Given Good Head
Bilbao, Spain.

After a cultural day staring at the vast empty spaces and giant flowery puppy of the Guggenheim, my mate and I headed into the back streets of the old town, and chose somewhere that might feed us. Somewhere untouristy. Somewhere without an English menu. Armed with a seemingly rather deficient phrase book, we half translate the menu. Pollo is chicken; Cordero, it seems, is lamb, etc. No idea what the other bit is, but how bad can it be? The waiter looks quizical when I order the lamb, but I confirm, and off he trots.

Anyway, starters, and a few drinks later, and we've forgotten what we've ordered, as you do. My dish looks a bit like a small bird, a guinea fowl, perhaps, split in two. I'm about to tuck in when my loyal companion alerts me to something I'd previously missed.

"Mate," he says. "Your dinner's got teeth"

And it had. A full set. And eye sockets. A quick scan of the phrase book, away from the eating out section, and into the medical injuries chapter, and there was the missing word that I presumed to mean "roast", or "drizzled in a redcurrant jus" or some such. Cabeza. The Spanish for head. A lamb's head, cleft in two, grinning at me in a way I'd really prefer my dinner not to.

I sort of lost my appetite around then.

(After that, ordering pig's ears for a snack later in the trip was a positive highlight)
(who knows where thoughts come from?, Tue 2 May 2006, 21:14, Reply)