The restaurant is called Sol y Sombra, which you will know translates as sun and shade, two contradictory but often simultaneous weather conditions. (Gosh, perhaps this is philosophy after all.)
The sunshine in their lives for many people is represented by their children, or so they believe, until their son becomes a teenager and their daughter gets a tattoo of a boy’s name on her shoulder.
Worryingly, it often turns out that Xavier from Amsterdam is not only your daughter’s boyfriend but her “tattoo artist” as well. Presumably no one has told him that artists sign their artwork, rather than their signature being the artwork. How many girls in Holland, you wonder, bear Xavier’s name on their shoulders, and are you being overly cynical to think that many children may also bear his name?
Tattoos are notoriously difficult to remove, so a girl with a boy’s signature, if you see what I mean, must either try to find a spouse with that name, or never turn her back on her husband, or is that already part of the marriage vows?
The writer Somerset Maugham once described Monaco as “a sunny place for shady people,” showing he appreciated the symbolic juxtaposition of sol and sombra almost as much as most tapas bar owners do. Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall, sang the Ink Spots (who don’t sound as if they had very imaginative tattoos) but immediately promised that “someday the sun will shine.” A safe enough prediction, even during monsoon season.
There always has to be some light being blocked to make a shadow, even if the shadow is only a foreboding feeling that we shouldn’t have bought such a thick cloth lampshade. There is a type of lamp which apparently can diminish the gloom of winter by providing you with a strong blast of light. Seasonal Affective Disorder, or ‘SAD’ lamps banish the sort of depression that Cliff Richard probably felt when he split up with the Shadows. There’s a cure for everything nowadays.
Shakespeare always liked to have the last word, and why should today be any different? “Life’s but a walking shadow,” he wrote, “that frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.” No wonder most of his plays were tragedies. He sounds like he needed one of those SAD lamps to see him through the winter of his discontent. To sleep, perchance to dream. Remember to switch that light off first, though.
