AKA beer-drinking blondes from Bristol basking in the sun

I was happy to finally meet UK food & wine writer Fiona Beckett @food_writer at Vinoble the other day. She just happened to be standing behind me waiting for a tasting to start (I was buying an It’s Sherry Time button…) and I recognised her from her Twitter pic. So I said hola and introduced myself, mentioning that we had some friends in common from my Bristol days, one of them being Kate Hawkings @katehawkings, who I last saw back in October 2013 when she came to Sevilla for a visit. Which was actually the first time we’d seen each other since we worked together at the infamous Rocinantes tapas bar back in 1992.

Anyhow, the next day I ran into Fiona again as she was leaving the Vinoble site with a tiny blonde woman who looked remarkably like Kate. Turned out because it WAS Kate! What a lovely surprise. So we all went off for a beer break in the sun because sometimes you can actually have too much of a good thing (sherry). Later that evening we went for a cosy tapas dinner and had a fab time. I was even thinking of staying another day in Jerez so I could see a bit more of Kate (Fiona had to leave early the next day) but the visiting UK group had such a jam-packed itinerary that getting together again wouldn’t have been possible. So it was back home to cats and my own bed. But how wonderful to meet up with an old friend and also meet a new one. Plans are afoot for another meet up either in Sevilla or Málaga… #TapeoExtremo. Or maybe even in Bristol. You never know.