The big six O

4th November

Gill is six months older than me. This has meant, in terms of scarily big birthdays, she is doomed to play a pioneering role. It also means I can reasonably  claim to be fatally attracted to the older woman. In terms of obsessive male desire this is a much healthier state of affairs than being fatally attracted to the younger woman, because, funnily enough, just like men, most women don't tend to grow younger, so it's more sensible all round to be attracted to women roughly the same age as yourself rather than younger. This gives both of you opportunity to grow wrinkled and bewildered together in sunny harmony.

Some of my male fellow travellers seem not to have arrived at this enlightened position; there's a fair old smattering of grey-haired males with significantly younger (15 years plus) significant others in tow.... it's never going to work in my view, but other peoples' marriages are always a mystery, so if it works for them, good luck!.

Anyway, today is Gill's 60th birthday, this means next year it's 40 years since we first met, and though all this decade stuff seems ridiculous - it's just numbers after all, it remains important to mark the occasion, not least because I can't quite believe that someone as sassy and generally wonderful as Gill would choose to spend her life with  me. And if you are thinking this is all self indulgent, self deprecating nonsense, then at the end of this post I will present irrefutable photographic evidence that unequivocally supports this assertion.

However, before then, back to the birthday.

Some months ago Gill set out her base requirements 60th birthday wise. They were simple but specific:

1.  A lunchtime meal outside even though it's November.

2. A sea or harbour view

3. Under a palm tree, or at least with a view of a palm tree.

4. Interesting local food

5. A nice bottle of wine, preferably from the locality.

As the pictures on the blog have shown, all of this should have been entirely do-able, apart from the one thing beyond our control. It's been fairly clear since the third week of October that Gill's birthday and a deep Atlantic low beginning to fester in the Bermuda Triangle were on an inevitable intersecting trajectory. BBC Weather, France Meteo, El Tiempo, and the dear old Met Office all agreed on one thing, the Atlantic front in question would track across the Iberian Peninsula on the evening of 3rd November, temperatures would plummet and a dusting of snow would fall on the Pyrenees and high Sierras. Wunderground predicted the rain would reach the Mediterranean coast at 3 am.on the 4th - Gill's birthday. They were wrong, in fact at ten past one precisely I rolled out of bed to close the roof lights,having been awoken by the gentle patter of drizzle on the van roof. By morning it was grey and raining steadily. We spent the morning lazing about, then around 12ish set out to hunt out a pre-lunch cortada.

By this time the rain had cleared and had been replaced by a clear silvery light which when viewed across the broad sands with the pallid sea looking distinctly choppy, presented a scene more reminiscent of Bournemouth in November than Benicassim.

The plan was to eat out at the nearby Hotel Voramor. Its dining room overlooked the bay, it had palm trees on the terrace and the menu del Dias had a good write-up on Trip Adviser. Beforehand we headed to one of the villas a few hundred yards down the esplanade which had been converted into an Ibiza style cafe bar - high ceilings, contemporary styled black glass and chrome furniture, background music - a mixture of J J Cale style rockn' blues and indie singer-song-writer stuff. A nice place, with an interesting looking menu too.

''London  calling'

The terrace of the Villa Del Mar (palm trees and everything...)

When we returned to the Hotel Voramor for lunch, the dining room was utterly empty, just rows of crisp white table-clothes all beautifully set for lunch, but no customers. We'd gathered from yesterday's visit to the hotel terrace for coffee that the place had a penchant for quietly wafting deeply felt operatic arias across its speaker system to create a mood of romance and soulfulness. The effect is lost on us; it just tends to depress our spirits, in the end we'd rather have Ibiza chillout to accompany a Mediterranean vista. We decided to return to the Villa Del Mar to eat.

A seriously cool cafe bar

Perusing the menu

A big smile from the birthday girl.....60 - never!

In most respects, given the weather, it hit most of the buttons - sea view, palm trees - the wine the waiter recommended was excellent - a local white, refreshing with a citrus after taste. The food, however, proved to be memorable....but not in a good way. This was probably as much to so with our inexperience with Spanish menus as the fault of the chef. The starter we ordered was described as salmon with anchovy butter on a rocket salad. What we expected was salmon with a small, light anchovy flavoured butter, a bit like garlic butter, but fishy. What arrived was a terrine made of cream and pure butter with slivers of salmon through it like marbling. It looked like a slab of fishy lard plonked on a bed of rocket. We struggled with it and made fairly good stab at eating it. A starter if supposed to excite the palate, 'open the stomach, as the Italians say; this concoction should have been arrested for GBH. The effect of this was to make wading through the main - a Valencian paella - very hard work indeed. We finished our meal sitting out on the terrace with our wine, under a palm tree watching the silvery sea which had grown agitated enough for a lone surfer to don a wet suit and attempt to ride the waves. Always entertaining watching people trying  to surf - like all good slapstick it involves a display of how many different ways you can fall over ridiculously.

Finishing off the bottle on the terrace.

It's a miracle that anyone so full of anchovy butter could manage a smile

The cake, candles and fizzy wine had to be postponed to much later in the evening, even then it was truly miraculous that we had recovered enough to consume even a crumb - but we did somehow. I sang tunelessly, Gill blew the candles out, and that was that - the big Six O duly marked, though I never did enquire of Gill precisely what mark she gave it. Whatever it was you can be sure it would be accurate, reliable and fair,and fully adhere to national standards as laid out by Ofqual. In any case, in the event of any future inspection or need for external verification we have the video evidence to hand....

Oh, I almost forgot, the irrefutable evidence that Gill has spent her entire adult life married to a complete idiot.

While fiddling with her Moto phone Gill commented, "Oh there's the selfie button, I've never taken a selfie, being 60 should be all about new things" - CLICK!

First selfie, not bad... a bit rueful perhaps...

In the interests of togetherness I followed suit.

...what can you say...

See, told you, a complete plonker!