Pimpao

Back in those days we used to drink Pimpao, Portuguese wine that cost a couple of (now = ten thousand eight hundred and eighty six) kwacha a demijohn. We bought it at Caruso's, the Portuguese baker down the North end of Cha-cha-cha road. Caruso's baked all day, so the smell always made you hungry - yeast fermenting and bread rising and baking wafting into the street is hard to imagine in an English winter in 2006, it has to be that soft warm before the rains. So we used to drink a lot of Pimpao, when we just had the one toddler who slept snug and warm in that little bunk between the back seat and the engine in a VW beetle (we were totally irresponsible back then) and one night I got out of bed and went for a pee and then into the bathroom to wash my hands still in a Pimpao haze and as I was drying them my vision sort of cleared and there was a pearl-spotted owlet sitting on the towel rail staring at me as owls do. Google in Pimpao now and all you get is Livros e Materiais Pedagógicos.