It was very hot day today, too hot to do anything apart from lying and sitting around.
Come the evening and it was still hot, really hot with no breeze or air movement whatsoever. The sweat emerged at the top of my head and gathered momentum until it all finished in my shoes. I was a walking waterfall. We arrived at the restaurant and they showed us to a table at the back of the open air eating area up against the side of the restaurant where there was even less cooling air movement. Emma, Dan and even Pauline had acknowledged that it was really quite warm. We all squelched into our chairs and the waiter came up.
He was sweating more than I was. His shirt was stained, his hair was lank and his face just dribbled sweat. As I sat there dripping, watching him drip we suddenly thought we might be more comfortable at a table further away from the building, more into the roadside area where there might be the chance of the odd breeze from a passing car. We asked to be moved. The waiter shrugged his shoulders sending a tidal wave of perspiration down his arms and said in Spanish, “I don’t think it will make any bloody difference where you sit, wherever you sit, it will still be bloody hot.” Well that’s what I thought he said anyway.
But we insisted and helping the waiter to move our entire cutlery, bottles, glasses etc. we moved over to a new table and sat down.
A couple already sitting at a table next to the one we’d just moved to looked at us and the man said to me with a grin, “It doesn’t make any difference. It’s psychological. You’ll still be bloody sweating.”
And we were. And we did. All except Pauline who doesn’t sweat, she doesn’t even perspire politely and can exist quite happily in temperatures far exceeding the highest temperatures ever reached in the hottest place in the world…ever.
All I could think of for the rest of the meal was; if the waiters were sweating so much out front, what must it be like out the back in the kitchens.
Who knows what liquid our paella was finally cooked in? It doesn’t bear thinking about does it?
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