Tag Archives: portero

Days of grapes and honey

16 Apr

I’m currently staying in an apartment in Palermo Hollywood (this is it’s official name but someone had a go at me yesterday for saying it. Apparently it’s a bit pompous. He much prefers Palermo Viejo. Maybe that’s what I should go with) in Buenos Aires.

My roommate is a guy called Alaric. He’s from the US (though if you ask him where he’s from he’ll say New Mexico. I think he’s trying to hide his roots!). He spends all day in bed. Although to be fair I should write; he spends all day in his bed, with his girlfriend. Normally they have the door open so I get to see into their world. He works away on his laptop while she lies there. Sometime they close the door. I can only imagine what they get up to then. Scrabble maybe. It’s normally followed by a shower so they must be pretty heated games.

The best thing about living in an apartment here though is the portero, which is basically a janitor. It’s taken me a while to get used to kissing him every time I see him, but other than that this guy is an absolute gem. Every question I have he has an answer. He knows everything. And he fixes everything double quick. Only two days ago did we have a leaky tap. Problem was solved in about 10 minutes. He does keep insisting I need to strengthen up though, mainly through buying polenta. I think maybe he’s on the polenta marketing board or something.

It’s impossible to ignore the portero’s advice though and so I have bought polenta. No immediate effect yet but I am hopeful.

(Oh yeah, and days of grapes and honey. This is the Spanish version of Days of Milk and Honey. I think maybe they’re forgetting the versatility of milk. Although thinking about this you can make wine out of grapes. You can’t make alcohol out of milk and it does go a bit funny after a few days (unless you have a magical Ecoworks fridge) so I might have to rethink this. Umm…)