Llama for Lunch by Lydia Laube Read Free Book Online

quarter past the hour but never got the time right.
    I looked in the parroquia, discovering that was the word for church and not the parrots I had been asking the girl at the hotel about. Never mind. Inside the church was stupendous – just how I think churches should be – but I wondered whom the Spanish made do the building work. It was constructed of rough stone and had a huge cupola of brickwork high up in the roof, but at ground level everything was very ornate. There were several altars, the main one superlative, some magnificent glass chandeliers, pretty coloured-glass windows and a battalion of gilded statues. In the front courtyard the inevitable fountain burbled away, surrounded by ancient trees that, by the width of their trunks, looked as though they were planted when the church was built.
    The centre of the piazza sported an elegant rotunda where on this day a band played martial music to lorry-loads of children who were massed around it. The uniforms they wore differed for each school, but the girls all wore long, white socks and looked neat and smart.
    I walked many kilometres, saw a great deal of this lovely town and found all kinds of delights. But you had to watch how you stepped on the uneven old cobble stones of the street and the narrow footpaths made of rough-hewn stone blocks. Passing windows grilled with fancy metal bars and glazed with patterned glass, it seemed that everything had the touch of time on it. I encountered wooden doors with tiled facings, carved panels and peep windows barred with simple slats and spools or delicate iron scrollwork, personalised knockers, huge hammered metal key holes and handles, overhanging ancient lights, textured walls and swinging wooden signs. It was like a living museum.
    I finally worked out that all the funny little hole-in-the-wall places that I had been walking past in my search for the shops were in fact what passed for them in this town and, once I poked about inside, I realised that they actually had all I needed. From the outside each shop looked to be merely a wooden door in a wall and the small signs above the doors hadn’t registered with me. Some of the shops around the piazza were tiny jewels packed full of gorgeous trinkets, ornaments and jewellery meant for the rich or tourists. And some were teeny cafes that contained two minuscule tables and seats for only four people.
    The central area of the Jardin was constantly being swept by women with old-fashioned straw brooms. Most things were done the old way here and, as most floors were tiled, everywhere I went someone always seemed to be sweeping or mopping – even in the big bank, which possessed a bit of carpet, a woman scraped away with a straw broom. Despite all this cleaning activity, I saw much rubbish strewn about on roadsides and empty blocks as I rode around the outskirts of town in local buses.
    I bought the local English-language newspaper and read it on a bench under the Jardin’s trees. The major news of the week was contained in a long article concerning the only person who seemed to have died lately in San Miguel. It described in gory detail how he fell down on the steps of the church, hit his head and ‘pools of blood came out’. The departed had been unidentified for a while so all his clothing was described minutely by the reporter. Then came a harrowing tale of how his relatives came and looked at him through the glass window of the morgue. There was a blow by blow account of the proceedings, concluding with the comments of onlookers outside the church who had said ‘what a good thing it was that he had just been to confession’, and ‘how fortunate for him to have died in a state of grace’. No one mentioned that going to church seemed to be a health hazard. I wandered into several churches but managed to avoid starring in the local paper, perhaps because I wasn’t in a good enough state of grace. All the churches were much the same in degrees of grandiosity and