FIRA!

Big Fira in town today...sort of like your classic Medieval market without the mud and smell, or rats or disease or or or, but there was a band and dancing a traditional Catalan dance, the Sardana, and all the local artisans were out with their products at boots. A potter from whom we got a great big beautiful mortar and pestle. Actually the colours are a little ugly between you and me, a mustard yellow and green, colours I usually quite like, but, well. It is very traditional. It will also be very useful. i have felt a little cramped in the kitchen without one. They also had a potters wheel up and going, the man was amazing with it...I have seen potters at work before and it always looks like magic to me. The eldest and I both came away with a desire to learn to work it. Not so much for the finished pieces as the fun of making them.

There were people there who do fabric art, kind of like rug hooking, but much better and they work in three dimensions, and have different textures. They had also added other materials to the works. There were weavers making fabrics that I coveted horribly, jewelry makers, knitters, the local cheese maker....we bought some, it is of course unpasteurised, we got two types of goat cheese, mmmmmmmm. And we found out where to buy it whenever we want it. There were chocolate makers and sausage and meat curers, wood turners, metal workers, soap makers leather workers and fabric makers. A pretty impressive turnout overall.

One of the interesting things there were tables and tables of people buying, selling and trading the little metal caps from the tops of bottles of cava...the Catalan champagne. There are tons and tons of cava makers and they produce different tops every week, some of them. There was a special top produced just to commemorate this fira. Some of these caps sell for 150 Euros! I guess that it is like collecting stamps, just rather more local...no impulse to try that out anyway.

The girls got tiny teeny smaller than a thimble glass animals, one hedgehog and a rabbit, they also got tiny little clay jugs from the potter, and some very pricey chocolate each.

Peaceful afternoon, artichokes, artisanal cheese, French buckwheat pancakes, red pepper and yogurt for lunch. Pretty good overall.

It is lunchtime now...read 3:40. They shut down about an hour ago, and it will all start up again at around 4 or 5 and go until about 8. We'll go out again, the only thing I wanted to get and didn't was this amazing looking pate...it was huge, like the wheel of a bicycle, and tall as a loaf of bread and is a country style pate which I think basically means chunkier...it looked gorgeous and I want to try some.

My head doesn't hurt today, and the noise of all the festivities didn't bother me as much as I thought it might....noise has been rather irritating these last two days. So while I am still taking it pretty easy to say the least, things seem to be mending. I will be buying a big old pool noodle or something similar and gluing it to the offending bit of concrete. A two day headache and possible concussion is more than I really want to deal with again.