A Spain-themed date (though not deliberately)

Yesterday Steve gave me part of my Christmas present early, which was that we would go out to dinner together at La Tasca and then go to see Pan’s Labyrinth, which was this Spanish film that was sort of a dark fairy tale and looked really nifty and I’ve been wanting to see it for ages. So it ended up being very Spanishy, but we did not think of that until afterwards.

It was one of those nights where everything just goes exactly perfectly. Like, I did something stupid when I bought my weekly bus pass, which was that I took the sheet in which you are meant to place the ticket, and I didn’t take the ticket itself because I didn’t realize there was one. I’m dumb. But then when we went into Colchester, the nice bus office people gave me another one for free! probably because they realized I was American and didn’t know any better.

The food at La Tasca was delicious, especially to two people who have been wasting away longing for spicy food or really any halfway decent restaurant food. We learned a new word, chorizo, which means sausage apparently. We each got paella (a rice dish; mine had chicken and seafood and Steve’s had chorizo), which was pretty nice, but it wasn’t spicy and we were all about the spice; so the objects of our devoted rejoicing were the patatas bravas and the pork on a skewer thing that we can’t remember the Spanish for. The patatas bravas were these potatoes cooked absolutely to total perfection and covered in a spicy tomato-based sauce that was amazingly fantastic; and the pork (although I do not eat pork usually) was equally perfect and equally sauce-covered. Every time we took a bite of one of those dishes we went Mmmmm! MMMMMMM! and were sort of like that scene in Chocolat where they’re having the feast and putting chocolate on everything. Remember that scene? That was me and Steve.

Then off to the movie, which was playing in Ipswich at six (yes, we ate dinner really early), so we had to hurry hurry to the Colchester train station, and do you know, there was a train leaving in four minutes from the time we got there? Which was perfect! And we got to the Ipswich cinema right at six, and we didn’t even miss the previews! We also didn’t miss a whole ton of ads. Loads. Thousands. Half an hour of ads, seriously. Well, almost.

Here was the thing about the flim, however. It was really good, and I liked it a lot, but it was a lot less joyous than I was somehow expecting. And I wasn’t expecting it to be that joyous, because it was one of those things where the little girl is caught up in warry events in real life and she has this rich fantasy stuff happening to her and it’s never really clear if it’s her imagination or the truth. In this case there were Fascists and guerrilla fighters. Being all scary. With lots of graphic violence. Like they cut this guy’s leg off! They just cut it right off, slice, in one swell foop (I closed my eyes for that part). And the Bad Fascist bashed this chap’s face in with a bottle (I closed my eyes for that part). And this women stuck in her knife into the Bad Fascist’s mouth and ripped it sideways so he had extra mouth (I closed my eyes for that part too). And then he took a big sip of whiskey or something, and it fell out into his ripped-up cheek and stained the bandage (I didn’t close my eyes for that part because I assumed that the guy was smart enough to tilt his head sideways when he drank the damn liquor! but he wasn’t, and it was icky).

Otherwise, very good. And the music was fantastic. But I wouldn’t take your kids to it. Alert everyone. It’s coming to the US on 29 December, I think, and if you know anyone who’s like, A pleasant children’s movie! I will take my children!, then tell them NO.

Oh, and our new Spanish word came in handy! because they used it in the flim! Chorizo! While the Bad Fascist was investigating the bag of stuff that the woman was taking away to the guerrillas, preparatory to torturing her brutally (he thought, but actually what happened was she had a knife folded up in her skirt and she folded it out and untied her hands while his back was turned and stabbed him twice and did the mouth-ripping thing), he was all, “Tobacco–Chorizo–” and I patted Steve’s arm helpfully to alert him to the use of our new vocabulary word. Sausage.

So if you’re somewhere and you see a La Tasca, hit up the patatas bravas and pork on a skewer. I liked it so much that I am yearning to return there and have pork and potatoes again. FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.