A few weeks back, for some fun and variety, I spent 4 hours each day, Monday to Friday, at Bartending School in Kelowna. Hour after hour, I mixed and poured about 5 billion drinks of coloured water that looked like fancy cocktails into chilled martini glasses and shooter glasses and highball glasses.
Within hours of leaving my resume behind, one of my very favourite restaurants, a local Greek culinary landmark, interviewed me and, in a moment of obvious weakness β or perhaps heat stroke β they offered me a shot at being one of their bartenders. I stand behind the bar, wiping the counter with a bar rag, looking so understanding and approachable.
Then I pour my client a shot of Ouzo or Baileys on the Rocks. Yes, bartenders have been prostituting themselves ever since Jurassic beasts abandoned our neighbourhoods and we humans rose up on our feet and discovered fermentation. Then one well-proportioned young fellow looks directly at you, right at YOU , and discretely lowers the band of his shorts displaying his junk with a come hither look.
Our day began bright and clear, the temperature sitting at perhaps 6C or 7C in Fez as we headed out with an early start. The full-day driving journey from Fez to Marrakech took our group of 5 Canadians, Moroccan guide Redouane, and driver, Fouad, over the Middle Atlas Mountains through a schizophrenic set of agricultural fields and orchards.
Our trek morphed from huge lush green fields of hay and orange orchards, to dry scrub land with prickly pear cactus in abundance. As we climbed the grey morning hills, the air grew cooler and cooler, and then β¦ surprise, we were in snowy terrain. Maureen looked out the van windows and pointed out to us the spray of almond blooms hanging pretty pink, like delicate earrings in the trees, with white snow clinging to the branches and as a backdrop.
