Sunset over Salobreña

From the petrol station. Read on for an extraordinary coincidence!

To Salobreña this afternoon to see Belfast, as finally the films in English with Spanish subtitles have restarted. We did like it, although I feel it's been somewhat over-rated. It's rather sentimental and in some ways skates over the realities of the Troubles (perhaps inevitable as it's told from a child's point of view). The actors were all great though. I hadn't looked at the details beforehand and was staggered when we got home to realise that the granny was played by a totally unrecognisable Judi Dench.

Other cultural news: Paloma Herrero's piano recital yesterday evening was rather strange. She had deliberately not provided a conventional programme of the pieces she was going to play. Instead she played one short piece after another, a mixture of her own compositions, classical pieces, and music from films while abstract photos were projected on a screen behind her. She didn't speak at all throughout. As far as possible she moved swiftly from one piece to another but if she took a bit longer turning over scores, some of the audience decided to applaud, which I got the impression she wasn't entirely happy with. The intention was for it to be meditative, which it was -- they were almost all slow, melodious pieces. She suggested in an interview that people could close their eyes and dream. But it did make me think that you could get the same effect by listening to a CD or a music stream!

Afterwards we went for a drink and extremely copious raciones with F and T. Their friends L, who is Dutch, and H, who is Japanese (as is T) joined us. During the course of the conversation it emerged that L, who has lived in the Alpujarras for 30 years, until they moved to Almuñecar a couple of years ago, had lived "near Toulouse" before that. Pressed, she said, "Oh, you won't have heard of it -- near a village called Seix". Where exactly? Well, it turned out she was a near neighbour and great friend of S's friends Francis and Gila, who live in a tiny Pyrenean hamlet in the back of beyond, keeping sheep and running a walkers' hostel. Extraordinary! S took a photo of L and H to send to Gila. It was a long and pleasant evening, but eventually we had to acknowledge that the staff wanted to go home.

Edit: Oh! I know I'm rabbiting on, but I have to record that on this day two years ago, we had what I now recognise as our last carefree social event before Covid. Nothing has been the same since.