Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning



The weekend arrived. One and a half days off, almost. Clients to see on Saturday afternoon, which is unusual, so decided to stay in on Friday night, a most rare occurrence. After an extreme pilates session, a handsome meal of sausages and mash, and a wonderful first viewing of ‘Brief Encounter’, I had an early night.

Saturday morning, an even rarer occurrence, I didn’t have a headache having abstained from the normal Friday night’s carousing…. Saw the clients on Saturday afternoon, did the soundcheck for Saturday night’s gig, and then went out to dine. Due to impending gig, just ordered an ‘exotic salad’, not wanting to play on a belly full. The salad took about 45 minutes to arrive, and when it did, it was lettuce and tomato, grated carrot, grated cheese and some large onion rings. I wasn’t sure which part of it was exotic, but my Creole is not sufficient to be able to ask without getting into all sorts of trouble …

Salad consumed, frocked up and ready for the gig… a jazz trio in a lovely rooftop bar, mainly frequented by Italians. It was a lovely evening, having imbibed a queasy mix of ‘spritz’ (white wine and campari), pernod and tequila I was now in the mood for a proper Saturday night.

Off we all went, to Calema, the liveliest bar in town, with live music, tonight a reggae band in which Ricardo, our lovely Mexican bass player, was playing with for the first time, on guitar. The place was heaving, full of local Cape Verdians, expats of all nationalities, and tourists. The set was 2 and a half hours long, everyone was dancing and falling over, marvellous fun had by all, ending with a lock-in consisting of Cape Verdians, English, Italians, Portuguese and a couple of girls from Denmark. It was marvellous fun and very interesting. To bed by 4.30am …

Sunday morning, awoke about midday, leapt out of bed and to the stereo, where Motown hits only encouraged dancing to shake off any potential hangover. This brought on a great hunger, so we called Ricardo the Mexican, and all set off to the Ponta Preta restaurant on the famous and fabulous surf beach. The weather was perfect for surfing and kite-surfing, so we were entertained whilst waiting for the food. Oh, the food… 3 portions of cracas (rock mussels) followed by 3 portions of percebes (goose tentacles). The waitress was stunned into silence by this order. All washed down with cold beer…

Our hunger sated, a walk up to the dunes was called for. We struggled up the gentle slopes to the top, where we all lay down, to watch the sunset. Ricardo entertained us with Mexican folk songs on his acoustic guitar, the sun went down and we walked back only to bump into 3 Czech friends who were playing Czech Gyspy music on the car stereo parked looking out to sea. As the sun finally went down the music came to an end, perfect timing. Another wonderful day in Cape Verde.