Going native III

I talked to my mum on the phone today. She asked me how my birthday had gone on Wednesday. She apologised for only having sent a card and a Facebook message and for not having phoned. I didn't ring she said because I guessed you would be out for a meal.

My mum was wrong, I wasn't out to eat. After work I'd come home and set about a bottle of birthday brandy in front of the telly. As we talked I realised that it had never crossed my mind to go out for an evening meal. In fact we are booked in for a celebratory lunch on Saturday at a well known and well regarded local restaurant.

In the dim and distant past when I used to come to Spain on holiday the routine was simple enough. Something light for lunch and then a nice meal in the evening. That's the way my British upbringing told me to do it. The equivalent of the lunchtime sandwich at your desk with something cooked in the evening. Generally though that's not the Spanish case. Obviously Spaniards do celebrate big meals in the evening. Generally though the more substantial meal is at lunchtime and there is a whole industry of inexpensive lunchtime set meals to maintain that habit.

So is it, that like taking to stone garden furniture, our eating habits have also become unknowingly Spanish?