, I went home and sulked a bit more.

Popped down for a Ricard aperitif to La Tabla Belga and then came back to have the remainder of the dinner I had cooked the previous night.
I’ve started reading Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, which I bought from a charity store here for 1€. What an interesting book. I particularly liked the following description of a city called Zaira (although the premise of the book is that the narrator is Marco Polo telling Kublai Khan of his discoveries in the world, when in fact he is describing a different aspect of Venice at each time):
“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps,…”
I’ve never read much of Calvino (i.e., any) but am tempted after this.

Blip is of one of the trees in the communal green space here. Any experts as to what it is (a fuller picture in the extra).