Street artists, tapas, pickled onions

Two street artists, on stilts and dressed in white tatters, like bizarre wedding dresses, wend their way through the pantiles accompanied, for safety's sake by an employee of the Council in an orange jacket. A small ice rink as been installed and the street performers are there to add to the fun.

Two bottles of good Spanish wine provoke a spread of tapas including croquetas, little sausage- shaped cylinders of mashed potato filled, in this case, with spoonfulls of goat cheese, rolled in bread crumbs and fried until golden brown. In Spain, sometimes, we have had them made from a mixture of potatoes and salt cod - a sort of fishcake.

Baby Italian onions in balsamic vinegar are to ordinary pickled onions as birdsong to squacking hens.