Well here we are in May already…

I remember as a child how the years seemed to take forever to pass, there always seemed to be an unbearably long wait to your birthday, the Easter bunny, the summer holidays or Santa coming. These days you blink and the best part of the year has flown by.

And I do mean best part of the year, because my favourite months of the year here in Spain are March, April and May. It is not because of the perfect weather but because the town is a joy to navigate, often you can get a parking space on the street and if you do choose to use the underground car park, you don’t end up half way to hell in the bowels of the building before there is a vacant spot.

But the best part of this time of year, March to May, is that most of the wrinkly winter set have packed their campervans and headed north again so it is safe to negotiate the roads of Nerja once again and most importantly the ‘winterites’ are no longer clogging up the lanes of the municipal pool.

The swimming pool was incredibly busy last winter and at first I thought that I only had myself to blame for publicizing the amazing new swimming centre in this column but after a considerable amount of eavesdropping in the women’s changing room, I realize that Weight Watchers is to blame. I don’t know much about Weight Watchers as I only ever attended once. It was around the time that Fergie shedded half a ton of weight and became the face of Weight Watchers that I decided I would give it a go too. I thought if it was cool enough for an ex-Princess it could just be the right sort of scene for me.

On arrival at a Weight Watchers meeting, they expect you to ‘weigh in’ publicly, that’s right, you have to get on the scales in front of everyone else. I don’t even let the dog see what I weigh, in fact, to be truthful, I don’t even look too closely when I get on the bathroom scales. Then to make matters worse some over zealous ‘mentor’ in a red polyester suit barks your weight at the top of her voice to the group leader, who is sitting behind a desk in her matching faux leopard skin pants suit, she writes it down in your ‘Weight Watchers Book’ and sticks a gold star next to it if you have lost weight that week. It’s like when you were a child and got an elephant stamp at kindy for peeing in the potty.

Then red suit and leopard pants stand up in front of the group and talk about ‘counting points’ and they finish off with the ‘recipe of the week’ which is usually some sugarless tea cake recipe that when baked is tasteless - in fact eating sand is probably a more pleasurable experience.

The only redeeming fact about Weight Watchers that I could decipher is that you are ‘permitted’ two glasses of wine a day which is not bad as on most diets you have to cheat to have a drink but on closer examination of this fact I found that what they called a glass was the equivalent of a thimble... and to top it all off you pay them for the experience of attending a Weight Watchers meeting.

In my opinion, and I know that Fergie was desperate for cash at the time and Weight Watchers paid her a load of money, but Fergie did not do weekly weigh-ins and collect recipes with the masses all dressed in their velvet tracksuits. I think she followed the diet for a week to fulfill her contractual obligation and then she used some of her big fat Weight Watchers’ pay cheque and had a little lipo … well actually a lot of lipo.

Anyway I diverge … I was telling you about how I discovered that Weight Watchers was to blame for filling up of the pool lanes with the wrinkly winterites bobbing up and down. I overheard in the changing room one old darling mention that “wasn’t it a good idea of Sheryl (the Weight Watchers leader) to recommend swimming as the exercise of the month at last weeks meeting?”

Mind you I am not sure this old darling can be trusted as a reliable source as it was the same woman that I heard on a separate occasion declared that she “doesn’t bother counting points and the night before they had a lovely meal at the Haveli”. As I said I don’t know much about Weight Watchers but from my one experience I did glean that the diet worked around counting points… so not counting points when on the Weight Watchers diet is a bit like having a G&T without the gin.

It also seems that May is to be a month of bulk birthing with several family members due to expand our extended family. One of Tony’s nephews recently came to me asking that I help them discover what the sex of their expected bundle of joy is. I know that most folk these days use the more conventional means that modern medicine has developed of ultrasound but on the two occasions of their scans the little ‘un had it’s legs crossed and refused to reveal to them its sex. So when the news reached them that a clairvoyant once told me that I had gypsy blood in a past life, they asked that I assist in the quest to find out if the nursery should be painted pink or blue.

I have always been fascinated by the art of penduling so when this opportunity arose I wikipediaed penduling. Following the instructions we laid out the expectant mother, with her wedding ring hanging from string over her belly to deduce the result. Initially, the ring didn’t move or answer our questions but I was convinced that was because of Tony’s negative energy and snide comments on the side. Then when his nephew, Mark, held the ring over her belly, the ring began to swing and the answer came strong and clear that it was a girl. Now the nursery is painted fushia pink, lets hope that the clairvoyant was right.

Finally, we had a lovely afternoon recently celebrating the Lao New Year at Lan Sang restaurant. I travelled several years ago to Lao and it is a magical country with warm and generous people and delicious food. Lan Sang is a great restaurant as it beautifully combines both Lao and Thai food that is genuine and true to its roots. Sonephet from Lan Sang has produced a lovely little book - the proceeds from the sale of which will help educate the children in the village of Ban Nahoinoi. If you are passing, buy yourself a copy and stop for lunch as well, you won’t be disappointed.

Gabby Bridge