I wish this wasn't just a lump of bottle caps. A lump, a small one, to be precise. I wish it had a lot of meaning and maybe if I let myself get carried away with creative writing and just write and write without thinking, something more will come out than the places where these little metal things come from.
A rattle! 馃榿
That is if they all come together in the bowl of one hand and are shaken like a cough syrup before drinking. 馃槣
&&&
Even if I had skills as a musician, I could compose something. We can try, yes, I have some editing software here, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to make a mini soundtrack to this quiet, cadenced day, in which the caps have a certain, shrill predominance.
Better not. 馃ぃ
If Chanel wants to be part of the soundtrack, I can't refuse
This is always a concern for me when I decide to save something. Just yesterday I took some clothes out of my wardrobe and some shoes and gave them to a neighbour. I don't want items that are just going to attract dust or sit there forgotten, stressed, overheated or whatever. I want things with meaning! And I also want...
Let's talk about crown caps (by the way, thanks mipiano for the info about its inventor, William Painter).
In a (slight) survey over this month I discovered that at least here in Havana, canned drinks are the ones that proliferate in most establishments.
A friend who travelled to Varadero and from whom I ordered some crown caps for this (I don't know whether to call it a collection) intervention, said that she didn't see bottled drinks there either. It's not that there aren't any, I suppose there will be, but there aren't many, because if there were, she would have seen them in the places she visited that weekend.
Some of the first ones I collected were these and they come from the Cuquis coffee shop, very close to home. The waitress told me that she keeps the bottle caps for her mum who makes tomato paste and then bottles it. She needs something to cover it up, of course.
It's more or less the same story with these two that my neighbour gave me. She looked through some sacks of bottles she had and found my new little friends. She had more, but all of the same brand. My intervention demands variety (which there isn't).
I found this Bucanero beer bottle cap in the cafeteria where I had a Guarapo during that trip to Ceiba del Agua. There was nothing else bottled there at the time I asked.
The man on the phone was the one who very kindly looked it up for me, by the way.
The very Cuban Cristal and Bucanero beers are hardly ever seen anymore. You could find them bottled and in cans too. I always preferred the bottled ones and I liked the bottles to be green.
I had a time when I drank more beer than I do now, although the truth is that I am not a regular drinker, only on rare occasions, at family gatherings, with friends or outings to discos and bars.
With time I've discarded bars and discos... maybe that's why, I less Cristal and Bucanero, or whatever beer they have available.
I didn't find any Sol crown cap. I like this one, as well as the Bavaria. However, (you saw) the Cuquis had Heineken and Corona, and I honestly haven't gone for a walk in Old Havana. Maybe I would have stumbled across other bottle caps there. But I've been concentrating on my bike rides, and Tai Chi and now I'm thinking of starting CrossFit on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
If you didn't notice, I have a pretty busy life, between housework, work, the time I spend on Hive, and now these sports outings... it's pretty much all to myself. I'll see how I manage. But the important thing is that I am happy and I am making progress in my life, things I had planned for this year. A powerful turn that I hope will help me gain physical and mental strength.
Sorry, the bottle caps... I continue.
Several times I kept thinking that the search for such metallic artefacts had been neither profound nor coherent. I was, I think, in two coffee shops where I forgot to ask if they had bottled drinks.
Then one day it occurred to me to put in a Whatsapp status that I was looking for bottle caps and I received two replies (from Pinar del R铆o). The moral of the story, there is always someone willing to help.
These last two were brought to me by my mom the day before our excursion to Caleta Buena.
Holandia is a beer, but the other one I have no idea what it is.
... searching with the help of recognition software...
馃樀
doy pena, era Bavaria (I'm obviously not good at remembering logos!)
Ah, this is what the search turned up.
馃
Whattttttt!!!!!
And is this for sale? - screenshot of the search
Come on, I have a record of living under a rock! 馃ぃ
And I would like to end this post with the crown that started this intervention (chap铆stica).
Please note that I only found beer bottle caps. No soft drinks. It's worrying how scarce everything is here where I live. However, to tell you the truth, I'm not interested in carbonated soft drinks. I've never been interested in them. Nor bottled juices, I prefer to make my juices at home from fruit I buy or grow myself.
This is from a Portuguese beer that I tried for the first time on my 44th birthday, when my friends Eddy and Mary were here at home.
... wait!
Eureka, it's true that I also have bottle openers.
And this vintage bottle opener... needs a touch-up and I think I know who can restore it for me. 馃槈
PS. I will continue to collect bottle caps because I feel tenderly influenced by the hostess of this community in the pursuit of certain collections, as well as the hidden collector within me. One day the bottle caps will end up embedded in some wall of my dream place, where other things will surely round off my infinite happiness.
... and what's more, promise kept!
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