Sunday 13 November 2016

Memories of a young Traveller - Don’t drink the water!

Don’t drink the water!
torriemendo
There was once a (rather bad) sitcom named that.  But in actual fact back in the 60’s and 70’s the tap water in Spain, even in the hotels, wasn’t of drinking quality.  Although none of my family experienced problems we did hear of others who suffered tummy upsets.  Buying water in a bottle was another new experience, the UK didn’t have shelves of bottled water in the supermarkets in those days.  Trying to clean your teeth without swallowing the tap water was another new experience too and one as a 5 year old I remember as being rather tricky.
water
As we didn’t use tap water we didn’t have orange squash either, something all British children drank at that time.  And there was no lemonade, it was orangeade or cola or fizzy lemon.  To a child this was very strange.  And another daily drink missing was fresh milk, so no warm milky drink at bedtime.  Milk came in strange cartons and tasted funny because it was treated so it didn’t have to be refrigerated, (fridges were a luxury item still).  To a child used to full cream milk in bottles delivered by the milkman before breakfast daily it was all a bit odd.  In those days we still had cold milk at school too at morning break time, a third of a pint if I remember correctly.
And there was wine!  Wine was not allowed for 5 year olds but it seemed the Spanish consumed vast amounts and it was very cheap and available everywhere at any time.  In 60’s Britain wine was drunk at a dinner party, bought from a local off licence that could only open for a few restricted hours a day and certainly wasn’t cheap.
wine
And another strange food was olive oil, copious amounts used on the food that was presented.  It tasted odd, sort of nutty and fruity at the same time.  My grandad complained about it being greasy but the food wasn’t greasy.  We had no idea it was healthy and would one day be a mainstay in British cooking too.  Can you imagine certain TV chef’s reactions if they were told they couldn’t use any olive oil – they would have to completely re-write their cookery books!
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