Llandudno is a suburb (or small, isolated village/area/beach town/slice of paradise) set on the Atlantic seaboard of Cape Town. It is also a place name of a small town in Wales, pronounced θlænˈdɪdnoʊ, which is surely where it gets its name from.

Names are a strange thing. Strange things are often the gateway to the most interesting of facts, though. Take the word ‘spanspek’ for instance. I’m going to indulge a little here as I cannot recall the original story exactly as it was told me but here is an honest-as-the-day-is-long rendition:

Some famous guy from Holland was cavorting around South Africa centuries ago, let’s say 1732 for fun. He was of nobility (as travellers often were in those days) and so he had some clout and a title, let’s say (again) he was a Baron (or equivalent, I don’t know much Dutch history/language/customs, other than that they always seem to ‘go dutch’). He met this beautiful lady who was from Spain and they fell madly in love. Yay.

His favourite food was bacon – importantly called ‘spek’ in Dutch (and Afrikaans, to this day) – and when he asked her what her favourite food was, it was the cantaloupe (Of course, unless like me you haven’t travelled to America and shopped in their hideously large shops (in even more hideously large shopping malls), you won’t know that that is the name given to our preciously delicious South African spanspek – which is of course a word creation by this famous Dutch prince/Baron/property owner.)

Point being, he figured: why not name this wonderful fruit ‘span’+’spek’ because his favourite thing is bacon (being dutch) and so the Spanish girl’s favourite thing (equivalent of bacon, for those not following the story) is the melon. Because, hey, combining these two thoughts is the perfect way to reflect your love of food and that of the person you’re madly in love with. Not so mad after all, perhaps.

One does wonder though if, after marrying her, his favourite food switched to melons.

And one is even more amazed at the fact that, across a continent and in Italy, you’ll find Italians to this day putting prosciutto on spanspek (melona, it’s called, I believe).

Lastly, if you do the above all on Llandudno beach at sunset, I can’t imagine life being any better.