A banquet.

Having just spent 4 hours walking over the hills with her goats and sheep, I think Maria was probably looking forward to 5 minutes by the fire with a hot mug of coffee. Instead she was met by a house full of visitors and went straight into hostess mode. Soon, added to the bread & cheese, we had a plate full of sliced Chorizo sausage and another of Serano ham from the recent Metanza. More drinks were poured and more food added to the table.

On the wall we suddenly noticed that there were 4 large calendars, all in a row next to each other - and a 5th on another wall by the door. All were local calendars which can be picked up free in the village, but it seemed odd to have so many. As it began to get dark we found out what these were for. Bernardo brought in the Quails for the night, and he has four of them in seperate cages. Each one hangs on the big nail holding the calendars to the wall, and it stops any dirt from the birds marking the walls. When a page in the calendar gets too marked Maria simply tears it off for a new month! Simple really!

Maria brought through some photos of her family and she told us her sons had all gone through to Aguilas for the Carnival, which is why none of them were around when we called. I asked her about the kid goats that we had seen as I wondered when they would be old enough to go out with the herd, walking the hills. Maria explained that they wouldn't go walking as they would soon be sold for meat. If you visit Spain and see cabra, cabrito or choto on the menu, that's young goat.

We spent about an hour chatting in our best Spanish, and managing to be understood. Sometimes it's necessary to re-think how to say something or ask something and then we all struggle to understand the answers, sometimes because of the accent but it was great fun trying and the time passed quite quickly. The bottle of wine was empty and Bernardo went to fetch more. He topped up all the glasses and then took a sip of his own, at which point he declared it 'not good'. It was too vinegary and he took all our glasses back and poured the wine back into the bottle. I asked him whether this wine would be used for cooking and he said it would be. The next bottle he tried himself first and after announcing it fit for drinking he topped up all our glasses once again.

Maria then brought out some fruit, some home grown cherries which had been soaked in sugared water and were delicious. Nnormally I don't like cherries but these were sweet and had the texture more of a grape. There was also something none of us recognised. It was like a fruit jelly with a really nice, sweet flavour that we couldn't pinpoint. Maria told us the name but it still meant nothing to us. It was like an apple, but not an apple and not pear either, but was really nice. I have learnt not to ask anyone to write things down for me, as much as it would help, as some of the older farming generation cannot always write, and I don't want to cause any embarassing moments, so we just have to struggle on in ignorance sometimes.

Janet & I were suddenly aware how long we had left our dogs and started to make noises that we should be leaving but Bernardo pointed out that Maria had water on the boil for coffee. Along with the coffee there was a plate piled high with crisps and Maria also brought out 3 bottles of liqueurs. It is traditional in Spain to finish your meal with a small liqueur and often these are served free in restaurants with your bill. Very often you don't have a choice of what liqueur you have, they serve it ready poured. Today we had chupito de hierbas, a popular drink made from grapes and supposed to be good for your digestion .

Finally, we said we had to leave and as we all began to move Maria gave Janet and I a litre of the drinking wine each to take home, tested and approved by Bernardo of course, and Bernardo also gave me a bottle of the wine deemed fit for cooking purposes as well. Outside it had become dark and we now saw the sense in parking the car on arrival in a manner ready for departure - reversing around a farm yard in the dark is not easy. Fortunately, most of the animals were inside and only a couple of dogs were showing any interest in making sure we left the premises. A couple of hours had passed incredibly quickly, Maria and Bernardo are such lovely people and seem really pleased to have us visit their home.

As we left I wondered whether Maria would now get her 'sit down by the fire with a cup of coffee moment'.