I walk through the city at a time when you can no longer have breakfast sitting at a bar or a cafe table, due to pandemic issues. As we have already said in dozens of articles, after half past nine, if you want a coffee and a sandwich, it will have to be to go. In fact, at the door of certain bars you see workers sitting on the curbs, grouped in the same way as if they were at a table. I meet some, every day at eleven (I've already guessed they are gas-oil delivery drivers) who have potato omelet and carajillo for breakfast while criticizing the company's receptionist, a certain Trini. "I already tell Trini: you do it, the route, you do it...". Getting a coffee and a sandwich on the street is easy, although it causes a loss of paper newspaper sales, but if you are one of those who occasionally have a "fork breakfast" with wine or sparkling wine, things will get complicated. Bars and restaurants don't open until one, lunchtime. Then, it becomes legal again to go in for anything. They still haven't told us it's illegal to eat a glass of cava and a bag of potato chips.
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John Cheever explains in his Diaries that the dignified time to have a cocktail (to start drinking) is twelve. Before, no. But he cheats and wonders if, having woken up so early, he couldn't move it forward to half past eleven or perhaps eleven. In fact, many cocktail bars in Barcelona already opened, at the earliest, at one or half past one. In contrast, vermouth bars and tapas bars had been open much earlier.
Absolute fans of the aperitif, like me, those who stop at twelve, those who sometimes have a negroni and a "Gilda" (this invention that not everyone makes the same, and which consists of an olive, an anchovy folded back on itself and a piparra pierced by a toothpick) or a glass of cava and some potato chips, at Angelus time we are a bit lost. I recognize, under the mask, the bewildered aperitif-goers, like me. We wander around the wine shops, cocktail bars, vermouth bars we frequent, waiting for it to be one, but thinking that then it will be too late for lunch.
Let us, those of us who don't know much, learn to drink elegantly from the spout, which is an ideal system for sharing a drink when you don't have glasses and which, furthermore, oxygenates the wine during its aerial journey from the container to the mouth.It is for this reason that I propose that if this lasts much longer we go back to hip flasks and bota bags, like those carried by shepherds. The hip flask is very much designed to go in the inside pocket of a gentleman's jacket (hence its asymmetrical shape) but now we will have to create some (very exclusive ones) for a lady's handbag. Let those of us who don't know much learn to drink elegantly from the spout, which is an ideal system for sharing drinks when you don't have glasses and which, moreover, oxygenates the wine during its aerial journey from the container to the mouth. I'm imagining some Chanel boots, with an adjustable shoulder strap, ideal for ladies who are on the streets of the hostile city at noon, and want to make a stop on one of the benches of Passeig de Gràcia.
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