The flowers had been destroyed by the time we came out to eat last night, and when we got up this morning and walked through the noonday sun to buy breakfast (it had been a late night) all trace of them was gone. The roads were wet from the sprays of the municipal cleaners and all that was left was the more stubborn of the chalky white outlines.
The festival is over.
I think, to be honest, I may have overdone the sun today. Just a little. I’m not burnt, but I do feel weary, and kind of sun-strokey.
Breakfast, in the Chiringuito cafe on the seafront, turned out to be a long affair, where sitting around reading and watching the world go by far outweighed the actual eating. The manyana ethos was in full swing, and we asked form the bill several times before it eventually arrived and we were free to move on.
We walked for an hour and a half or so, well beyond the limits of the town to the point where the road and pavement came to an undignified end by a stony beach and a hollow of stagnant water. I think that’s perhaps when I caught the sun – and on the walk back home when it was on our backs and necks.
The afternoon, we spent on the beach, under the shelter of umbrellas until the day wore out and the ants invaded our towels.
We ate dinner in a square in the centre of town: the four of us beneath a wilting tree that dropped flowers onto our plates. All around us was a mad cacophony. A man beat a tea crate with his palms while the woman beside him danced a silent flamenco in straw-soled shoes in time to the beat. Couples holding hands, both mixed sex and same, chatted and shouted as they walked past, and all the time we were there – two hours or more – the sky was ablaze.
Fireworks screamed up into the sky, exploding all around us and strobing the face of every building.
They were coming from the beach where kids jabbed them into the sand and lit the fuse, not caring to stand back as they screamed off into the night. All along the front was gathered hundreds of people. Those on the pavements, like ourselves, watching the free show; the hundred or so on the sand letting off their rockets.
There was no thought of safety. Many would even pop the stick of a rocket into an empty drink can, hold it high above their head and then watch as the flame took hold and carried it away in a streak of red and green sulphur.
Others put smaller bangers right inside the cans, which they dumped amid the crowded streets. Seconds later they would explode and the can would all but disappear.
There was no explanation for these dangerous goings-on. We could only assume they were the dying hours of the Corpus Christi festival. Whatever or whyever, though, after we had watched for some time on the sea front we retreated to the safety of a hot, airless bar.
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