Blog Sin Jamon

An expensive non-event

2012-01-25T22:14:00.000Z

A few weeks ago, I got an email from The Applause Store, a well-known group which provides (free) tickets to the filming of TV shows. Normally, I ignore them as they're for such shite as Big Brother and various other "reality" shows. However, this one offering was pretty tempting - a show called New Britannia, hosted by Morgan Spurlock (he of Supersize Me) and with such guests as Rich Hall, one of my favourites, and various others. So two tickets were duly applied for and granted. Hurrah.

The filming was due to take place on January 9th in London, out at the BBC Wood Lane studios in Shepherd's Bush. It seemed like a long way to go just for a couple of hours in the evening so we decided to make a bit of a day of it.

It still staggers me just how much public transport is these days. London is only 52 miles from Brighton, yet a return ticket booked in advance, even travelling at a civilised time of day, was over £21.

A bit of a hiccup in the morning meant we didn't set off til about 3 hours after we'd planned and only had time for a quick skip round Camden Market, an hour in the Natural History Museum, which I'd promised myself, and a final 20 minutes in the Science Museum. All free, all good.

The TV filming tickets had said that we had to arrive "in good time" to ensure entry. Actual filming was due to start at 7pm, the doors were due to open at 6.30 so we figured that 45 minutes in advance would be more than sufficient. Coming out of the tube station, walking towards the BBC building and seeing an alarmingly large queue made us a bit dubious but we still thought we'd be fine. The queue seemed to hold audience members for more than one show which also made us feel better.

Misplaced optimism, it turned out. Less than ten minutes after we joined the queue, a guy from the studio walked up the queue shouting "Anyone with tickets for New Britannia from the Applause Store, sorry, we're full up. If you contact the Applause Store, they'll give you guaranteed tickets for the next filming of the show". And that was that. The last people to get in were about 10 ahead of us in the queue. Most other people just wandered off saying "Oh well" but I guess they probably lived in London and therefore it was no great shakes for them. For us however, having spent £42 and most of the day, really just to go to the filming, it was more than disappointing. And we certainly weren't going to spend another £42 going on a different day even with guaranteed tickets.

Determined not to just slink back to Brighton with our tails between our legs, we wandered over to Westfield Shopping Centre, not for shopping, which I hate, but because we assumed it would have a load of places to eat. Wrong again. Well, not wrong, but what was there seemed to be overpriced, chain-type rubbish. We dived into a nearby pub to decide what to do when I realised that I have the Time Out London app on my phone so I quizzed it for suggestions.

Lo and behold, a ten-minute walk down the road was a vegetarian restaurant, of 22 years' standing, called Blah Blah Blah. Good reviews, online menu looked tasty, we were hungry so off we went. What a find. It was lovely. Beautifully done out, chilled, only 3 other people there, attentive friendly waiter and ... a pot of crayons and a paper tablecloth on each table so you could let your creative juices flow before, during and after your meal. The food was absolutely delicious and, for London, not too expensive. We were also pleased to find that despite the online site saying that they weren't licensed, they actually were so we even got a bottle of wine to wash down our food.

All in all, a mixed day. Train fares are a rip-off but bits of London are still worth the effort, the Applause Store isn't worth wasting any more time on but at least missing out on the filming meant we found a great restaurant.

Swings and roundabouts!

2012 - and in bed by ten past midnight!

2012-01-01T11:03:00.000Z

So there we go. That was it, the Christmas and New Year festivities all over for another year. Half of you will be thinking "What a shame", the other half "Phew. Thank god/Santa/mince pies for that!"

I had a fairly hectic Christmas period, but a very quiet New Year - nice balance.

I spent most of the four days either side of Christmas on the road, visiting or chauffeuring friends and relatives to and from places. I dread to think how many miles I covered - not quite as many as Santa I'm guessing, but all worth it. On Christmas Day I was back in Brighton to volunteer at the Brighthelm Centre, serving hot drinks, soup and then a full Christmas lunch and presents to about 55 homeless, elderly and people from care in the community centres. This year was much better organised than last and after the presents had been given out, we gave a little carol concert. Two New Zealand girls and I were in charge of the entertainment so between us we played the piano and sang most of the well-known carols in a bit of harmony. My throat was unimpressed at my attempts at the descant though! I read out a poem I'd heard on the radio on Christmas Eve, which went down very well. You can see it HERE.

I received some lovely presents - mostly food related! That's not a complaint by the way - there's a double silver lining involved. First, they're delicious and second, I only have to find somewhere to store them for a short while till I eat them! So thank you to everyone who bought me presents, edible and otherwise. Although I'm really, really not sure about the Marmite Chocolate!!

Back to work came round fast but I only worked a day and a half last week then it was time for the New Year break.

I've never really "done" New Year. Pubs are all too busy or they charge you to get in and then rip you off with drinks prices. So I settled down with a film, some delicious nibbly dinner food from Waitrose (yes, I know, posh and expensive but what the hell!) and a bottle of Cava waiting in the fridge. The film was enjoyable enough, the food was tasty and then suddenly it was 11.55. Bubbly was poured, Big Ben was on TV and the "I dread to think how much that cost" firework display in London was causing Oohs and Aahs.

And that was that. By ten past twelve, I was under my new lovely new Christmas present duvet cover and dreaming my way into 2012.

So Happy New Year everyone - just remember, 2012 will be exactly what YOU choose to make it.

Tinker tailor soldier ... WHAT?!

2011-12-31T21:10:00.000Z

The title probably says all it needs to. I went to see the new Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Result? I have precisely no clue what happened. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed it. It was well-made and the acting was great. But could I tell you the plot? Not a hope.

Hmmm, given that I drafted this post months ago, I now have even less idea what happened than I did before. I think I read the book about 25 years ago. I don't remember being quite as baffled but maybe I was and I just finished it because I hate to give up on a book.

So if anyone can actually explain the plot to me, go for it!

Shopaholics baffle me

2011-12-31T17:18:00.000Z

In October, I went clothes shopping twice. Anyone who knows me will know that that pretty much doubles the total number of clothes shopping trips I've ever made.

Put simply, I hate every miserable, depressing, pointless, expensive, soul-destroying minute of it.

I don't do clothes. OK, I wear them! Let's face it, the alternative doesn't bear thinking about but I can't and don't get excited about them.

They're a necessity, like food or having a shower.

At the end of October, I went clothes shopping with someone else, for them. She was looking for a dress for her wedding - not a wedding dress, you understand, just something nice to wear. I have no idea why I was asked to go along but more to the point, no idea why I said yes. I could have predicted how it would go. And go it did. Within twenty minutes, I was bored stiff. We'd been to precisely one departement store so far and picked up loads of dresses, skirt suits etc etc. A couple of things had even been tried on and dismissed. I had a sinking feeling.

To be fair, I don't think anyone's heart was in it. The bride had already said that if she didn't find anything, she had something already in the wardrobe which would do the job so I guess there wasn't really much impetus.

Because I don't go clothes shopping, I really didn't know what a baffling array of styles, colours, sizes there were. Shops didn't seem to be laid out in any discernible logical order. Why not put all the dresses together? All the trousers? Etc. Oh no, they're all mixed up into party, formal, office, informal, casual, blah blah blah. All the other people in the shops seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves despite the fact that as far as I could tell, their trip would involve several hours of traipsing, trying on and then some serious damage to their bank accounts.

It is absolutely no fault of the bride in question that I hated the entire experience and I'm sure she knows that.

It just confirmed my long-held belief that shopping and I were just never destined to be friends.

PS - I feel obliged to point out that she didn't buy anything in the end!!!

No, I haven't found Jesus...

2011-08-28T19:34:00.000+01:00

...I didn't know he was lost.

So while I was in Nottingham, at Wollaton Hall café (see previous blog post), I got chatting. There I was, minding my own business, polishing off my jacket potato and veggie chilli, alone, when a voice from the next table said "Was that good?" "Absolutely delicious", I said, looking up at an elderly man in a beige suit, white socks, pale slip-on shoes and with very few teeth. "And what was it?" he asked. "Veggie chilli and a jacket potato" I replied, in a way that I hoped made it clear that I wasn't really in the mood for idle chit-chat (I had a blog to draft, after all).

Undeterred, he went on with the small talk and within a few minutes of perfectly pleasant chat, I'd discovered that he lives locally, comes to the park every day, has a niece who lives in Hove, thought I was either Australian or from Cambridgeshire (?!), had been a mathematician, retired at 52, and had written three books since retiring. Innocently, I asked "Oh, what were the books?" "Funnily enough, I have one here", he said, pulling a small white book from his equally white jacket pocket. I glanced at the cover, couldn't work out what it was, so I flicked through a few pages and was none the wiser. I saw poems, personal memories, fables and a random list of chapter titles with no discernible connection. I made a few suitable noises of appreciation and handed it back. He started to talk about chaos theory and how mathematicians try to make sense of everything around them, trying to make order out of chaos, he mentioned the butterfly effect and various other concepts I'm relatively familiar with.

And then it came - "You see, as a mathematician, I see life as a journey, a logical progression, from questions to the final answer, from ignorance to knowledge and that only comes when we understand God and Jesus and the real love which follows." My heart sank. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with religion - when it's kept private but I could see where this was going. He continued for a good four or five minutes while I shuffled my feet and nodded politely, until he reached "Don't you see? You'll finally be complete and free when you love Jesus." I couldn't take any more so I was quite diplomatic (for me!) and said "Well, of course, everyone's entitled to their own opinion and no-one actually knows who, if anyone, is right. But I'm an atheist, I feel perfectly complete and free already thank you, and I personally disagree with your views on the subject." Unsurprisingly, he ploughed on, not aggressively and not exactly preaching, but not letting the subject go either. I picked up my bag, put on my jacket and received a rather convenient text which gave me the perfect excuse to leave.

It was a shame - he'd seemed like an interesting person to talk to at the beginning but once the topic had headed to where he clearly wanted it to go, it was pointless. The subject wasn't going to change and he clearly wasn't prepared to listen to my views even though he thought it was perfectly acceptable to foist his on me. I really don't understand it - most religions preach tolerance and yet seem to be entirely intolerant of anyone who doesn't share their views. Personally, I'll never understand why anyone would want to live their life being told what to do by an invisible entity, a big book or some bloke claiming to be speaking for the invisible entity. Personal responsibility, people! Do what YOU believe is right and take the consequences if there are any! OK, I'm getting down off my soapbox now before I'm accused of foisting my views on anyone! ;-)

So, a potentially nice chat spoiled! What a shame.

What I did on my day out...

2011-08-28T17:42:00.000+01:00

...near Nottingham.

Last Tuesday, having dropped Dade in central Nottingham for another photography training course, the day was my own. On the net, I'd seen a hall and deer park - Wollaton Hall - to the west of the city that looked pretty interesting. Having no map and a SatNav that failed to recognise the name of the park I was reduced to just heading west and hoping. Fifteen minutes later, I was there! I drove in to the park and immediately saw some deer but no sign of the huge house! It was free entry but you had to pay to park and being a disorganised soul, I had no change. I was about to head off in search of a cafe to get some, when a very nice man knocked on the car window and handed me his all day parking ticket. He'd only used it for half an hour!

The hall didn't open for another half an hour so I set off (in the rain) to find more deer. I spotted a big group and carefully circled them, keeping my distance, wary of the big males and their rather impressive antlers. I'd seen a sign saying it was calving season so I knew to be on my guard. Just as I'd almost completed my circuit, two more appeared from behind a clump of trees about twenty yards away from me. The only thing between them and the rest of the group was the patch of open ground I currently occupied! My brain said "Just keep walking" but my legs were yelling something very different. When they broke into a run, so did I (the most exercise I've had in a while!) Once the adrenaline kick had worn off, I at least managed to take a couple of pictures.

By then, the cafe was open so I hid from the rain with a cup of tea and let my heartrate return to normal. It's a cute cafe with the expected clientele - elderly couples, middle -aged people with their elderly parents and thankfully few kids, despite it still being the school holidays.

Finally it was time to hit the hall, which was rather odd. The house itself is very impressive - a slightly less Gothic version of Gormenghast. Inside was a "natural history museum". Hmm - I found myself rather bothered by the exhibits. The Tudor entrance hall was beautiful and from there I entered "The Bird Room" which contained stuffed birds of all sizes and descriptions, none of them very nice. Undeterred, I carried on into The Insect Room - not quite as disturbing but the trays of butterflies made me sad and the tarantula gave me the creeps! Then came The Wildlife Room. It was about as far from "life" as you can get. Stuffed with every mammal you can imagine, mostly big game and obviously hunted. I know it was a different time, blah blah blah, but the sight of zebra, lions, buffalo, giraffes and gorillas which had clearly been shot, stuffed and then bequeathed by some colonial old fart who thought there was nothing better in life than killing defenceless animals got the better of me in the end. It improved after that with the mineral, gemstone and fossil collection which was, as Stephen Fry would say, Quite Interesting. And that was that for the house. It's a huge property but the museum part only takes up a small part of two floors.

The very wet morning had given way to a sunny afternoon so I wandered out in search of the gardens, camelia lawn and greenhouse, all of which were very pretty as well as nice and quiet. The greenhouse was a little odd - I can only assume that it had been used to grow something which had already flowered as it simply held a couple of dozen huge green bushes! The camelias smelt gorgeous though.

My tum told me it was time for lunch so I went back to the cafe and treated myself to a jacket potato with veggie chilli. It was absolutely delicious, huge and a bargain at £4.50.

As I finished eating, I started chatting to an elderly guy at the next table but soon regretted it when it turned into an attempt at religious conversion, but I think that's for another blog post. After lunch, I went for a long walk through the deer park, ending up at the lake where I watched a very amusing duck-feeding display by three seemingly "hard as nails" blokes who were all reduced to gibbering wrecks when the ducks came at them en masse having spotted the bread they were carrying! I found a comfy bench and read my book by a secluded bit of the lake until the sun went in and my bum went numb. By then, Dade had finished his training and it was time to pick him up, find some dinner and start the drive home.

All in all, it was a lovely place to spend a day, great value with only paying £4 for parking (if you have to pay at all of course), a tasty reasonably-priced cafe and plenty to do. If you're in the Nottingham area at any point, I can highly recommend it.

All my pictures of the day are HERE. Apologies for the quality - all taken on my iPhone.

Please do not feed the animal

2011-08-14T17:16:00.000+01:00

I am fat. Oh yes, fat. I know it's true. You know it's true. My entire life I've had a propensity to carrying extra weight (a family trait) and for years I've yo-yoed between 9 stone and 13 stone. Breaking point for me came in April 2007 when I looked at a photo of myself and just thought "Yuk". It was vile. Horrendous. Humongous.

A switch in my brain activated and I successfully lost nearly two stone in the next six months. I did it slowly and sensibly, with the help of nothing more than a free website (www.sparkpeople.com) and a daily one-hour walk along the seafront (and a lot of support from Andy). No stupid "you can't have this, you can't have that, potatoes are bad" diets, no pills, no quick fixes and no expensive gym membership!

So when I headed off to Spain I was a healthy 11st 2lbs and I managed (somehow!) to keep it off until I came back. Given the obscene amounts of alcohol and fried food I ate in Madrid, that's a miracle but nonetheless, it's true.

But now a lot of it has crept back on. That really shouldn't have come as a surprise to me. I know exactly how it's happened. Far too much food, definitely far too much alcohol and pretty much no activity that could really come close to being considered exercise. I have excuse after excuse - my back/leg don't allow me to exercise properly; I like socialising; I really want a couple of glasses of wine every day when I get in from work. Blah blah blah. And it's all bollocks. I like food, I'm greedy and I have very little willpower. That's the upshot.

But this morning when I strained to see past my jiggly tummy to see what the scales said, that switch in brain was flicked again. I promised myself back in 2007 that I would never go back over a certain weight and I have. So it's back to the website, back to sensible portions of healthier food (whilst not actually cutting anything out altogether because I believe self-deprivation always backfires) and a determination to go for a walk every day, rain or shine, knackered from work or not. If it means I have to turn down a few drinks/meal invites for a little while while I retrain my brain, then so be it.

My friends and family are, as always, lovely and say "No, you're not fat, you're fine" etc etc. I'm not suggesting that they're lying or that they're just being nice but I know when I'm comfortable and happy and it's not now. Time for action.

Blue skies and the blues

2011-08-14T13:02:00.000+01:00

After nearly three years, I finally made it back to lovely Magnac-Laval and Cathy's gorgeous holiday home (l'Etoile de Mer).

We set off from Hove at 7pm Friday evening, got the 9pm shuttle and commenced the long drive down to the Limousin. Despite my best efforts to stay awake, I'm ashamed to say I nodded off rather a lot and Cathy did the vast majority of the 7hr 45 min drive. I think I only took over for about the last 2 hours! Being the last weekend in July, the big holiday getaway had started for the French so what is normally a practically deserted overnight drive, was more like mid-afternoon on the M25!

But just as dawn broke at shortly before 6am we pulled up outside the little house in the silence of the village. We unpacked as quietly as we could and then hit the sack for about 5 hours. We couldn't bear to waste any more of the holiday asleep though and were up and about by midday.

We headed to the local supermarket to stock up on the essentials for the weekend - wine, beer, cheese, vegetables etc and then wandered back to grab croissants and a baguette for later. Imagine our surprise to find the little boulangerie shut on a Saturday afternoon for the first time we'd ever known. Fortunately, when it's shut, the other one about ten yards away and with bread from the same baker is open and they were happy to fulfil our brunch order! We spent the afternoon wandering around the village, catching up on events. Cathy had been there in May but because I'd been away for so long, I was interested to see what had changed. Some of the streets have been newly cobbled - well, cobbled down each edge and tarmac in the middle. A couple of roads have been blocked to traffic giving the tabac the opportunity to put tables and chairs outside for the first time. The council have also put up lots of wooden structures full of beautiful flowers so the place is looking very pretty (or rather, prettier than it already did). There's definitely more of a buzz in the village than there used to be - a combination of the influx of holiday-home owners (mostly Brits) and the fact that the bars now organise more events in the evenings to pull in customers.

Saturday evening brought the main event of the weekend - music by blues guitarist/singer Dave Thomas at L'Escapade bar in the village square. He's been playing for over 40 years and is a very well-respected musician in the UK and the USA but I'm guessing barely heard of in France. A good friend of his, Collette, a South African lady who Cathy knows well, had organised an 8-date tour around the Limousin for him and Saturday was only the second night. A good crowd had turned out on a beautiful balmy evening. Food and wine were flowing and once Dave got started, there was no stopping him. He's a fantastic musician and whilst I won't pretend that blues is my favourite genre, he put on a great show with a mixture of his own songs and covers, interspersed with little stories from his years as an entertainer. Collette and her husband Ron came to join us at our table, along with Bonnie, Dave's partner, an absolutely lovely lady. The evening flew by in a whirlwind of chat, drinks and a lot of laughing (not at the music, I hasten to add). At about half past midnight, most people headed off but we went into the bar just to settle our bill, only to start chatting to two girls we'd never seen before, Mel from Dubai and Joanne who lives just round the corner from the bar! Mel had to head home but Joanne invited us back to hers where we met her disturbingly silent French ex-husband who was babysitting and we drank some Pineau. We finally rolled home at 2.20am, knackered!!!

Sunday started as all Sunday should - with croissants beurres from the correct boulangerie on the corner! Then we hit the road. First was a splendid plant nursery/teashop in a tiny village where we drank beautifully presented teas and coffees and heard all about the incredibly early crop of soft fruits in France and were presented with a gigantic bag of cooking pears for free, because the owner had a glut of them and couldn't bear to see them go to waste! Then we moved on to the Lac de Mondon, a regular haunt. It's either a reservoir or a man-made lake (I can never remember which) near Cromac. It has a large grassy area, perfect for lazing in the sun and eating a picnic of baguette and Emmenthal, with lashings of greasy foreign crisps (as they are always referred to). From there we headed to Jouac, where Dave Thomas was playing again during the afternoon. We arrived at about 4 and he'd been on for about 3 hours already but he didn't quit til 6pm! He was very well received again. Despite our over-indulgence the night before, I somehow managed to down a large beer at about 5pm (thanks for driving, Cathy!) We dragged ourselves away from the fun to head home to make chick pea stew and get ready for a firework display we'd seen advertised, due to start at 11pm in a nearby village. Dinner duly scoffed, off we went to Dompierre les Eglises where we've been many times before and have even seen fireworks there in the past. We arrived about 10.45pm to a completely deserted village, not a soul to be seen, the huge number of cars that usually accompanies such an event conspicuous in their absence. Baffled, we drove from one end of the village to the other but nothing. Somewhat confused, we thought that just maybe we'd got the wrong village as there's another with a rather similar name. We shot off to the other village and arrived just a few minutes before 11pm but if anything it was quieter than the first. Bum! There was nothing left to do but head home. We were, however, quite determined to find out if we'd imagined the whole thing and we could remember where we'd seen the poster advertising it - on the outdoor noticeboard of the local supermarket. So at 11.30pm there we were, in a deserted supermarket carpark, headlights on full, staring at the poster which did indeed say "Fireworks - 23h - Sunday - Dompierre les Eglises". So at least we hadn't made it up. Just as we were about to pull away, headlights appeared behind us. Uh-oh, THE FUZZ! Or rather, the young gendarmes. Oops. Cathy looked like a rabbit caught in, well, caught in the headlights and I got out of the car to face the music. They didn't actually say anything, just looked expectantly at me. "Alors, je peux expliquer" I began. But could I? In French which, I hasten to add, I hadn't really spoken for the best part of three years! About seven minutes later, they seemed slightly confused but placated - further confused no doubt by my having said "Nous avons cherché le, um, le poster pour les feu d'artifices y esta aqui". Yeah, great, Em. Bad French followed by pointless Spanish. Suffice to say, they probably couldn't face the paperwork of booking in two rather tired foreigners and let us go. Rather relieved but very amused, we drove home for a well-deserved cuppa and a sleep.

Monday morning dawned, yet again, bright and warm. We'd heard that the previous two weeks had been miserable and wet yet so far we'd been blessed with blazing sun and cloudless skies. A quick trip to the décheterie (the tip} to dump a few things but also to pick up a bit of free wood, was followed by a drive to Bellac, the nearest main town where we had a slow but tasty lunch at the Café Le Pont de la Pierre, a cute little bar/restaurant by the 13th century stone bridge at the bottom of the city. The British owners had taken on some new staff - a couple of French teenagers and one British girl. We got the impression that it was the first day for all of them as they were having serious teething problems. No-one came to our table for about 15 minutes and when the waitress did, we asked for a menu and she headed off never to be seen again! Still, all was well in the end and we commenced the very steep climb to the top of the town to deliver a large bag of cat food to the cat sanctuary. That makes it sound more formal than it is. It's a small piece of land with some handmade cat houses with bedding etc. There are no staff, no office, just a shed for the food. Having delivered the food, we descended again and finally managed a game of Poohsticks (which I won - hurrah)! We spent another lazy afternoon on the shores of a lake - this time it was Lac Freadour, part of the Lac St Pardoux area. We did some murder mystery plotting, a bit of snoozing and watched some people take a very refreshing dip in the lake. It made me wish I'd remembered my swimming costume!

We headed back to the house late afternoon and attempted to have a little cycle round the village. Sadly, our attempts were scuppered by the fact that the one of the two bikes at the house is a men's bike. Not that I have a problem with a crossbar (!) but the saddle turned out to be jammed at a height that made it absolutely impossible for me to sit on the bike and reach the ground, even with only one leg. Cycling not being one of my best talents, we decided it was safer to walk! Our evening perambulate was followed by a trip over to Chez Chaumet, a tiny hamlet just past Dompierre Les Eglises where we visited the beautiful holiday home of Mel, the girl from Dubai we'd met on Saturday evening. She has the most amazing house with a glorious view - it's almost illegal that it's only used for 2 months every summer when she and her 3 kids come over to stay there from Dubai! We had a lovely evening chatting on the verandah (Cathy to Mel about owning property abroad and me to her 10 year old son about Star Wars Lego - go figure!) We headed home to a late dinner to use up the contents of the fridge and took a last look up at the stars from the roof terrace.

Tuesday had rolled around far too fast and it was time to pack up and leave. We met up one final time with Bonnie for a quick coffee in the local tabac while Dave was being interviewed for Radio Magnac Laval but the interview hadn't finished before it was time for us to leave so we didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Dave (or to Colette who was interpreting for him!) The seven-hour drive back to Calais was uneventful, though we did realise that on the way here we'd actually been on the inner peripherique instead of the outer (the equivalent of having been on the North Circular instead of the M25) which explains why we had actually driven through a part of Paris city centre on the way down! Still, after a ridiculous detour in the final stage of the journey, which added about 12 miles and nearly half an hour to our arrival at the Shuttle, we grabbed a case of ridiculously cheap wine each at Cité Europe and boarded the train.

As usual, I had a glorious time in a beautiful part of the world and with lovely company. Thanks Cathy and a la prochaine, l'Etoile de Mer.

The photos of our little trip can be found HERE.

The return of a charming prince

2011-05-17T08:37:00.000+01:00

After a 15-year absence, Adam Ant returned to the UK stage last night at the Concorde 2, Brighton, a relatively intimate venue holding about 500 people.

The evening got off to a fairly dismal start to be honest. The first support act, whose name was conspicuous in its absence, were so dreadful we barely made it to the end of the first song before returning to the bar. The trio, two scantily-clad female guitarist/singers and a male drummer, could well have come to the stage direct from their first ever music lesson. They had little stage presence, the lead guitarist couldn't take her eyes off her fingers for her chord changes, the singer hit as many bum notes as true, and the look of concentration on the drummer's face was worthy of someone sitting an astrophysics exam.

The second support, Krakatoa, a five-piece guitar band were refreshingly competent and they managed to hold the attention of the burgeoning crowd.

Finally, after a teasing half-hour wait, Adam Ant and his new band The Good, The Mad and the Lovely Posse, appeared. Ant, doing a passable impression of Jack Sparrow, resplendent in pirate hat, highwayman jacket and, presumably as a nod to his advancing years, a pair of spectacles, delivered a surprisingly polished performance. There was plenty of solo material, both recognisable and new, but he didn't let down the majority of the crowd who were looking for a nostalgic return to the late 70s and early 80s. We were treated to Ant Music, Kings of the Wild Frontier, Prince Charming and Goody Two Shoes, one of which was introduced with the words "Oh, OK, here's another f*cking hit!" It's surely one of the downsides to making a comeback after such a long time away - the vast majority of your crowd will be there because they liked you the first time round and will expect to hear the songs that made them fans in the first place. A personalised and reworked version of YMCA - called AATA - went down well, as did their rendition of Get It On during the encore.

He certainly appeared to be enjoying himself and wasn't above a bit of self-deprecation. Having complimented one of his backing singers on her new and improved cleavage, he said "Good way to spend my money - what's left of it!", bringing a giggle from the diverse crowd.

He's had his problems and his glory days remain a good two decades behind him, but Adam Ant can still put on a damn good show.

We stood. He delivered.

Sad sign of the times?

2011-05-13T21:18:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I did something I've never done before, and which made me surprised at myself.

I was on the bus home from work when, about four stops before mine, three guys got on. I'll get this out the way straight away - they were of what I would call Middle Eastern appearance (I have no idea if that's what they were, or if there's a PC way of saying that isn't going to upset someone but there you go). I had glanced out of the bus window while people were getting on and noticed the men talking to each other in the queue so I assumed, not unreasonably, that they knew each other.

Having bought their tickets, they then did something which I found rather odd - they separated, one went to almost the back row, one sat two rows in front of me and the third sat near the door on the folding-down, sideways seats. They were all carrying either a rucksack or a courier bag. Having sat down, they didn't speak or interact with each other again in any way, nor did they make eye contact. The guy nearest the door got a huge pair of headphones out of his bag, then some kind of smartphone, donned the headphones and seconds later, his lips were moving though no sound was coming out.

I don't know quite how long it took me to start feeling somewhat nervous but by the time we'd reached the stop two before my own, I'd decided to get off the bus and walk the rest of the way.

It's not like I actually sat there thinking "OK, these guys have to be terrorists because they look of Middle Eastern origin and have bags" but more "That is very weird behaviour"! Needless to say, having got off the bus, I watched it disappear on its way with no disasters and it's now no surprise that today's news wasn't full of "Suicide bombers hit Brighton bus".

It has, however, made me wonder a few things. Would I have had the same feelings if the three guys had been white? Or black? Or women? Or if I hadn't noticed them seemingly talking to each other in the bus queue?

Thinking back on it, my reaction seems extreme and unwarranted but I know that I was certainly feeling very uncomfortable during that short part of the journey - enough to make me get off (and walk uphill to get home!)

Is this a sad reflection on the times we live in? I like to think of myself as fairly unjudgemental - certainly at least on the basis of someone's appearance (like everyone else, I'm as judgemental as the next person once I've experienced someone's behaviour or attitudes) and I've always been very anti people being tarred with the same brush purely because of historical events. And yet that was, at least partly, what I did. I'm still mildly disappointed with myself but I can't guarantee that I wouldn't do exactly the same thing again.

Chocolate heaven?

2011-04-16T18:23:00.001+01:00

This weekend sees the Brighton Chocolate Festival, part of the Brighton and Hove Food and Drink Festival come to New Road, behind the Pavilion.

I imagine the exhibitors today were quite relieved that it's not as hot as it was last weekend - I'm guessing 23 degrees would have led to some rather alarming meltage!

Conditions were perfect - light cloud, about 15 degrees, no chance of rain. The combination of that and the idea of free chocolate served to bring rather a lot of people to the event - it was rammed!

It's crammed into a fairly small space meaning that each stand can have a rather offputting crowd to fight your way through. However, if you can be bothered to wait (or elbow your way in) you're rewarded with some delicious goodies. Most of the stands are from local, small companies although there was one from a London company who currently supply Selfridges. There were delights on offer from Chocoholly, Artisan du Chocolat, Cocoapod, Philip Maes and many others.

There was a huge variety of types of chocolate on display - milk, plain, white, raw, 99% cocoa, flavoured, as well as some interesting shapes: fish, bunnies, owls, chickens, pods, lollipops, sausage rolls and Yorkshire puddings (!) as well as the classic bars, discs and eggs.

Almost every stand had plates of tasters out - I thought the ones that chose not to had missed a real marketing opportunity. A lot of the products weren't cheap and I certainly wouldn't spend upwards of a fiver on a bar of chocolate without tasting it first. It was clear that the stalls with tasters were more popular too. That surely serves to prove the value of freebies and the insatiable appetite of the general public for chocolate!

If you're now salivating, then pop down to Brighton tomorrow between 10am and 6pm for day 2.

For info, there's also the Made in Brighton Festival out at the Marina.

It's all over bar the shooting!

2011-04-12T15:28:00.000+01:00

Peril in the Park - when Cathy and I first discussed doing a live murder mystery production at a local café back at the beginning of the year, Saturday April 9th seemed a very long way off. But then it crept up on us, as things like this inexorably do.

And last Saturday was D-Day. Or rather, it was MM-Day.

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of plot details, prop organisation, printing, laminating, script writing, rehearsing, last-minute amendments and general panicking. When the day finally came, I was seriously wondering what on earth we'd let ourselves in for.

We knew that the food was going to be great, we'd been in the café and seen and smelt what they have to offer. The guests had paid £40 a head for this event, a not inconsiderable sum for an evening out in the throes of a recession, so we really had to give them their money's worth. Not to mention this was our reputation at stake. Being our first live production, we really needed to make a bit of a name for ourselves.

I arrived at the café at 5pm along with the rest of the cast - Cathy, Dade, Sid, Carol and Andrea, clutching our huge bags of props and paperwork. Cathy had managed to make it there without being arrested for carrying five guns, two knives, a bloodstained sheet and some handcuffs. We'd originally thought that we'd have two straight hours (between the café closing and the performance beginning) to set up and run-through, but we didn't bank on the fact that although the café theoretically closes at 5pm, they quite understandably leave the doors open and people can pop in to buy a quick ice-cream etc. The staff were also very busy setting up the tables for the performance. So they were trying to negotiate their way to the tables with cutlery, glasses etc, while we were throwing ourselves round the only open space in the room, rehearsing our various scenes. I really hope we weren't in their way too much!

Before we knew it, it was 6.45, T-minus 15 minutes. We were all in our costumes, sipping a nerve-steadying beer, and keeping our fingers tightly crossed.

At 7pm on the nose, the first guests arrived and the rest gradually trickled in for the next half an hour. Initially, it was a case of getting people to mingle - no mean feat with a room full of strangers. But Sid (as event hostess, Greeta Client), Cathy (as her temporary assistant, Tallulah) and Dade (as Ed Lines, local journalist and photographer) did a great job of entertaining them and keeping them on track. Until 7.30, I was pretending to be a guest but once everyone had arrived, I performed a quick change outside the café and hurtled in in my very fetching police uniform, clutching a blue flashing light and to the slightly dodgy recording of a police siren. And that was it - we were off. The next three hours passed by in a whirl of scenes, audio clues, visual clues, heckling from the crowd, some quite fantastic off-the-cuff performances by a couple of the guests and a sense of mounting confusion as the combination of clues and copious amounts of alcohol combined to baffle the budding sleuths.

In what felt like the blink of an eye, the guests were finishing up their desserts and it was time for us to conclude the limerick competion, mark the solution forms, arrest the wrong man and then have the obligatory (but surprising for the guests) dénouement.

To our great relief, a round of applause ensued, giving us the opportunity to thank everyone for coming and introduce ourselves. Once it was all over, we managed to chat to quite a lot of the guests as our real personas, as opposed to our characters, which is always nice to do. They were a great bunch and all seemed genuinely impressed with the evening. Hopefully word of mouth will do the trick. Natalie and Juliet who run the café are really keen to get another one going so we'll be meeting with them to discuss how we move forward.

All in all, it went really well and I, for one, had a fantastic evening. Cue huge sigh of relief!

The photos of the evening, courtesy of Krysalis Photography, can be found HERE.

Dying to get started

2011-03-02T21:22:00.000Z

It's official. Write Me A Murder's first proper, paid, public murder mystery dinner is actually going to happen. Well, as long as the minimum number of tickets are sold, that is!

Thanks to the lovely girls at The Garden Café, St Ann's Well Gardens in Hove, we've now started work on the plot for a murder mystery dinner there on April 9th.

Details will be posted on our website and our Facebook page or, if you're in the Hove area, you can find posters about it around the park in the next couple of days.

Keep everything crossed for us!

Real life Fast Show pushy dad

2011-03-02T21:15:00.000Z

On a recent bus journey to work, I witnessed a hilarious (though quite sad) exchange between a father and his son, who I would put at about 10. They were sitting on the 2 front seats and I was standing just behind them so could easily eavesdrop on them!

The first thing I heard was the child ask "Dad, which would help you live longer? 3 bananas or a bottle of water?" Dad then launched into a very long explanation of fat cells and calories and kilojoules but tied himself up in spectacular knots in the end when he said "You know what a calorie is, don't you? It's the amount of energy required to heat, um, some, well, an amount of water".

He then went on to try to get out of it by saying that he wanted the child to wait and enjoy learning all about it in physics, the "most interesting subject at school"! In order to prove how exciting physics was going to be, he then started explaining the periodic table. Well, I say explaining. He said "it's a table of all the elements and they all have an abbreviation and a number". Hmm, very helpful.

At this point, the child was still nibbling on his banana and staring out of the window. I figured he was just very, very bored and hoping his dad would shut up.

However, I think he was actually simply thinking about what he was going to say next. Which turned out to be "I was 7 when I got into music and Michael Jackson was 8. So that means I'm only a year behind Michael Jackson talent- and experience-wise". To be fair to his dad, all he did was say "Hmmm. Oh look, here's our stop".

I'm pretty certain that Daddy wasn't exactly proud of his son's apparent desire to take after a somewhat eccentric pop star instead of becoming the next Stephen Hawking.

We got off at the same stop and I followed them for a few yards. I managed to resist the temptation to pat the poor kid on the shoulder and say "Go out. Climb a tree. Eat worms. Talk about random shit with friends"

Ah, the stuff you see and hear on public transport!

Humanism in Education

2011-01-20T15:19:00.001Z

Having been an atheist pretty much from the day I read the last page of the Bible (something I was made to do at Girl's Brigade), I certainly identify pretty strongly with the Humanist organisation (British Humanist Association). In the last few years, I've attended three humanist funerals - two of my grandparents and my aunt. In each case, a humanist celebration had been requested by the deceased as they all felt that the religious overtones of a "normal" funeral would be completely inappropriate for a person who has lived their life without religion. Each and every one of those services (if that's the right word) were lovely - personal, friendly, amusing (on purpose in some cases, not so much in others!) but above all, very fitting. I'm a huge supporter of the BHA and will certainly be requesting a humanist celebrant for my funeral.

So I was interested to see a recent press release which appeared via my Facebook feed from them. There is apparently a review coming up of the national curriculum and the BHA has called for RE to be added to the national curriculum. Two things sprang to my mind: 1) I assumed it was already on the national curriculum and 2) why on earth would the humanist association be in favour of religion being taught in schools?

The article can be found HERE and having read it, I can understand their thinking. I have long believed that if RE is to be taught at all in schools, it should cover each and every religion and should include agnosticism, atheism and, of course, humanism. No school should be allowed to concentrate on any one religion any more than another - the basics of each world religion should be taught so that kids have a basic understanding of all of them and can then, should they so choose, decide which one they will follow (or none, of course).

I was also unaware that it is still the law that state schools must have "compulsory collective worship" on a daily basis (yes, that would be "assembly" to most of us). How antiquated! Surely, I thought, in this day and age, where most schools have pupils belonging to a multitude of cultures and religions, it would be almost impossible to have "collective worship". The logical thing would be for assembly to be precisely that - one opportunity for everyone in the school to be together in a large hall, there could be some kind of motivational talk or an excerpt from a book or a poem read out, followed by the obligatory announcements (what time choir practice starts, whether the school won the footie match against its biggest rival yesterday, etc) and that would be that.

Anyway, back to the national curriculum. Having read it, agreed with it but then thought about it again, I started to wonder if in fact the BHA might not have shot itself in the foot. I have a sneaking suspicion that they might partially get their way - RE might become part of the national curriculum but be limited to the kids actually being taught about religion - not about non-religion. To my mind, that would almost be worse than the current system. If you give kids an overview of all the many religions that exist, but fail to equally cover the non-religious aspects, some kids might believe that it's almost obligatory to have a religion - that there is no other option. That belief would sadly be reinforced if their parents were religious - those children certainly wouldn't be receiving the message at home that you don't have to have a religion - it should be incumbent upon schools to ensure that that choice is made clear.

The other thing that struck me was the likelihood that in these overly PC days, the government would probably still feel obliged to allow parents to refuse to let their kids take part in the RE lessons, national curriculum or not. I remember that in my school class between the ages of 5 and 12, there was a boy whose family were Jehovah's Witnesses (note that I did not say that he was one as I don't believe that at the age of 5 he can possibly have decided what, if any, religion he wanted to follow). He was not allowed to come to assembly, did not attend RE classes and was not allowed to join in the annual decorating of the classroom with paper chains and snowflakes for Christmas. Yes, I understand that none of those things were part of his family's religion but they made the poor boy a complete outcast, especially at certain times of the year.

So I agree in principle with the idea of RE becoming part of the national curriculum but with conditions - it should teach every religion along with non-religion, and attendance at the classes should be obligatory no matter what religion the child (or their family) follow.

Another year over...

2010-12-27T23:58:00.001Z

....OK, not another year, but another Christmas at least.

Like last year, I spent Christmas Day volunteering at a local community centre which was laying on Christmas lunch for 50 "less fortunate" people. I put that in quotes simply because I don't know what else to call them. They welcome the homeless, the lonely, the elderly, the disabled and basically anyone else who would have nowhere/no-one else to go to on Christmas Day.

If I'm honest, it was a little disappointing after last year. I realise that I wasn't meant to be entertained, enthused or otherwise kept amused by the entire day but....! Yet again this year, I somehow got roped into organising the tea/coffee/soup etc. Really not sure how especially as I was quite determined not to but somehow I got embroiled in it with the mad (and frankly irritating) Margaret. Dade escaped into the kitchen with the organiser (Martin) and two lovely, eccentric ladies who I'd met last year! Having said we'd both rather be out front with the "guests" I think he got the better end of the bargain - on the drinks counter you don't really get to interact with people, other than to take their order for a drink and say hi briefly, and it gets pretty hectic. Like last year, the volunteers all had lunch at one table so we didn't even get to chat to the others during the meal. Martin said the reason for this was to give the volunteers "a break" but, to be honest, I didn't feel like there was anything to have a break from (except Margaret!)

The community centre itself is attached to a church but at some point in the last year, the minister and her family had relocated to Scotland and the church now shares its minister with a church in Eastbourne. That church obviously had a tighter grip on him this year and that's where he'd gone to give the morning service, so this church was minister-less for the morning at least. Consequently, there was no mini-service at the beginning of the proceedings as there had been last year, just a CD of carols. Most of the people didn't show up until about 12 for a 12.30 lunch so there wasn't much socialising to do in advance either.

Lunch, as last year, was very tasty. There was turkey/stuffing, mash, roasties, sprouts, carrots, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, gravy. The vegetarians had a goat's cheese and cranberry pastry thing (though no veggie gravy which was disappointing, for me at least). A pretty light and scrummy Christmas pudding followed, though with a very odd white custard that I couldn't really identify this year any more than last. Being a church hall, there was no alcohol, officially at least. However, a very lovely Irish disabled lady had brought a bottle of fake Bailey with her, mainly for her to drink but the remainder of the bottle she was insistent that the volunteers drank! We were very grateful, but had to be a bit surreptitious with it!

The minister did show up in time to make a short speech at the end of lunch, thanking the organiser etc and letting everyone know that there would be a present for each of them at the end of the meal. Unfortunately, what he failed to point out was that after lunch everyone was welcome to stick around just to chat and also for entertainment. One of the other volunteers had a couple of songs organised, I know one of the women told a story last year, I'd taken my guitar and Dade and I had a couple of very silly sketches planned (and even semi-rehearsed!) Added to the lack of warning of any entertainment, one of the volunteers (mentioning no names) started to clear the tables very obviously right at the end of dessert, to the point that clearly several people felt that they were being ushered out. By 3pm the place was empty and all the washing up, clearing up and rearranging of furniture was done. So no entertainment required which I'll readily admit I was kind of disappointed about. Very odd, given that we'd finished at nearly 5pm last year.

I'm going to sound, I don't know what, now - snobby? Not sure that's the right word. However, I sort of envisaged the people who would come to these things would generally be the homeless, the extremely poor and the elderly who really had nowhere else to go, no family etc. I noticed last year that there were a few people who I didn't think quite fitted the bill but this year was definitely more obvious. There were a couple of genuinely homeless guys, both of whom I'd met last year, and maybe three or four older people who probably had nowhere else to be. The rest of the places, however, were taken up with pairs/groups of people who seemed, to me at least, either too well-off, too connected or otherwise unlikely! Maybe I'm doing them a grave disservice, but it just seemed to me that a lot of them didn't NEED to be at a community centre on Christmas Day, enjoying a totally free 3-course meal. I readily admit that maybe a lot of them were there simply for the company, rather than the food and, frankly, who am I to judge?

All that aside, I really enjoyed the day and would happily to do it again. In fact, at the end of the proceedings, the organiser asked me if I'd be interested in being part of a small committee organising next year's event. I have to admit that I have reservations. I do feel a little hypocritical getting over-involved in a church event when I'm a self-proclaimed atheist. I'm sure they don't really care but maybe I should. Having said that, the day needs better organisation and (I think) it needs to target different groups for next year. I felt sorry for Martin, the organiser, as he'd pretty much put it all together it himself and, without the help of a minister, that was probably a bit of an ordeal. Consequently, if it doesn't look like it's going to be too church-related, then I'll happily help out with organising next year's event. For the time being, it certainly looks like I'll be here for it.

All told, and infuriating (and, I discovered, uninvited) volunteers aside, I'm still glad I did it again this year and I'd highly recommend the same kind of thing to anyone who really doesn't view the 25th of December as necessarily a day to over-indulge in vast quantities of food and drink, and get caught up in the obscene commercialisation of what is, in effect, a religious celebration which has become almost an obsession for society, and not for the right reasons!

I would like to stress....

2010-12-12T19:10:00.000Z

....actually, no, I wouldn't. Stress, that is. But I do. I am.

I'm normally fairly relaxed, chilled and stuff kind of washes over me. But in the last few weeks, that hasn't been the case.

My poor 89-year-old granddad is in a bad way and at the mercy of the NHS and Social Services. He had to be moved out of his care home due to a severe chest infection and cellulitis - once he was in hospital, the care home decided that he couldn't go back there because he required too much supervised care. He has advanced dementia but is (or was) fairly mobile. The problem was that he was still able to get out of bed and once he'd done that, was in danger of falling or collapsing. So the search had to start for a nursing home which would actually take him. The problem with elderly care in the UK seems to be that if you're just old but physically and mentally fit, there are plenty of places you can go, if you're physically impaired (confined to bed etc) then again you have a lot of choices. But as soon as you add dementia into the mix, it becomes a nightmare. Initially, it was going to be down to the family to find him somewhere to go but in the end the hospital care team found him a place in a proper nursing home. He's now there, but I found out today that he is now pretty much completely unresponsive, recognises no-one, is almost bedridden and is being spoonfed by staff. To have gone from an incredibly intelligent, erudite, entertaining man who spoke about a dozen languages to what is left is really sad and frankly, isn't a life.

My cat's also ill - she has eosinophilic granuloma - she's been to the vet three times now, been on two lots of antibiotics, been anaesthetised, had biopsies taken and got stitches, and is now on anti-inflammatories for at least three weeks. So far, it's cost me £250 and she may well have to keep having repeat prescriptions for the next few months. The drugs she's on are also quite likely to mess with her respiratory system, which is already weakened.

As per my recent blog, my washer/dryer decided to pack up (with a little help from the guy who was meant to be repairing it when only half of it wasn't working) - very stressful and cost £400 for a new one.

Cathy and I are frantically trying to finish two murder mystery bookings, which need to be ready for New Year's Eve and early January (well, that's when the parties are, they actually need to be ready in about six days). Normally, we don't have a problem getting them done in good time, but I think it's the fact that we're doing two at a time that's causing the issues. We're very aware that we need to be sure we don't get the plots, characters, guests and paperwork mixed up. We've also, for some inexplicable reason, made the plots far more complicated than usual - great for the people doing the plot as they'll have to think more in order to solve it, but makes life much more difficult for us.

In the meantime, of course, Christmas is sneaking up on me. Whilst, as in recent years, I'm not doing Xmas per se, there are still online cards to be emailed, mini pressies to organise, the odd real card to send to those rare people who aren't on the net, and various other things.

And then there's my crappy job. I can't pretend otherwise - I hate it. Crap money, crap conditions and I spend the day annoying people at home and being shouted at. It's turned out to be pretty much exactly what I thought an outbound call centre would be like.

However, trying to get into something else is proving almost impossible. I'm registered with every recruitment agency in Brighton and Hove but the daily emails they send me are full of rubbish. Despite supposedly being fitted to my criteria, they send details of Chartered Surveyors, primary school teachers, Web Developers, plumbers and who knows what else. Less than 5% of the jobs they send me would actually be relevant. And I do apply for those 5% - every one that's remotely suitable get my covering letter and CV. So far, not even an acknowledgement. The same goes for the multiple Gumtree ads I've replied to. I know it's probably more than they can be bothered with given the number of applicants, but I do think it's pretty appalling that you get nothing back from companies any more - no acknowledgements, nothing to tell you specficially that you haven't been successful in even getting an interview, and certainly no feedback. I've advertised my services on Gumtree as a proofreader and also to give conversational English classes but no responses. The audio typing I'd been doing for a freelance company has dried up completely too. I'm desperately trying to avoid contemplating going back to the Civil Service in any capacity but it is becoming like fending off a lion with a blade of grass.

Oh and, of course, I'm broke. Properly. For the first time in my life. I've borrowed an embarrassing amount of money from both my parents over the last year, for which I'm very, very grateful but it can't keep happening. I'm living off my credit card and keeping my fingers tightly crossed that they finally get my tax code sorted out at the end of this month so I don't pay a stupid amount in emergency tax, and that they refund my overpaid tax. That will help a little.

I'm very aware that I've been self-absorbed and wrapped up in all of this recently, have totally neglected my mates (both here and in Madrid) and my family, and I've been stressing my poor flatmate out to the point that he thinks I want him to move out. I DON'T! For all those things though, I'm really, really sorry - I promise I'll get my act together in 2011.

For now, I'm off for a chamomile tea and a lie-down in a darkened room.

Free education - free for whom?

2010-12-11T14:58:00.001Z

Since the student demos have been in the news so much recently, it got me thinking about the whole "free university education" issue.

Education in the UK is only compulsory up to the age of 16. After that, it's entirely optional (though personally I think it should be compulsory up to the age of 18 and if you choose to leave school before then or get expelled, you shouldn't be entitled to any unemployment benefits in the future - but that's a whole different bee in my bonnet!)

Now, once upon a time, only a very small minority of people went on to further education - most didn't even continue on to Sixth Form College or Technical College etc, let alone university. It may well have been seen as something that only better-off kids did - though I'm not quite clear why that would be - the education was totally free then as far as I know so it shouldn't have made any difference how rich or otherwise you were. The only thing I can assume is that if you came from a lower-income family, there was more of an imperative for you to go out and work so you could help support the family. I'm quite certain it had nothing to do with intelligence. Of course, there is always the chance that it was snobbery and that it was simply that universities didn't want poorer people attending. Who knows?

I digress. As the number of people wanting to attend university rose, so did the cost - to both the universities and the taxpayer. I'm not saying that more people wanting to gain a degree is a bad thing, but it does depend on why they're doing it. In my current job, I work with quite a lot of students who are in their first couple of years at uni. I've heard some of them say that they're there not because of some compelling desire to learn, or because they have some particularly high-brow career in mind which absolutely requires a degree, but simply because at the age of 18 they either didn't know what they wanted to do for a living, or simply didn't fancy getting a job. Many of them do also seem to be fitting the stereotype of the heavy-drinking, ever-sleeping, doing-no-work student. Two of them yesterday said that they hadn't actually attended any lectures, tutorials or even been near the university for two and three weeks respectively. I'm really not clear how that's something to be proud of! One of them was on one of the demos last week. So let me get this straight - she wants me, via my taxes, to pay for her to have a free education, but she doesn't actually plan to work at it? So I think one of my objections is pretty clear now.

My second objection is that from the way many people are talking, you would think that the students or their families are being asked to turn up with a suitcase full of used fivers at the beginning of term (totalling between £3500 and the new maximum fee of £9000 for a 3 or 4 year degree) in advance. No! There are still grants, bursaries, scholarships etc etc. Many will still get it paid for and then not have to start paying it back until they're earning £21,000. So if they leave uni and either choose not to work, choose to continue in education or take a job at a lower salary, they're not going to have to pay it back anyway. And if they do make use of the degree and get into a job that's paying them that sort of money, why shouldn't they be expected to give something back?

On a more personal note, if higher/further education is to be free for all, surely it really should be for all. There are several adult education courses I fancy taking, either for personal development or to improve/change my career prospects. I know plenty of other people who would love to go and get a couple of extra A Levels, learn a language, do a vocational course etc - do we get that for free? No, of course we don't. We have to find the money to pay for the course up-front, then pay a fee for any associated exam, pay for transport/parking to the college/university etc. Perhaps the taxpayer would like to cough up for that too. Yeah. Thought not.

Much like for most things, I'm all in favour of means-testing. I realise that's more difficult with education as most people don't have any "means" at the age of 18 - and I don't think that parents should be expected to fund a degree either unless they really want to. So what is currently being suggested pretty much fits in exactly with how I think it should work. Do your degree. Pay for it later if and when you're earning enough. Is that really so unfair?

I've got EEG on my face!

2010-12-11T01:28:00.001Z

Gumtree was yet again responsible for providing a weird distraction from daily life. This time, it was an ad for paid volunteers for a psychological study. It seemed interesting and, to be honest, an easy way to make a few quid.

So I fired off an email a couple of weeks ago and got back a message asking me to complete some online personality questionnaires. I did them, and submitted the results to Mindlab as requested. I wondered soon after if it was just a way of getting responses to the online test because once the results had been received, they emailed simply saying that if you were then chosen to take part in an actual study, then you would get the £5 payment for filling in the questionnaire. To be honest, I didn't expect to hear from them again.

However, last Sunday I got a phone call asking if I could go to the University of Sussex the next day to take part in an actual study, involving being hooked up to an EEG, for which I'd be paid £20 (plus the £5 for filling in the personality test). Dade had volunteered for the very same study so we elected to go along at the same time, either for moral support or a mutual opportunity to laugh at each other, I'm not sure which.

So a freezing Monday morning found us mingling with the students on a train to Falmer. We checked into the Mindlab centre and met the four people who would be conducting the tests. They were a fairly young and amusing bunch, though the office looked a little thrown together (and the walls moved more than the ones on Crossroads!)

Before we knew it, we were being wired up - me in a very fetching tight-fitting cap with Polo-sized holes in, and a weird strap that attached the cap to a chest strap. Once secured, some really unpleasant electrode gel was squeezed into the holes (and all over my hair) before the elctrodes were attached and the signals were checked. Once that was done, I resembled some kind of multi-coloured Gorgon - or at least that was what I was told - I couldn't see myself. Very unfairly Dade could move in his seat and spy on me but I was practically velcro-ed to the back of my chair and couldn't reciprocate. I should just be grateful he didn't get a photo!

Once all the signals were being picked up OK, the procedure started. First, I was shown my "resting" brainwave - although initially even relaxed and with no visual stimuli, mine looked like the seismic readout of an earthquake. However, this turned out to be a glitch and it finally settled down. To show how important it was to remain as still and calm as possible, they asked me to blink a couple of times and also to clench my teeth. When I did so, the readout wnet wild. Finally, the actual test got underway - we were moved to our designated tables, the lights were dimmed and off we went. There were some control exercises - following dots round a screen with your eyes, presumably so that the eye-tracker could be tested, then counting the number of dots that appeared for a few seconds and shouting the answer out to the technician. That one was a bit disconcerting because our tests had been started almost simultaneously but Dade's just a little ahead. I could actually hear what number he was saying and it made me paranoid every time I counted a different number of dots, even though I couldn't be completely sure that we were doing exactly the same test! They then showed some random video clips of varying degrees of boringness (some Juliette Binoche rubbish), sentimentality (Forrest Gump) and violence (American History X). Once the controls were complete the actual study began. I'm not going to say with what we were actually shown because a) it's very boring and b) we signed a confidentiality agreement. Suffice to say, it involved looking at various pictures, accompanied by the most annoying voice in the world and then saying a number between 0 and 10 to say how much fun etc we thought the pictures looked. The actual test probably only took about 30% of the time!

Once done, I was disconnected from the apparatus and the cap was peeled off my head. Bleurgh. The gel was everywhere - my hair was all gunked up with it and was plastered to my head. Mmmmm, nice! Just as well my coat had a hood!

So off I trotted with my £25 in my pocket for my trouble - not bad for 75 minutes of weirdness.

I'm on their books now for future studies so we'll see if anything interesting crops up.

Not so glamorous assistant

2010-12-10T12:21:00.000Z

Debbie McGee? Dr Watson? Mutley?!!

OK, so my first foray into the glamourous world of "photographer's assistant" was an interesting one.

In an attempt to get some portraiture experience, Dade had advertised his services for free to anyone who fancied having their portrait done. The first respondent was a young guy called Alex, who asked if Dade could make him "look good".

I happened to be free on the afternoon they had arranged to meet and apparently an extra pair of hands might come in useful, so I tagged along. We waited in the pre-arranged meeting place, Add The Colour, wondering if a) he would turn up, b) how we would know it was him and c) what Dade would have to work with!

Only a couple of minutes later, a rather dapper young man entered, looking a little lost. Was it him? Aha - he went to the counter and said "I'm looking for Dade". Well, it was either him or a very spooky coincidence! Rather pleasingly, it was him. He told us a little about himself - half-French, half-English, cabin crew out of Heathrow, had lived in Canada and basically wanted some decent photos of himself as he said he usually didn't like being in photos.

We headed to the seafront and the pier, the chosen locations for the shoot. On the way, Alex stopped off at a florist's as he wanted a flower as a prop for the photos. The usual selection of roses, carnations and lilies weren't deemed suitable due to either their size or their colour, but one quite unusual one jumped out at us all - Alex went in to get one and discovered it was, in fact, an ornamental cabbage! On reaching the seafront, the shoot began.

Alex was a very natural subject, happy to be directed and had some good ideas of his own. My not-so-glamorous job pretty much involved carrying the camera bag and lenses, Alex's bag, coat and other paraphernalia and generally being vaguely useful. I must admit that had the subject not been so easy on the eye, I might not have lasted the two hours. It was getting a bit chilly, the sun was disappearing quite fast so it became a bit of a race against time to get the final set of photos under the promenade arches. As it got a little gloomier, I got a "real" job - holding the remotely-fired off-camera flash - I even occasionally held it in the right place! This was a particularly pleasant job when Alex decided he would rather like some shots without his top on. Sigh!

Anyway, it was a fun afternoon, Alex was very friendly and sweet, and it was interesting to finally watch Dade work properly. Alex loved the shots - so he should, they're really good.

If you want to read Dade's blog about it, and see the actual pics, head HERE

Chilly climate change collaboration co-ordination

2010-11-29T02:45:00.000Z

On Saturday morning, I spent a freezing four hours on Brighton seafront (sorry, Hove (actually) Lawns). I'd been alerted a week or so earlier to an ad on Gumtree for people to get involved in something very secret - the ad revealed that it was something to do with Earth350, the giant art side of climate change awareness group 350. I replied to the ad and received a very mysterious reply thanking me for volunteering to help co-ordinate the group! Had I? Well, apparently I had. It gave me a time and location and two very strict instructions - 1) Wear all black and 2) DO NOT REVEAL THE LOCATION PUBLICLY!

The general idea was that 1800 people were to make up the outline of King Canute attempting to hold back the sea, and the image was to be photographed from a plane. The clear (?) deep meaning was the futility of trying to control nature. The image itself had been designed by Thom Yorke of Radiohead (no, I wouldn't have known who he was either).

So like a pair of secret squirrels, Dade (one of the official photographers) and I headed for the seafront on Saturday morning. I peeled off at the Peace Statue to meet the other volunteers - as usual a random bunch of both locals and "outsiders". We were given a briefing which, to be honest, didn't tell us much other than the very Bond-esque use of codewords over the radio for emergencies, punch-ups (!) and lost children. We were then shepherded up to the main area and given very fetching blue ponchos for later, and hi-vis vests for now. For one horrible moment, I was reminded of being back at Gatwick on the airfield but the feeling passed quickly and fairly painlessly.

We finally found out that basically we were there to try to control the 1800-odd volunteers and interested passing public, directing the volunteers to where they needed to go to be assigned a space in the picture, explaining to the public what was happening, giving them the website address, telling them that there were enough volunteers thanks, and ensuring no-one from the press talked to anyone they shouldn't!

Suitably attired in our lovely stewards' hi-vis vests, we trailed after the co-ordinator, being deposited one at a time as a kind of human circumference marker. Some of the stewards were placed a disappointingly long way away from the action - I came very close to being one of them but successfully stared at my feet and shuffled about for long enough for someone else to be picked on. A very friendly music student and I were finally placed right by the edge of the picture. All this by about 10.45am, with the public participants not due to arrive until 11.30am and the actual photo not being taken until around 1pm!

The top temperature for the day was forecast to be around +2 with a chance of snow - brrrrrrr. My 2 layers, coat, scarf, fingerless gloves, one pair of socks and furry-lined boots quickly proved themselves inadequate (and yes, as most of you know, I don't particularly feel the cold!) So there was a lot of bouncing around, jumping up and down, swinging of arms etc to stave off hypothermia. Some of the earliest participants to arrive really should have dressed more suitably. One guy near me was wearing just a T-shirt and fairly thin trousers. The blue poncho he was given in order to be part of the picture really didn't afford him any protection from the rather brutal elements and he had to stand there for the best part of 90 minutes! Once the participants had started to arrive, there was at least the distraction of trying to direct them to where they needed to be and watching the whole thing take shape. The people in charge, who appeared to be a mixture of 350 staff (activists?) and a team of choreographers, plus the press and film crew were busy ushering the poncho-clad volunteers into the shape although, to be honest, from ground level it was almost impossible to tell how it was looking.

Finally, all was ready - the stewards were told to remove the hi-vis vests, replace them with the ponchos and blend in with the picture. There was a quick run-through, then a horn sounded, the plane appeared overhead and we all dutifully turned and pointed out to sea. We had to hold the position for a good five minutes until another horn signalled the end. There was a rather unimpressive self-congratulatory round of applause and that was that. The stewards took up their final positions along the street, attempting to stop 1800 people from all trying to cross the main road at once - an exercise in futility if ever there was one. We then discovered that we were also to do a quick sweep of the lawns, removing any obvious litter (presumably based on the "Take only photographs, Leave only footprints" ethos of ethical tourism), then we collected and sorted the discarded ponchos and we were done.

Dade and I wandered back home, accompanied by a rather pathetic flurry of snow, not entirely clear what the finished product would actually look like but glad that we'd taken the time to be part of something unusual, if nothing else.

I didn't even take my camera, so for a different view of the event and some great photos go HERE

Repair my arse!

2010-11-26T11:45:00.000Z

Please note - the title is neither a request nor a demand! Admittedly, there should be a comma in there but I omitted it shamelessly for effect.

The point? The point is my washer/dryer. A few days ago, the dryer part of my combination washing machine/condenser dryer decided to give up the ghost. Washing machine = fine. Dryer = buggered. Needless to say, it's way out of its warranty so it was down to the Thomson Local Directory to suggest someone to come and fix it. Other people always seem to happen to just know someone who can do this sort of thing, but I don't. I randomly picked a company that said they did same-day repairs and didn't charge a call out fee. Within 4 hours, they said. 45 minutes later, Neil and his large toolbox were at the door. Promising, I thought.

I gave him the info, including the fact that I'd had the same problem before with this machine and what I'd been told it was (simply the heating element of the dryer part of the circuit board). "Leave me to it", he said. Dade and I retired to the safety of the living room to indeed leave him to it. There ensued grunting, dragging, crashing, swearing etc but to be honest, that wasn't surprising. I have a tiny kitchen which doesn't lend itself well to large appliances being hiked out from under the worktop and then taken apart. Shortly afterwards, we heard what sounded like rather a lot of water followed by Neil saying "Um, have you got any kitchen roll?" I entered the kitchen to find water everywhere - the floor, the worktops, the walls. He'd already used a teatowel to mop a load up. More mopping ensued and he said he was fine to carry on. Once back in the living room, the next worrying noise was a repetitive clicking, which I recognised as the ignition switch for the gas hob. I went back to the kitchen and found him attacking the ignition switch with kitchen roll while it clicked away happily. The fact that I had no idea where the actual cooker is plugged in didn't help as it meant I couldn't cut off the power to it so it continued to click for a good 20 minutes. At which point, Neil then said "Have you got a hairdryer?" Working on the assumption that he hadn't decided to suddenly sort out his coiffure, I retrieved my rarely used and frankly almost pointless hairdryer and delivered it to him. "It's like this", he said, "One of the hoses came off because it was too short and hadn't been installed correctly, and water went everywhere as you know. A lot of it went inside the machine so I need to dry it out before I can fix the dryer". I then watched him hang the hairdryer upside-down inside the machine - not inside the drum, but into the inner workings of it via the missing top cover. Unable to look, I went back in the sitting room to rejoin Dade who had been watching/listening to all this with, I'm sure, slight amusement but some sympathy! A couple of minutes later, we heard a loud pop and the now familiar clicking noise stopped. Given how annoying the noise had been, you'd have thought that would be a good thing but the addition of the loud pop into the mix gave it an air of disaster. Off to the kitchen with me again, where this time Neil said he'd been trying to dry out the igntion switch with the hairdryer, and had obviously shorted it. He was very quick to point out that 1) he's not an electrician so couldn't just fix it and 2) he's not qualified to touch gas cookers. I was starting to wonder if he was qualified to do anything at all. The upshot at this point was that the inner workings of the machine needed time to "dry out naturally" so he would come back the following afternoon at 2.30 to finish the repair (and at the same time, bring me one of those gas ignition lighter gun things so that I could light the gas hobs).

The next day, I got home at 2.29, eagerly awaiting Neil's arrival, as by this time both Dade and I were pretty desperate to do some washing. Neil turned up, disappeared into the kitchen again for half an hour then called me in. All ready to pay up and wave goodbye, I was a bit concerned to see him still sitting on the floor and all the lights on the front of the machine flashing. "Um, unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to get it fixed for you today", he said. "Oh well," I said, "as long as the washing machine's still working, I can dry stuff on the radiators for a few more days". "That's the thing", he continued. "I can't get it to work at all now. The flashing light code is telling me that there's a problem with the motor and the motherboard..." At this point, I was as bored as you probably are now. Ten more minutes of excuses and explanations were forthcoming, none of which changed the simple fact that 24 hours earlier, I'd had a washing machine but no dryer and now I had neither. Nor did he bring me a hob ignition thing, of course!

Neil's solution - "I have a mate who sells reconditioned washer/dryers, installs them, takes away the old one and gives you a 3-month guarantee on the recon one". Oh, you do, do you? How bloody convenient! He then offered to try and get me a second-hand motherboard and fit it for free, but if he couldn't do so, he would get his mate to call me to see if I was interested in buying a machine. Less than two hours later, and with no call from him about the motherboard, his mate called me and did indeed ask if I wanted to buy a replacement machine. I told him I had no idea yet as I was still waiting for a call from Neil. He hung up pretty fast when I didn't immediately say I wanted to buy from him. What a lovely little set-up they have going, eh? I'm trying not to be cynical but it's damn difficult.

The ad in the Thomson Local says that the company in question (who I have a feeling might just consist of Neil) is "insured". Hmm, interesting. Insured against completely knackering my washing machine, breaking my hob ignition button and soaking most of my kitchen, I wonder? Probably not.

I feel a trip/call to Citizen's Advice coming on. In the meantime, it's the launderette for us while I work out if/how to afford a new/replacement machine or how to sue him for everything he's got!

It's the Work, the Working, Just the Working Life

2010-11-23T00:59:00.000Z

So - the market research call centre has availed itself of my services for just over two months now. It was never a job I'd considered before, especially as cold-calling seemed like the most demoralising way in the world to earn a crust. The job details were a little misleading, suggesting that we would be calling people who had either said they were happy to be contacted by phone or were actually expecting a call. Not so! Quite simply, various companies ask our market research company to conduct customer satisfaction surveys by telephone with their customers. However, it's safe to say that most of those customers have no idea that their contact numbers will be used in this way. No doubt, it's somewhere in the small print of their contracts, or one of those little tick boxes, but really - who reads those?

It's been an interesting experience if for no other reason than hearing the many and varied reasons people come up with for not being able/willing to participate in the survey at that time (or at all). Some of my favourites so far are:

- But I'm watching Countdown!
- I would but I'm just going out to buy plums.
- God, ten minutes is a REALLY long time!
- My son's got a blister so I can't possibly.
- It's Sunday - the day of our Lord. Sod off. (Spoken by a vicar!)
- Sorry, my biscuits will go soggy if I do it.
- I'm on a piss-up at the moment so it might not be the best time to be asking me questions.
- Are the government paying you to do this because you can't get a real job? (Asked to one of my colleagues)
- I'm in the bath so I would sound all bubbly if I talked to you.
- No, my wife won't want to do the survey. But, Emily (!) you sound very sweet and lovely so I can promise that Santa will look after you very, very well this year.
- I know you mean well, and it's probably an awful job, but I just don't want to talk to anyone at the moment. I'm so very very sorry.
- Can I take the survey in the shower?
- I can't stop now. I'm just looking for a hamster that's gone missing.

As expected, I've also been shouted at, sworn at, told where I can stick my survey, and generally abused! And of course, all of these tirades have to be met with a completely fake, sickly-sweet "Well, thank you for your time anyway. Goodbye." Mind you, by the time I've reached the second word of that, they've usually hung up.

It's easy to be pretty thick-skinned about these when they only occur once in a while but if several of them crop up consecutively, I'll admit it does get to me. One day last week, on a shift due to finish at 9pm, I was on the verge of walking out at 7pm. For a solid half an hour, everyone I spoke to was either rude, unhelpful, unco-operative, pissed off or all of the above. I have no problem with people simply refusing to take part, with "I don't want to do it" - I would say no too - but there's really no reason to shout and swear in the process.

One surprising thing I've learnt is that people really don't like being disturbed on a Sunday. I guess because I worked shifts for so long and weekends meant nothing to me, plus the fact that shops etc open seven days a week now, I forget that some people still consider Sundays to be sacrosanct, whether on religious grounds or not. I've also discovered (though I'm unconvinced by the truthfulness of some of the claims) that "traditional" Sunday lunchtime now starts at about 11.30am and runs right through until about 4.30pm.

I'm in a bit of a quandary about the job though. I can really only hack about five hours at a time (except at weekends when the shifts are all six or eight hours), but that means I only work about a 26-hour week. Given the stupidly low hourly rate (even on the bonus rate when you beat the target number of completed calls), that really doesn't give me an income I can live on. The upside of the job is the flexibility of being able to choose your own shifts on a weekly basis, and I can't deny that not having to start work until 4 or 5pm is quite nice! What I could really do with is a nice little part-time job on three full days a week, which I could mix with the obligatory three shifts at the call centre.

It looked like it might get a little more interesting when I was asked to coach some of the poorer performers regarding the quality side of the calls. I've only been there eight weeks, but I'm currently ranked number 2 in the whole centre, and my quality feedback is at 100%. After the coaching, there's potentially some mini-training that they might want me to run, along with a couple of other members of the phone staff. They're trying to get away from all training being done by supervisors as they believe, probably rightly, that people generally accept advice and coaching better from their peers - people who are actually also on the phones day in, day out. However, as with most other things there, the coaching wasn't very well organised and the actual potential training hasn't even been devised yet, nor have any days or times been chosen for it. The people I was speaking to wanted to know the details before they signed up to their refresher training (as it was all voluntary). Suffice to say, that little diversion actually isn't going to make me inclined to stick at the job any longer than I was already going to.

So the hunt continues for something else/additional, reasonably flexible but more interesting. At least the latter shouldn't be too hard!

Sunny and Share!

2010-11-13T19:58:00.000Z

Little trip continued....

8am on the Monday morning saw me heading off on my little solo adventure. I'd randomly picked Whitchurch in Staffs for my first stop, and very pretty it turned out to be. It was a real mix of medieval and modern with an imposing church which, unusually these days, was open. As I'd arrived so early there was really nothing else to do so I had a little wander round in there - very cool stained glass windows and a small brass plaque in the floor which was catching the morning sun through the coloured glass beautifully. I've always enjoyed being alone in any building and, atheist though I am, churches always provide at least a very peaceful atmosphere. I had the place to myself for a good half an hour. As I left, my attempt to get into the wooden choir stalls was thwarted by the locked door at the top of the old stone staircase - one of those where years of footsteps have worn a smooth curve in each stair.

I emerged into the still-early sunshine and, spotting my reflection in a car window, decided I couldn't put off a haircut any longer (needless to say, that's not all I thought when I caught sight of myself, but the hair was the only immediately fixable thing!) The very first hairdressers I found on the High Street were able to offer me an appointment immediately so half an hour (and a very predictable "Been anywhere nice on holiday/Looking forward to Xmas? conversation) later, out I came with, as usual, the exact same haircut, just 2 inches shorter!

I found a little café which enticed me in with the offer of veggie sausage sandwiches for breakfast. It was a friendly place where everyone (except me) seemed to know everyone else by name. My steaming hot pot of Earl Grey came pretty quickly but I'd practically finished it when I heard a voice from the back say "Oh no, the veggie sausage girl!" I quite reasonably assumed they were talking about me, not least because the other customers were a couple of ambulancemen, a builder, two ancient pink-rinsed women and a guy with one leg. A rather harried-looking waitress then rushed to my side and said "SO sorry, we totally forgot - have another pot of tea on the house". Admittedly, I'd rather have had the sandwich for free but what the hell, swimming in Earl Grey tea wasn't a total disaster. At least once the sandwich came, it was worth the wait!

Duly sated, I surprised myself by successfully finding where I'd parked the car and hit the road, this time heading for Ironbridge, which Dade had said was worth a look. Again, a cute little place, straddling the banks of, um, a river. I'm sure I should know which one! I parked and went in search of the source of such metallic fame. I wandered across a small, unimposing bridge, looking up and down the river to see if I could see THE bridge - only when I reached the other side did I discover that I'd just been walking across it! As with so many other things in life, it was a lot smaller than I expected! I took random photos of it from the towpath, had a short wander along the banks and treated myself to a quarter of Everton Mints from one of those over-priced Olde Worlde Sweetie Shoppes.

Since it was still only lunchtime, I decided to head towards Telford but, on the way, see if I could find The Wrekin, a hill Dade had mentioned just a few times! The Sat Nav was no help but I very soon found a tiny white sign towards it. The roads got narrower and narrower, the hedges higher, the corners more twisty and at one point I swear I was actually driving on a cycle path. Now although this is my idea of driving heaven, my rally driving temptation was thwarted by the very real possibility of meeting something coming the other way. Just before I was about to give up any hope of actually finding it, there I suddenly was at the little car park for The Wrekin. With the promise of "spectacular views from the summit" I commenced the ascent. There were very few other people around but the ones I did see were decked out in hiking boots and walking canes, and looked rather fit. I climbed and climbed but I had to admit defeat before the top when most of my body gave out! I discovered on the way down that it was steeper than I'd realised on the way up so I reached the bottom rather faster than expected thanks to slippery gravel, ill-advised shoes and, of course, my poor single Achilles/calf muscle!

Photos of the weekend can be found HERE

Bored with my own company, I headed to Dade's place. I'm sure I heard Sid's little car gulp at the mountain of stuff it was going to be crammed with for the journey south the next morning though, given the strong winds that were forecast, I actually thought the extra weight might help glue the poor little thing to the road! We randomly passed the evening with chat, online TV and a HUGE Chinese takeaway. A perfectly good way to spend Dade's last evening there, before embarking on his own little adventure as my new flatmate and his independent photography career in Brighton. But of course that's for another blog...

You know what? It's not grim oop North!

2010-11-09T01:28:00.000Z

Yes, it's been ages since I've blogged! No, I don't have an excuse!

I'm going to sneak an announcement in here so that I don't have to do a whole separate blog about it - my plans to return to Spain are all on hold. I'm not going back in January. There are a lot of reasons, which I won't go into here, but the upshot is I'm staying put for the time being. So that's that done - on to the proper blog post.

Having the loan of a car again thanks to Cathy and Sid's little jaunt to the Orient, I finally managed to organise a few days away. I'd been meaning to get together with Hannah for ages - I met her in Spain in February 2008 and we'd then become really good mates in Madrid. She came back to the UK in October 2009 and we hadn't seen each other since. So the delights of the M25 and M40 delivered me (thanks to Cathy's Sat Nav and Sid's dinky little Citroen) to Madeley, to a little village in Staffordshire where Hannah's boyfriend's parents have a house that they built from scratch 30 years ago while they lived in a caravan in the garden with a newborn baby (Steve!)

Hannah and I spent the afternoon trying to find the ruins of a local manor house but, despite having fairly clear instructions, all we found was a muddy path, horses, a fallen tree for me to trip over and a fence which was inexplicably completely inoffensive when I grabbed it, but remarkably electrified when Hannah stuck her hand on it 10 minutes later. After a yummy dinner, the three of us struck out in the pitch dark to the local pub (local = a mile away). We'd planned to get there cross-country but having discovered quite how muddy it was, that looked like a bad idea. Instead, we walked on the pavement-less, streetlight-less road under an amazingly starry sky. I relied on night vision, Steve had a great, retro, heavy 80s torch which gave off about as much light as a glow worm, and Hannah attached her wind-up torch to her head. Between us, we managed to fend off the onslaught of oncoming traffic and made it in one piece to the pub. We duly took over the pool table (no mention will be made of the results) and the quiz machine, and sampled their finest brews. Soon it was time to take our lives in our hands and return to the house via the same dark road which had now turned into the equivalent of Brands Hatch due to the number of people now leaving the pub (why they didn't have the sense to walk there, I don't know!)

Sunday dawned and Hannah and I decided to get out from under Steve's feet by heading to a local car boot sale. Hannah invested in a pair of rather startled-looking wooden cats and two candlesticks for her fireplace. I bought fake Rolos and a packet of fig rolls (am I the only person that thinks they're the most nostalgic biscuits in the world?) Having deposited the cats at Hannah's place, we went to an Arts and Crafts Centre based at a farm - so twee that Hannah had never managed to drag Steve to it. Giving in to the hunger brought on by the car boot sale, I dived into a very tasty bowl of pumpkin and apple soup (it was Hallowe'en after all). We wandered round the farm part, oohed and aahed over tiny chicks, huge pigs, cute ponies and slightly smelly goats. Hannah cooed over the shop's Christmas decorations. I commented on the fact that it was "still bloody October!" We headed back to the house, took the dog on rather muddy walk then drove across town in a proper workman's white van to collect a table and chairs Hannah had bought for their conservatory. The area we picked it up from was clearly going for Hallowe'en in a big way - most of the houses were decked out with glowing pumpkins, cobwebs, skeletons and were expecting a deluge of scarily-clad children (and probably adults). Having delivered the furniture to its new home, we headed back for a scrumptious roast dinner before Steve went off for an evening's table tennis. That left Hannah and me to drink our way through the evening, generally putting the world to rights and catching up with nearly a year's random chat. An early night beckoned as they both had to get up for work the next morning and obviously I had to leave when they did.

It was a very chilled weekend in a lovely part of the country and it was definitely worth the wait to catch up with Hannah.

Enough? Thought so! The rest of the trip is for the next blog...

Back to the land of the employed

2010-09-12T21:00:00.001+01:00

Finally, I have a job!!! I've been back in the UK for just over two months, and I just realised that this is the longest I've gone without working since I was 18.

When I first returned, I had no reason to look for a job. I was only meant to be back for a few weeks to sort out the flat, and then head back to Madrid. But that was not to be, as most of you already know. So having made the decision to stay in the UK until the end of the year, I had to face the fact that money really doesn't grow on trees and I'd actually have to earn some!

The obvious answer, as many people said, would have been to cut short my career break and go back to Gatwick for a few months. However, there were a few issues with that idea:

1) If I'd gone back until December and then tried to recommence my career break, I'm quite sure they'd have said no and I'd have had to resign there and then.

2) Having been away for over a year, it's very unlikely that I'd have been able to go back to my previous office, leaving the possibility that I'd have to go back to the main airport terminal, doing the frontline job that I've not done since 2002. I'd be facing refresher training and then the prospect of working at an office which I already know has zero staff satisfaction and with a small number of people I swore I would never work with (again).

3) Transport - when I had a car, getting to and from Gatwick was easy. On public transport, I'd be faced with heading out of the flat some days around 5.45am for the walk to the station, then the delights of the train trip to the airport to be ready to start by 7am.

4) The bottom line - it would be a backward step. When I walked out of that office in February 2009, I was determined I would never go back. Realising I'd been in the Civil Service for just under 20 years was what made me go to Spain in the first place. The only reason I'm on a career break is just in case one day I get so utterly, seriously desperate for a job that I might actually bring myself to go back, briefly or otherwise. That day most certainly has not come, nor do I want it to.

So - job-hunting began in earnest at the end of July when I decided for sure I was staying put for a few months. Having never really done anything apart from the Civil Service (before the English teaching, of course) I really didn't know what on earth to look for, let alone what I was good at. I've never had to write a CV before so that was a learning curve (thanks go to Ange for her advice). I was quite sure that immigration had given me no transferable skills whatsoever, unless I wanted to go into another law-enforcement type job. However, the more I thought about it, and as various people pointed out, I'd basically spent 20 years doing a variety of administrative and customer service roles, and had at least had the chance to show I was fairly flexible (not bendy!) and up for a challenge with some of the things that job entailed.

I had a CV, now I needed a job to apply for. I'd registered with every temp agency I could think of and given a fairly wide list of criteria, yet three weeks later, I'd heard from none of them! I know there's a recession but I couldn't believe that not a single one of them had found one job that suited my stated preferences. In the last week, one of them has started to send me emails listing jobs I "may" be interested in. Bear in mind that what I asked them to look out for were jobs in secretarial/admin/typing/data entry/filing within 3 miles of Brighton. An email from them last week offered me: Weighbridge Operator, Small Dole; Quantity Surveyor, Guildford; Finnish speaking salesperson, Edinburgh! Call me fussy, but what on earth made them think I would/could do any of those?!

Next ports of call were the Friday-Ad, Evening Argus and Gumtree websites (yes, the one where I found the slightly bizarre naked admin assistant job!) There's a bewildering array of jobs out there, it appears, several of which I fired off my CV to, without getting so much as an acknowledgement, let alone an interview. Then finally, I heard back from one - a telephone market research job (no sales, which was very important to me). Last Tuesday, I had a face-to-face interview and had to do a 10-minute test call (which admittedly seemed to only prove that I could read from a pre-prepared script on screen and click the mouse a few times!), then the next morning they called to offer me the job.

No, it's not the most exciting job in the world, nor the best paid but it's a job, it's pretty flexible (choose your own shifts each week, and no weekday shift starts before 2pm!) and they offer temporary, short-term or long-term contracts. Training starts on Wednesday for two days, then work proper next week. My bank manager will be delighted!

The amusing downside of job hunting

2010-08-29T21:00:00.001+01:00

In my recent search for work, I've come across some interesting ads, especially on sites like Gumtree and the Friday-Ad, where ads are free.

Today was the best yet, however! On Gumtree, I found the following:

"Hello there

Im a self employed businessman looking for help. I work from home and I need a PA for general easy admin jobs, cleaning jobs, booking flights, hotels etc. Some travel will be required but only if it fits in with you.

Full time hours offered, part time too if needed. Great rates of pay, easy going environment. £80 an hour, no mistake.

Please reply for more info ."

Yes, you read that right - £80 an hour. Being a cynical, suspicious kind, all sorts of things ran through my head - cover story for drug runner? Prostitution? Money laundering? Still, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I thought "What the hell" and fired off an email for more info.

Within minutes, I had my reply, as follows:

"Hello

Before you read on I must stress to you that this is a very genuine job offer.

Im looking for a female to work with me at my place just as they would do normally but in underwear and in the nude while I work from home. The work is simple admin, bit of cleaning, general easy going jobs.

All above board, NO contact or touching, im just rich and bored and want to try something different. Will pay you daily in cash. £80 an hour. Sometimes you can come away with me when I do business and be my PA, il pay £100 an hour for that aswell as all expenses covered.

I'm looking for all kinds of females, different shapes and sizes, ages 18-50. This will be a very discreet agreement. I also must stress that this is an agreement between us both and no photos or filming will ever take place.

Please reply if interested with a recent pic and add me on MSN via this address.

Thanks for the interest."

Bloody hell! OK, so I was already suspicious but I can't say I expected quite that (despite one friend's suggestion - before I got the reply - that the guy might have a "uniform" he wanted me to wear! Good call!) My initial reaction was righteous indignation, shortly followed by tummy-ache inducing laughter, then bafflement, then the temptation to report the ad to Gumtree as inappropriate. I guess the ad itself wasn't exactly inappropriate, but it was certainly misleading (apart from the rate of pay, of course!) These rich, bored guys really exist?! Well, at least one of them does and he lives in Brighton. But really - how bored would he have to be to want me parading round the house naked?! And how desperate would I have to be for work?!

I start Monday.

My plans they are a-changing

2010-08-22T21:30:00.000+01:00

I may have to make "over-optimistic" my middle name. When I headed back to the UK at the beginning of July, I sincerely believed that 6 or 7 weeks would be enough to sort out my flat (my life?), rent it out and head back to Madrid.

When I got back to my flat, I realised that I may have been wearing rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. My poor flat revealed itself in all its shabbiness. I'd been away 16 months, with only a couple of brief trips back, both of which were filled with stuff that didn't really allow me to stand back and take a good look at my (or rather the mortgage company's) little piece of Brighton.

This time was different. Andy, and his belongings, were gone, leaving me to see the somewhat dilapidated truth. My flat was tired, a little sad looking and full of, well, tat!

A visit from a local rental agent brought it home with a bang. He seemed optimistic that I'd be able to rent it out pretty quickly provided a few things were dealt with. And then began the list:

New living room carpet (yes, I can't disagree with him there)
Replace cracked sash window panes (at least he didn't suggest replacing the entire windows and sash mechanisms)
Fire door to the kitchen (to comply with Health and Safety regulations)
Decent Chubb lock to my front door.
Replacement locks on all windows (not essential but certainly recommended)

On top of that, I'd already discovered that these days, in order to rent a property out and eliminate the risk of being sued by a tenant, landlords have to have certain checks done:

Gas safety certificate for boiler and gas hob (£35)
Energy efficiency certificate (£32)
Electrical safety certificate - check of all sockets and any electrical items to be left in the flat (£150!!)

All soft furnishings have to have the label showing that they're fire retardant still attached. Sofa - check. Mattress - yup. Futon mattress - nope. Throw cushions - a couple, yes, the rest, no. Plus the various bits of painting that I already knew I needed to do.

By the time I'd found all this out, there was only about five weeks left til my supposed return to Madrid and I was faced with this daunting list and not enough time or money to do it.

Cue slight panic followed by total rethink! In order to do everything necessary to the flat, I need money. Having pretty much gone through all the cash I brought back from Spain (which amounted to a paltry £400), the proceeds of two car boot sales and even spent (in advance) my payments for some CDs/DVDs that I've sent off to a company that buys them, as well as some audio typing work I've done, I don't have anywhere near enough to cover the costs of sorting the flat out.

So I had to bite the bullet and accept that I'll have to hang on here long enough to get a job, earn enough to do the work on the flat, and have enough to cover rent/deposit in Madrid.

The upshot is - I'm staying right here until early January. Being more inclined to boil my head in oil than return to the Civil Service (despite only being on a career break), I'm now job hunting. I've registered with temp agencies and am scanning Gumtree, the Friday-Ad and anywhere else I can think of for four months' earning potential. If anyone knows of a job going in central Brighton, let me know!!

The things people want!

2010-07-31T22:23:00.001+01:00

While I've been sorting out my flat, I've been trying to get myself some karma points by Freecycling some things. In the process, I've been trawling through the Brighton and Hove Freecycle sites, looking at the "Wanted" ads, to see if I can help out. I've got rid of a few bits but I've been constantly entertained by the weird and wondeful things some people actually look for on there, or their reasons for wanting them. For example:

Super King Size bed: Due to bad backs and too many pets we are looking of a super king size bed and mattress. (I'm still trying to work out that reasoning!)

Women Clothing: Any size 20 good. clean women clothing. (May want to work on the punctuation there)

Shelves, Car Seatbelts and a Chest of Drawers (OK, 1 and 3 I can understand, but 2?)

Ironing Desk (er yes, what the hell is that?)

Cement mixer (ah, now I'm sure I've got one lying around somewhere)

Archery equipment (damn, another hobby that didn't pan out, eh?)

Chicken poo (I really don't know what to say)

Bidet (this one was an offer - wonder how long it'll take them to find someone who wants something other people have washed their arse in!)

Piano - in tune or not as we only want it for photos (not sure if they want to put photos on it, or take photos of it!)

The one that made me laugh the most:

OFFER: 2 Freeview boxes: Two with remotes on offer. The Grundig works. The Humax is about 2 years old and I can't work it as I am a girl.

PS - Yay, I just noticed this is my 100th blog.

Isn't sport meant to be good for you?

2010-07-26T23:18:00.000+01:00

My attempt to get at least some exercise while I'm back in the UK, and to get back into much-missed racquet sports, got off to a reasonably good start on Friday evening.

Cathy had told me about a casual, drop-in tennis club so I thought I'd give that a try. As a warm-up, I decided to walk to the club - 40 minutes, mostly uphill. So I was knackered when I got there! They were very welcoming and I was thrown on court immediately as there were actually only two of us there at the advertised start time. I knocked up for half an hour with Richard, who I think was quite gentle with me as I told him I hadn't played for almost 18 months! More people turned up and we started the doubles matches. We were randomly paired up over the next two hours, I played with or against almost everyone there. Won our first match 6-2, then lost 3-6 and 4-6. Could have been a lot worse! It's a very sociable club so at the end I spent half an hour in the clubhouse with a much-needed beer before embarking on the long walk home. Other than my usual "wet rag" impression, and having a face the colour of someone who's about to have a heart attack, I didn't feel too bad. Then it all caught up with me. On Saturday and Sunday, everything ached! My calf muscles felt like someone was sticking knives in them and my shoulders were making alarming grinding noises. Still, I felt better for actually having done something!

By Monday, I'd just about stopped aching - so I went to a local badminton club! Again, they were a nice bunch though I think their website statement that they're mixed ability might have been a bit misleading. Some of them were VERY good! Still, I was pleased to find that despite not having played for 18 months, I could still actually play. All was going well - won the first match 21-15 then, like at the tennis, the groups mixed up. In the next match I spun/dived for an evil backhand smash from our opponents and felt (and heard) a rather nasty tearing sound from my right knee. OUCH! (Won the bloody point though!) Not wanting to wuss out, I carried on as the game was nearly over anyway and two points later it was over - we lost - and I hobbled off to see what the damage was. I was a bit concerned when I found that it hurt to bend it, straighten it or turn it! One of the others gave me some ibuprofen rub for it so I sat out for a game then decided there was only one way to find out if I should worry about it a bit more. So I played one more game (which we lost) - it stood up (no pun intended) to the challenge reasonably well, though I couldn't run backwards on it and I was very reluctant to twist. It seemed like a bad idea to risk it any further so, with 40 minutes still to go, I made my excuses and left.

This may be too much information but ... it was bloody hot in the hall so yet again, I could have wrung out everything I was wearing (clearly my DNA missed the class about "women don't sweat"!). However, I hadn't planned on using the changing room showers so I had no towel. Oh well, I thought! After my quick (cold) shower - gotta love private girls' schools - I attempted to dry off using my soggy sports gear! Memories of my school changing rooms came flooding back as I realised that it's actually impossible to get dry in them, towel or not. And to add a final insult to (actual) injury, I discovered that whilst I'd remembered to pack a change of clothes, I'd forgotten one rather vital item. To put it bluntly, I had to go commando for the walk home!!!

Anyway, my right knee just about survived the walk home although by the time I got into the flat, it was complaining, and I also found a strange dent in my left hamstring!

So - exercise. Good or bad for you? You decide.

Back in Brighton

2010-07-23T17:21:00.000+01:00

Soooooooooo, I'm back in Brighton for the summer! It's been an interesting couple of weeks so far. There's so much to do in the flat before I head back to Madrid that I think my head's going to explode! I've got To Do lists galore and they're going VERY slowly. OK, scratch that. I'M going very slowly!

No excuses. I've just been very guilty of faffing about on the net, Facebook and watching trashy TV. There's just so much to do that I don't really know where to start.

I have to sort through basically everything I own, decide what's to keep (and store somewhere), what's going to the car boot sale next weekend, what I can recycle/charity shop etc. In nearly 10 years at this flat I've accumulated way too much stuff and I'm not that good at being brutal when getting rid of things.

But - in the last couple of days I've made some headway finally. I've organised a meeting with a letting agent, and have details of another. I've arranged to have the smashed mirrored wardrobe door replaced (a mirror I smashed over 8 years ago!). I've contacted my stepsister to pick her brains about renting the place out in case there are alternatives to paying the extortionate fees for an agent.

I've been lucky enough to be loaned a car three times since I got back (thanks to Cathy and Sid) so I've been able to zoom about between the flat and the storage lock-up where some of my stuff is. I'll be borrowing car(s) again for most of August so I should be able to get out and about to see people who live in other parts of the country, when I'm not clearing, cleaning and doing odd bits of DIY (probably very odd bit, knowing me).

The one thing I haven't even started on is trying to find a foster/adoptive home for the cat. Mainly because I can't actually imagine putting her in the catbox and taking her to live somewhere else. It's HEARTBREAKING!

I've caught up with Cathy, Sid, Andy, my mum, my dad and stepmum, been to two terribly quaint fetes, played tennis, stuffed my face with Oregano's pizza, come second in a pub quiz, and finally got to hear Dani perform live!

In an attempt to at least do something about my increasing jiggly bits, I've been trying to walk every day (not terribly successfully!), tonight I'm taking the plunge and going to a drop-in tennis night at a local club to embarrass myself with a group of total strangers, then on Monday I'm going to a local badminton club. Let's hope it turns out a little better than the last proper club I went to, about 12 years ago. After a few weeks, I was given a rather clear choice: stop playing like a bloke or find a different club!!! Basically, it was one of those clubs where the women wore velour tracksuits, never broke a sweat, touched up their makeup during the evening, and barely hit the shuttlecock hard enough to clear the net. Me? Run around like a demon, smash wherever possible, play to win. Apparently not "ladylike"!!! Needless to say, I accepted their kind offer and left! Fortunately, since then I've always been able to play with/against people who actually want to play! Hopefully Monday night will be good. I'm looking forward to it. But let's get the tennis night out the way first. I'm hoping they'll forgive the fact that my back issues mean I'm not able (or allowed) to serve properly.

So - if anyone a) wants to adopt/foster a very beautiful, very furry, slightly neurotic housecat, please let me know and b) would like to bombard me with messages to motivate me into getting stuff done, please do!

(Comments on the actual blogsite please!)

Latest visits (another long blog, sorry!)

2010-07-18T22:42:00.000+01:00

I was honoured with the presence of no less than four good friends in my last couple of months in Madrid - Cathy, Julia and Mike, and Sid. I hadn't seen any of them since at least last Christmas so it was lovely to catch up with them in my adopted hometown.

First was Cathy for four days. We had a lovely time just wandering around, with lots of food (previous blog shows just how much food!)

Then at the end of May, Julia and Mike came for a belated anniversary trip. They were staying in the centre of town so we met up a few times, went to the Retiro, El Capricho, ate at the very lovely Isla del Tesoro (still my favourite veggie restaurant) and generally just "did" Madrid! It was nice to be a tourist again even if I did also have to demonstrate that living somewhere doesn't necessarily mean you know where you're going! It was great to see them and I think (I hope!) they had fun! Annoyingly, I managed to forget to take my camera out even once, so I'm hoping Julia uploads her photos sometime soon (hint, hint!)

At the very end of June, it was Sid's turn. It didn't get off to the best start as she flew in on the same day I (semi-unexpectedly) had to move out of my flat and into a hostal, and on the third day of the chaotic Metro strike! She finally joined me at the hostal at 1.15am Wednesday night (well, Thursday morning). On Thursday, once I'd picked up my final pay of the summer, we hit the Retiro for the afternoon. Ice-cream, laughing at the rowers on the lake and sunning ourselves passed a couple of hours. We walked back to the hostal via a quick exhibition at La Caixa Forum, and La Mallorquina for afternoon tea then spent a relaxed evening in the nearby square with Julie and Natalee.

On Friday, after a brekkie at the hostal of knobby bread and cheese, we headed out to a couple of photography exhibitions (PhotoEspana 10). We wandered back to the hostal to pack for the weekend in Alcoy (for Kim,'s 50th birthday party) and then off to the airport (on the way we got on the Cercanias going the wrong way and had to jump off at the very last second, trapping poor Sid's arm in the door and causing a spectacular swelling and bruise! Sorry Sid!) Our flight was delayed a bit but we finally made it to Alicante and found our welcome committee (Kim, her son Matt, his girlfriend Silvia and Kim's friend Silvia 2). Kim's lovely friend Silvia very kindly drove us to Alcoy, Kim,'s hometown, about 45 mins inland from Alicante, dropped us off at the Savoy (yeah, OK, not the famous one!) where we changed and hit the main square to meet the others. We'd bumped into Geraldine at the door of the hotel so the three of us went to meet Alex and Marta, who had flown in from New York and Zaragoza), then were soon joined by Kim, her niece Lisa (in from Australia!), Matt and Silvia, Fay and Stuart (Kim's friends from Devon) and Jay, who we discovered was going to be the DJ at the party on Saturday night. Alcoy was much more buzzy than I'd expected and at 1am we walked to the weird and wonderful Gaudi Bar (not the name, but it's based on various Gaudi designs of houses in Barcelona). Kim got us all drinking some strange cocktail with lemon and coffee liqueur but we finally gave up the ghost at 3am and crashed.

Having discovered that the hotel dining room doesn't open at weekends, we went back to the main square for Saturday morning breakfast - tasty and cheap hot chocolate and croissants. The rest of the group were heading into the mountains for a huge slap-up lunch but Sid and I had promised ourselves a day at the beach so we went off on the 90-minute bus journey to Alicante. At first glance, the beach looked a bit like one of those "Yuk" pictures of classic Spanish tourist beaches - absolutely packed, with sunbeds lined up like rows of sardines in a tin. We were surprised to find that the majority of the people were Spanish though. We found ourselves a small patch of sand and settled in. It was damn hot so after a few minutes it was time for my first dip in the sea since September 2008! Sid wussed out, only making it in up to her knees before deciding it was too cold, but I'd been looking forward to this for months, so in I plunged for a lovely long refreshing swim. A couple of hours of sunbathing and a bite to eat, and it was time to head back to Alcoy for the party!

Having initially gone to the wrong address (not our fault!) we eventually found the party, being held at Kim's school. The party coincided with the quarter final of the World Cup, with Spain playing Paraguay, so the first couple of hours were a little quiet, with the majority of the guests inside watching the TV, but after that the party got into full swing. There was stacks of alcohol, a huge table of cold foods and then no less than 3 barbecues! Great mix of people, Spaniards and Anglos so there was plenty of chatting and laughter. Kim certainly seemed to be having a good time! But as all good things do, it came to an end and we weaved our way back to the hotel.

On Sunday, we all headed to Kim's, helped clear up the party stuff at the school, then went for a slap-up Italian meal with far too much wine, and then (at Kim's insistence!), 2 bottles of champagne. We finally had to leave when we realised the restaurant had actually closed, so we went back to Kim's just in time for me to see the final 4 points of the Wimbledon final (yay, Nadal won!), more wine before Matt kindly drove 4 of us to the airport. Great weekend!

For the next two days, Sid and I walked, ate and drank our way around Madrid. More sunbathing was required, as were a couple more photography exhibitions. Tuesday evening was my last night in Madrid so an evening in El Buscon was the predictable result. Joined by Louise, Jorge, Philip, Sian and Richi, we had a fun time. Jorge had brought his VERY expensive guitar along for me to play with. Fortunately, the music in the bar was loud enough to drown out my picking and warbling but I was certainly impressed with the guitar. Now he just needs to learn to play it!

Before we knew it, Wednesday arrived and after one final morning sunning ourselves on the rather steep slope of grass under the suicide bridge (!) we had to face the packing! I was convinced there was no way it was all going to fit in but finally, after a lot of sitting on suitcases, it was all in and we made the trip to the airport on the Metro. Dragging all that luggage in 36 degrees was interesting! I'm very grateful for the fact that the Easyjet staff at Madrid are a bit more relaxed than they are at Gatwick - luggage allowance each was 20kg. My case weighed 23kg and Sid's (which mostly contained my stuff!) was 24.5kg! Ouch. At €16 per kilo excess luggage, my heart (and my credit card) skipped a beat, but the check-in guy didn't bat an eyelid and we waved goodbye to our cases.

And that was that! We finally took off and my first full year and a bit in Madrid was over - 7 weeks in the UK to come!

So thanks to all my visitors for entertaining me over my last couple of months there.

Pics of Sid's trip and a few of the party are HERE

Things wot I learnt in Spain

2010-07-12T20:21:00.000+01:00

In my first year and a bit in Spain, I've learnt a lot. Admittedly, I've probably forgotten a lot of it, but here's a list of some of the weird/wonderful/bizarre/pointless things I've picked up. Feel free to add to them in the Comments section if, like me, you've been lucky enough to live in Spain for a bit.

1) Guys christened José are frequently called Pepe. It took a while to find out why but I finally discovered that it comes from the fact that José is the Spanish version of Joseph. Joseph was, allegedly, the father of Jesus. "Alleged father" in Spanish is "padre putativo", which begins which 2 Ps. P, in Spanish, is pronounced like "Pay", so put 2 Ps together and you get "Pay-pay" or Pepe!

2) In Spain, you start with 12 points on your driving licence. If you do something wrong, you have points taken away, until you reach zero, and then you're banned.

3) The north coast of Spain has a climate very similar to that in the UK.

4) Pretty much all Spanish (women's) shoes have high heels, even the sandals.

5) In Spain, jamon (ham) in not considered to be meat.

6) The festival of Corpus Christi, despite being a clearly religious celebration, last year in Toledo consisted solely of a military parade lasting about 2 minutes, for which rather a lot of people lined up for a good 3 or 4 hours.

7) Whether they're 2 people or 10 people, the Spanish will somehow find a way to block the entire pavement, making it impossible to get past without risking life and limb by stepping into the road.

8) I can buy Heinz Baked Beans in the local supermarket, but buying a half-decent potato for baking to go with them is much more difficult.

9) Re number 8 - cheddar cheese is purchasable, at vast cost!

10) Carrots are so hard I've broken 2 vegetable knives cutting them, but potatoes are so soft you almost don't need to cook them!

11) Una caña - a standard draft beer, can range in size from a thimble to about 1/3 of a litre, depending on where you order it. And "un doble" doesn't appear to be "double" anything!

12) The sidreria near Sol, off C/del Carmen, makes fantastic sangria, containing six or seven different alcohols, then a tiny splash of lemonade.

13) The famous statue in Sol, which has recently been moved back to its original location, is either a bear and a cherry tree or a bear and a strawberry tree, depending on the source of your information. "El Oso y el Madroño" translates to both online, though Madroño appears to be "arbutus" which should be "strawberry tree".

14) When you fill in your annual tax return in Spain, you can note a tick-box to show that you want a small percentage of your taxes to be donated to either NGOs (unspecified) or to the Catholic Church, or to neither (so it all goes to the government). Every Spaniard I've asked so far has said they choose either NGOs or no-one.

15) The word for Sir is "señor", for Madam it's "señora", for Miss it's "señorita". However, for Master, you might expect "señorito". No. Señorito is apparently a somewhat disparaging old term for a rich man who owned a lot of land.

16) Mosquitoes don't necessarily wait until summer to start munching.

17) "No two without three" - the translation of a Spanish saying, suggesting that if something happens twice, it is likely to happen a third time. It's not quite the same as our "bad things come in threes" because it refers to all events, good or bad.

18) Felix Rodriguez de la Fuente - Spain's equivalent of David Attenborough. Also known as El Hombre de la Tierra (Man of the Earth). He made lots of nature programs in the 1970s but in the early 80s was killed in a helicopter crash while working.

19) A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I had the brownest forearms of anyone on the Metro! A rare occurrence.

20) Every single day of the year is a Saint's Day, sometimes more than one saint.

21) The 25th of May is Saint Emma's Day!

22) Public holidays can be moved to a more convenient day if the actual day falls on a Sunday, though they don't have to be moved at all. One of my students said they're like the "jokers" in a pack of cards, or the "wild card".

23) Most people I speak to here can't believe that we don't have ID cards in the UK, nor can they understand the opposition to them. They're surprised that we don't have a single document that we're legally obliged to carry round with us to prove our ID in case we're stopped by the police. I guess since the new government scrapped them, it'll be a shorter answer from me when I'm asked about them.

24) It may be expensive electricity-wise, but when I come back, I'm getting a flat with air conditioning!

25) Giving English classes in cafés doesn't really work. I tried it a couple of times but the noise is too much and the students are usually rather self-conscious. While sitting in a café on my own I watched a guy give a class across the room and it clearly wasn't successful. I won't be doing it again.

26) I still can't get used to the Spanish newspapers referring to the queen as "Reina Isabel II". The first time I saw it I thought, "How funny, they got her name wrong", forgetting that all names in the public eye are translated to the Spanish version. Isabel = Elizabeth. Weird.

27) Metro strikes are a real pain! Legally, the Metro staff are obliged to offer a 50% service even during industrial action, but at the end of last month, they called a 2-day all-out strike. Chaos!

28) Staying up drinking/partying all night, then going for brekkie and heading home about 10am is pretty normal. Not for me. Too damn old for that!

29) South facing balconies are the best!

30) You really can't get halloumi!!!!

Well, that was fun...

2010-06-22T19:13:00.000+01:00

What an utterly bizarre cock-up of an afternoon!

Disappointingly, after only one set of Nadal's first round match at Wimbledon, I had to leave to go to teach. Off I went into the blazing sun, onto the AC-free Metro, off the Metro one stop before my student's class because the line is shut. Walked for 20 minutes to her building, pressed the buzzer, waited, waited a bit longer, buzzed again. Finally, a voice said "Si?" "It's Emma" I said, cheerfully. Silence. "Oh. I. Um. I. Er..." Entryphone went dead, leaving me standing in the street burning my bonce! Then my mobile rang. It was my student, who said "I thought I told you I had to cancel class today". And yes, she had. Last week. When I didn't have my diary with me, so when I got home last week, I wrote it in the wrong week and showed next week's class as cancelled. Crap! Oh well, head home to catch maybe the end of the Nadal match, I thought.

Over to the bus stop with me for the nice, quiet, air-conditioned number 21 which comes every 6 or 7 minutes. Or not. 20 minutes later, it finally turned up. On I got, and plonked myself at the back for the short ride. At the next stop, I thought maybe I'd entered some kind of alternative dimension. Waiting at the stop, for my bus, was a huge group of pensioners along with their, um, supervisors? Helpers? Guards? Whatever! There were 55 of them (yes, I counted) - 45 excited (drunk?) and very chatty "people of the third age" and 10 nuns! On they piled, taking as long to get on as my entire journey should have taken. It was hot and loud and very squashed. When I could see my stop coming up, I rang the bell and struggled valiantly to get out of my seat and to the exit. To absolutely no avail. There was no getting past this sea of age and wisdom. The bus stopped for about 2 seconds then drove off again.

I managed to escape the bus hell at the next stop which turned out to be much closer to Metro Alonso Martinez, than to Bilbao where I'd wanted to get off. Fine. I'll get the Metro there, change lines and get home!

So I descended the 4 escalators to the steaming depths of Line 10 where another AC-free Metro whisked me to Plaza de Castilla where just one more change would have me in sight of the flat. Or not. Again. This time, an inexplicable problem (OK, that should be incomprehensible cos I didn't understand half the tannoy announcement) meant no Line 1. So back up to the roasting hot street with me to walk home.

By now, it was nearly 2 hours since I'd left the flat, I hadn't taught, hadn't earnt any money and I was hot, tired and fed up. With one result - a HUGE bag of fries from the nearest fast food place (something I haven't done in many, many years!)

Yes, no-one but myself to blame for screwing up the date of the cancellation but even so, sense of humour failure was threatening.

I thought I was the teacher....

2010-05-28T21:59:00.000+01:00

...but I learnt a lesson this evening!

I've been teaching here for over a year now and, until recently, had, by choice, stuck with adult students. However, 3 weeks ago one of my students asked me to teach her 8-year-old son (who shall remain nameless, despite the many names I feel like calling him, none of which are the one he was christened!) She told me that he hates English classes at school and she wanted someone to make English fun for him (I resisted the temptation to tell her that, generally, I also hate something - children!) She told me that since I seem so bubbly and friendly (which, considering I teach her at 8am, was a surprising opinion) she thought I would be ideal. Maybe I was swayed by the compliment, maybe I just thought it was about time I gave it a try. Whatever the reason, I said yes, and 3 Fridays ago I started classes at 6.15 on a Friday evening with him.

Week 1 went pretty well, I thought. He showed me what he'd been doing at school, we went over a few basic verbs, some vocabulary, played shopping games with my newly purchased plastic vegetables and some fake money, and the hour flew by.

Week 2 was a little more difficult - in my bag of "toys" was a small, soft football which he found very early on. We played with it, throwing it to each other, with him shouting out the next number in a sequence, or giving me the next letter in the alphabet. More games with the plastic veg and some animal flashcards seemed to go down well, and 3 days later, his mum told me that he was very happy and that he'd said I was "muy simpatico"! So far so good.

Tonight was our 3rd class. I was actually pretty geared up for it though I won't go so far as to say I was looking forward to it. It's my last class of the week, but I was determined not to let that affect it. However, he's a kid. It's his "end of the week" feeling too. He gets home from school at 6pm, probably looking forward to his weekend. But no, he has English class. Tonight was a trial - for both of us. When I arrived, he got out his box full of foreign money to show me. I guess he thought I was just going to look at it, be impressed, then do whatever he wanted. Oh no! I was determined, so we divided it up into the different currencies, I explained the difference between coins and notes, then we starting listing how much money he had in each different currency. Good practice for: numbers, names of countries, and the verb "I have got....." Great for about 20 minutes, then he lost it completely. He threw the money back in the box and told me, in no uncertain terms, that he didn't want to study, or work, or speak English. He only wanted to play with the football. I tried everything - "How about 5 minutes study, then 5 minutes football?" I said, hopefully. "No." "5 minutes football, then 5 minutes study?" "No." Whatever I said, he said no. Then he sat in his chair, turned his back on me and sulked. I felt like doing the same.

"Aha", I thought, "everyone tells me that silly songs and stuff work with kids". So out came the felt-tip pens, a picture of a rainbow and my best rendition of "Red and yellow and pink and green, orange and purple and blue..." etc. Cue him nicking my coloured pens, scribbling pictures of something inexplicable all over the sheets of paper, and refusing to join in with the song. Then he put my pens back in their box and tried to put them in his school bag. I retrieved them. While I was doing so, he dived into my bag of props and pinched the packet of stickers that he's only supposed to get when he's done well. I got those back from him, after a tug-of-war with them! I can't remember what prompted it, but at one point I actually found myself saying "Am I going to have to go and get your father?" That worked for a bit and he concentrated, vaguely. For the last 5 minutes, we were back to the "throw the ball, say the next number...." game. And finally it was over.

I have never felt less in control in my life! I have no idea what to do with him, say to him or how to deal with him at all.

This is why I didn't want to teach kids in the first place. 4 more classes with him til I finish for the summer. The question is, do I agree to continue with him in September? I don't like giving up on things - I'm just stubborn like that. But there are some things that I'm just pretty sure I'm not cut out for, and teaching kids is (and always was) one of them.

If anyone finds my brain, please post it back to me

2010-05-21T11:14:00.000+01:00

It's been one of those weeks. My mind has been somewhere else all week - or rather, it's been in various different places. Unfortunately, those places have rarely coincided with the location of my body.

So far this week, I have:

- missed my stop on the Metro. Twice.

- got on the Circular (Madrid's equivalent of the Circle Line) going the wrong way.

- gone to pay money into the cashpoint machine without taking my card.

- gone to a lesson with the lesson plan for a different student

- completely lost a bright yellow tea-towel! It's nowhere to be found (though I'm blaming the workmen who were on the balcony on Monday for a very bizarre theft)

I dread to think what's next! There are clearly too many things floating about in my head at the moment.

Pet pets

2010-05-19T22:24:00.000+01:00

I was thinking about the prospect of having to rehome my beautiful cat :-( and it got me thinking about the various animals that have shared my life over the years. I hadn't realised quite how many there had been, but here's a little potted history:

1) When we first moved to Brighton when I was about 3, we got 2 guinea pigs called (for reasons that are lost in the mists of time) Telephone and Fred Egg (yes, Fred, not Fried!) I don't really remember much about them other than the smell of sawdust in the cage. There was also a tortoise in the back garden when we moved in, if I remember rightly, which had been left there by the previous occupants. I have absolutely no idea what happened to that!

2) Next came our first cat, Sparky, when I was about 7. My aunt was working at a vet's surgery and Sparky was brought in with a dislocated back hip. For some reason, I think the owner didn't want him back, or couldn't pay for surgery, or something, so my aunt rang my mum and asked if there was any chance we'd like a cat. Oh yes, we would! So shortly afterwards, a rather startled black and white cat joined the household. When we got him, his back leg was still healing and he wasn't meant to climb so we had to take him out in the back garden on a little lead. He was a temperamental little sod, prone to hiding under my parents' bed, where I would lie down on the floor and try to coax him out, usually receiving a swift swipe for my efforts (the scar from one of which can still faintly be seen between my eyebrows). He had a great fight with a starling once and, needless to say, the starling won - by getting into an overturned dustbin in the back yard and fighting Sparky off with fiercely flapping wings and a very sharp beak. I think he learnt his lesson. I remember him out in the back garden in deep snow once, doing that gorgeous thing cats do where they pick their paws up really high over the top of the snow, before plunging them down again and looking completely baffled! He stayed with us for about 10 years until sadly he had to be put down one day. I still can't think about the day I came home from college and found he was gone without a tear or two.

3) Next, when I was about 10, came the mice! The school mouse had had babies and the teacher was looking for people to take them home. Being the rebellious little brat that I was, I told the teacher that my parents had said it was fine and I sauntered off home with 2 of them in a shoe-box. I came very close to having to take them back to school but I won out in the end and Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent (guess what was on TV at the time) moved into the spare room where their frantic wheel-spinning wouldn't keep everyone awake! All was well until the day we all left the house, unaware of the fact that Sparky had slunk into the spare room and was now shut in there with them. When my mum came home from work she found mouse massacre! Sparky had pulled the cage off the table, it had flown open and Ford Prefect was very dead. Arthur Dent had miraculously survived but not for long. I think he pined away within a couple of weeks.

4) When my mum and I moved into her new place when I was 18, we adopted a ridiculously cute black kitten from a very strange mad cat woman in a flat above a taxi despatcher's office (strange the things you remember). She must have had about 20 cats in there and needless to say I wanted to take them all home, but sanity prevailed and the tiny ball of black fluff joined the household. We took a while coming up with a name for this one, but my (then) boyfriend and I were reading a fantasy trilogy at the time, so the poor little thing got saddled with Tasselhoff Burrfoot (Tass for short). Tass was the sole witness to a burglary at the house and I recall being absolutely terrified when I heard that we'd been burgled, that they might have hurt the cat. Fortunately, no! When the boyfriend and I bought a place of our own 6 years later, Tass came with us. He was king of the castle, until.....

7) ......we did what couples who don't want to have a kid do - we got a dog! Smudger was a fruit-the-loop crazy whippet/ cross, who we rescued from the National Canine Defence League. He was absolutely gorgeous, very bouncy and liked nothing better than jumping up on the kitchen worktops, once knocking an entire dinner service onto the floor in the process. I think it was that that gave us a clue that he'd been mistreated because when we went into the kitchen having heard the noise, he was cowering in a corner. I went over to him and reached my arm up to turn on the light, but when my arm raised, he shrunk back even further and whimpered as if he was expecting to be hit. With hindsight, he really wasn't best suited to our lifestyle. We were out at work from 7.30 every morning, til about 6 at night, which left him home alone and, being not much more than a year old, he was very boisterous and bored easily. We had to put locks on the outside of all the doors so during the day he could only get into the kitchen and the hallways. Not that that stopped him causing chaos. He managed to get hold of a bottle of black shoe-polish once, sank his teeth into it and then carried it round the house shaking his head from side to side. When we got in from work, there was black polish everywhere! All over the beige carpets, up the cream walls, you name it! We couldn't help but laugh. When the relationship ended and I moved out, things became unworkable and my ex rang me one day to say that he was going to have to take Smudger back to the rescue centre, and wanted me to go too. I swear I have never felt so bad in my life as I did on the drive over there, with Smudger in the back of the car, no doubt thinking he was going for an exciting walk. Taking him back into the reception area, explaining the situation, signing the paperwork and leaving him there was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But I'm quite certain that the rescue people will have found him a new home very quickly, with people who were home during the day and give him the attention he deserved.

8 - 13) In 1997, while I was sharing a flat with Sid, we decided that the place was missing something! Sid really wanted house rabbits but that plan just didn't work out. So we went off to Foal Farm, a rescue centre near Biggin Hill, and found ourselves in the "rodent caravan" where a volunteer lived 24/7 with dozens of mice, rats, gerbils etc. I may have got this lot in the wrong order, but over the next 3 years we had: a hamster called Feck (again with the TV show theme!) who, as hamsters do, succumbed about 2 years later and was buried on our allotment; a gerbil whose name totally escapes me (I'm sure Sid will remember); and 4 rats called Lewis, Kellerman, Pembleton and Bayliss (yes, characters from Homicide: Life on the Street, our favourite show at the time). The rats were a revelation! Incredibly intelligent, they learnt their names, were capable of tricks though we never taught them any as that seemed a bit exploitative. We let them out of their cage as often as possible and they happily had the run of the flat, though their favourite position was sitting on our shoulders with their whiskers tickling our ears and their very strong tails curled round our necks. A few of our friends remained unconvinced and we had to put them out of sight when some people visited! My overriding memory of all those rodents is when Feck managed to escape once. About 3 days went by and we just couldn't catch the little git though at night he would come out of wherever he was hiding and eat the food we left out for him. We found a potential trick for catching him on the internet, so one night we laid a trail of tin foil on the hall carpet, with a stash of food near the door to our bedrooms. The idea was that his little claws would be heard on the tinfoil alerting us to his presence. At about 3am, we heard the telltale noise and we emerged from our respective bedrooms, clutching a sieve each. There he was, on the tin foil, looking damn annoyed that he appeared to have been rumbled and, like American football players diving for a touchdown, Sid and I descended on him, trapping him under one of the sieves. Hah! Gotcha! He was very unimpressed at going back in his cage but he never escaped again.

14) And now to the present day. Having been in my flat for 5 years, in 2005 I was really missing the company of a pet so I started the long and it appeared fruitless, search for a housecat. My flat in Brighton is right on a main road and doesn't have a garden so I needed a cat that would be happy living indoors. I didn't want to adopt a cat that had previously been used to going out so I need to find one that actually needed to be kept in. Finally, the lovely guy at City Cat Shelter told me he thought he had the perfect candidate. I went to his house where he had a rescue facility in the back garden, and was introduced to a sorry-looking mass of chocolate and white long fur. Missy (as she was then called) had been abandoned on his front doorstep with a note that said the owner was moving to a new property where she wasn't allowed to have cats. It gave little information other than the name, the fact that she was about 3 years old and had been bought from a pedigree breeder. However, it turned out that she had some medical problems which the breeder hadn't mentioned (what a surprise) so in all likelihood the owner probably just didn't want her any more. She'd caught cat flu and had been at the vet's for the last 2 weeks with a high probability that she wouldn't survive. She had various areas of fur missing where she'd been on IV drips and antibiotics, and she generally looked pathetic. She was terrified of other cats and just hid at the back of her little cage. On my first visit, she wouldn't let me pick her up so I sat on the floor of the shed and just talked to her. I was smitten, but was advised to go back again a week later for another go, to make sure I hadn't changed my mind. This time, she was looking better and I even got a brief cuddle. My mind was made up and a week later, the guy from the rescue centre brought her to the flat. He told me that one of her medical conditions was a strange weakness in her spine that meant her back legs didn't work properly, that she would be a "floor cat" as she couldn't jump and she might randomly fall over. Imagine his surprise when, half an hour later while he was still there chatting, she hopped up onto the sofa next to me, curled up in a huge ball of fluff and fell asleep. I didn't really like the name Missy, but as with a lot of rescue animals, the only thing she had was her name and I didn't want to change it too much. Given the state of her when I first met her, I decided that Messy was very appropriate. As she's technically a pedigree (she's a cross ragdoll/chocolate point), and pedigree animals always seem to have those ridiculous names on their pedigree certificates, I also unofficially named her "Mesopotamia Disco Ball von Fire Station (don't ask), but she is only known as Messy, thankfully! She is, without a doubt, the most gorgeous, lovable, perfect cat in the world (I'm not biased, really!) and it was a real wrench leaving her when I moved to Spain. At least I knew I was leaving her in good hands with my (now) ex, and all my friends coming round to feed/play with her when he's away, for which I thank them all profusely. But - things change, my ex is moving out and I need to rent my flat out privately so I can come back to Madrid for another year. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to rent the flat out with a resident cat, and to be honest, I wouldn't want to leave her there with someone I don't know. So the time has come (or it will, in about August) to find a new home for her. Ideally, I want her to go to someone I know, or at least someone one of my friends knows (and I will be demanding access rights!) So if anyone knows a likely candidate for her new owner, please let me know. She has to stay indoors all the time (absolutely imperative due to her non-existent immune system) and she can't mix with other cats in case she catches something. Another bout of flu or anything similar could kill her! But other than that, she is perfect (or should that be purr-fect?)

So there you have it - my life history as seen through my pets.

Students giveth, and students taketh away

2010-05-19T20:50:00.000+01:00

I knew it was too good to be true! Things really started to pick up in the last couple of weeks with two (nearly three) new students and my projected income was actually looking pretty healthy.

True to form, no sooner had I started to get all smug about it, two of them cancelled for the next fortnight!

The universal balance is restored once more.

Am undaunted and refuse to be brought down, however.

Cathy dodged the volcanic ash!

2010-05-15T14:38:00.000+01:00

Since my birthday weekend, I had my first visitor of the year last weekend. Cathy somehow managed to catch the only flight from Gatwick to Madrid that actually took off on Saturday and by 12 she and her dinky suitcase made it to Plaza de Castilla and the short walk to the flat. A quick lunch and a well-deserved beer and we headed out.

First stop was the cheap shoe heaven that is Calle Montera (otherwise known as Prostitute Street!). Baseball boots, sandals and the world's cheapest work shoes (they were for me) were purchased, by which time we were ready for tea and cake at La Mallorquina - great cakes and pastries to take away downstairs, and upstairs a tea "salon" that appears to be stuck in time. A couple of Napolitanas de Chocolate (pain au chocolat to the rest of us, though I have no idea why there doesn't appear to be an English word for these), proper tea with cold milk and a coffee set us up nicely for a trip to El Capricho.

Recommended by Debbie , El Capricho Garden of Enlightenment is a very peaceful little park hidden away almost at the end of Metro Line 5. It once belonged to the Duke and Duchess of Osuna and consists of 14 hectares of land, containing a folly, a hermitage, a Temple to Bacchus, a lake, a mini fort, a palace and, thankfully, very few people! A lovely way to spend the late afternoon/early evening. We left but decided it was too early to head back into town so found a little bar, full of locals (and showing bullfighting on TV which we had to try to avoid seeing). One beer turned into two, then inexplicably into four and we finally wended our way to the Metro at about 10pm. Still, it was Saturday night so it would have been rude not to stop at the square near the flat for a couple more beers and a plate of very good patatas bravas.

Sunday morning still threatened rain so our planned boating trip on the lake at the Retiro could wait. We headed to the Chocolateria San Gines for an artery-clogging breakfast of hot chocolate and churros (though we actually got porras). Then it was off to El Mercado de San Miguel , where we strolled around the many deli stands, admiring the sheer variety and quantity of delicious food and drink. Despite our filling breakfast, we couldn't resist a couple of mozzarella and veg kebabs, artichoke hearts, a tiny bean-filled pastry and a stuffed vine leaf, washed down with a glass of wine. We bought rustic bread and some interesting-looking cheese, ready to make a packed lunch for the tennis on Monday. A short walk took us down to La Caixa Forum , an art/exhibition centre near the Prado. There was an exhibition of works by Miquel Barcelo , including a very bizarre video of his live show from 2009 (I think) where he covered an assistant in blocks of wet clay and moulded them on him, before the assistant collapsed against a wall presumably to set! Hmm. Art, eh?! The second floor was more to our taste with a photography exhibition (FotoPrensa) - a random collection including civil unrest in Rwanda, graphic pictures of Pakistani women who had suffered "honour" attacks by having acid thrown in their faces, a weird 1970s themed nightclub and much more. Needless to say, there is a cafeteria upstairs so we stopped for refreshment, before heading over to Lavapies where there was a festival to celebrate Spain's Presidency of the EU this year.

We wondered if we'd got the day wrong when we arrived as it was all due to kick off at 4pm with street theatre etc, but we couldn't find anything! However, after wandering for a bit we stumbled across a square where there was some kind of dance going on, performed by a mixture of disabled and able-bodied teens. We spotted Debbie, Moira and Raul so we joined them, shortly followed by Krisztina, just in time to be entertained by a trio of Polish acrobatic breakdancers (one with abs, and a face, to die for), then a rather odd Finnish slow-motion dancer/contortionist and finally a group of 7 French freestyle breakdancers. Feeling entirely worn out by their exertions (!), we repaired to Baobab, a Senegalese bar up the road for more beer! A very stoned waiter with dreadlocks and particularly lovely eyes brought us beer, then another beer, then crisps, then another beer before we decided we really should go and find food. Being in Lavapies, the obvious thing to do was get curry - and very delicious it was too. A €7.95 set menu got us samosas and pakoras for starters, rice with veggie coftas for main, a beer each and tea or dessert. Bargain!

Monday rolled around and with it our long-awaited trip to La Caja Magica for the Madrid tennis tournament.
All went well initially, we picked up the pre-booked tickets easily but were a little too early as the gates weren't yet open so we headed into a tiny local bar for a quick drink (non-alcoholic I hasten to add, it was only 10.15am!) Once the gates were open, we clutched our tickets and marched happily towards the security staff on the gates. They asked us to open our bags and that was where the trouble started! No food or drink allowed! Nothing, not even a bottle of water! Outrageous. We vainly argued that we hadn't known etc, but to no avail. We had to scoff our tasty cheese and houmous bocadillos, as many crisps as we could and most of a can of Diet Coke outside the gates. We weren't alone, there were several people caught out by the ridiculous rule. We both decided to flout the rules and managed to smuggle our empty water bottles in by hiding them in amongst other things in our bags. I understand the economics of it - they want you to spend money on food and drink at their concession stands (and there are a lot of them!) - but it's not well-advertised, and not everyone can afford to buy everything they might need for around 9 hours there. Well, their cunning plan failed with us. We topped our water bottles up from the bathroom taps and made a point of buying absolutely nothing to eat all day! Little victories!

We'd been a little surprised by the order of the play for the day. It's a men's and women's tournament, we knew that, but we assumed that the play would be split about 50/50. Not at all. Play started at 11am on most courts, yet there wasn't a men's match on until 2pm and the women accounted for about 75% of the day's play. I'm not averse to a bit of women's tennis when there's no choice, but I'm afraid it doesn't hold any great fascination. Still, Court 4 found us watching Petrova win pretty convincingly. We wandered wondering what to watch while waiting for the first men's match on the main court, when we noticed that the current match on that court was looking more interesting than expected. Serena Williams had lost the first set so we decided to head over there and cheer on Dushevina. It was a surprisingly good match, lasting over 3 hours, but in the end (disappointingly) Williams won. And finally it was time for some real tennis (!) - Gael Monfils beat Stephane Robert pretty convincingly, then my second fave player, Feliciano Lopez was up against Lucasz Kubot. Amid many calls of "Vamos, Feli!" he won, to the delight of course of the Spanish crowd. And that was that. By the time that match was over, play on all the outside courts had finished and they were starting to let people in for the evening session. We headed off, stopping for dinner at the splendidly-named "Bosphorus Grill" Greek place near my flat. Can't beat houmous, tzatziki, stuffed vine leaves and beer after a day watching people chase a small ball round a rectangle of red clay.

Tuesday brought Cathy's last day so we managed to get up at a vaguely reasonable time and headed to the local square for another chocolate and churros brekkie, then down to the ghost Metro station at Chamberi (Anden Cero) - I'd been there before but it's a nice, quick and interesting thing to take visitors to. Our timing wasn't best as we found ourselves following a big school group around, but they were fairly well-behaved teens.

Quick lunch at the flat and it was time for Cathy to head back to the airport and for me to get ready for my first class of the week. It wasn't at all certain that Cathy was going to make it back, as the other two Gatwick Easyjet flights of the day had been cancelled due to the volcanic ash. Off she went though and, as with Saturday, turned out to be on the only flight of the day that actually got off the ground.

It was a very lovely weekend and it was great to see Cathy for the first time since Christmas. A lot of catching up was done! My (few) pics can be found HERE

(Note - as always, if you'd like to leave a comment, please go to the original blog at http://emsr2d2.blogspot.com to do so. Thanks.)

Memories of Hotel Gellert Spa, Budapest

2010-04-13T13:37:00.000+01:00

A random comment by my friend Diana sent my mind whizzing back to my trip to Budapest several years ago. I was there with a friend (some of you know her, but for the sake of propriety I'll keep her name out of it!) We were at the end of a great trip, first to Bratislava, then Vienna, and finally Budapest.

Our trusty Time Out/Rough Guide insisted that a trip to the thermal baths at the Hotel Gellert was an absolute must. We could see the gorgeous building just on the other side of the bridge across the river, so we trundled off with our swimming costumes, towels etc.

The price list at the reception desk was fairly baffling and only in Hungarian so we opted for the cheapest one that appeared to include the baths and a massage. We were given a ticket and a small, triangular piece of white cloth, and no explanation. We made our way out of the huge, domed reception area and headed to the ladies' changing rooms. These looked more like what you would expect from an Eastern Bloc building - in the basement and just some very basic cubicles. We quickly changed into our swimming costumes, emerged clutching our towels and still unexplained triangles of cotton, and locked our worldly goods in our cubicles. We had gone no more than 2 or 3 steps when a terrifying sight appeared. A sturdy, flip-flop-wearing Hungarian woman, who may well have more than her fair share of shot-putt gold medals, advanced on us across the room, wagging her finger, shaking her head and saying "No, no, no". Baffled, we looked around to see if we had used the wrong cubicles or were somehow in the men's changing rooms. No. She bore down on us like a train, finally stopped, pinged the shoulder straps of my swimming costume and uttered the unforgettable words......... "Nudie bath. Nudie bath."

Gulp. Er, what? My mate and I looked at each other in terribly British, prudish disbelief, nodded at the woman and ran back inside one of the cubicles for a conflab! What to do? We'd paid (though clearly not for quite what we thought), and had been really looking forward to it. So do we get dressed and run away? Or do we bite the bullet and stay? Well, my motto is meant to be Carpe Diem so we went for the "What the hell? We're only here once and no-one knows us" option.

So after promising never to mention it again (so much for that promise, eh?), off came the swimming costumes, and the towels, and we crept back out into the shot-putter's lair. This time, something she may have thought of as a smile crossed her face and she directed us up a flight of stairs at the back of the room. To this day, I still feel bad about making my mate go first, not least because it meant I ascended the stairs mere inches from her bare arse!!!! We emerged into the thermal baths to be met with the sight of scores of naked women of all shapes and sizes, immersed in the steaming waters or wandering about. We finally discovered the purpose of the tiny triangles of material with a neck strap that we'd been given. They were intended to preserve a modicum of modesty. Which would have worked if we'd been about 3 feet tall, 6 inches around and had no adult body parts! I'll say no more about that.

To be honest, after a shorter time than you might think, we got quite used to the idea and spent a lovely couple of hours wallowing in baths of varying temperatures, and boiling ourselves in the string of sauna rooms which increased in temperature as you went through each connecting door until we reached the one of about 113 degrees at which point we both had admit defeat. We even gave up on any pretence of using the little cotton aprons. My abiding memories of that part of the day are the (we think) Dutch girl who sat in one of sauna rooms, on a chair, facing the rest of the room, with her knees under her chin and her feet up on the chair, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination, and the 2 American girls who had heard us speaking English and sidled up to us saying "Oh my god, did you REALISE......?" We admitted it had been something of a surprise to us too, but that we recommended just getting on with it!

Finally, the time came for our massage. Any ideas we'd had of a lovely, relaxing 15 minutes of aromatherapy oils and soft music were swiftly despatched! The massage room was a large, glass-brick-walled affair, containing 2 metal slabs and a couple of women who clearly came from the same stock as the assistant in the changing rooms. We clambered, inelegantly, onto a slab each, face down. I, for one, was desperately trying not to think about the fact that it was more like the dissection room in a morgue, or the display trays in a fish market! Having liberally lathered me up from neck to toes with a gigantic bar of soap and a little lukewarm water, the masseuse set to work. Pain is an understatement. I don't know what she did, how she did it or what parts of her anatomy she was using, but she found ways of causing pain, without leaving any marks, that a KGB interrogation team would have been proud of. After a few minutes, she forcibly flipped me over onto my back, leaving me slithering around on the table while she did her thing again to my front! I didn't dare glance over to the other table. Having decided that either she'd caused enough agony, or that she was disappointed I hadn't screamed, she shoved me off the table and yelled "Stand". She was not a woman to be argued with so I stood stock-still with my back to her, wondering what on earth could be coming next. Had I actually considered the possibility that it might be a huge, wooden bucket full of ice-cold water thrown over me at point-blank range, I might have taken the opportunity to leg it while I could! Too late.

And that was that. We were done. An old, tatty white sheet that passed for a towel was thrown at us and we were pointed in the direction of the changing rooms.

When we finally re-emerged into the Budapest sunshine, I'm not sure we were even capable of speech though I recall something like "Did that just really happen?" being uttered. True to our original promise, neither of us mentioned it for a while though the intervening years have at least turned the experience from a traumatic, never-to-be-repeated debacle, into something much more memorable and appreciated for what it was.

So - if you're in Budapest, you know where (not) to go!

10 April 1954 was a good day

2010-04-10T10:38:00.001+01:00

Carey, my mum's younger sister, was born that day and today would have been her 56th birthday.

She was the youngest of 3 girls, a pretty, quiet child and a keen ice-skater and tennis player.

She was 15 when I was born, though I really only remember her from when she finished her teacher training and went off to her first couple of teaching jobs in Manchester and Brixton. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end! She married an eccentric Liverpudlian guitarist and they produced my lovely cousin Joe.

She soon landed herself a plum job as the Head of Drama at the very prestigious girls' boarding school, Cobham Hall, where she taught very happily for years. She was the shyest drama teacher ever though, hated speaking in public and blushed at even the mildest rude joke.

She later divorced and married a local man. They lived happily in her beautiful, very old house in Kent.

She was successful, happy, gorgeous and very content with life. She fell in love with Greece, especially Crete and spent many a summer week sunning herself and enjoying the relaxed lifestyle. She was looking at houses in France with a view to retiring there.

In mid-2002 she developed a severe, debilitating headache and nausea, lasting several days. A migraine was initially blamed but soon other possibilities had to be investigated. And then came the news - multiple brain tumours, secondary to lymph cancer. It was less of a diagnosis than a prognosis - one which initially was shockingly short - maybe 5 weeks with no effective treatment possible. Private healthcare disagreed and various bouts of chemotherapy and radiotherapy ensued, over the next 21 months.

She returned to Crete a year after her diagnosis for a long holiday, during which most members of the family joined her for a week or so each. It was weird but great, and a trip which would remain etched in our memories. She saw her baby boy take his driving test, and go off to university, events which she had been determined to stick around for.

Those of you who have watched cancer ravage a person will know what followed. Those who haven't, consider yourselves very lucky and I hope you never do. Over those months, I saw more of her than I had in the previous 30-odd years. We shopped, watched films, sang, talked, laughed and cried.

On the 1st of February, 2004, at 1.26am, 11 weeks short of her 50th birthday, with almost all her family members in the house with her, she finally succumbed, dying, as she had lived, peacefully.

I know she would have been involved, intrigued and proud of everything her family has done since.

And I miss her every single day.

Happy birthday, Auntie Carey. xxxx

Has spring sprung?

2010-04-08T17:38:00.001+01:00

Yesterday afternoon in the park, the swallows (or are they swifts? I never know) were zooming around merrily, 2 magpies had rather rampant sex near me, there's now a butterfly flitting around outside the window and it's 26 degrees on my balcony.

It's been warm and sunny since our impromptu picnic in the Retiro on Sunday and it's showing no sign of letting up.

I'm inclined to officially announce that it's spring, hide my jacket at the back of my wardrobe and start wandering around in slightly more summery clothing.

However, as Richard M is forever reminding us - "Hasta el cuarenta de mayo no te quites el sayo" - "Until the 40th of May, don't give up your tunic" (how quaint). Or for the English idiom: "Ne'er cast a clout til May be out". So apparently I shouldn't take the risk until either June 1st or June 10th, depending on which idiom you want to believe.

Still, since I own neither a tunic nor a piece of clothing that resembles only a "fragment of cloth" (clout), maybe I'll just say "F*ck it", hide my coat and keep my fingers crossed. If it rains in the next few days, you'll know who to blame.

I really can't get my head around this one

2010-04-02T17:40:00.002+01:00

A story caught my eye earlier, while I was passing another fruitless hour trawling the internet (and recovering from my hangover).

You may have seen a story a few weeks ago about a school in Mississippi which decided to cancel its annual prom because one of the students who planned to attend is a lesbian, and wanted to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend. She petitioned the school board to be allowed to do so, but her requests were denied and a memo was circulated advising everyone that same-sex dates were not permitted. She challenged this decision with the help of the Mississippi ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) who agreed that the decision was a clear violation of her constitutional rights and urged the board to reverse its decision. Instead of doing so, the school decided it would be preferable to cancel the prom completely, due to the "distractions caused by recent events". They also stated that it hoped that the local community would organise a private prom as a replacement (note: apparently a private prom would be perfectly within its rights to prevent gay couples attending, if it so wished).

Needless to say, the young lady involved was upset a) by the school's decision not to allow her to bring her girlfriend and b) at the idea that she now felt responsible for the prom being cancelled and that many other students would feel badly towards her about it.

Now this story alone is enough to have me shaking my head in disbelief, but it gets stranger.

The Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition decided to organise the aforementioned "private" prom and asked the Mississippi ACLU to help with the fundraising. A couple of days ago, the American Humanist Association offered a $20,000 contribution to the fund, a substantial sum. However, the donation was rejected by the ACLU with this explanation:

"Although we support and understand organizations like yours, the majority of Mississippians tremble in terror at the word 'atheist'........... Our staff has been talking a lot about your donation offer and have found ourselves in a bit of a conflict. We have fears that your organization sponsoring the prom could stir up even more controversy."

Wait. WHAT?! So a civil liberties group, whose own website states "The right to practice religion, or no religion at all, is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights" decided that atheists are so controversial and terrifying that accepting money from them to assist in repairing another case of discrimination is simply impossible? Yes, apparently that is exactly what happened.

In a world where religion is still responsible for the vast majority of wars and terrorist attacks, and where the Catholic church is being brought to its knees (stop making up your own jokes) by the paedophilia exposés, is it really feasible that us atheists/humanists can be seen as subversive dangers to society? Quite honestly, it simply shows what a terrible stranglehold religion has on society as a whole, where the mere presence of people who think for themselves and have chosen not to believe, actually frightens them.

I have just found a recent update on this story which shows a potential light at the end of the tunnel. Apparently the Safe Schools Coalition has the final say on who to accept donations from, and they say no decision has yet been reached on the one from the AHU. They also said that the Mississippi ACLU "made an error in judgment (sic)" in sending the email to the Humanist Association, and that the ACLU has apologised. I'll be interested to see whether the donation is finally accepted.

Let's hope that Constance McMillen, the girl who, in standing up for her fundamental rights, set the ball rolling on this ever-expanding story, finally gets to go to a prom, in a tuxedo if she wishes, to share a slow dance with her girlfriend. What the hell - make them Prom Queen and Queen!! They deserve recognition for bringing the narrow-minded bigotry of some people to the forefront again.

Vim, verve, vigour and vocab at Valdelavilla

2010-03-29T16:50:00.001+01:00

Now there's a tongue twister for the Spaniards!

So Sunday 21st March saw me back on another long bus journey, this time to Soria, for Vaughan Town. The venue was Valdelavilla, a previously abandoned village in the mountains. It's beautiful, remote and perfect for an immersion English program. I'd been there before, last August, but with Pueblo Inglés. Sadly for them, the contract was up at the end of 2009 and it reverted to Vaughan who used to go there when the two companies were one and the same. It would perhaps have been nice if they'd sent a bus driver who either knew the way, or who had a map or GPS, which would have saved the extra hour on the already interminable journey!

I'd half-expected to spend the week tucked up inside away from freezing temperatures and potential snow. But the weather was kind to us and, apart from a couple of afternoons of rain, it was clear and bright. Seemingly my reputation as a "hard" girl continues, given that I didn't wear a coat or jacket pretty much all week, yet others were wrapped up in coats and scarves. What can I say?

This was the smallest group I'd been part of - 12 Spaniards and (yet again!) only 10 Anglos. 2 Anglos who had been scheduled to attend simply didn't show up - they weren't at tapas on the Saturday night which gave a clue, but they could still have made it to the bus. No. So, as in January, both Dade and Marisa had to be Anglos as well as doing their actual jobs, which is totally unfair. I think I said last time that it baffles me why a program would be set up with only the exact number of Anglos booked, leaving absolutely no margin for error.

As always, the Spaniards were a varied group, from all walks of life, a mixture of ages and levels of English. I knew 2 of the 10 Anglos from previous programs, and the rest were all great fun too. As is always the case, it's a shame that the Anglos don't get as much time to get to know eachother as we would like, though mealtimes, house-sharing and time at the bar help!

The program itself ran as it always does - one-to-ones in the mornings, then group activities, more one-to-ones, entertainment hour in the evenings, with phone sessions and conference calls dotted around. The only fly in the ointment really was that Valdelavilla really does have very limited facilities - no music system, no projector, no flipchart paper (this week, at least!), no printer available, (not to mention the complete lack of mobile coverage and the very sporadic WiFi). This means that a lot of the usual entertainment activities - karaoke, the last-night party plus many of the sketches and presentations just aren't possible. Yes, that means that people are encouraged to help out more, by bringing presentations, telling jokes etc, but with no advance warning, most didn't know to do that. Having said that, the 2 nights of entertainment were fantastic, as always, with both Anglos and Spaniards throwing themselves into the weird and wonderful collection of sketches, readings and general silliness. Marisa's ballroom dancing lesson may well have been the highlight of the week, mainly because it meant a rare glimpse of Dade looking remarkably self-conscious (sorry!) and an opportunity to prove yet again that the Spanish do seem to have an inbuilt sense of rhythm and dancing ability that's distinctly lacking in the rest of us!

The food at Valdelavilla is fantastic. I'd hoped that things hadn't changed since last summer because the meals were something I was really looking forward to. After the disaster that is the food at Gredos, I was excited to get back somewhere where they a) understand vegetarianism b) give you a choice of dishes for each course and c) serve it with a smile!

Given the amount I ate (and drank) it's just as well that the place also lends itself to lots of exercise. With the exception of 2 hours on Thursday morning, I walked with my various Spaniards for the entirety of every one-to-one for the whole week. That equated to at least 5 hours' walking every day. On top of that, 2 impromptu excursions to nearby abandoned villages, both taking around 2 hours and with the entire return journey being uphill, mean that I think I actually lost weight during the week, and may have rediscovered my leg muscles. I could have lived without my face becoming absolutely beetroot-red on the uphill marches, but I should be used to it by now. I blame my capillaries, not my complete lack of fitness.

Quei Mada was fun, though the rather low ceiling in the dining room where it was held made it excitingly dangerous. Just for once, I think everybody had at least one cup of the lethal Oruja concoction which may have explained the unexpected joke-telling that came after. Blame the drink, but the only thing I can remember is that all the Spaniards jokes seemed to revolve around the Guardia Civil!

As always, I laughed, cried (sometimes with laughter, sometimes not!), and learnt a lot. The Spaniards almost without exception, were enthusiastic, keen, interested (and interesting) and determined to get everything they could out of their week. It's always the case that the people who have paid for themselves are perhaps a little more enthusiastic than those who have been sent by their company, but even if "forced" to be there, they generally try to see it as a positive thing.

As ever, Thursday evening rolled around far too quickly and, despite there being no "official" party, the group certainly made the most of their final evening and the oh-so-generous one extra hour of the bar being open and an impromptu party ensued. I hope Vaughan realise that the last-night "letting your hair down" part of the programs has always been very popular, both with the Spaniards and also with Anglos, whether veterans or not. Everyone has worked so hard over the course of the week that they deserve to relax and have a blast. Valdelavilla's meeting room is perfect for the party - plenty of room to dance, a bar can be set up in the room, meaning people don't have to keep leaving the party to negotiate the death-trap stairs in the dark to get to the other bar, and certainly last year there was a perfectly good music system up there (I can only assume it belonged to Pueblo Inglés who quite reasonably took it away).

Special mention should go to Elena for making it through her presentation despite being absolutely terrified, to Miguel for his hilarious performance in the 3 husbands sketch, to Monica for constantly "inventing" English words when she was stuck, only to find them in the dictionary and to Maica for creating a whole new business venture based around exploding kangaroos in Australia (don't ask).

It was also Dade's last week ever as an MC, after 3 years of bringing fun and laughter to an amazing number of people. Everyone in the group wishes him every happiness for his new life back in the UK as a photographer.

And so it was over! The journey back to Madrid was long and uneventful, fortunately and the usual sad goodbyes were said before we went our separate ways. But not for long. Fernando very kindly organised a get-together for those that could make it on Sunday. A group of us met at the Mercado San Miguel for cava, wine, beer, oysters (well, spinach croquettas for me), snacks, bread and chat. We moved on to various different locations, the group gradually dwindling until, at the end, only 3 of us remained, having completed 10 hours of non-stop drinking and eating! Diana and Anthony - you're a very bad influence on my liver!!!

Thank you to everyone for a great week.

As always, I was too busy having fun to remember to take many pictures, but what I have are HERE.

What are they reading?

2010-03-16T13:48:00.000Z

Having forgotten to take my book on the Metro this morning, and then discovering that the battery in my MP3 player was dead, I spent 20 minutes investigating what my fellow travellers were reading! Yes, I was bored.

Top place went to the variety of free newspapers that can be picked up outside various shops, or are handed out on the streets (20 Minutos, Que and ADN). I normally get a copy of 20 Minutos at the top of the Metro stairs on the way to my early class at the Ministry of the Environment. It's handed to me by a man whose face I have never seen. Come rain or shine, he's bundled up in a waterproof jacket, gloves, hat and a scarf that's wrapped around his face only leaving his eyes exposed. Still, his eyes appear to be smiling and there's usually a muffled "Hola". Maybe once summer comes, I'll actually find out what he looks like!

One very geeky, terribly small, thin man who looked about as far removed from a football fan as anyone I've ever seen was dissecting his copy of Marca, the Real Madrid official paper.

No less than 3 people were reading whatever that damn red and black book is by the author that died before publication of the final part (someone please tell me what it is!).

2 people (and 2 yesterday) were reading the same book by H P Lovecraft - not something I've noticed before, and all their copies looked very shiny and new, so I'm guessing somewhere there's a new edition out or they're all on sale.

The man next to me was reading a very dull-looking document he clearly had to revise either for work or for a test. I'm not sure how all his markings will have helped as he had highlighted and underlined in red every single word of every sentence!

A guy standing up was trying valiantly to read the biggest hardback book I've ever seen. It looked like it weighed a ton and required both his hands to hold it which consequently meant that every time the train lurched, so did he. Hope it was worth the risk of injury!

And the girl next to me was reading the instruction book for her new mobile phone. I certainly wish she'd gone straight to the section on how to turn off that irritating beeping noise that the keys make when you first get a phone!

And that was that. My journey of nosiness was over. Really must remember my book in future otherwise you might be subjected to this kind of blog again. Bet you really hope not!

One year on....

2010-03-13T15:47:00.002Z

1 year. 12 months. 52 weeks. 365 days. 8,766 hours. 525,600 minutes. 31,536,000 seconds.

As I'm writing this, I'll have been in Spain a full year (plus about 3 hours!). March 13th 2009 was a big day. I was hugely excited about my big adventure, but at the same time I was completely terrified. I think I said in my first blog that for someone who had been in the same job for 19 years and 11 months, had never been out of the UK for longer than about 4 weeks, and who generally didn't do anything alone, I appeared to be confronting all those things in one huge hit.

I've been trying to remember what it felt like on my first afternoon here, but it's difficult. Everything here is now so familiar and normal, that casting my mind back to how it was to be new is really hard. I know I remember that everything smelt, sounded and looked, well, just different. That's always the case in a foreign country but usually it's accompanied by a feeling of "Well, it's just a couple of weeks on holiday". But this time, no. This was it. Home. One way or another, I was staying.

I have no intention of rehashing what's happened in the last year - most of it is on this blog anyway.

All I'll say is that I want to thank each and every person who encouraged me, supported me, practically pushed me in some cases, to take the plunge and come here. It's not all been plain sailing, but then staying in the UK probably wouldn't have been either. So thanks to everyone in the UK for wishing me well, keeping in touch and not telling me I'm mad even if you think I am. And thanks to all my friends in Spain for welcoming me, helping me out and making the last year such a memorable one.

Without wishing to sound like an Oscar acceptance speech, I want to mention (in no particular order):
Louise, Andy, Debbie, Cathy, Dade, Sid, Julie, Mum, Hannah, Dad, Eve, Jorge, Nacho, Ann, Pedro (both of them!), Richi, Bev, Kim, Donna, Krizstina, Mariano, Gabriel, Lizzie, Javi, José Luis, Richard, Max, Alex, Nat and Moira. Without you I either wouldn't be here at all, or wouldn't be having as much fun!!!

A little photographic trip down memory lane can be found HERE

What might have been......

2010-03-07T00:31:00.001Z

......had I not taken the plunge, today would have been the beginning of my 21st year as a civil servant. What a horrendous thought!

I celebrated this non-event by going over to Rafa's place (where Louise now lives) for a very lovely lunch (crema de calabacín, home-made bread, cheese and walnut salad, pear and banana yoghurt with maple syrup, carrot cake muffins, wine and tea) and chatting in 2 languages. I got home from lunch at 7pm, relaxed for a bit, then at 9pm I met up finally with the Madrid Vegetarian Group. I've been trying to go to one of their monthly meals since October but the dates don't always work out. Tonight's restaurant (Ecocentro) is only 4 Metro stops from my flat so nice and easy to get to. It's a huge place with a full-service restaurant, a self-service cafeteria and a massive veggie/natural shop and bookstore. I'll be going back. There were 10 of us for the meal, 4 Spaniards, 1 American, 1 Belgian and 4 Brits. A good mix. My only wish is that we had been sitting at a round table, instead of long rectangular one which meant that conversations were limited to the people nearest you. Though that meant I chatted to Amy, Sa, Beatriz and Katherine, all of whom were lovely, interesting people. The food was good if a little more expensive than I'd hoped, but I enjoyed my crema de esparragos, and arroz horneado (cream of asparagus soup, and baked rice with vegetables).

So, given that instead of that I could have been sitting at a desk at Gatwick, dealing with crap files, an equally crap computer system, and probably arguing with several people on the other end of the phone, I know where I'd rather be!

And so career break 2 starts...........

Delia Smith, eat your heart out!

2010-03-04T18:58:00.001Z

Having found myself with an unexpectedly free day, I blitzed next week's lesson plans, wasted some time (as usual) on the net, then thought "OK, what now?"

A quick squint in the kitchen cupboards gave me an idea. When one of my flatmates recently moved out, she left behind half a jar of peanut butter (hope she didn't want it back!) Can't stand the stuff on its own, or on bread, but I hate waste so I (w)racked my brain trying to think of something to do with it. DING! Peanut butter cookies! Google searches told me I probably needed butter and eggs, but I had neither and no money to buy any, so I cobbled together the contents of various vegan versions from the net and set to work. Flour, peanut butter, bicarb, sugar, olive oil, cinnamon and nutmeg were all whipped together in a bowl which may have been a little too small resulting in bits of the mixture regularly flying out of it and across the kitchen. But finally I had something that I looked like cake/biscuit mix.

As there are no baking trays here, nor did I have any greaseproof paper, I had to turn the main tray from the oven upside down and coat it in butter! Thus making them not completely vegan, admittedly.

But nearly an hour later, and with the kitchen fairly coated with flour, there were 16 blobs that vaguely resembled cookies happily baking. And 12 minutes later, there they were. Now I have to resist the temptation to eat them all! I think my student tomorrow morning will be getting a little present!

Tales from my students

2010-03-02T21:54:00.000Z

I felt like I needed a somewhat more light-hearted post than my last rant, so I thought I'd relate a couple of stories from my morning classes today.

In my first class, we played "2 Truths and a Lie" and it was up to my student to come up with 3 stories about herself and see if I could work out which was the lie. The outcome is irrelevant to this story (though I guessed correctly), but one of her claims was that she used to teach "Fluid Mechanics". Having been taught in my old job always to "trade test", I said "Fine, so give me a brief lesson in Fluid Mechanics." And she did! Not exactly a brief lesson either. All I can say is that in 20 minutes, she made me understand things that several years of maths/physics/chemistry lessons had failed to do! I can now tell you that a particle of water has a specific weight of 1 gram per cm³, oil is the lightest at 0.8g per cm³, and mercury is heaviest at 1.3g per cm³. And that in order to work out the total energy of one particle of water you need the following equation: H = h + v²/2g + P/γ (H = total energy, h = height, v = velocity, P = pressure, γ = specific weight of the relevant liquid). So basically, the higher a drop of water falls from, the more energy it has! This, she explained, is necessary in order to work out how high to build a hydro-electric dam so that when the water hits the turbine at the bottom, it creates enough energy to actually work! Clear now? Good. Cos I'll be testing you later.

The second story is a touch more disturbing. One of my students flew to Tenerife with 10 friends for Carnaval weekend. As I'm sure you all know, THE thing to do at Carnaval (apart from drinking and not sleeping) is to don fancy dress. The group of friends in question had decided that on the 2nd night they would dress as cowgirls. They had jeans, boots, ten-gallon hats, checked shirts and toy guns. All of these were bought in advance. Now you may remember I said they flew to Tenerife. None of them had checked-in luggage so when they hit security, imagine the fuss when their luggage was found to contain around 17 toy guns. The airport police ~~threw them straight into prison~~ listened to their lovely explanation about the fancy dress party and let them board the aircraft with said guns in their bags! As if this weren't shocking enough, when they returned from Tenerife, they went through airport security with the exact same items and ~~were thrown straight into prison~~ no-one even noticed. Their bags went through the X-ray machines, out the other side and they were on their way! Yes, I know they were toy guns. Yes, I know you can't kill anyone with them, but as the police pointed out (before letting them continue!) if they pulled one out on the plane and started waving it around, who was going to know it was only a toy? One for the national press, if you ask me!

Beyond a joke?

2010-03-02T18:10:00.005Z

Grrrrrrr!!! AAAArrrgggh. Etc.

I know cancellations are part and parcel of choosing to have mostly private students, but this one pretty much takes the biscuit. Let me explain....

- Last Tuesday, Student A called to cancel that evening's class and also to cancel tonight's class - at 7pm. She said she would let me know by Sunday if that was going to change.
- Nothing heard by Sunday.
- Monday, Students B&C who I teach from 4 til 6 on a Tuesday, ask if there's any chance I can teach them later.
- I say, this week, that's fine as my 7pm class has been cancelled. I move Students B&C to 5 til 7.
- I email Student A on Monday evening out of courtesy to thank her for giving me advance notice of her cancellation, as it has meant that I can accommodate Students B&C's request to have class later.
- Student A emails back to say that she REALLY REALLY needs to reinstate the 7pm class because she has a delegation of people coming for work this weekend and will have to speak English to them, so needs the practice.
- Being the nice person I am (doormat?), I email students B&C and ask if I can move them back to 4 til 6, so I can reinstate 7pm class with Student A.
- They, very kindly, agree.
- Tuesday, 4-6, I am teaching Students B&C. I'm aware that my mobile is frantically vibrating in my bag and finally give in and look at it.
- At 5.45, 75 minutes before class is due to start, Student A has texted/rung to say she's very busy at work and can't have class!

So I basically messed Students B&C around for NOTHING! It's infuriating. It's made worse by the fact that Student A paid me upfront for 20 classes and we're still only on class 15, after nearly 6 months, due to regular cancellations. I didn't have a cancellation policy with her, unfortunately, so the money just keeps rolling over until I've finally managed to give her 20 classes. At the rate I'm going, I'll have retired or moved back to the UK before we've completed! I can't ditch her, and I'm trying to be accommodating so she doesn't ditch me, because if we stop having class, I'll effectively owe her for 5 classes and would have to refund the money which, needless to say, I don't have!

Right, time to breathe and get a large drink, I think.

PS - If you want to leave a comment, please visit http://emsr2d2.blogspot.com and leave the comment on the actual blog. Otherwise, it looks like no-one's reading it, or commenting, which makes me sad. And you wouldn't like me when I'm sad!

I'm seeing stairs!

2010-03-01T20:51:00.004Z

Yup, stairs, not stars!

Really, I should have the tightest buns and the most toned thighs ever (sadly, most of you know that I don't). And why should this be the case? The Madrid Metro, mainly.

Here's why, using today's excursions as an example:

7.30 - leave flat, go down 8 flights of stairs (4th floor flat, no lift). Walk to Metro.
7.40 - Enter Valdeacederas Metro: descend 4 flights of stairs
8.00 - Exit Rios Rosas Metro: ascend 4 flights of stairs
9.30 - Enter Nuevos Ministerios Metro: descend 3 flights of stairs (and 3 escalators)
09.50 - Exit Sainz de Baranda Metro: ascend 5 long escalators, but walking cos I was late, then 2 flights of stairs to street.
12.10 - Enter Sainz de Baranda Metro: descend 2 flights of stairs
12.20 - Change at Manuel Becerra - 2 flights of stairs
12.30 - Change at Ventas - 2 flights of stairs and a long walk
12.40 - Exit Pueblo Nuevo Metro: 4 flights of stairs
12.45 - 10 minute fast walk to academy to get paid (that's why I was walking fast!)
13.00 - 10 minute walk to Pueblo Nuevo Metro
13.10 - Enter Metro : descend 4 flights of stairs
13.20 - Change at Diego de Leon - long walk and 2 flights of stairs
13.30 - Change at Cuatro Caminos - 1 escalator (ok, I stood on this one!)
13.40 - Exit Valdeacederas - ascend 4 flights of stairs
13.50 - Get home - ascend 8 flights of stairs
18.50 - Leave flat : descend 8 flights of stairs, then 10 minute walk
19.00 - Arrive at student's flat : ascend 6 flights (has lift, never uses it)
20.00 - Leave student : descend 6 flights then 10 minute walk
20.10 - Arrive home: ascend 8 flights.

Tired yet? Cos I bloody well am!

Is it art?

2010-02-14T10:44:00.002Z

Or is it just a bunch of crap hanging on walls, that inexplicably people will pay good money for?

Last Saturday, my flatmate and I decided it was time to get some "culture". Neither of us, by our own admission, are that interested in art, but we live in a city with allegedly 3 of the best art galleries ever! The Prado, the Thyssen and the Reina Sofia. We plumped for the Reina Sofia cos it was free on a Saturday afternoon.

Having stuffed ourselves full of patatas bravas, huevos y fritos and, in Nat's case, calamares, along with a large beer, we joined the other freebie-seekers at the gallery.

4 floors. 4 floors of.......? Well, excuse me for appearing un-cultured, but in my opinion, 4 floors of shite. In the entire place, I found around 10 paintings I actually liked - 7 by Dali who I already knew I was a fan of, and 3 previously unseen. They were: Procesion de la Muerte by José Gutierra Solana, Un Mundo by Angeles Santos Torroella and a pencil drawing of a Basque Cemetery by Dario de Regoyos (can't find that one on the net).

As for Guernica by Picasso, supposedly the piéce de resistance and the gallery's pride and joy - all I can say is I have absolutely no idea what all the fuss is about. I've heard people going on about this painting ever since I arrived. "Oh you must go to the Reina Sofia, at least to see Guernica" etc etc. Well, now I have. And I wish I hadn't bothered. It's smaller than I expected and to me, just looks like another Picasso except it's black and white.

Maybe we were unlucky. Maybe sometimes the temporary exhibitions are better and we just picked the wrong week. There was a lot of modern and cubist art on show, neither of which do anything for me at all. And I'm afraid that the signs above some of the rooms proclaiming "Experimental, neo-modern" etc (isn't neo-modern some kind of tautology?) put us off even sticking our heads round the door.

After about 2 hours we were done, somewhat disillusioned and consoled ourselves with a glass of red at a local bar and headed home! Not a total waste of an afternoon as at least we can now say we've been there, but I won't be going back any time soon.

Birthday weekend 2010

2010-02-14T10:42:00.008Z

I know it's nearly 2 weeks since my birthday but I've been, you know, busy!

It barely feels like a year since my last birthday, spent in the UK having a blast with my friends, but yet the next one rolled around and crept up on me, as they do.

On Thursday evening my ex-flatmate, Eve, arrived in town from Dublin so we met up and went to the mad, packed sidreria near Sol with Julie, Jorge, Louise, Susan, Philip, and Debbie. We quaffed sangria and beer, and were regularly disturbed by a big group of lads next to us who, depending on which one of them you talked to, were either from Asturias, Romania or various other global origins. Wherever it was, one of them decided that what we needed to experience was him projectile vomiting all over the floor of the bar, wiping his mouth and then grabbing the rest of his group to move on somewhere else. We weren't sorry to see them go but were sorry that the staff made no attempt to clean the floor before we left, carefully stepping round the offending puddle!

On Friday afternoon, Kim arrived from Alcoy and joined in the fun. We headed to Bar Ave Fenix where the regular Friday evening meetup happens, though we stayed in the upstairs bar and let the language practice happen downstairs without us (much to Julie's annoyance when she found us skiving!) Having hung around there for a while, a group of us headed off to yet another sidreria down the road for late night nosh. After rather too many beers, there's nothing like a table groaning with carbs - bread, patatas bravas, tortilla and some very good pimientos al padron. We unexpectedly made the last Metro, or at least some of us did, saving ourselves for the Saturday!

Saturday (my actual birthday) lunchtime saw 5 of us finally making it to the Retiro (Madrid's main park) to go boating on the lake. I'd been meaning to do it since I arrived but Eve was absolutely desperate, having failed to take the plunge (not literally, fortunately) despite living here nearly a year, and coming back for a visit. So 1pm, hangovers aside, found the 5 of us split over 2 boats, Debbie and I in one, and Eve, Kim and Louise in the other. Louise was entirely unsure of the wisdom of this, not being the biggest fan of water or boats (not sure which) but we basically bullied her into getting in. Debbie and I, if I say so myself, made a damn good show of rowing ourselves round the lake though the strong wind that picked up at the end threatened to spin us round in circles rather a lot. The other boat turned out to be a fantastic lesson in how to row backwards. I never quite worked out how they did it, but somehow Kim and Eve, with an oar each, kept the boat going with the flat end (yes, I'm sure it has a name) forwards, instead of the pointy end!

45 minutes later and we were back on dry ground, and heading off to find lunch. Nat came to join us at Cafe El Espéjo on Recoletos for some very good bocadillos. I was alarmed to find myself the only person who ordered an alcoholic drink - but it was my birthday, after all!

Then it was time to head back to the flat and prepare for the "get-together". Drinks and nibbles were laid out beautifully by Kim, things were shifted round a little so that people could actually sit down and then I waited for the doorbell to ring. I'd told people to come from 8, which seemed ridiculously early for the Spanish, yet by about 9.30 almost everyone had arrived. I may have slightly underestimated the number of people who would actually show up, and consequently was having a slight panic around 11pm when there appeared to be somewhere in the region of 21 people here! At least I did actually know them all. There were old faces and new (some older than others!) and everyone seemed to have fun chatting, catching up with unexpected friends, demolishing the crisps, bread, pizza, houmous etc and making serious inroads into the bottles. Richi had been making his famous Cosmopolitans which kept everyone going, then Jorge arrived clutching the ingredients for 10 litres of sangria, including a gigantic purple plastic tub to make it in! It was damn good sangria too, although certain people who shall remain nameless saw fit to spike it a bit later in the evening with rum and Cointreau!

I was entirely embarrassed by the number of presents people brought - thank you all! In no particular order I was lucky enough to receive: 7 bottles of very good red wine, cider, Ferrero Rocher, Swiss chocolate, hot chocolate mix (plus miniature whisk), an Irish art calendar, special bread from Jaen, an olive-wood belt, a beautiful mounted print, a photo frame, a beer cooler, a scarf, a top, a silver necklace, 3 CDs, more chocolate, handmade soap, a very amusing book, a bracelet, beer, and probably some things I have failed to list (apologies!). And 2 jars of Marmite - yay! My friends in the UK who sadly weren't able to come sent money with strict instructions to spend it on sangria and beer (not a problem!) and I received some more dosh that I have yet to spend!

Roz, a friend I met last summer, arrived at nearly 1am, having flown in from Cambridge late after work so it was lovely of her to come, albeit briefly. By around 1.30am there were about 9 people left so we retired to the living room, put on some background music and just chatted and laughed til the early hours.

I finally disappeared under the duvet at 6 but was back up at 10 tidying up and getting ready to go out and meet Kim again. She treated me to lunch at my favourite vegetarian restaurant, La Isla del Tesoro before we wandered around the shops in Fuencarral then she had to head to the airport. Eve came round in the evening for more chatting, reminiscing about her time living at the flat and plotting her return to Madrid!

Exhausted but very happy, my birthday weekend came to an end and life returned to some semblance of normality. But huge thanks to: Eve, Kim, Roz, Julie (& 3 friends!), Nat, Jorge, the other Jorge, Debbie, Louise, Pedro, Moira, Philip, Mariano, Richi, Richard, Nacho, Almu, Javi, Carmen, Rafa and Celia for making my first birthday in Madrid so memorable.

Random photos by me, and stolen from friends can be found here

A dead nice Saturday afternoon!

2010-01-30T22:13:00.004Z

A gloriously sunny Saturday afternoon in Madrid seemed like the perfect opportunity to head out to the Cementerio de Neustra Senora de la Almudena (link in Spanish), in the east of the city. Debbie had been meaning to go for ages and hadn't quite made it, despite it being walking distance from her flat, so along with Krisztina, we had a lazy hot chocolate and cake then headed down there, via an impromptu street market where the pirate DVD merchants vied with the old ladies selling lemons, in amongst the actual stalls of clothes.

It's apparently 160 times the size of a football pitch (that doesn't help me at all with my girly spatial awareness problem) - but needless to say, it's HUGE! It covers about 120 hectares and there are approximately 5 million people buried there, not including those in the civil/Jewish cemetery across the road. It was founded in 1884 and was the principal cemetery for the city until 1973 when the Cementerio del Sur in Carabanchel started to be used.

The main entrance is very imposing, which is appropriate given the size of the place. Having seen no warning signs, we were a bit surprised when a guard came over to tell us that we couldn't take photos in the cemetery unless we'd got a permit from the office in advance. Suitably chastened, we apologised, kept walking and as soon as we were out of his sight, started snapping!

The first area is laid out like a Greek cross, with a mix of old and new necropoleis (yes, I checked, that's the plural of necropolis!) and more modern tombs, but no mausolea. However, the further we walked, the older it got until we made it to the much older areas with a Gothic feel. That's what I'd been expecting. Having been to La Cimetiére de Pére Lachaise in Paris, I was looking forward to lots of gloomy stone angels etc, and the older area didn't disappoint. We barely saw anyone else all afternoon and the whole place was very peaceful and relaxing, with a pervading smell of pine trees. On the far side, there's a memorial to "Las Trece Rosas" - dedicated to the 13 young women (7 of them children), members of the Unified Socialist Youth, who were executed there (along with 43 men) on 5th August 1939 by a Francoist firing squad as part of a massive execution campaign.

Once we'd spent about 4 hours wandering around the main part, we headed across the road to the civil/Jewish section where there was a real mixture of graves. Many of them were people who had been born outside Spain, but had died in Madrid, but there were also a large number of historical figures, literary, musical and artistic. The main thing we noticed in this section was the prevalence of Socialist symbolism (hammers and sickles, red flowers) and a lot of Freemasons. A magazine article explained that many of those buried there had been deemed unworthy of a place in the main cemetery due to religious or political reasons.

The day had been kind - bright blue skies, warm sun, none of us got arrested for taking photos, but finally it started to get chilly and we left the peace and quiet to head back towards town for a well-earned beer and then home.

My photos are HERE

Age of consent

2010-01-29T12:07:00.004Z

While trawling the net this morning for something completely unrelated, I stumbled across this:

http://www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm?12

Now I know that all parts of the world have different views on morality and acceptable behaviour etc, but some of this is just shocking, given that it's the 21st century and this is supposed to be a civilised world.

Have we really learnt nothing over the years about the unacceptability of certain types of discrimination? Many of these countries practice religions where tolerance is meant to be one of the main tenets. Yeah, right! Not that I believe that religion should come into this particular equation at all.

I'm all for negating the risk of the corruption of minors, but we have brains and common sense and by a certain age (no, I'm not giving my opinion on what that age should be), surely it should be taken as read that we know our own minds, preferences, proclivities and can be trusted to do what we feel is right and natural.

I can't decide what was more surprising:

- the number of countries in which same-sex relations are still completely illegal
- the number where a couple has to be married before having sex
- the places where F/F sex is fine, but not M/M

Though I think first place in the surprise competition (though maybe it shouldn't!) has to go to the age of consent in Vatican City. Really - well done there, guys! Let people get together at a really young age, but whatever you do, don't let them use contraception!

OK, back to what I was meant to be doing before I get started on the global overpopulation problem.....

Neglected blog, I know!

2010-01-28T21:09:00.005Z

OK, I haven't updated since New Year's Day. Bad Emma!

What can I say? It's been an up and down month. I was ill for the first 6 days of it, recovered just in time to lose a brand new student before she'd even started, and then go back to classes.

Feeling distinctly sorry for myself, I jumped at the chance of a very short-notice Vaughan Town cos they were desperate for Anglos. I can't quite understand the logic of them booking so many Spaniards onto a program if they're then going to have start frantically looking for Anglos at 3 days notice. The MC and PD had to be Anglos as well as doing their actual jobs, which is ridiculous. Still, I had the usual great time, with lovely people even if I did give up a week's teaching (or rather the money) to do it.

Then I went straight back to teaching again and it's been a busy week with planning, and fitting some extra lessons in to cover the ones I missed. One potential job opportunity passed on by a good mate in France unfortunately came to nothing in the end, but there are a couple of other irons in the fire at the moment. Fingers crossed.

Cathy and I are in the middle of a murder mystery for the beginning of March so that's keeping me busy too. Lots of plotting and silliness.

It appears to have stopped raining/snowing permanently so I'm determined to get out and get some exercise too. I've turned into a flat-bound blob recently!! Living on toast, cheesy pooofs and red wine isn't exactly a healthy lifestyle.

Being completely broke has gone, if I'm honest, from being a bit of an amusing novelty, to being downright annoying. I can't afford to go out and be sociable or buy anything but the absolute basics. I just waited nearly a week before I could get a new battery for my watch, for crying out loud! One of my flatmates is moving out in a couple of weeks, so the bills/internet costs at the flat will go up accordingly, and it looks like I might be looking for a new occupant for my flat (and more importantly, a new cat-sitter) in Brighton sooner than I expected.

Still, I keep reminding myself that this was meant to be an adventure and so far it is. Just not quite how I envisaged it!

I'm at least consoled by the fact that everyone has been VERY supportive over the last 10 months, and they continue to be so. I'm lucky to have lovely people in my life at the moment!

OK, soppiness over. Back to the third person singular and how to murder a male stripper.

Hasta luego.....

New Year in Madrid

2010-01-01T16:24:00.003Z

And so the last day of 2009 rolled on, as last days of a year are wont to do.

Most of the day passed with lots of global online chatting, listening to fireworks being set off pointlessly in broad daylight, and much staring from the balcony at the sheets of torrential rain which obscured the other side of the road, and didn't bode well for a terribly welcoming midnight in Sol.

However, the skies were kind and by the time I left to go to Richi's place for his party (sorry, NOT party, I keep forgetting - little gathering), it was dry. I travelled on a near-deserted Metro down to Atocha where I met Debbie who was still in search of cava for later. Thanks to the convenient opening hours of the Chinos, she was soon to be cavaed up!

And off to Richi's we went. The little gathering was in full swing with a flat full of people I'd never met, but who all turned out to be lovely, friendly and a lot of fun. Of course, I should have realised that - they're Richi's friends, after all! Several hours of chat, drinking and nibbles followed. My beer, which I'd carted halfway across Madrid, didn't even get a look in due to the lethal Cosmopolitans he insisted on plying us all with all evening. Really, Richi? You're absolutely sure you had the recipe right? 2 parts vodka, 1 part Cointreau and a splash of cranberry juice? Not that I'm complaining but I hadn't planned to be quite so smashed by 9.30pm!

11pm arrived and we donned coats, hats, scarves, gloves, grabbed cava, plastic cups and way too many grapes and headed for Sol. The closer we got, the busier the streets became until we finally hit what appeared to be an impassable logjam, just in sight of the square. Undaunted, we formed a human chain and dragged eachother through the crowds, only to find that once we actually made it to Sol, there was plenty of room. Weird. Perfect timing - we arrived at 11.45 and formed a terribly English circle (a la 1980s dancing but without the obligatory handbag in the middle), and set about dishing out the cava and the grapes. Hands duly filled with the requisite comestibles, we waited for the hands of the clock to click over to midnight. I hadn't realised that there aren't actually any chiming bells to time the grape-eating to, so once the big hand had hit 12 we were reduced to simply stuffing 12 grapes into our mouths and washing them down as quickly as possible with the cava. I think Richi and I tied for first place on getting all 12 down! Wish I'd gone for the seedless variety though!

Something approaching a firework display ensued - London and Sydney have nothing to worry about though! There was a lot of clinking of glasses (or whatever noise it is that plastic glasses make), wishing of Feliz Ano Nuevo to all and sundry and more photo taking. I've never been to Trafalgar Square for New Year but I have a feeling that Sol was a damn sight friendlier, with complete strangers hugging and "Salud"-ing all over the place.

Debbie decided she needed someone to kiss, and I was tasked with finding a suitable participant. The first victim was a guy in a group next to us, who was only too happy to be dragged over and worked his way round us all. Victim number 2 I don't really remember, mainly because number 3 was my piéce de resistance! See the final photo to see what I'm talking about! Yum.

So 2009 was officially over, and I'd survived the best part of 9 months in Madrid. And what a 9 months they've been! Fingers crossed, there'll be many more.

So Happy New Year, everyone, and here's to you all getting everything you hope for in 2010.

Here are my photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/emsr2d2/NewYear2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCMv4-djwkozVgwE&feat=directlink

A different Christmas

2009-12-26T10:37:00.004Z

This Christmas Day I did something I'd been meaning to do for years, but various things had always got in the way - usually the simple pressure to spend the day with one relative or another.

But 2009 was my year for changing things so I started making enquiries in October into volunteering opportunities in Brighton for Xmas Day. Information was few and far between, but via the Brighton Volunteer Centre I got in contact with Brighthelm Community Centre. They run a community Christmas on 25th and 26th every year and needed around 20 volunteers each day. So I got in touch with the organiser and was welcomed as a volunteer, then I met up with them on the 22nd for a little planning meeting. They were a diverse bunch, which I guess was only to be expected. I didn't really learn much about what to expect on the day, other than the fact that the guy who normally does the entertainment had unfortunately died a few weeks ago, so they were asking all the volunteers to pitch in and help out. Eek.

So 9am Christmas morning found me walking the half hour to the centre, through a deserted Brighton, wearing my most cheerful clothes, Xmas baubles in my ears and carrying my guitar.

When I arrived, the kitchen was a hive of activity with 5 volunteers having got there early to attack 25lbs of sprouts, hundreds of potatoes and the usual trimmings. There was a huge nut roast parcel waiting to be cooked, 3 gigantic turkeys, 2 huge hams, bread sauce, cheese sauce and gravy, someone making custard from scratch, and a gigantic Christmas cake.

The kitchen appeared to be under control so I set to work helping to lay the tables and working on teas and coffees. Which turned out to be my job for most of the day, by default. People started to arrive around 10.30, and having walked there in the freezing cold, were in need of a hot drink. And of course some of them were homeless so had actually spent all night outside.

At 11am there was a mini service because the community centre is also a church - however, most of the guests were sitting in the eating area and chatting and the volunteers were busy, so most of us just vaguely hummed along with the carols!

At 12 we started to serve up hot soup from a tureen the size of a small house. The soup turned out to be WAY too popular and it ran out before everyone had had a cup. Cue frantic searching through the cupboards where we finally tracked down 5 boxes of tomato cup-a-soup and everyone was happy.

At 1, it was time for the mammoth task of dishing up a full Xmas dinner to the 65-odd guests. Each volunteer chose a table to serve and went backwards and forwards between the table and the hatch, collecting steaming hot plates of turkey, roasties, mash, sprouts, carrots, bread sauce, cranberry sauce and gravy. Once everyone else was served, we got to eat too! The veggie nut roast was lovely and as not quite as many veggies had turned up as expected, I got 2 helpings. With extra sprouts! The guests were all offered seconds too, and most accepted though strangely enough, the second time around most of them said they'd have everything except the sprouts! Can't understand it.

Before dessert, it was time to dole out the presents, all of which had been donated to the group over the preceding weeks and wrapped by the organiser and her family. Unfortunately, having carefully originally separated the presents out into male, female and unisex, the parcels had all got mixed up on the way to the centre so it was a case of waiting until everyone had opened their present, and then swapping if they wanted to. Christmas pudding and custard followed, though there was way too much. Then more tea and coffee! I think over the course of the day, I made about 30 large pots of tea, 15 pots of fresh coffee and we cleared about 25 pints of milk.

The group started to thin out after that, but probably half of them stayed on for "entertainment"! Several of the older guys took their turn on the mike, with rousing choruses of What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor, My Way, Side by Side, Pack up your Troubles etc, complete with a can-can dancing pensioner and much use of a tambourine. A couple of people read poems. The minister and his family had made a somewhat bizarre home video version of the nativity story, which was shown on a big screen. I didn't escape, so my guitar and I made it to the front for just one song, thankfully. An attempt was made to feed the Queen's speech through onto the big screen via the net but it was not to be! Oh dear. What a shame. Never mind. I've made it this many years without ever having seen the damn thing, don't see why I should start now!

Over the course of the day, I'd chatted to a good number of both volunteers and guests. I met Annie, a volunteer who's a jazz singer and medium; Suzanna who has the smiliest face I've ever seen; Michael, a guest (who'd come to the centre via a mental health charity) who knew everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) there is to know about the life, works and death of Bruce Lee and was determined to make sure that everyone else knew it all by the end of the day too. The 50 out of focus photos of various BL-related places in Hong Kong were a bit of a trial, to be honest! I talked to a lovely guy who for reasons I didn't get to the bottom of, is currently living at a homeless hostel where he can enter at midnight but has to be out by 6am, so for 18 hours a day he's on the streets. If he hadn't told me that, I'd never have known. He was eloquent, intelligent, reasonably nicely turned out (!) Yet he came back for food and drinks over and over, pointing out that he hadn't eaten since the 23rd so was stocking up. He needed to phone the hostel to make sure he could get a place that night, but didn't have 20p for the phone either, so he borrowed my mobile then constantly thanked me and apologised for the next hour! I had random, brief and bizarre conversations with many people, but they all had one thing in common - if it weren't for the community Christmas, they would either be alone at home, or simply have absolutely nowhere to go. It was an eye-opener, made me feel very privileged but also made me realise even more what an obscenely over-commercial, expensive and wasteful time Christmas is for most of us.

I finally made it home at about 5.30, tired and desperately in need of a drink (no alcohol allowed during the day!) but very, very glad I'd done it. And I'll do it again. I can recommend it!

Universal balance

2009-12-23T13:50:00.002Z

On my return from my evening at Cathy's I found 2 messages waiting for me, both of which reduced me to tears - both from really good friends. One simply very lovely and heartfelt and the other to say that her mum had passed away the day before. Life is regularly tinged with sadness, but at this time of year it's always worse. So to all the people I know who are having a really hard time at the moment - you know who you are - I'm thinking of you lots.

The silliness begins...

2009-12-23T13:13:00.004Z

Having been the only person I know to have actually made it back to their "home" country without hideous delays, here I am! In my flat (weird), with the cat (cute) and preparing for 9 days of Christmas socialising.

My flight from Barajas was only an hour late so I was back here just after midnight on Sunday night, or rather Monday morning. Having unpacked my very tiny amount of clothing, I set to work behaving exactly like I do in Madrid - ie I got a glass of red wine and spent til 3am on the internet!

On Monday, I stocked up with the necessities from my much-missed local greengrocer/deli, had an unexpected afternoon tea with Cathy and looked forward to an evening catching up with my ex over pizza and beer. But it was not to be. The vagaries of the British public transport system, combined with the half an inch of snow and a bit of ice, meant that he couldn't make it down to Brighton. Ah well.

Things fell into place more on Tuesday. I went to a meeting with the other volunteers that I'll be spending Christmas Day with (weird bunch, but I guess that's only to be expected!) then it was off to Cathy's for an evening of Christmas silliness! She'd laid on a really good spread, practically all homemade, and must have been slaving over the proverbial hot stove pretty much all day. There was homemade houmous, carrot and beetroot cakes, chickpea flour fairy cakes, steaming hot potato croquettes, fried cheese balls, spring rolls, crisps, cranberry Bellinis and most importantly, mulled wine and mince pies. Yum.

She'd gone all out on the games front too. A frustrating, and potentially argument-inducing "Christmas Number 1 in which year?" game which caused much scratching of heads and a lot of nostalgia, Family Fortunes and a quiz. Crackers, da-dos, stickers, paper hats and exploding streamers. And the obligatory Christmas CD playing in the background. All the requirements for a lovely, festive evening with friends.

It was really good to see everyone, and I haven't laughed so much in a while! Despite my pauper status having caused me to knock any chance of present buying on the head, I should know my friends better, and I came away with 3 bags of pressies. Naughty people, but THANK YOU! I'll have some serious catching up to do if I ever have any money!

I got home very full of food, and possibly slightly too much alcohol (so what's new?), ready to crash and prepare for the next round!

So thanks Cathy, Sid, Ed, Sarah, Carol, Anne, Andrea (and 2 unnamed friends!) for a fun evening!

The photos are here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/emsr2d2/Christmas2009AtCathyS?authkey=Gv1sRgCIDzm5mVv9zaDg&feat=directlink

Now if I could just get Stop the Cavalry out of my head.....

Glorious Gredos

2009-12-19T22:26:00.003Z

So another week at Vaughan Town came, and sadly went! The last program of 2009 was one I'm really glad I was part of. It was my 4th time at Gredos, but my first in the winter. Despite the potential for heavy snow, which would have kept us indoors a lot of the time, we were instead treated to (mostly) blue skies, sun and freezing temperatures. One night of light rain combined with a massive drop in temperature did leave the pathways between one of the buildings a lot of us were sleeping in, and the main hotel, like a skating rink. Several people fell victim to the slippery conditions and I think we were lucky not to have serious injuries.

As usual, there was a fascinating combination of people and personalities in the group. The Anglos were from far and wide, with a big range of ages and some hidden (and not so hidden) talents. The Spaniards were, as ever, the most delightful group of people you could hope to meet. Without exception they were charming, interesting, enthusiastic, friendly, exuberant and eager to make the most of their week in a little English enclave.

I have to mention Vicente, the most inspiring septugenarian (nearly octogenarian) - not only was he the most disgracefully fit person (for his age) thanks to a regime of tennis 6 days a week, running 3 times a week, regular pilates and who knows what else, but he was one of the most dignified, proper "gentlemen" I have met. Anyone who knows me, knows that I find a lot of the old school gentlemanly behaviour somewhat sexist, but I swear that there was nothing Vicente could have done that could ever offend anyone. He is interesting, eloquent, funny and frankly, mad as a brush! He took up skydiving at, I believe, the age of 72 having lied about his age to get his first jump! By the end of the week, everyone wanted to take him home as an adopted grandfather. Not least for his ability to eat 3 if not 4 helpings of dessert at every meal!

We had a great selection of sketches, presentations, readings, musical interludes and everyone joined in. Those of you that have done a program will know that the hard work that has to be put in by Anglos and Spaniards during the day is made even more worthwhile by the hour of entertainment at the end of each day.

As always, the Spaniards' level of English, comprehension at least, rocketed up over the course of the week, which is good since that's the point of them being there. I have huge admiration for the sheer guts of them for even being there in the first place - I know I wouldn't be brave enough to go and do the same thing in a foreign language.

Even the veggie food had improved since the last time I was there - though the vast quantities of red wine I managed to drink at every meal may have skewed my opinion just a little. Really, I don't know where it goes - it must evaporate while I'm enjoying yet another bread roll drenched in olive oil and chatting away nineteen to the dozen about a bizarre selection of subjects.

As always, I'm having a huge comedown now I'm back to reality - the price you pay for having such a good time, I guess.

The only disheartening thing about the week was the fact that there are some weird goings-on with the company at the moment - they appear not only to have lost focus and interest somewhat but, for a company that is all about communication, they are failing to keep potential participants up-to-date on future opportunities. The Spanish version of their website clearly shows the whole of the 2010 schedule and details a change of venue for next year. The English version however, which would be where any interested Anglos would be looking, is sadly lacking, showing only 5 programs for next year and still talking about a venue they won't even be using. The machinations may well result in one of the loveliest and most talented people I know no longer having a job next year and frankly, if that's the case, they won't be seeing me back either. It seems to me that employee relations in a lot of companies these days have hit the back burner and those companies are going to be losing some of their best employees who simply feel abandoned.

OK, I'm off my soapbox! Nonetheless, it was a week filled with fun, laughter, chat, some tears and a great feeling of friendship that will hopefully last a long time. I'd still heartily recommend a program to anyone looking for an unusual but very rewarding experience, whether it be with Vaughan Town or Pueblo Ingles, the other company offering a pretty much identical program.

Back to real life then, I guess, but if you're interested in my photos of the week, they're here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/emsr2d2/GredosDec09?authkey=Gv1sRgCL_-2P3q_NFU&feat=directlink

Fun with Falling Furniture

2009-11-19T11:53:00.005Z

So the time has come to share with you my latest Spanish adventure. Let me begin by saying I hope no-one has to repeat it, because it really wasn't fun.

I will set the scene. My little Ikea, almost kids', bedroom here in Madrid has a single bed pushed up against one wall. Over it, standing almost 7 feet tall, is a piece of furniture which has 4 cupboards at the top. It stands on 2 legs, one at either end of my bed, and the legs are probably about a foot across, and maybe an inch and half wide. Since I arrived here, I haven't put much in them, because I am not 7 feet tall and therefore can't reach them easily.

On Sunday evening, I came home with a bagful of goodies from my friend Hannah, who is leaving Madrid and had donated some things to me (thank you, Hannah!). Not being exactly brimming over with spare space, I decided to put just a couple of them in the cupboard over my bed. I can just about reach the cupboard handles so I reached up and opened the end cupboard.

Or at least that's what I tried to do. All I remember is that as I glanced up towards the cupboard to decide what to put in there, I was confused as to why the entire unit appeared to be getting bigger and closer to me. Cue something of a strangled scream as I realised that the whole thing was falling - on top of me. I at least had the presence of mind (I think) to get to the floor as fast as I could, which I'm pretty sure is the only thing that stopped it actually crashing into my head.

A couple of seconds later, and having heard the scream and the crash, my flatmate Kiran appeared in the doorway with a horrified look on her face, to find me in a heap on the floor, surrounded by the contents of the cupboards, most of the things from my table, with the massive unit leaning at a 45-degree angle across the room. Fortunately, my room isn't all that wide and the opposite wall had stopped the unit in its tracks, otherwise it would have continued its downward journey unimpeded and landed on me anyway.

I rather quickly noticed that the opposite wall wasn't the only thing that the unit had ended up crashing into. One of the cupboard door corners was wedged quite firmly straight into the keyboard of my laptop, like a dagger sticking out of a dead body.

In this technological age, as you can imagine, I was actually more concerned about the laptop than about whether or not I was still in one piece. Given the disastrous history of that laptop, I wasn't honestly surprised that it had suffered yet another attempt on its life.

With the help of most of the family in the next flat, I was extricated from underneath the offending piece of furniture, it was pushed upright again and after a lot of pushing, shoving, moving of other furniture, and the ingenuity of Jorge from next door, it stood up without any assistance, albeit still a little wobbly (as was I, by that point).

That's the exciting bits of the story pretty much over with, you'll be pleased to know.

The rest of that evening and most of the next day were taken up with phone calls between me and the landlady, her husband, the landlady and her insurance company and the computer repair centre. Rather surprisingly, we discovered that this flat is not covered for accidental damage to anything by anything. The contents are covered solely for damage due to flood, fire or theft. Now to me, that was a shock. I would have assumed that in order to rent out a flat privately an owner would be obliged to arrange comprehensive insurance cover, particularly in case something belonging to the owner in a furnished flat, somehow damages something belonging to a tenant, or even actually injures a tenant. I'm still staggered to find that it appears not to be the case. Given the hoops that landlords in the UK have to jump through in order to be allowed to rent out a property (electrical inspections, smoke alarm installation, fire extinguishers etc etc), it seems nigh on irresponsible that here someone can pretty much rent out their house/flat to private tenants without any formalities whatsoever to safeguard the health or safety of the tenants.

The laptop is now at the repair centre locally awaiting a decision on its fate (inexplicably, it did actually work after the incident, but 6 of the keys and the space bar were pretty much unuseable) - the landlady is paying for the inspection and the repair if that's possible and if it's not, she is paying for a replacement computer.

The piece of furniture has now been screwed to the wall behind it, which frankly, should have been done when it was installed - both the landlady and her husband have said precisely that. Which does beg the question "Well, if it SHOULD have been screwed to the wall, why wasn't it?" I'm guessing that will be an eternally unanswered question.

The room is finally sorted and things are back where they should be.

The only extra surprise has been the quite startling number of bruises that have appeared on me over the course of the week. I went from thinking I had come away entirely unscathed, to now looking as if I was beaten up. One example is in the photo at the top of the page. The rest of the bruises are on my back, my thighs and (be very grateful for the lack of photographs) my buttocks! I also ache all across my neck, shoulders, back and arms, I think from lifting the damn thing off me and then pushing it back to an upright position. It's a lot heavier than I had ever realised!

November really hasn't been my month all in all!

Thankless task

2009-10-29T12:29:00.004Z

Out on my balcony a minute ago, I witnessed one of the most pointless things I've seen in a long time. Anyone who has been to my flat, will have seen the dinky little house across the road, the single-storey abode which appears to house a family of about 5 people, a giant TV, and wouldn't look out of place in a shanty town.

The roadworks that have been going on for months now have all but consumed this tiny dwelling, and I can only imagine what it's like to live in there, with pneumatic drills and cement mixers just inches from the doors and windows. Given the stupendous amount of dust that the works create, which reach my 4th floor balcony and cover everything in a film of brick and concrete dust, the effects on that house must be incredible. Right at the moment, they are literally working right outside the front door, and when I saw the little old lady who lives there just now, valiantly trying to sweep her front doorstep, I could only feel sorry for her. I feel she needs her 5 minutes of fame, so here she is:

Peace and quiet amongst the chaos

2009-10-29T11:42:00.004Z

I finally found myself a little haven of peace and quiet in my local area of roadwork chaos.

Just a 5 minute walk from my flat, is the local library (Biblioteca Pública Municipal Tetuán). I'd walked past it a few times without realising what it was - it doesn't exactly advertise itself well - you only find out what it is after you go through the main doors from the street!

In fact, it's like 2 libraries. Downstairs is obviously the original - it's kind of dark, dusty, low-ceilinged but is, at least, full of actual books! It reminds me of the one I belonged to when I was a kid, wandering between the shelves, staring up at the ones I couldn't reach, picking up anything and everything and reading the blurb, only to carefully slide it back where it belonged. There's a tiny selection of English books, only 3 shelves, and they're a real mishmash of stuff. Half of it belongs on an English 'O' Level syllabus (do I have any readers who wish I'd said GCSE? I don't think so!) - Shakespeare, Dickens, the war poets - frankly not things I generally want to read in my free time. And the rest are a random concoction of thrillers, romance, slightly off-the-wall strangeness, translations of some Spanish books, things by no-one you've ever heard of. My reading is certainly going to be varied in the next few months, but I don't think it's going to take me long to exhaust the supply. Being the serial filer that I am, if I find something in the wrong place, I can't resist putting it where it's meant to be!

Book of choice at the moment? Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike. It's a kind of prequel to Hamlet (my favourite Shakespeare play) - it's pretty good so far!

The second floor is clearly very new. Upstairs you have magazines, CDs, DVDs, 6 computers with 45 mins free net access (inexplicably unavailable in the mornings of 28, 29 and 30 of every month) and a quiet reading area. Through from that is the study room - my current haunt for peace and quiet if I'm trying to study Spanish or lesson plan, or just scribble my thoughts.

Peace and quiet might actually be an understatement. Deathly hush is closer to the truth! Even full, which means probably nearly 60 people in there, it's pretty much silent. There's a slight hum from the overhead lights and from the individual lights on each 6-person desk but otherwise, there is just the occasional noise from people simply being alive! Papers being moved around, the opening and closing of zips on bags and pencil cases, water bottles being sipped from, but not much else. Last time I was in there, I hadn't eaten all day. Suddenly, my stomach rumbled - about 10 people looked over at me. It had sounded like the beginnings of a small earthquake in the silence. Chastened, I lasted another 10 minutes then slipped out to find some food. That's a mistake I won't make again. The users are, as you can imagine, mostly students surrounded by pages and pages of notes, trying to write dissertations but there's a good few other people studying languages, or perhaps revising for the very difficult Civil Service exams. If I'm lacking in inspiration, I tend to just people watch, imagining what they're all doing there.

Now that there are 3 of us living in the flat, and I have lots of lesson prep to do, it has become my little hideaway where I actually get something done. Any complaints? The chairs are bit uncomfortable in the study room, and I wish it was open at weekends. But Monday to Friday, 8.30am til 9pm isn't bad. I just wish I knew why they feel the need to employ a security guard!!

If you're really thrilled by the idea, here's their website: http://tinyurl.com/yzvh8ru . Don't get too excited!

Conde Hermanos

2009-10-10T22:41:00.003+01:00

Having treated myself to a guitar a few weeks ago, I finally made it down to the shop that the guy I bought it from had recommended.

It was an experience. It was a proper guitar shop! Dark, dusty and filled with half-built guitars that the owner makes himself. He's about 150 years old and, needless to say, speaks no English. In I marched, completely unprepared, ready to get a case, some new strings and theoretically to ask him to replace one of the tuning heads at some point.

After much gesticulating, the case was easy enough though it took many repetitions of "menos cara" til I got the cheapest one he sold. The strings should have been easier but turned out to be more difficult. Had I spotted the big display of them under the dusty counter I could have pointed, but the charades were much more fun. The tuning head I just couldn't fathom at all. He got what the item was that I was on about, but trying to explain that I wanted to take the guitar in and get him to fit it, failed dismally. He got a huge box of tuning heads out and I just bought one to get it over with! By this point, his equally ancient wife/assistant had come out from the back room (where presumably they hide the bodies) to "help". Debbie was finding the whole thing very entertaining.

In all the excitement I completely forgot to buy a capo, so a few days later, I had to go back in there on my own. As soon as I walked through the door, he said "Ah, hola, .........." something else very fast in Spanish! Then he shouted to his wife "That English girl's here again". I don't know if he just assumed I wouldn't understand cos my Spanish had been so appalling the first time. Still, I got a capo and a very big smile out of both of them!

It was just as well I didn't ask to give one of his handmade guitars a try, cos I'm sure I would have had to buy it!

Now I just need my huge stack of music sent over from the UK and I'm sorted.

Damn dawn delights

2009-10-08T21:39:00.004+01:00

Sunrise from the window of the Ministry of the Environment, before my class!

In the words of The Monkees, and if I had my way, "the six o'clock alarm would never ring".

On the 21st of September 2009, I "officially" became employed again. Yes, I'd had private students before the summer, but now I had a real job. With a contract (though I've not actually seen it yet!), and proper pay - hurrah - minus tax - boo!

The day before my first class, I did the sensible thing and made a reccy out to the Ministry of the Environment, to time the journey and make sure I could find it. Easy enough. 5 stops on the Metro and a 7 minute walk down one straight road! Even I can do that. Having found it, I decided to take a stroll back a different way and to a different Metro station. The area between Nuevos Ministerios, Rios Rosas and Cuatro Caminos is really nice. If I were to move, I'd quite like to go there. During my wander I found a cool looking wine shop, the very posh Scuela Italian de Madrid, a Pilates centre, a million pastelerias with their tempting window displays, a great little travel bookshop, a couple of tempting restaurants, the beautiful Antigua Hospedal de Maudes (now some kind of council building) and my absolute favourite - a kitchen furniture/equipment shop called, in a particularly un-PC fashion "ForLady"!!!

Anyway, work! It's going pretty well, if I say so myself. My 2 students at the ministry are a director and a sub-director. The director is nice but scary. She's clearly something very, very high up and has an office that wouldn't look out of place in the White House. I'm meant to teach her every Monday and Wednesday morning at 8.15 but so far she's cancelled every Wednesday due to work commitments. I only get paid for a cancelled class if they cancel with less than 12 hours' notice - damn. The sub-director, however, is absolutely lovely. She's happy, bubbly, smiley, enthusiastic, does yoga and belly dancing and seems to find pretty much everything I say funny. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and taking that as a good thing!

As I said, the only down side is the early morning start. Alarm goes off at 6.30 and I'm out the door at 7.20. It's kind of weird being back in the normal working routine and going to the Metro station with all the other commuters! My Metro routine is to listen to my MP3 player all the way there, then pick up a free paper as I exit the station so that on the way back after class I can listen to more music, but read up on the news in Spanish. It's a hilarious free paper - it carries the important stories but mostly it's about Madrid and its suburbs. In that great way that those kind of local publications do, it has amusing stories about, for instance, a car being abandoned on a street corner in one of the suburbs. If that's the most exciting thing that happens there, well......!!

Getting into the Ministry has at least got easier and faster. On my first day, the security desk didn't have the requisite authorisation email about me and they wouldn't let me in! A couple of frantic phone calls to the school didn't help as it was out of hours so I just got the machine. Finally, I went back to the security desk and asked if I could at least phone my student on the internal phone to explain that I was there, I had actually turned up and that I would see her at the next lesson. The security guy rang her office, and 2 minutes later, I was in! I guess he rang the student himself and if she's as important as she seems, she probably just said "Let my teacher in!"

So, there it is. I'm working. I even got my first pay cheque on the 1st of October. It's all gone, of course!!!

Debbie's birthday decadence

2009-10-08T21:10:00.003+01:00

September 27th not only saw the end of the reunion, but Debbie's birthday! Yay!

A small affair, due to various people being out of town - Debbie, Moira and I celebrated together. We met at Cafe Delic in Plaza de Paja, a plaza that I discovered was a total nightmare to actually find! Despite looking very easy on a map, I walked round and round (round what turned out to be the outside walls of the square!) for about half an hour, trying to find the way in. Finally, with the help of Moira on her mobile and her map which actually had street names marked (always helpful) I found them.

They were just reaching the end of a mojito each (which when the bill came and they turned out to be €9 each, I was glad I'd missed!). Being a birthday, cava was the order of the day. The waiter initially looked a little dubious as to whether they had any or not, but then came back with 3 very cute, individual bottles (much more reasonable at €3 each), 2 proper champagne flutes and a short, fat tumbler (no, not the acrobatic kind from the circus!). He apologised for not having 3 champagne glasses! As if that mattered. We were tempted to decadently swig it out of the bottle but propriety won out in the end.

Despite the desire for another cava, we decided to resist and walked all of 10 metres to Viva La Vida, a vegetarian food-sold-by-weight buffet restaurant we'd heard so much about but never been in. WOW! What a revelation! Like veggie heaven. First, the place itself is beautiful - all hippy and mad decor. But the food is just amazing. There must have been around 30 different dishes to choose from and that was just the savoury stuff. There were various croquetas, polenta cakes, pastas, fresh veg, salads, roasted vegetables, falafels, you name it, it was there. Loads of sauces, and pots of toppings (sesame seeds, pine kernels etc). Basically, you choose a size of plate, load up whatever you want and they weigh it. It's €2.10 per 100g. Now admittedly 100g isn't very much depending on the density of the food on your plate, but we threw caution to the wind! My plate cost €18 which is probably more than I'd spent on one plate of food since I got here. But to hell with it. It was absolutely delicious and it was more veggie food than I'd seen in 6 months. I may just move in there.

The desserts all looked good but I was so stuffed I could only manage a tiny little biscuit thing that cost me all of 67 centimos!

With that I took my leave of them, at a very civilised 10.30pm and headed home ready for my 6.30 am alarm call for the start of week 2 of teaching.

So - on here at least, happy birthday again Debbie, and no, I haven't forgotten I owe you a present. Forthcoming when the bank balance allows!

Raucous reunion

2009-10-08T20:32:00.005+01:00

The weekend of 25-27 September saw the long-awaited reunion of at least half of the group from the Vaughan Town I did at the beginning of August.

Marta, Nacho and I had become the unofficial organisers of the whole thing, so come the Friday morning, I found myself with a long piece of paper containing the names, mobile numbers, planned arrival times, accommodation details and who knows what else of the group. They were arriving by various methods and all through the day - apart from those of us who live in Madrid of course.

First to touch down was Roz who came into Barajas and then found her way to the lobby of Kim's hotel to wait. Then Kim arrived - we had a very girly, screamy reunion of our own as she came out through arrivals, and then headed off to her hotel. Or we would have, if she'd had any idea of what it was called or where it was! Now I realise I had become the weekend organiser, but I wasn't aware that that stretched to knowing where she was staying or how to get there. With the help of various people on the street and finally Roz, we made it.

We spent a lovely afternoon after she'd checked in, first at La Mallorquina (great tea/cake shop on Sol) with Pedro, who was moving to Dublin the next day. It was great that he could manage to catch up with just a few of us before going to his own leaving party in the evening.

Over the course of the evening we managed to track down/meet as planned with: Carlos (known to me as Luis, long story), Mercedes, Margarita, Maria V, Nacho, Marta, Ana Belen and Geraldine. Oh, and Marta's brother and Margarita's husband! We moved around the area near Plaza Mayor for most of the evening, from bar to bar, attempting to eat but in 2 places failing, once due to no room and once due to no food! The travelling finally caught up with people and we drifted off.

On the Saturday, people went out in disparate groups. Kim and I met Roz, Geraldine and Marta at Plaza Espana and we went for a lovely walk all around the Temple of Debod, Palacio Real, Jardines de Sabatini, had a late lunch, sat in the sun, talked a lot and generally chilled.

In the evening, 12 of us made it to dinner at Bardemcilla (owned by the Spanish actor, Javier Bardem). What a great place! Google it - even the online menu is funky! Margarita's husband came out again, and this time Maria Angeles came and brought her husband along too. Halfway through the evening, we had some bad news and some great news.

The bad news was that one of the Anglo participants on the program had been involved in a really bad car accident 5 weeks earlier in Ibiza, and had been in hospital there ever since, with a severely injured pelvis and will have to learn to walk again. Poor Ali. We've heard from her since and she's very positive, bless her!

The good news was - JOSÉ LUIS was coming - as a surprise guest! Without a shadow of a doubt, the loveliest, most gorgeous, most popular (with both sexes!) guy on the whole program, and I know everyone else would agree. He'd said he wouldn't be able to make it due to work commitments, but he drove all the way down from Santander, with a work colleague, to come to the restaurant! The reaction from our table when he walked in probably made people think some film star had just entered! It was really good to see him, and his work colleague (Haagen from Germany) was equally lovely and entertaining! After dinner, we all headed to Chueca and took over a huge corner outside a great bar, that was full to overflowing with drag queens and various same/mixed/indeterminate sex couples and groups. We talked and drank til the small hours but finally admitted defeat!

On Sunday, most of us met up again, this time in the lobby of José Luis' hotel. The majority went off in search of culture by way of the Prado and the Thyssen. Roz and I, being the uncultured heathens that we are, went to the Retiro and just sat in the sun and chatted for a couple of hours. Roz then headed off on the train to Alcala de Henares to visit other friends and I went to find the rest in the Thyssen gift shop (generally the only bit of an art gallery you can drag me into!)

We went for lunch nearby and then it was time for everyone to head their separate ways. The usual 30 minute goodbye scene took place on the street and it was over!

It had been a lovely weekend, full of laughter, chat, fun, silliness, seriousness (Margarita had a totally life-changing experience the week after our program and is clearly very, very happy - good for her!), and a reminder of what good friends we had made on the program.

Whatever other nonsense might be going on with those programs at the moment, the fact remains that they're great experiences that always result in new friends being made, some programs more concretely than others. This was just one of those very special programs.

So thank you to everyone who made the effort to come, thanks to those who couldn't come but sent messages, and to the rest - see you sometime in the future. There is talk of this becoming an annual event so we'll keep you all posted!

Lazy, lazy, lazy blogger

2009-10-08T20:29:00.003+01:00

I know, I know, I've been really bad and not blogged for ages. I could come up with various excuses but I won't.

So get your reading heads on - it's a quiet night here in the flat and I'm recovering from last night, so what the hell. Several blogs to be blitzed.

>>>>>>>>>>> TBC!

Blognotes Inc.

2009-09-25T07:56:00.002+01:00

I was flicking through the little notebook I carry everywhere with me and found loads of little entries marked "For Blog". None of which have been. So here is a somewhat random selection of stuff, some of it from right back when I arrived! And exactly how I found them in my notes:

- El Corte Inglés - important to have accent on Inglés otherwise it means a groin wax!
- Guy on Metro asking for money by thrusting a note in your face. Can't speak at all or just can't speak Spanish?
- César - at Quiet Man - chat about paganism. Emailed me. Oops, who is he? Can't remember.
- C/de la Huertas - Veggie deli, Moroccan restaurant, Karma Indian, lots of stuff, v touristy, prob not cheap.
- Esto no sierve para nada - This is good for nothing!
- Spanish don't really do birthday cards!
- Little local veggie restaurant (Ceres) full of workmen at lunchtime. (Not sure if I thought this was a good or bad thing!)
- Nacho's "other" friend = Jaime
- Why can't I buy just one potato?
- Terramoto = earthquake. Maremoto = seaquake. What the hell is a seaquake?
- Keep being asked question/directions especially at bus stops. Do I really look Spanish?
- Why don't Spaniards seem to sweat or smell in this heat?!
- There are almost as many travel agencies as hairdressers.
- Ferreterias - key cutting places. Millions of them. Do the Spanish lose their keys a lot?
- In 39 degrees, I suddenly understand the need for shutters on all windows and doors.
- Ugly Naked Guy on balcony opposite. Stares a lot. Maybe we should flash him!
- Guy in the little convenience store across the road knows what I want the minute I walk in. Predictable?
- That's 2 entire buildings near me they've knocked down now in 3 months.
- Great city. Apart from the dog poo.
- I should really have found a job by now!

Not scintillating, I realise but they were starting to annoy me every time I flicked through my notes. So now it's done. Blogged. As planned. Well, not quite as planned. I'll shut up now.

I'll just walk in the road, then!

2009-09-25T00:24:00.003+01:00

Just recently, the roadworks etc right outside the flat have been looking like coming to an end. October, they promised us. I'm not convinced but at least it's improving!

However, I now see that they've just moved.

Calle del Capitan Blanco Argibay, the fairly main road near me is becoming impassable. First they dug up the pavement on one side, completely, so everyone had to use the other pavement.
Now, rather spectacularly, not only have they dug up some of the useable side, but along the part they haven't dug up, they've just put up scaffolding. There is a whole stretch of the road with nowhere for pedestrians at all.

So we're taking our lives in our hands and walking in the fairly narrow road, full of taxis with their horns blaring, psychos on scooters who never seem to look where they're going, and buses that are almost the same width as the road.

Frankly, if I keep making it to and from the Metro station in one piece, it'll be a miracle.

Louise's moving day!

2009-09-23T15:27:00.003+01:00

OK, so I should be lesson planning but I can't get Word to open (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) so it's time to catch up on blogging.

Last weekend saw Louise, one of my Australian friends here, moving out of her little house. The very house that I lived in for a month when I first arrived. She's going back to Australia in a month and for the next 4 weeks, will be variously in Madrid, Santander and Mallorca. So it was time to quit the house.

For days, if not weeks, beforehand, she'd been talking about packing, and the move, and storing stuff elsewhere. I'd already said that she could leave a couple of cases at my place until she leaves.

The day of the move came around and when I texted her at 12 to see how it was going, what came back was "I'm up to my neck in it here. I need a calming influence. Please come." Now, I'm pretty sure I've never been called a calming influence before, but there's a first time for everything so off I trotted, having called in reinforcements in the shape of Debbie.

When I arrived, I could see what she meant! The landlady was coming for the keys at 6pm and the place looked like a bomb had hit it. She'd made a good start but really, 2 years' worth of accumulated stuff is an awful lot when you have it all piled in a tiny room. Wrongly, I assumed upstairs was finished. Not a bit of it. Not least, one of the wardrobes was locked and stuck that way. Various attempts were made by both of us to open it to rescue her work suits but it resisted any and all attempts, nice or otherwise. Still, once I was there, we cracked on with the rest and slowly but surely, it all came together. Or at least, it all came downstairs. Debbie arrived soon after and lo and behold, a bit of Reiki and positive thinking (not to mention a screwdriver and some now missing wood from the lock) resulted in the wardrobe popping open and releasing its contents!

Downstairs, the main focus of attention was the huge wooden cupboard/press/thing! The drawer at the top contained, well, a bit of anything and everything, as drawers like that are wont to do. The main part of the cupboard contained 2 years' worth of teaching materials! So much paper! I believe there may have been an entire Brazilian rainforest in there. Not any more. Now it's mostly in the recycling bin nearby. Debbie and I even found it quite therapeutic taking regular trips to the recycling places, and the bins, so I imagine it was either more so, or very painful, for Louise!!!

Finally, everything was packed up. There were 4 cases, innumerable bags and boxes plus of course the odds and sods that we kept stumbling over that she had forgotten about!

It took a total of 3 taxi journeys (2 to my place and 1 to Debbie's) to shift it all. The corner of my bedroom has now disappeared, and Debbie's flatmates are marvelling at the arrival of actual kitchen equipment (like forks, for instance!), and a working TV and DVD player. In true Louise style, she was determined to pass on/recycle as much of it as possible, so Debbie and I have her to thank for our large bags full of goodies! Debbie was unfeasibly excited by a pot of plastic animals - I'm hoping due to her imminent teaching of children!

It was a fun, but exhausting day, and has served to convince me that I must not accumulate stuff while I'm here if I can possibly help it! I don't want to be faced with that if/when I leave.

Louise, for a nomad, you're a terrible hoarder, love! And we will be very sad to see you go!

Strum strum strum

2009-09-20T20:14:00.002+01:00

Finally, after 6 months and 5 days here, I have a guitar! I didn't bring mine with me due to luggage constraints and the fact that I don't have 12 hands!

For the first few months I didn't miss it so much. I had plenty of other things to do, plus I went back to the UK twice and could play mine while I was there.

But my week at Pueblo Inglés was a reminder. Unlike Vaughan Town, there is a guitar at each venue with PI so I got to play. Not as much as I wish I had the nerve to, and probably should have. But in a couple of group activities, quietly in the bar area a couple of times, and then outside on the last morning. And I realised how much I missed it. Not so much the performing, because unlike singing, I haven't really played the guitar in public all that much. Just simply having it there, in reach, to play around with when I'm bored or can't sleep or feeling a bit down.

I have to admit to there being another incentive. A certain rather lovely guy who I met on the program (yes, the one mentioned in a previous blog) picked up the guitar when I put it down on the last day, said he really wanted to learn so I taught him a couple of chords. He's clearly musical so picked it up easily. On his return home, an infuriating 6000 miles away, he bought himself a (very nice) guitar! Which just made me want one more.

So I trawled through strange Spanish eBay, and a couple of second hand websites til I found some. I struck lucky with my 3rd attempt. A 2-year old, good condition, Spanish classical, nylon strung guitar could be mine for the princely sum of €40. All I had to do was meet a complete stranger at an out of the way Metro station. "Just look for the guy carrying the guitar", he said. Well, to be fair, that's exactly what I did.

I gave the guitar a test run, sitting on a bench in the street while I chatted to Mark, the seller, a Brit who's been living in Spain for 2 years variously as an English teacher, a guitarist and a music teacher. He plays amazing flamenco guitar and gave me a little demo, which made my embarrassing little test play even more mortifying.

We ended up chatting for over an hour about all sorts of stuff. That's what I like about this country. In the UK, if I'd bought a guitar of a guy on the internet, I'd have gone to his house, checked it was in one piece, handed over the money and that would have been that. People here have the time and the inclination to chat, are interested in your story and happy to tell their own. He has since sent me info about good guitar shops in Madrid, how not to get ripped off should I decide to take flamenco guitar lessons, and I've sent him info about the whale and dolphin watching company I holidayed with once, and about a garlic restaurant in San Francisco. Weird and wonderful.

So anyway, I'm the proud new owner of a lovely guitar! Now I should really practice more......

Moroccan munchies

2009-09-20T19:55:00.003+01:00

Thursday was Louise's birthday, so a group of us went to Arabia, a very lovely restaurant near Chueca.

I can certainly recommend the ambience of the place - it looked and felt like you'd want it to. Lots of cushions, low seating, carved wood, nice music.

Yet somehow it appears we pissed off the main waitress simply by arriving. Maybe it was the fact there were 7 of us for a booking of 10, but these things happen. Can't be helped.

Because we were a group, we had to have the set menu which basically means not ordering off the menu, you get what you're given. It's a starter, a main and a dessert per person, a glass of cava and a bottle of wine between every 3 people.

A couple of us had ordered a beer at the beginning but confusingly, this resulted in said stroppy waitress immediately starting to collect up all 7 wine glasses and try to take them away. We pointed out that wine came with our set menu and could we please have our glasses back. Cue them being banged back down on the table at each place setting!

7 very delicious all vegetarian starters arrived. No complaints. Divine. All of them.

Then 7 main courses. I'm assured they were lovely, but unfortunately only one was veggie so my main course consisted of 2 spoonfuls of couscous! Partly my fault for not checking, I admit.

7 little baklava style cakes, the little glass of cava and the most sugary mint tea in the world followed.

Really, the only downer was the behaviour of the one waitress who continuously glared at us, banged things on the table, snatched things away and was generally entirely undeserving of a tip. Which is why she didn't get one!

All in all, it was a great evening though, as the company was marvellous. I learnt all kinds of things about wine, courtesy of Rafa.

I'll be going back there again, but to order from the menu next time. And hopefully when the waitress is in a better mood! Or on a day off.

And the nominations are.....

2009-09-18T14:14:00.004+01:00

A couple of days ago, the lovely Dade (http://www.dades-life.blogspot.com/) nominated me for the above. Having been somewhat lax, and in my opinion, not terrible creative with mine, that was a very sweet surprise for which I thank him.

I have no idea, and nor did he, where the idea came from but that doesn't diminish it one bit.

In return, a recipient is asked to share with their readers "7 things that I love", not including people, and then nominate 4 brand new worthy recipients, simple.

So, 7 things I love

1) Playing the guitar. I've been doing it since I was 10, on and off, but in recent years probably more off than on. I've been getting itchy fingers though, in the last few months and having had a couple of opportunities to play, finally bought myself a second hand one here in Madrid!

2) Madrid - what can I say? For someone who doesn't like cities, very much, it's been a revelation. I love the people, the different barrios, the buildings, the sheer chaos of the streets and the tranquility of the Retiro.

3) Marmite. Say no more.

4) Music - after a dry few years in the 90s when there was nothing I liked and I stuck to listening to my 80s classics, I'm pleased to be back interested in music again. My mp3 player comes everywhere with me these days and there is rarely a silent moment.

5) Vaughan Town/Pueblo Inglés - yes, I did actually put them together. I'm aware this is sacrilege, but no matter who runs them, any immersion program in beautiful parts of Spain, where Spaniards can get the equivalent of 6 months' English in a week, is a good thing. They both lead to lasting friendships and experiences that will never be forgotten.

6) Water - OK, not the most scintillating choice. But still. It's what keeps us alive. I am never without a bottle of water, as certain people regularly point out, and possibly make fun of. I don't care. It's good stuff. It lets me eat and drink all the other rubbish, enjoy myself yet not always suffer the after effects!

7) Greece - After Madrid, it's my favourite place. OK, probably higher than Madrid! If I live anywhere else, it will probably be Greece, Crete hopefully. I love everything about it - the food, the lifestyle, the scenery, the beer (Mythos!), the people, the perfect little blue and white houses and churches you stumble across everywhere, the skinny cats, the beaches........ you get the picture.

And so, my 4 nominations for blogs are:

1) More Or Less : http://debralondon-moreorless.blogspot.com/ This is my friend Debbie's blog about her life in Madrid these days.

2) Crystal Jigsaw : http://crystaljigsaw.blogspot.com/ I've been following this for a while. The writer has a great turn of phrase and some of the most moving entries I've seen.

3) A View of Madrid : http://aviewofmadrid.blogspot.com/ - this is Richard's informative, amusing and well-written take on, well, Madrid. Obviously.

4) Rockin' On : http://rockinontheblog.blogspot.com/ - I stumbled across this a while ago, while searching the net about halloumi cheese. Don't ask. It's a random blog, but I just like it!

So there you go, my 7 and my 4. Thanks again Dade, for the nod!

Employment!

2009-09-16T11:46:00.004+01:00

I guess the bumming around, living off my ever-dwindling savings and generally lazing had to come to an end sometime. And the start of the academic year in Madrid seems like an obvious time for it to happen.

It's been good to be here, experiencing the city and life in a foreign country properly for the first time, but reality sets in eventually, especially when I look at my bank balance. Plus, I'm really not good at doing nothing. No, really, I'm not. Stop laughing.

So work it is. Two interviews in the last week and it appears they were both succesful. For one of them, I start teaching at 8am next Monday morning (ouch!) - in a government dept (not sure which one). The company has a 3 year contract to teach English on site to various government offices all over Madrid, so I'm going to be teaching civil servants. Ironic, really. At least we'll have something in common. My first 2 students are "directors" - not quite clear what that means here other than presumably they're reasonably high up and slightly older. The woman who interviewed me said she thought that would be a good reason to send me because I'm "slightly more mature". Ouch. Backhanded compliments all round.

I'm excited and terrified at the same time. I guess this is the crunch. I find out if I'm actually a good teacher. At least I start from the position of thinking I probably am! Having been on training teams etc for a lot of years, and generally feeling pretty pleased with myself when I have trained/taught someone something, I feel I've got a good base. But can I teach English? We'll see. All I can do is my best, which I will.

The kicker is going to be getting up in the mornings, for the first time in 6 months. It's not like I've been in bed til 12 every day (OK, some days) but I also haven't actually had to set an alarm really for ages. From now on, Monday to Thursday, I'm going to have to be up around 6.45. I just checked online and sunrise here is around 8. Still, at least in the dark I might not look as trashed as I'll actually be! So there will be some early nights coming up, which will be very unusual. My body clock seems to have very happily swung onto Spanish time, and bed at 3 or 4 in the morning is pretty normal. Still, again, years of shiftwork mean I'm fairly flexible and reckon I'll deal with it OK.

The other company hope to have some classes to offer me in October sometime.

2 of my 3 private students want me back too, which is good and they've moved their lessons so that I teach both of them 2 evenings a week at their flat for 2 hours. I'm waiting to hear from the 3rd one as to whether or not he wants to continue. His work is pretty demanding so I think it's the timing that will be the issue.

So there we have it. I'll have an income again. Not a king's ransom but a good start.

Now - the third conditional. What's that again?

Distractions

2009-09-12T09:49:00.003+01:00

So since the tearful goodbye at the airport on Thursday morning, I've been in serious need of distraction from heartbreak, not to mention sleep.

Thursday at least involved lots of sleep, eventually. Though first I finally sorted out my Social Security number and went for a chat and a drink in a tiny weird Ecuadorian coffee shop with Debbie.

Yesterday turned into a packed day. First I had what appears to have been a pretty successful job interview. Then I met the lovely Richi for a chat and a drink and dog-walking. Then, and try not to be too jealous, I hit Ikea with Richi and Julie! OK, so I don't actually have a property to furnish or anything but since when did that stop anyone wandering round the Marketplace? In very restrained, and broke, fashion I managed to spend just under €15. I'm now the proud owner of a small lime green stool/table to rest my drinks on in the living room, a strange silicon ice cube tray, vanilla ice cream tea lights and....there must be something else. Other than a big Ikea paper bag!

Amusingly, I spent the trip feeling like a kid in a big shop with their parents. Julie's 6ft 2 and Richi's about 6ft 4. Consequently, I felt like a midget trailing round between them!

Excitement of the visit came when Richi dumped an entire cup of coffee over me and, more importantly, my mobile phone! Cue panic, swearing and much crossing of fingers. Seems to have survived the experience though it now smells funny!

Then I had a fleeting meetup with the lovely Lizzie from my recent Pueblo experience. She was on her way to Dublin. I was lending her a pair of shoes. Random.

Knackered, I then headed home via Hannah's for a "quick drink". That was at 8.3o. I got home at 2.30 am. Time warp. Again.

So thanks to my friends for doing their very best to distract me and keep me sane for the last 48 hours. Has it really only been 48 hours since the airport? I guess so. Feels like a lifetime.

Unexpected surprise

2009-09-09T02:01:00.004+01:00

There is far too much I could say about the last 11 days but I can't begin to express it, nor would you all have the patience to read it, I dare say.

Suffice to say, my experience in Valdelavilla was unforgettable and I have taken away (and I hope, given) more than I could have expected. The immersion English programs, no matter which company they are with, are the most rewarding, intense and frankly, tiring, weeks in the world. Everyone should do one.

However, on this occasion, and more importantly, I met the most beautiful, inspiring and loving person of my entire life. What happens next is out of my hands but if anything I believe in cares to conspire in my favour, I will be eternally grateful.

As per the statue's head - "E 4 G" (private joke!)

Another trip coming up

2009-08-27T11:46:00.003+01:00

Having spent most of my week back here faffing about with job applications, fighting with the dust from the roadworks, and socialising, I decided to reward myself with another week away!

I was asked at very short notice if I wanted to go and do another English immersion program (mentioning no company names!) so I'm off Friday morning, til next Friday. It'll be interesting!

No idea what the net/mobile access is like, so if I disappear til next Friday night, you'll know why.

Hasta luego.

No joke

2009-08-25T14:14:00.003+01:00

Well, it appears I've finally found out what's wrong with my foot. The GP in the UK seems to have given me the absolute basics but it might have been nice if she'd told me the long-term news. Instead of which, I have to get my info from Google.

Using a phrase that the GP mentioned while I was there, I've done some research. And I can confidently say that I have PTS - Post Thrombotic Syndrome. Every single thing I found on the net today fits perfectly. Thanks to the multiple blood clots on my lungs that I had in 2003, which it seems came from an undiagnosed DVT in my calf, I am now joining the high percentage of post-DVT PTS sufferers. Ah, so many acronyms!

There are 2 annoying things : 1) it appears that my chances of getting it COULD have been lowered if I'd been given certain advice/treatment immediately after my 6 months on blood thinners following the pulmonary embolii and 2) there is now nothing that can be done for it and I can look forward to years of foot/leg pain, swelling, discolouration and if I'm really lucky in the end, open ulcers. Referred to on most websites as leading to chronic morbidity.

Oh goody. Bit pissed off, frankly.

What I did in my summer holidays!

2009-08-18T11:29:00.009+01:00

After the gloriousness of Vaughan Town, I packed myself off to the UK for 11 days. That may seem a strange place to go in the height of summer when you live in Spain, but....! Those of you in Spain will know that August in Madrid is 2 things: dead and HOT! Not just a bit hot, not just pretty warm, but hotter than hell. 40-45 degrees. So despite the fact that it's lovely that it's so quiet, it's kind of wasted cos you just don't want to go out! I realise that complaining about the weather may seem like rubbing salt in the wound of those of you living with grey, cloudy skies but really - try living day to day in over 40 degrees. Not as fun as you might think!!

Be warned - this is a bit long. Sorry.

So - anyway, August in the UK. I'll get the weather out the way first. Changeable. Predictably changeable - if that's not a contradiction in terms. I had rain, cloud, sun, wind, heat, you name it. Well, apart from snow. Though it wouldn't have surprised me if that had put in an appearance too.

After my previously detailed delayed arrival, I launched into my social whirl on the Sunday with an afternoon BBQ for the 60th birthday celebrations of an old family friend. It was a lovely, chilled afternoon in their garden, with a fantastic spread of "normal" and veggie BBQ stuff with very tasty accompaniments (including beer of course!). Followed by no less than 8 cakes! Most people were settled in around 4 big tables and there wasn't much mingling so I chatted most of the afternoon to the birthday celebrant, his son, my mum, dad and stepmum (always an interesting fly-on-the-wall experience to have the 3 of them sitting together!!! :-)

Monday was spent ferrying the slightly damaged cat backwards and forwards to the vet for stitches in her inexplicable wound! One VERY grumpy moggy finally came back home at 6, complete with pretty purple soluble stitches, but a look on her face that said she'd be taking a long time to forgive me. Pushover that she is, some chicken and tuna seemed to change her mind quite fast and she's now healing well!

In the evening, I went out with Andy (in case anyone doesn't know - he is now ex-boyfriend, formerly known as boyfriend). For the duration of my trip to the flat, he was away house-sitting for a friend so any awkwardness there might have been trying to share with a recent ex was avoided. So we met for beer, pizza and chatting. And it was really nice. Really, properly, nice. Think we've found we get on much better as mates than as a couple. Yay.

Tuesday was a mishmash of sorting out my storage lockup in a hunt for things to sell (got to pay my rent in Madrid somehow), then 6 hours trying to fix my mum's laptop. Fairly successfully, if I may say so. Then she took me out for curry at the yummy Blue India in Haywards Heath.

Wednesday I spent the day blitzing the murder mystery that Cathy and I are desperately trying to get ready for the beginning of September, then Ange treated me to food and drinks at The Open House and we chatted. A lot. (And I made her cry. Accidentally!)

Thursday was my only day to myself so it was more murder mystery prep, a trip into town to try and flog some jewellery (total failure!), caught up with some random TV and listened to Spanish radio! Oh, and at the back of a drawer I had found an old SLR camera - with film, not digital! Worked out I probably last used it in about 2001 and it still had film in it, with 13 photos taken. Curiosity got the better of the me and despite the fact I thought the film would be knackered, I used up the rest of the pictures and took it off to Boots for developing! And in the evening, I learnt to play the ukulele that I got for my birthday!

Julia and Mike, more longstanding friends, came down for the weekend. Friday night we went out for a gorgeous Sri Lankan curry (if you're in Hove, go to Moonstone in Church Road), with Cathy, Ed, Andrea and Carol. Another good, fun, chatty evening accompanied by great food. I nearly missed the last bus home but was very glad that I didn't as I would have missed the spectacularly impressive transvestite bus driver.

Saturday I collected the photos from Boots, expecting little, but getting 36 perfectly good photos! The first 13 were indeed a blast from the past - a weekend away with mates in, we think, North Devon and some shots of a very bizarre girly pampering night for me and Cathy at my flat. Facepacks galore! I met Cathy, Julia and Mike again and we went for lunch at The George (vegetarian pub). We got over the disappointment of them not having any veggie sausages available and scoffed tasty halloumi baguettes, baked goats cheese and vegetable soup. Then we went to Devil's Dyke on the open top bus. Breezy. Bracing. OK, probably cold! By the time we got to the top, there were very threatening grey clouds, strong winds and we had to admit that our planned beach BBQ might not be the best idea ! We walked on the Dyke for a while then headed back on the bus. We stopped at a pub near my flat then Sarah joined us for takeaway pizza at mine. I wish they'd open a branch of Oregano's in Madrid!

Sunday was Ed's birthday so brunch on the seafront called. Summer had returned and it was lovely to sit out with our veggie sausage sandwiches and cheesy chips in the sun and the sea breeze. Cathy and Ed headed off for a birthday surprise night away, and Julia and Mike had to go home so I met up with Sarah and Sid for a late afternoon laze in the park, with ice cream.

On Monday, I spent the day with my dad. Lunch at Tosca's in Shoreham was tasty as ever (though disappointingly the very gorgeous Italian waiter wasn't working!). I played about with his computer too, installing his webcam and Skype so we can have strange disjointed conversations in future, and getting rid of IE8 which they'd downloaded but hated! In the evening, Ange came round for food, chat and a jam session. We've been singing and playing the guitar together since we were about 13 - to be fair, on that basis, you'd think we'd be better by now! But it's always amusing to us even if the neighbours don't agree. The video evidence, which some of you will have been unfortunate enough to see, says it all.

Tuesday was packing and saying goodbye to the cat day. A long walk on the seafront with Andy was relaxing and refreshing. Then for my final evening, I went to Misty's for cocktails with Cathy, Sid, Deb and Carol. A rather drunken evening, I have to admit. Doing 2 for 1 offers on cocktails til 9 is very nice of them, but does rather encourage binge ordering. We'd already had 2 each when we realised it was 8.50 and we'd better get to the bar. Ordered another 2 each plus somehow an extra communal one for the table! Still, I can't complain about an evening that starts with a Sicilian Kiss, goes through Purple Rain, Brandy Alexander, another Sicilian Kiss and ends up in an Orgasm. Slightly the worse for wear, I climbed into our "taxi" (thanks, Andy!) and Sid and I went to her place so that I could wake up far too early this morning, only 10 minutes from the airport.

So that's my last 11 days. What have you all been doing?!

Photos of my trip can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.es/emsr2d2/UKTripAug09?authkey=Gv1sRgCITC3YrjoqG01gE&feat=directlink

Am I home yet?

2009-08-17T00:12:00.009+01:00

My time back in the UK was weird. Good but weird. As future blog will show!

I had some great fun meetups with my mates and family, and I definitely should have put the cat in my suitcase and smuggled her back to Madrid, but still somehow it was odd. The flat felt strange for the first few days though it didn't by the end.

But the couple of times I referred to going back to Madrid as "going home", I was met with slight surprise by the person I said it to, yet it felt totally normal to me. But is it home? Kind of. It's where I spend the majority of my time. Yet I don't have a "real" job, I'm renting a room in a shared flat, I still get lost (a lot!). I've got friends here, but I've known all of them less than 2 years, and in most cases, only since March. Having said that, they're fast becoming very good friends.

With the other Anglos (or should that just be non-Spaniards?), maybe it's the shared experience of living abroad that kind of throws us together. Someone said to me today though that it's a perfect opportunity to meet people that probably you wouldn't meet under any other circumstances. They're right - the majority of my mates in the UK are either school or work related. Common ground, of course. And without exception, they're great and I wouldn't be without them. But I guess it's another comfort zone thing - there's no impetus to find/need other people there!

So maybe I have 2 homes. Or none. Maybe I'm just learning to enjoy wherever I am.

Miracle

2009-08-11T10:12:00.000+01:00

Went to a BBQ on Sunday. In England. It didn't rain. Just thought I'd mention it.

Being home - but is it home?

2009-08-11T08:21:00.003+01:00

I flew back to the UK on Saturday evening, for the first time since May. It's only been 3 months but they've been a very eventful 3 months.

I felt strangely nervous as I headed to the airport (partly cos I'd been very disorganised and thought I was going to be horribly late!) - I was wondering how I'd feel to be back.

Ryanair did their best to change my nerves to anger by being delayed by half an hour, then letting us board the plane but then sitting on the tarmac for nearly another hour. Finally we left and the wheels hit Gatwick at 10pm (after an exciting descent through some great turbulence - yes, I'm one of those odd people that actually enjoys that!)

As we'd landed at a gate somewhere in Scotland as far as I could tell, it was 20 minutes before I found myself heading down the ramp towards the arrivals hall. Having spent so much of my life working at airports, they're not my favourite places anyway, but Gatwick South, particularly, fills me with abject horror these days. It's not improved by the fact that they're removing asbestos from the ceiling so there is now a false ceiling up, barely a couple of feet above our heads. It's very claustrophobic! So I joined the throngs of Brits and queued for immigration, hoping not to see anyone I knew. No such luck - but at least it was someone I liked! I got to giggle at the new uniform but as I left the hall, I realised that I absolutely can't ever imagine going back to the job, no matter where.

The delights of the British public transport system were my next challenge. Having spent nearly £9 on a one-way ticket to Brighton, I then found there wasn't a train for nearly 40 minutes and that was going to be the slow train. A dull wander around the terminal ensued to kill some time - at least it involved an M&S giant vegetable samosa - then off I went back to the station. The next stage of my journey was then thwarted by one of those announcement that you know isn't going to go well when it starts "Ladies and gentlemen, we are sorry to announce......." This time it was that everything was delayed because a train had hit a shopping trolley which had been thrown onto the line from a bridge. So vile British youth were already affecting my trip!

I finally got on a train and spent most of the journey being appalled at how the big group of chavs sitting behind me were massacring the English language. It struck me just how different it sounded to the English I hear in Madrid, from both Anglos and Spaniards (yes Debbie and Louise, of course you both know you speak the most AMAAAAZING English :-) )

At midnight, 3 hours later than expected I fell out of a taxi to my front door. It felt very strange to be back - it's my flat, it's my stuff (well, most of it at least!) but somehow it's not mine. At least Messy (the cat) recognised me this time! Last time I was back she spent 2 days skulking around, looking at me sideways and refusing to sit on my lap. This time, she was all over me in minutes, sniffing, head butting and washing me! Come to think of it, there was a lot of sniffing and washing. Maybe I didn't smell too good! :-)

After my day of travel, I was too awake to go to bed so I stayed up til 4am just faffing on the net and waiting to see if it would feel like home.

It didn't.

What a week!

2009-08-09T22:48:00.005+01:00

I could go on for hours and bore you rigid with all the details, but won't. In short (well, relatively short):

My sixth Vaughan Town (my third at beautiful Gredos) turned out to be as close to perfect as I can imagine. With the exception of the crappy veggie food (really, overcooked spaghetti with watered down tomato ketchup 3 times in one week?), which I was expecting anyway, everything else was fantastic.

The Anglos bonded really fast, in some cases within minutes of meeting for the first time at the tapas night (eh, Kim?!).

The Spaniards were an astonishingly lovely group - a pretty good starting level of English which probably helped but really just the best people. As usual, there was a good mix of ages, genders (well, OK, there are only 2 but....!), occupations, interests and talents.

Over the course of the week, I had silly, deep, ridiculous, interesting, moving, honest, educational and indescribable (or at least unrepeatable) conversations.

The group activities and entertainment hours were filled with laughs, audience participation and occasional bafflement. I enjoyed being in my own (tweaked!) murder mystery but the less said about my part in the dead parrot sketch, the better!

Queimada and karaoke night was fun, though as usual by the time karaoke really got going and people were getting enthusiastic, it was nearly time for it to be over! Too much time spent fighting over the 2 songbooks, trying to read them in the dark, deciding who to sing with and supping the requisite amount of Dutch courage!!

Party night rocked. Probably the first time I've known absolutely everyone stay til the end and of course, still not want to stop! The bleary eyes and sheepish looks the next morning indicated that not everyone did stop!

As ever, Friday rolled around far too fast and before we knew it, we were packing up, doing group photos and heading off for the certificate ceremony. Several of us were swallowing back tears before it even started, but by the end (despite the VERY inappropriate interruption of Dade's moving sentiment), open sobbing was the order of the day.

The palpable sense of achievement, accomplishment and friendship in the room is something I've never experienced anywhere else. That, along with the ludicrous amount of fun to be had, is what keeps me coming back. Time to look at dates for my next one, I reckon!

Here are my photos, though they're few and far between as I was generally having far too much fun to think about my camera: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/emsr2d2/GredosAug09?authkey=Gv1sRgCOv-rdqH1d-wHQ&feat=directlink

Unexpected intercambio

2009-07-28T23:42:00.003+01:00

Tonight's lesson didn't start well. I turned up at Jaime's garage, as every other Tuesday evening, at 8.30. The look on his face followed by his exclamation of "Mierda" should have been a clue!
Oh yes, he'd forgotten all about our lesson and was just closing up the garage and heading off for drinks with a mate.

Magnanimously (I thought, having walked all the way there in 32 degrees with a heavy bag!) I said never mind, why don't we do it tomorrow evening instead?! Oh no, he said, I can't, I'm going out for dinner with 6 friends. We'd already established that we were cancelling Thursday's lesson, so it was looking like it was all over til September.

Until his mate, who was loitering around, asked why I didn't go with them for drinks! Jaime said yes as long as we had the class at the bar. Though he made me promise to let him speak quietly as he said he'd be embarrassed speaking English in public.

What the hell!

I can't pretend it was a roaring success. We probably did about half an hour of the class, regularly interrupted by the mate, who spoke no English but was very funny. In the end, Jaime gave up and said no more, please!

I let him off (the customer is always right), and we got more beer and more tapas.

Of course, once the class was over it was a free-for-all language-wise. It was pointless for me to keep plugging away in English so I took the opportunity for my first proper Spanish conversation! Went quite well, if you ask me! I understood pretty much everything they said and they were very patient while I looked odd words up in the dictionary. They politely ignored the fact that I can still only do the present tense!

What had started as a bit of a disaster turned into a very entertaining evening, all in all, and a very enjoyable learning curve!

RIP Little Tree

2009-07-27T16:08:00.004+01:00

The bastards finally did it - the gits digging up the roads etc round here finally cut down one of the 5 trees in the little green area in front of the flats.

Eve and I had been keeping a close eye on it since they started, but because they had protected the trunks of all the trees with planks of wood, and had been carefully driving around them all for weeks, we thought they were safe.

Hah! Just as I stepped onto the balcony today, I heard a crash and looked down to see the smallest of the trees tumbling to the ground, then chopped up into bits and taken away in a digger.

So we have gone from (note little tree in the middle in front of the white van):

to this:

:-(

This is officially "Arbol Pequeño - Ground Zero".

Home alone!

2009-07-24T15:25:00.002+01:00

Hmm, so now there's just little old me rattling around in my nice 3-bed apartment!

Yesterday morning, far too early, I waved goodbye to Eve as she headed back to Ireland with her many suitcases! Mind you, given that when she got to the airport they pointed out that with Ryanair, it's a total luggage weight of 15kg per person, not per suitcase, I'm surprised she wasn't back here a couple of hours later.

It's weird that she's not coming back, well, not any time soon. Not that I mind living on my own, I've done it plenty and I like it. But it was a really fun few months sharing with her, so now it seems a bit quiet with no prospect of a cheery Hola, or her chuntering on in any one of 3 languages! No-one to laugh at me when I pile through the front door, gasping for air after the 8 flights of stairs which, after 4 months, still kill me! Plus of course I am now the only thing directly in the line of sight of Ugly Naked Guy on the balcony opposite!

Still, I'm only here on my own for another week, then off to Vaughan Town for a week, then straight to the UK for 11 days. By the time I get back to Madrid, I imagine there will be news on the people moving in in September (and the geraniums will probably be dead)!

Meanwhile, I'll continue to do the girly version of a bachelor flat occupant, make some more tea, settle down on the sofa and carry on watching Sneakers! Robert Redford and River Phoenix sharing screen time. Who could ask for more? It certainly gets my vote for recovering from gastric flu, or whatever I've had.

Oh, and Eve, if you're reading this, you clearly didn't take the poltergeist with you. The same white bowl enjoyed more aerial acrobatics across the kitchen this morning! ;-)