26 Degrees in the Shade . . .

An Impromptu Visit from Spanish Health and Safety

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Spain is moving with the times and the Health and Safety laws relating to bars and restaurants are as cumbersome as they are anywhere else in Europe. Gone are the days when you could stick a gas grill in a shop premises, place a few tables and chairs outside and calling yourself a bar, start selling hamburgers stored in a cool box.

Now, and rightly so, to protect the consumer the Spanish Public Health Department work as hard as, and have the same amount of rules as that of say the UK’s own equivalent.

But! What’s the last thing you want, just when all your lunchtime customers are seated and have ordered and are ready to eat? Yes! That’s right you’ve got it in one; a visit from the Health and Safety at Work Department.

Imagine this scene; it’s the third week in August (read busy), it’s 2:30 pm and the bar is packed out. Only two staff are working today including yours truly, but we are coping well and then up turns a woman with a big heavy briefcase. She puts it on the counter, flicks it open and inside lies the inevitable clip board and beneath the clip board, even more frighteningly, loads of very technical measuring devices.

There’s one to measure the heat, the coldness and the emission of just about anything that could every come out of any part of a kitchen. I try not to panic and keep at least half my mind on the eagerly waiting customers, but it’s quite impossible, just as the moment a nurse is about to stick a needle in you cannot stop yourself wincing, well I started to tremble, I don’t mind admitting it, the thought of all that powerful rocket science and the even greater power of her ministry clipboard, threw me into a panic.

She looked in every cupboard, measured the temperature of every fridge and the temperature of the chip fryer and the oven. She checked every single surface she could find for any semblance of a crack. She checked the worktops, the floors, the walls and yes the ceilings and all the time wrote copious notes on her clipboard. It felt like driving test that was not going well. I followed the golden rule laid out and then endlessly repeated in the Bar Owner’s Handbook. Basically I smiled at every comment and answered politely to any question she threw at me.

At long length she called me into a corner of the bar and said. “I should fail you on several things, but I am going to be lenient and give you 3 months to put your ship in order”. At this she ripped out what must have been about the quadruplicate copy of her last hours scribblings and slapped a piece of pink paper in front of me whilst disappearing from our restaurant with the same lack of endearment with which she had entered it.

I began to read the piece of paper with my heart beating overtime, expecting to find all sorts of dreadful horrors, which would be costly to rectify, but as I read a warm glow lit up inside me and a wry grin started to form:

1) New lid to be provide for pedal bin.
2) Sign to be provided denoting gentlemen’s toilet.
3) Extractor Hood central hole to be made 1cm wider in diameter.

Nothing to worry about at all! It was definitely time for a glass of sherry in celebration. We’ll no doubt see another recruit fresh out of university in her place visiting the bar at the same time next year.

Cycling in the Mountains

I have started cycling again after a few years lay-off. I have always been an endurance athlete throughout my life, so cycling round the back streets or along the sea front simply doesn’t interest me.

The best route for me is the mountain climb to the white village of Benahavis. This is not a route that one could do straight off, so I have been progressively going a bit further up the undulating mountain road in incremental stages.

For the first two weeks, I was content to ride as far as the bottom of the first challenging climb and then I’d turn around and come back down the gentle slope to the main coast road.

Graham’s Pizzeria, my restaurant and bar, is just 500m from where the Benahavis road meets the main N-340 coast road. Now into my third week, I’m doing the first climb and then carrying on to the “recinto y inglesia de Roamaria”. That is a very large picturesque spinney of eucalyptus trees with a quaint white church in the middle. The road at that point is both flat and shady, so it’s a great place to stop, take a drink and turn around for the return journey.

I ride in almost any temperature, but I’d probably draw the line at above 36 degrees. Most people think that it’s really uncomfortable to cycle in high temperatures, but actually as long as you are moving at a reasonable speed, the airflow keeps you cool.

When I get back to the bar and stop though, I do start to feel hot, but that’s simply remedied by sitting underneath the air-con in the lounge with a beer.

The Benahavis road is a country road and as well as being wonderfully scenic, skirted on both sides by trees, fields filled with wild flowers and several golf courses. You pick up all the wonderful scents produced by nature, that are lost when you travel by car.

The secret of cycling on undulating roads is to always make sure that you are in a low gear ratio, the moment you start struggling to push a high gear round you are finished. You’ll either end up too tired to make the return leg or you’ll have very sore legs for a few days afterwards.

At the moment the figs are ripening on the roadside trees and as Ines absolutely loves wild figs, today I stopped and picked some. The local Spanish people, being very wise always know exactly what’s in season and when, so most of the figs low down on the tree have already been picked, but as I’m tall, I was able to reach some that those before me had left on the tree.

The problem with cycling is that you never have anywhere to put things. Sometimes with a newspaper for instance you can shove it down your trousers, but sticky fresh figs, I don’t think so! I didn’t want to disappoint Ines so I put them in my leather bag, which I use for my telephone and bankers cards etc.

I knew that some of the natural sugar would ooze out on the return journey, but I could see no other way of getting these delicious fresh figs back to my wife who was waiting in the bar.

Spain is a wonderful place to live.