Football and friendly waiters

Along with proper cheddar cheese, my high heels, and having our own bed in our own home, we fully expected that being able to watch english football was one of the things we would no longer have and that Nic in particular would miss. In fact, we soon discovered that there are more premiership games shown on the TV here than there are in the UK. Quite often Nic will be convinced that we need to stay in the hostel to do some practical stuff, and I will find that it just happens to coincide with a match.  Or we walk into a bar and find a match on screen.  Hmmm, I smelt a rat a while ago, but I figure that if I let him get away with that, he can't complain when I drag him around yet another crafts market.
Occasionally though there is a particular match on, usually involving Liverpool or one of the cup games, when a special effort needs to be made to see it.  Like here, when Liverpool were playing Everton in the FA Cup semi final.  The match was at 12:45 in the UK, but that is 8:45 here, which some of you will know is a bit on the early side for us.
The hostel here didn't have a TV, so we had to get into the main town area and find somewhere open and showing the match. Most of the places that we had seen with TVs don't open that early, but we spotted a cafe that was open and had a big screen.  It was showing cartoons.
But undaunted, we went in and Nic asked them if whey were going to be showing the match.  They clearly hadn't been planning to, but a very friendly waiter quickly ushered us to a table near the screen and gave Nic the remote so that he could find the match. Every so often, our friendly waiter would pop over and have a few words about the game.  He was very happy to see Suarez, one of Uruguay's footballing stars, on the pitch, and even more pleased when he scored a goal.  Both he and Nic were happy with the Liverpool win.

The cafes are very good for this kind of thing here, and generally happy to accommodate requests.  We have found most waiters to be really friendly towards us too, probably helped by the fact that we always try to speak to them in Spanish, rather than English or just pointing.  They often ask us where we're from, and when they see us playing cards, they ask who is winning.  Nic gets a bit put out, because it is clear that they consistently like it if I am, but look disappointed if he is.