The pleasures of chocolate
On their visit to Barcelona the children were pleased to find that there were long queues to enter many of the highlights (yes, in October). They were pleased, of course, because it was easier to convince Mrs B to forget about art and architecture and go shopping instead when faced with the prospect of two hours stood in a queue.
They tell me that one morning, having given up on an art gallery, they went to a cafe instead, where they ordered hot chocolate. To their enormous satisfaction, hot chocolate apparently consisted of…melted chocolate. With nothing miserable and milky to reduce the pleasure.
Now even to me that sounds good, if a bit heavy going. Mrs B had ordered a cappuccino, and says it will always be one of her life’s great regrets that she made such a bad choice, having to sit watching the girls enjoy their hot chocolate while she had a mediocre coffee. Such is life.
As consolation for not going with them they brought me back a ‘Twix Xtra’ which I’d never seen before - like a regular Twix but much longer. Too big to actually eat of course, and I’m too mean-spirited to share it, so it will probably never actually get eaten.
Talking of chocolate, our local town has a great cake shop where you can buy awesome chocolate cakes, but they do cost almost 20 euros each so we save the pleasure for birthdays. And Bank Holidays. and Anniversaries and parties. And weekends and evenings.
My birthday this month, Christmas next month, Mrs B’s birthday in January, Valentine’s day in February. We can usually find an excuse if we try hard enough.
And of course whenever a visitor says, “Can I get something in for dinner tonight?” we do mention that there just happens to be a little cake shop on the corner opposite the church…
