Overcast Allariz

Tuesday was of little note. I set my alarm for seven the night before having had an instant sense of regret for committing to staying in the beautiful but somewhat inactive town of Allariz. When the alarm went off however I felt like pulling the covers over my head for the rest of the day nd so nothing became of it. At 10 I rose and had breakfast with Belin's mother - a vat of milky coffee and bread with mouldy jam. She offered me some of her prescribed painkillers for her back and had me sat on the sofa next to her, our legs tucked under the table which had been rigged up with a hot lamp on it's underbelly. I was not entirely sure how safe this was, with the excessive table cloth, but when I saw how warped the old lady's hands were with arthritis I understood. 

I went to the bar at the end of the street again to sponge the wifi for few hours at the price of a coffee I really didn't need. When it got to 2 I knew I needed to leave, I was well beyond necessary admin and had begun the fatal Facebook scroll. I had thought I'd go sunbathe in the park which was by the river, but there was patchy cloud and a strong wind so I lay down on a bench and curled up like a bum for a couple of hours, snoozing intermittently. I reluctantly returned to the bar in order to kill some more time before Belin got home from work.

At 5.30 I went to the flat where I found out that Javier's flight had been delayed so that he wouldn't be arriving till the next day, when I would be gone. I tried not to look like the wind had been taken out of my sails and Belin suggested we go into Ourense. We got in her car, which had this smell which was unidentifiable, but synonymous with moist sandwich fillers on long car journeys. We arrived in Verin and parked near the river, where the free thermal baths were. The weather was rather grey around the pools, and there weren't many people, but there was an old woman valiantly sunbathing topless. The water was so hot that after 10 minutes my feet were really porky and red. We walked into Ourense to the butchers to buy Belin's meat then we drove back to Allariz. We returned to to the funky tapas bar for a beer and some tapas before going back to the flat for a Spanish omelette. Here I learned why Belin had bought so much cooking oil at the supermarket - she fried the onions and potatoes in an 8th of the bottle. Her mother was in the room next, lamenting the pain in her joints like a guttering candle, and I was more than looking forward to leaving the next day. I got my bag packed before sitting down on the sofa for the tortilla, which for all that oil tasted delicious, although it did rather bleed out its contents when cut. I had about half and went to bed, with the sound of Belin's industrial cooking equipment and her mothers squaks rocking me to sleep. The uncertainty of the road tomorrow provided a quite realise from the entrapment of another's domestic friction.