I am not a fan of Valentine’s Day.

That said, Andrew and I thought we’d treat ourselves to a lovely dinner out to mark the 14th February, and it has been a VERY busy week for us both. Andrew is in the middle of designing one book, with a couple more in the pipeline, and this week I have recorded and edited the first of my new radio programmes for TRE, and preparing lesson plans for my first teaching job! All this, and we have been back at our Spanish language school, so a treat, we felt, was more than justified.

However, before I go into the delights of our romantic dinner, I must talk a bit about school.

Once again, it is lovely to be back, learning as much as we can, and we have progressed to the Imperative, Conditional and a thorough look at Pronouns. In the course of our lessons, we have learned quite a lot about our teachers, and one in particular.

Odile is lovely, and is a very good teacher; always thoroughly prepared. During the lessons we have with Odile, she demonstrates an expertise at finding examples to emphasise the target language in a way that we will all understand.

In the past week or so, examples have been as follows:

Odile hates hamburgers. On one occasion, she and her husband had hamburgers, bought from a supermarket, but they must have been off. The pair of them had the most terrible food poisoning with dire consequences. However, this episode coincided with the renovation of their apartment, so they had no working plumbing. As a result, the night was spent working their way through a supply of plastic carrier bags.

Odile has never looked at a hamburger since.

It's a competitive and lucrative business being a locksmith in Granada!

One of our topics of conversation, one day, covered the business of a locksmith. We were discussing the very high fees they charge and the reason there appeared to be so many locksmiths in Granada. Evidently, quite a few people lock themselves out of their homes. Odile was one such customer, but she happened to lock herself out of her apartment wearing nothing but a bikini. The locksmith had to come round, and climb in through a window that gave onto Odile’s bedroom which was, by her own admission, not the tidiest.

Finally, as we have been learning the Imperative this week, we needed a few examples to work with. The lovely Odile gave some very useful examples:

“I am 9 months pregnant and can’t tie my shoelaces, so I might ask someone to tie them for me, using the imperative….”

“I have a bad back and a tight bra, and can’t get the bra off, so I might ask you to remove it for me, using the imperative……”

Andrew and I (and indeed the rest of the class) could well imagine these examples coming in very useful at our next Intercambio.

The highlight of school, for us, is the loveliness of all the teaching staff, and we are delighted to call some of these teachers our friends now.

Anyway, look! Valentine’s Treats.

The idea was to go and have a delicious dinner at the same restaurant we visited for New Year’s Eve: El Puente in Durcal.

It was dark and cold when we set off, and having driven the 20 minutes or so to Durcal, we found that El Puente was closed. Oh well, we are sure that another restaurant in nearby Conchar would be a good alternative, we agreed. Also closed.

Let’s try the bar in Restabal with the open fire, we thought, optimistically. In darkness.

By this time, Andrew was feeling a little green around the gills from the drive around the many bends as we tried to find a place to eat.

We finally found a bar that was open, in Pinos del Valle, and feeling a little queasy, we stepped inside. The first tapas? Mussels. I thought Andrew was on the verge of something akin to Odile’s problems above. We ordered a racion of something else, as we were both peckish, but it arrived on the arctic side of warm.

Disgruntled, cold and marginally less than romantic, we repaired home. Thank goodness Andrew had had the foresight to buy some Lovehearts when he was in the UK!