Sunday 14 March 2010

An average is just that

The average rainfall in Malaga in March is just 62mm (just over 2 inches). This compares favourably with a number of other places such as Bergen in Norway which has 109mm.

However, what you never get from these figures is that you can achieve that monthly average in one sitting.

Today I was given a demonstration of this with a quite spectacular downpour in the early afternoon.

Call it an inbuilt British sense of impending rain, I had taken the decision to stop for some late lunch rather than go directly to the Picasso museum and within a few seconds of sitting down in the dry the skies absolutely opened.

It is a horribly schadenfreude thing to do, but it is quite fun to sit in the dry and watch everyone one else suddenly have to dash for cover.

Of course, it took nearly 40 minutes for the downpour to abate, which meant I just had to have a largish lunch, with some tapas, and a beer, and some coffee, and think about desert...

Saturday 13 March 2010

It helps to remembers yesterdays dinner

Last night I had a very nice meal in a little restaurant off of the main shopping street. Along with a particularly pleasant white Rioja and a very nice mint consommé I had the “Black Paella”. Black Paella is made using squid (or in this case Cuttlefish) ink to turn the rice black, in with the rice is diced seafood.

But, crude as this may sound, everything that you put into the system, usually within 24 hours, makes its way back out again, and when you have forgotten what you had for dinner the previous evening the outcome looks as thought you are seriously ill. It took me a worrying few minutes to work out that there wasn’t something horrifically wrong with me, just the Paella making a re-appearance.

Friday 12 March 2010

It shouldn’t make a difference, but it does

Perhaps it’s an experiment I need to repeat at a busier time, perhaps it was just a statistical anomaly that every so many people they do it, or perhaps it does show an in built prejudice in the system.

As I had been in work in the morning I went to Gatwick in a shirt and tie. Having checked in I made my way over towards the security screening area.

The area wasn’t busy at all; in fact where there would normally be queues of people waiting to have their boarding cards checked there were instead staff sitting around trying to attract people to come over to their desks.

To get to the main entrance to the security area you have to walk past the entrance to “Fast Track” this is the speedy line for those people travelling business or first, which, when the security checks are besieged by thousands of people off on holidays, probably does make sense.

Two large families had already walked past and been pointed in the direction of the main entrance to the security area, which is where I was heading, when I was invited to go through fast track “as it was very quiet”.

Now, was that because I was travelling by myself, or was it because I was smartly dressed?

And if anyone is wandering, there is no difference between the fast track lanes and the normal lanes, other than green coloured flooring!