Sueños Andaluces

Those who have read my book will realise and those have read my blogs will have an inkling and those who haven't may not realise exactly how diverse Spain really is. Take the North; wet, comparatively cold and windy, mountainous and full of mountains and lakes and rivers. Take the East; plains of rice and dry land give way to beaches and cheap resort development while traditional Spain buzzes around it. Take the West; barren but immensely fertile lands of forgotten and unknown towns and cities and natural zones where many of the famous ingredients that make Spain so famous come from. Take the South; the most Spanish of Spains.

It was to the South that my last adventure took me. Me and my friend James from UK. Me and James and our little hired car, Peggy Sue. A trip that took us from Madrid, through La Mancha to Granada via Jaen, then down to the sea at Nerja and finally through the twisty turny roads of the Alpujarras. 

One - Cities

After passing through the immediately attractive but finally monotonous slab of flat that comprises La Mancha south of Madrid - speeding through Valdepeñas for wine and Ciudad Real because it's there - you fly through the dramatic Despeñaperros gorge and burst into the first of Andalucia's provinces, Jaen. It's an alien land where thick forests of moody green and laden olive trees coat the thirteen thousand square kilometre region. It's a fairly, or unfairly, unknown province. Understandable if you're not keen on olives or have already visited its two pearls Ubeda and Baeza. I had. Jaen city waited though, sitting pert and confident and surrounded by the aggressive Santa Catalina peaks. As a city Jaen is mostly unappealing but does sport two outstanding monuments. After James heroically pulled Peggy Sue through Jaen's minimalist narrow streets - only incurring one scraping along a wall during which I directed like a father and invited bemused locals to come out and watch in their doorways - we drove uphill to the Santa Catalina Castle. As a building it is grand. As a viewpoint in the area it is insurmountable. The carpet of olive groves, the bouncy and jagged mountains around which Jaen curls like a white cat and the city's gargantuan cathedral taking up all the skyline, was quite something.

Granada is...Spain. Granada is...basically perfect. The city is drowning in history, monuments and areas to visit; from the Alhambra to the old quarter. The city is backed by the highest mountains in the country, the Sierra Nevada. The azure waters of the Mediterranean sea are but an hour away. Drinks come with free food; tapas of the order of paninis with rice and olives. In the evening you have the choice to drink and eat Spanish or to wallow in the Arabic quarter, sip tea and puff cachimbas - James and I did both. The women are spectacular and dark. The people are happy and relaxed. I shall not say much more on the place as I have previously done so in another post. If you haven't visited you must. If not Madrid or Barcelona, Granada - tied with San Sebastian - is the most necessary of Spanish cities to see.


Two - Coast

After skirting the snow-capped Sierra Nevada and almost crashing due to preferring the view of lofty heights to that of the road and due to seeing the 120kmph speed limit and open roads as permission for 140/150kmph, you slide along the south coast through Almuñecar and Salobreña before arriving at Nerja. It rests, hanging over low cliffs and looking out over the sea, a jumble of villas and white pedestrian streets, sparkling between the blue of the water and the set back Sierra.

Nerja's 'atmosphere' is odd. It is both very Spanish but also inescapably touristy. On the one hand we were swimming in the sea, watching serious Easter processions, eating boquerones fritos (fried anchovies) and drinking glasses of manzanilla with free tapas, but on the other hand 60% of the voices we heard were foreign, the shops and menus all wielded the English language with pride and retailers were bursting with colourful tat. At least it was the middle-class bought ourselves a villa on the costa tourist and not the beach and booze Benidorm variety.

Three - Mountains

The famous high-rises of the south of Spain, and of Granada province, are the Sierra Nevada mountains. Big, white and covered in skiers they are easy to visit and are a popular destination for locals and tourists alike. The 'foothills' of the Sierra Nevada - still higher than anything in the UK - are the Alpujarras hills. Long an area of comparative poverty and remoteness, the range is becoming more well known thanks to an influx of alternative lifestyle foreigners setting up shop there and also through the popular writings of both Gerald Brenan in 'South from Granada' and Chris Stewart's 'Driving Over Lemons'.

The alternativitiy can be seen at O Sel Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery up a heart-in-mouth shoddy dirt track. A place of windy, serene beauty where the only sound are the bells and squeak from the prayer wheel. Apparently this was the place where the next in line for Lama-dom stopped and felt the enlightenment in the air.

The driving through the hills is both gratifying long - as there are but a couple of roads that wind round the hillside - and absurdly scenic. The 'high Alpujarras' road that we chose skirts one side of the valley wall, providing near constant vistas down to the dappled green and gold fields and opposing mountain range. Little whitewashed villages, cut off from the rest of the country, are dotted around the valley. Some nestle in the valley floor, but most cling precariously to the slopes, with their Berber village-style boxey houses and flat roofs. The names were fantastic: Soportujar, Pampaneira, Bubion, Capileira, Busquistar, Valor, Laroles, Yegen, Bayareales...

After a plato alpujarreño - a carnivorous plate of chorizo, morcilla, jamon, some other chunk of meat, fried egg and papas a lo pobre (potatoes sliced and fried up with peppers) - we burst out of the north of the range and down into the grandest view imaginable towards plains and the two towns of La Calahorra, which sports 800 people but a vast hilltop castle backed by mountains, and Guadix, an odd place with an overblown church, a fort, and a district where people live in modern cave houses.

Spain isn't Andalucia, but Andalucia is Spain. Go.

Lisbon

There are places near Spain that I am to this day ashamed that I haven’t yet visited. Italy, Austria, the South of France, to name but a few. Another place was Portugal. This country in particular left me with no excuse. It is stuck on the side of Spain and its cities are no further away than many in Spain itself. So, one bank holiday, and with a Scottish friend in tow, I offed to the capital of Lisbon.

At the risk of presenting a twee ‘oooh, this is what I did on my holiday’ look at Lisbon, I will instead present the city to the reader via its varied barrios as I saw them.



Baixa

Essentially the ‘centre’, Baixa is the area where you find the principal squares, the tourists and their symbiotic touts, the cleanest streets, the drug-dealers, the tat-sellers, and the city’s grandest buildings. The best place to start is the large open space of the Praça do Comercio: a square, centred with a statue of King Jose I on a horse and hugged by the striking mustard-yellow apartments. It looks out onto the water and across the Tejo’s estuary to the banks on the other side. Despite the few tourists and odd guitarist hoping for some cents it is a truly peaceful place. The vast waters have not yet become sea so they lap at your feet quite gently.

North from this place handsome parallel streets – all feeling like Bath had been made Mediterranean – shoot up like bamboo shoots and hit a variety of squares. The first, smallest, and oddest, was Praça Figueira, housing another statue – this time King John I on a horse – and, oddly for a warm March, an ice-rink. Seagulls cooed and squawked and the Castelo São Jorge – St. George Castle – glowed amber in the failing light up on its hill. The second, and finest, square was the Praça Rossio, lined by pretty cafés, headed by the national theatre and this time housing a column and a fountain. The third, and least spectacular, was the Praça dos Restauradores. Wider and more open, this square was only notably for its London Ritzy style, pastel-coloured hotels and modernist style cinema.

Baixa was a funny old district. It combined very Portuguese Portugal with utter tourist trappy tourism. On the positive hand you had the opportunity to eat some of the finest fish – in particular bacalhau (cod) and my favourite bacalhau com natas (creamy cod) – and sample local liquors like Ginjinja (a fortified sour cherry wine) from tiny little bars that only serve that particular drink. On the other hand if you’re not careful at restaurants waiters may leave little ‘tapas’ on the table at the start of your meal so that the visitors munch away thinking they’re free, only to be slammed with a fortified bill at the end. Similarly we were often badgered by tat-sellers and quite the politest drug-dealers.
‘You guys want hash or coco?’
‘No thanks.’
‘OK guys, no worries, have a good night.’
Bizarre.

Alfama


This is the magical postcard area of Lisbon that causes the visitor to ooh and ahh at the views. It’s a jumble of streets and hills and trams and architecture styles and churches and accordion views – one minute claustrophobic, the next minute utterly wide-reaching to sea and sky. This is the old zone and is built up around a hill on which sits the castle. Lisbon’s city planners cleverly created various miradouros, viewpoints, that open the city and allow you to contemplate how it sits. The lay of the land. Like some white tortoise with a terracotta shell, the Alfama is full with flats, churches and monasteries and photographers.

As with all these places there exists the large, gleaming, double-edged sword. On the one hand tourists naturally veer towards somewhere worth snapping, worth seeing, somewhere that the book says you should see. On the other hand however, they also tend to veer towards whatever star of the show may be present. In the Alfama this was the castle. It’s a tasty entry fee of €7.50 so we desisted. The advantage of having a star of the show means that the tourists are sucked away from the other, less ‘things-to-see’ streets. The atmosphere in the Alfama is warm and cosy; little bars spilling out into cobbled streets, sun dripping into the lanes and birds in cages tweeting merrily as old ladies lean out of their stable-style front doors.

Barrio Alto/Chiado


This area, alto because it straddles the hill opposite the one topped with the castle is a mess of slightly scruffier streets bulging with more bohemian shops and little restaurants and bars. It was likened to Madrid’s La Latina tapas district, bursting with life. We hit the area at around nine o’clock and it was, for a city with a population that varies between 540,000 and 3 million depending on how you count it, dead. It was quiet and not how it was publicized. Perhaps we went too late.

During the day Barrio Alto is similar in texture to the Alfama, but a little better kept. All throughout streets dip over the edge and offer views to the city. Always views. Little parks and little cafes. Not much traffic. Lisbon is very quiet.

Chiado is the way an old quarter like Barrio Alto evolves into a smarter more modern one like Baixa. It’s seamless and attractive. One interesting part of Chiado is the Elevador de Santa Justa, a towering neo-Gothic lift in the middle of an unassuming street that stands 45m high and has stood for one hundred and ten years. The views – again with the views – are glorious. This was one of many lifts that were part of a plan by the Lisbon council to improve turn of the century Lisbonians’ movement around the city. Then the trams came. Trams are snazzier. It was a no-brainer.

Belem


The final area, ‘the second day area’, is the old village of Belem – long since absorbed into the city limits but still retaining a disconnected feel. We walked there, crisping and bubbling in the beautiful heat, but a tram can be taken too. The path follows the water west towards where it swims with salt and becomes sea. There are essentially four things to see. The first is the quite breathtaking bridge – the Ponte 25 de Abril – that is essentially the twin of the Golden Gate Bridge. Indeed, the same company built it. At 2.2km in length – the 21st largest suspension bridge in the world – it launches over the water to the southern banks where a statue of Christ the Redeemer stands, arms outstretched. Under it nestles an area of lovely restaurants by a glittering marina. Good place to stop for a while.

The second, third and fourth items are collected together on the far tip of the land. The Padrao dos Descobrimentos is a hefty 52m high, blockish statue at who’s base can be found 33 larger-than-life sized characters from the annuls of the great period of Portuguese imperial Age of Discovery including everyone’s favourite, Vasco de Gama.

The third is one of the more spectacular religious behemoths that I’ve ever seen: the Monasterio dos Jeronimos. An absurd building, long and floridly built in the hard to find Manueline style, the UNESCO monument is quite lovely. Its cousin is the Torre de Belem – the fourth item on the menu – that is plonked at the furthest point a tourist would go. Another 16th century Manueline style building, it was useful for two reasons. 1. To see off the ships on their expeditions to discover things for the Empire and 2. To protect Lisbon militarily at its entrance. It is frilly and grey and fortified and quite, apologies for the lame word, cool.

The sun set shimmering and shining over the Atlantic and Lisbon was put to bed. Visit it, you buggers, visit it.

New Ceremonies.

When you're single and bored you look for diversion and/or inspiration wherever it is. Be it with friends or alone you always look for something to do. Weeks get filled from Monday and days are spent either doing far too much, cramming every bit of socialising or appointments into free space, or mysteriously excusing oneself from exercise under the lying guise of 'tiredness' and wasting an evening in front of the telly watching complete shite.

This is where the city sometimes comes to the rescue. My mountains have often been a source of release for me and my friends in the post-festive funk. Last weekend we dominated some of the highest peaks during the hardest walk possible to do. La Maliciosa and La Bola del Mundo - 2227m and 2258m respectively - sit oppressively, still topped with a fat film of white snow and offer views south to the community of Madrid and north to Castilla y Leon where you could even see Segovia. It is always sad to leave the firmament and return to ground zero and urbanity. People have wasted their days at home, bored, hungover, or monging, but you touched the realm of the Gods and had to leave it. But needs must, as they say.

Another entertaining pursuit is to people watch at a football match. Spain, much like England, is a football nation. Unlike England, however, the teams here are quite political. Madrid has a few, but the principal two are Real Madrid and Atletico de Madrid. The former, and by far the better team, is considered both pijo and chulo, that is to say posh and cocky - the conservative team. Atletico is more the working class team. The everyman team. The sometimes chavvy team. People watching is quite fun in the Vicente Calderon stadium. It is also one of the few stadiums of the world from where you can see churches and a sunset from your seat. Amongst the crowds were all the typical people: chanting scarf-swingers, dads with sons, pierced chonis (chavs), die-hard vehement fans, newbies like me, and the foreign supporters. The whole stadium is a turbulent sea of red, white, and whatever other colours are visiting that day.

On the 8th of March Atletico played Besiktas, a Turkish team. I had a ticket, and a cheap Atleti scarf, and joined my friends at a riverside bar before the game to sup on a couple of cold cañas. Then the police arrived, some on horses, some in heavy duty gear. Then the armoured vans arrived. We weren't particularly sure what was going on but our lounging was gruffly interrupted by some overly anxious officers.
'Get in the bar please.'
We shared glances, not understanding what was happening.
'Let's just wait it out and play the English card.'
'Get in the bar now please, it's for your safety!'
'Right, we should move in then.'

We all - drinkers, old men and women, passersby - crammed into the small bar. Horses clopped past  as well as police cars. These were followed and joined by a large column of Turkish football fans. I was stuck by the window, the waiters rushing to bring in the last of the glasses and chairs, next to a plate of sun-warmed torreznos (pork scratchings), next to an old man moaning about the horses crapping on the pavement. Often rowdy, the Turks passed by peacefully. Tables were scattered again and more drinks were bought. Despite the build up the only violence during the match was a very fat angry man complaining about a sandwich and trying to fight some little hair-styled-pierced-ear chav. We couldn't work out what happened. We think the chav knocked the tubby fellow's bocata out of his hand but didn't seem to care. Blows were thrown but caught by friends and the crowd told them to put a sock in it. 3-1 in the end. Well done Madrid.


And so that ended. And so it always ends and life begs you to treat it to some more fun. And you consult your imagination; maybe strapping on your boots or flashing your cash at a waiter. Don't get stuck. Don't get boring. The greatest sin in life is to be boring. Make your minutes interesting. Fill them to bursting with joy and love and pastimes and people. Don't vegetate. Play.

Chilly Pedestrian Rage


First of all I want to take this opportunity for a good old-fashioned rant. I haven't had one in quite a while so I've pent up a fairly unhealthy level of aggression. That being said I shall try to make my venom spit educatively and not spitefully. Can't promise anything though.
The target for today's grump is Spanish pedestrians; on the one hand because I want to highlight them with a hope of changing them, and on the other because they are rubbish.
Their behaviour, after two and a bit years of analysis, can be split into various problematic areas.

1. Speed: They are slow. So achingly slow. Slow to the point that if you walk at the same pace as them you feel as though you are obviously taking the piss. This I believe I can attribute to the weather. Hotter countries maybe have slower walkers. This is certainly true of Spain and Italy. Conversely British people walk faster, and Russians faster still. Very slow.

2. Spatial awareness: Non-existent. This is a two-fold problem. Firstly, they seem utterly incapable of keeping in a straight line. They strafe as if their legs have minds or they are tired or drunk. The second thing is their 'in-the-clouds' behaviour. They aren't aware of what's happening around them. They - often gaggles of girls - rarely look before crossing the road then shout 'ay, Maria, cuidado!' when a car honks past. Similarly they will leave shops without looking, resulting once in me receiving an opening umbrella to the face. Or they will see a friend and stop in the middle of a busy street kissing and hugging and talking and forcing others to stop and siphon round them.

3. Line-walking: On a Sunday afternoon the Spanish love to pasear, stroll. This is good. In fact it's lovely. The problem is that when the numbers increase the intelligence evaporates. They walk in lines, like approaching redcoats. If you're behind them you can't get past them and if you're in front of them, approaching, you have to break them up or, more commonly, are forced into the road. Along the river I once counted a line of eleven people. Eleven. Arm in arm and waddling along merrily.

4. Standing where they shouldn't: I use the example of escalators. If you're going up an escalator you stand on the right-hand side, not the left talking to your friend in a bubble of ignorance. It's rude, but not specific to Spain. This happens everywhere. A tactic I was taught by a student was to walk up behind the felon and lead in near their ear saying sternly, 'permiso!'.

5. Queues: Non-existent. The concept of queuing here is fluid. In England it's law. George Mikes famously said 'An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one', and it's true. Here it isn't. People waiting for a bus mill about in a cloud of 'expectancy'. Others join at different places, smoking, reading timetables, choosing where they want to be. The silver-haired brigade are the worst. They bustle and push to the front, to get on first. I always want to say 'listen dear, well done for not dying and all that but bugger off down the line, I was here first'. Instead I must bite my tongue and let them do what they like. Bloody old people.

There is one salient point though; they never do any of this maliciously. It's dopeyness. Pure, simple, undistilled dopeyness. It's hard to hate them for it, even when I'm raging.


****

'Buscarviejos?'
'No! Not looking for old people. Bustarviejo!'
'Ah, right, that makes more sense.'
Spain is not all grandiose cities and imposing buildings. It is mostly tiny, hidden and unknown towns and villages without much to offer past a local church and a main square. Bustarviejo is one such miniscule town hidden high up in the mountains of Madrid. It was a cold day when I visited. Tiptoeing around the zero. There was enough wind to topple an elephant and it arrived in intermittent pulses that buffered walkers and knocked over shop signs. The Ruta de la Mina de Plata - the Silver Mine Route - lead out from the white-walled, but plain, village and up through a deep cleft between the hills; a sort of high-plain valley. Sharply turning right, it then rose steeply up the side of a mountain, its flanks covered by pine forests, bulbous rock extrusions, multicoloured meseta-grasses - all reds and burnt yellows, and fine layers of snow ever thicker on the way up.

Snowflakes whipped through the air and the clouds were low, skirting the peaks, touching distance. From the summit, the Pozo Maestro, at 1500m everything was laid out. It was me, Nikki, some old mine shafts and equipment and land and nothing and solitude. It was quite special.

The cold has seeped into the capital too. One morning was -7. Crisp and fresh and dry, the cold is as penetrating as it is invigorating. My hands are dry and look a little eczema tainted. The snow has left us disappointed. It has capped the far off sierra, but hasn't visited the city. The trick now is to delve further into the bumps of the sierra and find where the white is really living.



All that's New.


The man with the microphone screamed,
'Here come the next few runners! They'll be really wanting to cross the line before the hour is up!!!'
Somehow I had agreed to do another mini-marathon in Guadalajara. Back in 2010 it was the fairly easy 6km run. This time I had for some reason nodded yes to the 11km rompepiernas 'Leg-breaker' run. I flickered over the line with a time of 58:20. Under an hour. Leaking like a heffa in the Sahara.

Not to let down my 'reputation' as a traveller I seized the opportunity to visit a town the day before the run. Sigüenza lies deep in the Castillian plains, built on a small and subtle bump of ground, surrounded by low hills. It is small, has a few cobbled streets, some attractive old flats and a frankly absurd collection of monuments. Given the fact you can cross the town in about thirty minutes, it is fat and plump with more historic buildings than you would presume normal. Guadalajara, despite being the provincial capital and a far larger city, lost out on getting the cathedral. On the left flank of wee little Sigüenza you can find a most wonderful pinky-orange cathedral squatting beside a porticoed square. Continuing up the little windy avenues, passed churches and artesenal shops, the visitor is spat out grandly into an open area that is unremarkable apart from the massive castle plonked on it, topped with fluttering flags. Therefore, I suppose you could say, it is remarkable. I left Sigüena purring into the night, the sky hurling deeps reds with christmas lights twinkling into life and out on the Manchegan plains more stars that you have ever seen. Delightful.

* * * *

Christmas passed in a haze of surreality. The traditional English Christmas, those days of the ho-ho fat man, were spent, grumpily and ever so slightly Scrooge-ily, in Madrid. Such is the evil of the holiday period at my academy. Christmas Eve was a happy affair. The lemon-stuffed chicken that I crammed into the oven roasted up a treat. Matt and I devoured it with potatoes, garlic carrots, cauliflower, peas, gravy and some defrosted sprouts fried up with walnuts, pancetta and balsamic vinegar. After the feast we lugged our weightier haunches over to Matt's to watch Home Alone and Die Hard with mince pies. Classic. Christ's birthday was where the weirdness arrived. Matt and Rakel used my oven in the morning and we played Trivial Pursuit on an ipad. They left. I gathered leftovers. With my pungent tupperware of goodies, a bottle of artesan beer and a christmas cake sent to me by my friend James at home, I was off to Ed and Niall's house. We ate the leftovers. We ordered a curry. We drank the beer. A couple of others arrived. We opened wine. We watched The Great Escape - everyone being assigned a character. I got drunk. Everyone got drunk. Most fell asleep. I went home and then had the flu for a week and a half. Christmas.

Then it was the turn of the Spanish Christmas. Reyes. I think God-heads call the period Epiphany, on the 5th/6th of January. Concerned that I wasn't going to have a proper Christmas with my family, Elena's parents effusively invited me to spend the festive period with them. I had woken up at 5 o'clock in the morning on the 5th to catch my plane from England to Madrid. In the afternoon of the same day I was in a car blasting through the dusk towards an orange sky, sliding through the wide plains between the Sierra de Gredos and the Sierra de Guadalupe.

We arrived just in time to catch the small town's Cabalgata, the procession of the Three Kings. In Spain, in place of the ol' fat, port-breathed hedonist Saint Nick, the young of the country are brought their presents by the three wise men; Baltasar, Gaspar and Melchior. They arrived on the last three of a wide selection of colourful floats, covered in local schoolchildren throwing sweets to the crowds while dressed up as various themed characters. Post sweet-parade we handed out our gifts back at an aunt's house. I was very grateful to receive a shirt from Elena and her boyfriend and a selection of Spanish food and drink from 'la familia'. We ate, a lot. Ham, cured meats, cheese, bacalao, snails in a spiced tomato sauce and other tapas. As soon as we arrived and had visited one family, we ferried ourselves off to another large house when I met the rest of the family. It was a surreal wine-tippled experience where I was introduced to about twenty boisterous and felicitous Extremadurans as they got on with their Christmas. It is typical in this period to eat roscon after basically every meal. It is a large, bread-like circular cake with a hole punched in the middle, topped with sugar and candied fruits. Sounds nice. It's a bit bland actually, but you can find some decked out with cream, chocolate or crema catalana if you're lucky. The tradition is that inside the cake are two 'gifts'. One is good, usually a little king, and one is bad, usually a nut. If you get the nut you are supposed to pay for the roscon. I got the nut. Much laughter and ribbing. 'You'll have to come back next year and pay for it!!'

The following day I was driven around 'la ruta de los embalses' in the Badajoz province.
'People say that Extremadura is so dry,' said Angel, Elena's father, from the driver's seat, 'but that's because they don't know...'
A single road takes the vehicle through the village of Orellana la Vieja to an enormous area of small green hills that shelter three gigantic reservoirs: Orellana, Serena and Zujar. This whole area of Extremadura is where the productive magic happens. Murcia Community (over by the east of Andalucia) is the huerta, vegetable patch, of Spain, while Extremadura is called the despensa, the larder. The whole zone is covered in vast farms and fruit and veg producers. The reservoirs provide the water.
The only problem was that the day was foggier than any I've seen and so the majesty was all but hidden.

We finished a little deflated at the lakes and drove to the minuscule village of Guadalperales; a Franco-era grid-formation planned collectivist town. The family had booked into a family-style restaurant called Los Jamones. In its air-hanger sized dining hall we ate cochinillo (suckling pig) and cabrito (kid [goat]), sozzling ourselves on local wine. The day ended in another surreal haze of family fun, this time bingo.

The last day, well, day of any real consequence, was a burning blue day.
'Today is the matanza, do you want to see it?'
'Matanza...the killing?'
'Well yes, but don't worry, the farmers kill the pigs. It's the day my family makes chorizos and sausages'
I entered a room, was handed cheese and wine, and witnessed two burly, but light-hearted, men, sleeves rolled up, standing over a huge blue bowl filled with fresh mincemeat. One was turning it over with his hands while the other added oil and spices.

Later, the women of the family sat at a long table at proceeded to tie up the sausages that slid out of the meat grinder and into cleaned skins. Once tied, one of the burly, but light-hearted, gents - with a cheeky penchant for calling me Simon or Robinson - would hang them in a side-room where they would hang for the next month. During this process another aunt, matronly wielding a gargantuan saucepan, cooked migas - essentially breadcrumbs fried in oil and paprika and liberally sprinkled with garlic and smoked meat.

So that was that. And this is this. There are things I have forgotten. Things I'll want to have put in. Things about society, about food, about life, but haven't. This is the 'what I've been up to' blog. If you didn't enjoy it, I suggest you drown yourself in a bowl of cottage cheese. If you stuck with it, thank you, and we'll be running normally forthwith.

Gambas Olorosas


'Do you want a bag to take the rest of this stuff home then?'
'No, no! It's all for you!'
Lucia had returned from her home-town of Jerez de la Frontera (where sherry comes from) and had brought me gifts. She bustled in with a bag of Payoyo cheese from Cadiz, a bottle of sherry, a box of cooked prawns she had bought from her local market the day before, and another box of some fresh, peeled prawns. It was promising to be a great evening.

They say that on nights of a full moon, the fishing is especially good. Prawn-lovers also argue over where the best ones come from. It seems to be a tie between the waters off Cataluña, Valencia, Denia, Garrucha (in the Almeria province of Andalucia) and Sanlucar de Barrameda, the latter being about 30mins from Jerez. She cooked gambas al ajillo. First she fried the prawns in lots of oil, with a healthy dose of garlic and some little guindillas - dry chillis. After the prawns had taken on some colour, and shrivelled a little, she tossed in a double shot of sherry, allowing it to reduce slightly. The resulting earthenware-contained mix was sweet and fragrant. The blend of wine, seafood and garlic danced surprisingly daintily on the palate. Having cooed sufficiently we proceeded to blast away the flavour with the parmigianaesque nutty strength of the curado cheese and some glasses of the amontillado.

In Henry IV, part II that fat jollyite Falstaff bellowed:
'If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.'
In short, to stop drinking lady-liquor like beer and wine and get stuck in with the big boy's drink, sherry.
It is a drink that has been in production for more than three thousand years. In 1587 - the year Mary Queen of Scot's head was lopped off - dear old Francis Drake had a dalliance to the south of Spain pre-armada and attacked Cadiz. In the raid he smashed up around thirty ships and labelled the mission 'singeing the King of Spain's beard'. As well as spanking the old port town he also managed to pilfer 2,900 barrels of the region's favourite tipple. From that time on, our dear British ships have sailed southwards to get our hands and throats on the stuff.

Regarding sherry, there are seven main types.
1. Fino - a light liquor, dry, and with a clear golden colour. It is slightly floral and has wispy nuances of almonds. It is the classic aperitif, often found in a grandma's clutches before Christmas lunch.
2. Manzanilla - also light, it is clear in colour and very dry. It is grown uniquely in the Sanlucar area (that of the prawns) due to the Atlantic micro-climate and as a result is quite sharp and has faint hints of salty sea air.
3. Amontillado - this is what comes out when you let fino stay in the barrel longer. The wine oxidises, darkens and intensifies in flavour, as if the fino is relaxing more, letting its hair down. Due to its time 'inside' it's generally a little more potent too, slightly bitter and nutty on the nose. Great for cooking and marinading white meats with garlic and salt.
4. Oloroso - this a sherry allowed to oxidise against the air, eschewing it's yeasty protective layer - the 'flor' - that covers the chemical processes of its cousins. The end product is a dark wine with heaps of body, abundant and strong aromas - oloroso means fragrant - of nuts and a flavour that is a little sweet.
5. Pale Cream and Cream - dessert style sherries. They are both sweet. Pale Cream is lightly-coloured  and made from Palomino grapes whereas Cream is very sweet, dark, intense and is made from oloroso wine.
6. Pale Cortado - this is a mahogany-coloured wine that sits between amontillado and oloroso. It is produced without the flor and is nice and dark. In short, not to spurn it in any real personal attack, you can live without it.
7. Pedro Ximenez - this is a velvety sweet sherry, similar to Moscatel (also produced in Malaga), that is a guilty little pleasure with puddings and smacks of raisins on the tongue.

Sherry is equally adept at being flame-fried with kidneys, simmered with parsley and clams, or sipped in front of some live flamenco with a little dish of olives. I think it's reputation as a favoured booze of the silvery haired generations should be depth-charged out of existence. Either that or the grandparents know real quality. I can see why Drake and Falstaff were so enamoured!

****

That's quite a lot about food.
In other news, my career as a Spanish television presenter is advancing further still. The format is generally decided - Roque wants to do a programme about literary 'routes' in Spain. For instance a programme presented, by me, in situ, in Pamplona, were that episode about Hemmingway's Death In The Afternoon.

Last Wednesday I had a photo-shoot of sorts in the garden of his house out in Aravaca - a rather wealthy residential suburb. He gave me some tips and cues in the fading light as a bouncy photographer called Ivan clicked and snapped about me and his pet cat and dog scurried around the flowerbeds. Rather surreal. I've seen the RAW format images so it's now just a matter of time, and finger-crossing, until I see the finished ones. He wants to make an advertising dossier about the potential programme. We'll see if his Photoshop is able to null the red in my cheeks a little first.

And the Christmas excesses have begun...

Madrid: The gift that keeps on giving.


"Just those five?" he chuckled with mock consternation, "You'll be left hungry with just those five!"
"OK, OK," I smiled, holding my hands up in defence, "put five more in."
The local fishmonger in his blue apron plopped another handful of fresh, shining little sardines into the newspaper cone and wrapped it up with a twirl.
"Vale, so that's €1.14 then," he said, leaning over a veritable marine cemetery of colours.
"Christ that's cheap," I hissed under my breath, "adios!"



Those little sardines were decapitated, gutted, splashed with lemon juice, rolled in flour and chunky salt, and laid in a boiling bed of olive oil for a couple of minutes either side. Golden and crispy. Bones and all and served with a lemon. The snack of all snacks.

*        *          *          *


“That’s a lot of tomato.”
“Yup, a whole perfect kilogram…sliced,” I surveyed my knife’s handiwork, “I don’t think your blender’s big enough.”


Salmorejo – the stockier but simpler cousin of the famous gazpacho – is an unexpectedly tasty cold tomato soup made from a whizzed up purée of tomatoes, a little garlic, crusty bread, oil and a dash of balsamic vinegar. To finish, when pooling nicely in a bowl, add chopped jamón serrano and some hard-boiled egg.

It bubbled over the lid of the little blender, unaccustomed to such a tomato fiasco.
“Right, I’m splitting it.”
Two batches, totted up with water for consistency and a little salt. Healthy, clean-tasting, and occasionally violent on the breath. Too much garlic.

*        *          *          *


So Roque was on the phone for me in the police department. Bureaucratic nonsense to get a case number before sitting down to meet a real human being.
“Sí, they took his bag. It had his jacket, some teaching materials, a copy of his book, keys for his flat, keys for his work, his ipod and his passport,” he rolled his eyes at me, “no the bag isn’t mine…it’s my friend’s…I’m speaking to avoid translation problems…fine…what’s your name please?..just what’s your name?” Roque hung up the phone on the officer. “It has to be ‘you’ phoning because it was your bag stolen.”
“Why did you ask for the person’s name?” I enquired.
“Now, when I ring back pretending to be you, if it’s the same person I’ll hang up!”
He repeated the process with more success.
“My name? Luke Darracott”
“My parents’ names?” He looked at me.
“BRIAN, ANN,” I mouthed silently.
“Brian and Ann”
A pause.
“My address?”
“CALLE DE LINNEO,” I mouthed again.
“Calle Pirineo,” he said confidently. I sniggered and sweated at the same time. That’s absolutely not my address. On a little chitty I wrote ‘If you have the chance again, it’s ‘de Linneo’ not ‘Pirineo’. Roque covered the receiver with his hand and almost, just almost, cracked up.
Then came some slightly less stressful ones: date of birth, occupation, what had happened to the bag. The pencil and paper system was useful.
Roque then snorted quite audibly, stopped himself and then ‘mmhmm-ed’ into the phone. He wedged the terminal between his shoulder and ear and started writing me a message:
She said, ‘either there’s a delay on the line or you are speaking strangely.’

It worked. We sat down for five minutes and were seen to by a very amiable policeman.
“Apart from your passport is there any identification in the bag, or anything with your name on it? I think a book was mentioned?”
“Oh yes. There’s a book I wrote”
“So you’re the author?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I paused to let my ego deflate, “would be funny if I got my stuff back because somebody found my book”
The policeman smiled.
Whoever has my bag is either going to learn about Spain or, depending on their tastes, get a free lesson in question formation.

*        *          *          *


“Cheers everyone. And to our victory!”
The glasses chinked as we pondered our prize with hungry intent. Four green bottles of cold amber Alhambra beers and a plate of tapas: piece of bread, covered in a tapenade-style paste and topped with a prawn. Some olives were gleefully scattered at their base.
“My arse hurts”
“Yeah, mine too,” I pondered the possible after-effects, “but it’ll be like steel covered in velvet in no time”
Our bikes were propped up against a little tree in a darling quiet square of Madrid. No locks. We had just ridden 40km and felt like kings. No one would dare steal a bike from such pantheon figures. We allowed the wet patches in the small of the back and armpits to cool and dry a little. Milky light was trickling down through the leaves leaving a dappled patchwork of dripped luminous puddles on the ground.
“Next time we should do the whole route…” somebody said with a weary confidence.


The anillo verde. The great cycle route around Madrid. 64km in total, adding another 10km for entry and exit. I could explain the route, but what would be the point unless you know the city. You pass suburbs and intriguing residential and business areas one minute and sweeping vistas to the mountains and hills the next.
Burnt faces. Burnt arses. Burnt calories. But interest and love for the city were both phoenixed by the experience. So much to offer.
“I’m going to need a long, long bath…”

*        *          *          *


SMS (sent 6 Nov 14:15): Mate. I am up La Pedriza mountain in Manzanares el Real. You like views…this would blow your mind. Mountains all around me and a view to Madrid!! Boom.

Despite my message lacking the apt floridity to put into words the genuine beauty of the place where I was sitting at that moment, I think Matt would have respected the frankness. 


As Manzanares the town ends, the mountains just begin. It sounds airy-fairy, but I say it literally. House, house, house, town, town, car park, barrier, mountains, paths, nature, eagles. The transition is instant. Little paths then snake off and filter into forests and up inclines as the tendrils for serious trekking and Sunday strolling spill away from civilization. Views that could kill you for their grandeur are mixed in with terrain that also can if you don’t give it enough respect. I didn’t. But I seem to be a pro at going ‘off-piste’. Ten minutes of grappling and rock climbing and skin-ripping later and I re-joined the ‘path’.


And then the summit. The reason for the text to Matt. Madrid sat far-off in its high-altitude plain; the four ‘torres’ poking up into the sky next to the distinctive and jauntily crooked Caixa towers. The town, nestled like a sleeping cat by the lake. And peaks and peaks and peaks. 


SMS (send 7 Nov 15:44): I’m sad I missed it. I’ve just bought spanking ‘North Face’ trainers, perfect for mountains.

Along with the purchase of a walking routes book it seems I’ll be back to the hills, this time not alone.

Madrid: The Layered Cebolla

Visitors are threatening brilliantly with visits. The sky has only clouded twice in a month and a bit. Love still evades. And the new timetable means I now see all the daily strata of Spanish life.

Morning.
After a metro and a bus I'm in the north of the city with either Rob or Amanda, poised, sticky-eyed, about to teach some yawny businesspeople. The approaching sunrise throws warm oranges, peaches and strips away the veil of black with a bruise of purple. It's a silly hour for bipeds to be waddling around the planet they evolved on, but such are our ways. Before attempting to pretend we're anywhere near awake we head to Bar Toñi for a quick milky coffee served in a small tumbler.
It's a tiny bar with wood panelling and a general hue that is all ochres and gnarled mahoganies. The barman, a slender and attractive fellow we name 'Big Tony', fills up the tumblers along the bar where they are lined up ready for the customers. Along the counter working men stand in tracksuit bottoms or overalls or t-shirts laughing and joking, watching the corner TV dribble out the morning news. Some businessmen sit around a table. Sometimes there's a woman. There are only three or four tables. The men notice the pretty businesswomen walk past. I do too. Amanda might tut. Rob would damn the world if he missed her. A few coins pass hands.

Afternoon.
Leaving the main artery my road, Linneo, hums quietly as the clocks tip-toe past five o'clock. Old men are playing petanque in the sand and the now mellowing sun in the park over the way. There's the flat up on the fifth or sixth floor that houses an aural rainforest of birds, which twitters and chatters and tweets out of sight. At the crossing with Moreno Nieto street (which oddly translates as 'Dark Skinned Grandchild' but is more likely - and hopefully - named after the writer and erudite Jose Moreno Nieto from Extremadura) the road bends up towards the towering neo-Mudejar seminary on the hill. Where the chemical Fosforo street passes through, my front door stands on a corner waiting. Mondays and Wednesdays a middle-aged man sits there in his blue flip flops and either listens to a radio or plays with his phone. Waiting for someone? Checking the football? Some days an ancient veteran of life sits in his chair with a carer or family member, oxygen tubes filtering out of his nose. Sometimes I get a smile. Dogs yap and a scooter will buzz past.

Evening.
Families are strolling. Everybody strolls. Why wouldn't you when it's warm. October is grilling and simmering, the sun is stroppy. Home is 12 degrees, Moscow is 6. October 12th was 34 degrees. Now the weather is fondling the mid-twenties. A terrace BBQ in the north, again, with a view to new flats and skyscrapers and a sun that drops into fire as the flaming coffee-punch-spectacle queimada is finished. On Linneo and its sisters the little bars fluster into life; chairs and people spilling out onto the pavements. I cook something. The salmorejo recipe from my student? Or just a salad? Then the bed and the closing of the eyes.

I'm getting a rhythm. This is what I wanted and needed. Now if only I can get some unassuming idiots to spend more money on my book!

The Selfish Spatula


The city is cooling off. It only occasionally tip-toes over 30 now. Walking is a pleasure again, not a perilous skin-troubling gauntlet. The shops are selling jumpers. No more shorts for the fashion-conscious.

The economy is dripping ever more into junk. This morning I read the news - among the Steve Jobs laments and the everyday war stories - that Spain's debt has been downgraded again. AA-, whatever that means. Joyless news. How to console oneself during these times?

Well, the ever-constants: walking/eating. They never get tired and they never require too much expenditure. Whether it is strolling up and down the grand 20th century ornate bombasity of Gran Via, through the meandering lanes of La Latina, or around the city's many parks, walking is always an option.

Food, as those who have read my blogs or have met me will know, is as important to me as breathing. The joy is as much in the cooking as in the eating. Last Sunday I made a caramelised onion chutney. It is sitting in the pantry, 600g of sludge, waiting to be opened at the start of December. I fear the sugar genuinely caramelised and what will appear in two months will resemble a hard block of black sugar-tar with bodies of sweet onions entombed within it. Then there are the garbanzos, chickpeas, which, when bubbled with chunks of chistorra and garlic, paddling in tomate frito and a blob of chilli bean paste, are quite delightful.

I make tortilla española now. The Spanish will say that the best tortilla is the simplest style: potatoes, eggs, salt and cooked in oil. I agree to a point. It's tasty. But served ad infinitum it does have the potential to bore the palate to the extreme. I actually cook tortilla paisana, which is the same but with tasty extras. I experimented first by adding red onion and red pepper. It was a success. I even flipped it well - a moment of intense personal triumph. For a friend's leaving party - ever with undercurrents of sombreness - I cooked a chorizo and black olive one as well as a spinach and cabrales cheese. The mm's and aah's are what makes cooking so lovely. The gooey smiles and sleepy eyes when nice food is masticated.

The next plan is to try my hand at the hearty and sphincterally windy Asturian stew fabadas and then, one day, the king of average-but-famous dishes, paella.

I can do this now. I have an early timetable. So I work 8-5pm. I have time for a life. Time for cooking, for shopping, for thought, for a girlfriend, for productivity and poetry.

How Not To Cook Chipirones


To return to a place to live is odd. You get back and you recognise everything and know where everywhere is. The excitement is there, but it's different. Still of discovering something new, but maybe only a deeper understanding and what you already knew. Sometimes it takes a while to adapt to the new rhythms: the heat that you had forgotten and have to acclimatise to (in my case an unseasonably hot September, 32 degrees as a daily high); the timetable changes with the time zone as you now find yourself going to lunch at 3 o'clock and stuffing your face with heaving plates of meats, marine life and potatoes and bowls of cold soup; you arrive home at 10:30 from work and have no idea what to do - drink wine? read a book? eat food? do exercise and repeat. Finally is the added feature of being stranded on the living room floor until one of your current housemates moves out to free up and bedroom. It's not the comfiest but it's bearable. You just want your little space to fill with your books and clothes and scent and make it your own. You also have no wage yet but you stupidly and ill-advisedly, continue to buy food and amenities. You want internet on your phone but you must wait. At least returning to work was easy.

There are bonuses though, to this new place. It's by the river so you can run/cycle/walk/crawl, you choose, by the Manzanares River, or wind your way up into the Casa de Campo - a 1700 hectare ex-royal hunting ground - and enjoy the boats trickling over the water of the lake. Then you have the Palace and its gardens a few minutes back into town, proud and green. You smile that you live in the district of Madrid called 'Imperial'. And then you stumble into the 'historic' part of Madrid. Little winding streets, churches, tapas bars, colours and shady corners. And then the centre and the tourists. You have towns, so many of them, nearby. You spend a public holiday with a couple of your Spanish friends (Esther and Elena) in Manzanres and enjoy the sun while the rib you for being a guiri.

And then you utterly balls up to twattery cooking some baby squids.
Heather and I had spent €24 on these bastards, chipirones they're called. We didn't know what to do with them exactly. Seafood is not my speciality, but I had an idea how to treat them. I believe they should be served simple, a culinary shrine to their fishiness. Fried in oil, then garlic and lemon and maybe a sprinkling of paprika to serve. I came home from work to find a couple of forlorn little sea creatures in a fine-smelling pan - citrus rock pools -  in a pool of blasted garlic and a blackish sauce.
'There's more of them in the fridge love,' came a warble from the living room.
I took out the semi-translucent blobs and cut their glassy-eyed heads off, chucked them in the pan and started frying with all the vigour of Gordon Ramsey as a contestant on his own programme. I was a chef. A deft twirling squeeze of the lemon, flip, and then a daring drizzle of oil, careful now, and onto the plate. Poof! Paprika, done.

They were horrible. Truly disappointing. Well-cooked, but offensive to my mouthal zone. An advert, an example, as to why you should always check a method before launching into a new food stuff. None of us had prepped them properly.
One must:

  1. Remove the head, yes, and the little cartilaginous spine inside the 'pocket'. I can tell you they are quite tough to the chew.
  2. Turn the pocket inside out and remove the ink tube. This will assist in removing the black sauce from your usually chalk-white flaps of sea-flesh and not deposit what tasted like a grainy sand mixture all over your unsuspecting tongue and teeth. 
  3. Wash all over and fairly thoroughly. 


I now know how not to cook chipirones. I have had them before and they are delightful. Light and aromatic, like calamares but more modest.

A final piece of news is that I intend to 'crash' the InMadrid (Madrid's English language newspaper), October edition launch party and peddle my book like the whore I need to be.




Fishing for a meal.



While the 'Inspección Pesquera' and the Guardia Civil continue to fight the fishing of immature fish in Spain - down from 8,027kg in 2010 to 6,800kg this year - it is still clear that Spain is a nation of fishermen. All that coast and all those towns; from the rambling and dainty fishing villages in wind-swept Galicia, to the gloriously greedy Basques and then the legions of Mediterranean settlements, and finally the hungry belly of Madrid; it's a wonder there's anything left in the sea.

Over in the UK, still, I continue my fight to hold onto my Spanish dream. I could be back as early as the beginning of September. In the meantime food, and in this case, fish, has kept the Iberian flame flickering within.

In the Middle Ages, in Spain, the farmers were always getting on the nerves of the monasteries. Monks were the only people with official fishing rights over the Asturian rivers of the North. Farmers are farmers though. If there's good and plentiful fish to be had, no bald, pious bloke in a habit is going to stand in their way. They would fish for salmon without consent, against the clergy, and would then take truckloads of the stuff to market to make a few pesetas. According to some no doubt crusty, historical parchment, the pesky farmers also sometimes added a mysterious green tincture to the water to drug the fish, thus making them easier to catch.

Despite the apparent popularity of the now quite classy salmon, back then it was a fairly 'meh' fish. Not a delicacy by any means. There was too much of it. So ordinary it got boring. During the building of the church of Santa María in the Basque town of Tolosa in the 17th century, the workers apparently started an 'anti-salmon campaign' against the very clergy who were feeding them. With a bit of added violence they succeeded in ensuring that they were not given salmon to eat more than twice a week. They were sick of it.

To me though, salmon is still one of the marine royal family. Maybe a prince. It doesn't have the same fishy smack as sea bass or mackerel. Nor does it have the same gleeful luxuriance of scallops, mussels or fresh prawns. But, like chicken, it is versatile. And, unlike chicken, has a lotof flavour. After reading about this most noble and pink of fish I was hungry and I started to miss Asturias. And then I started to hanker for Spain again. I decided I would cook for my brother and me an old Asturian dish.

Salmón a la Ribereña

This is a very simple but excessively tasty dish. I am writing for two to dine.
First, take two fat salmon steaks, nice and orangey-pink and coat them fairly well with salt, pepper and flour. Heat up a pan to a medium-low heat and add about 1.5tbsp of butter, yes, butter, and 1.5tbsp of olive oil. When they come together and the butter starts to fizz a bit add the fish, skin down, and let them sit for about 5 or 6 minutes. Always cook for longer on the skin side. Flip them over and let them cook there, flesh down, for a further 2-3. Some people like a bit of 'raw' salmon in the middle, some like it all dry. But you're going to take the fish out and leave them to keep warm in an oven after all these minutes so don't cremate them in the the pan. An oven at 130-150 should do to keep them toasty.
After you've removed your fish add about 100g of chopped serrano ham to the pan (parma ham will do, but the Italian is a bit weaker in meatiness). It'll start to curl up and crinkle and crisp. Then add 100ml of farmhouse - not fizzy - cider and 100ml of fish stock. Let it reduce. Taste it.
Serve the fish with simple new potatoes bashed and mixed in a big saucepan with lemon juice, salt and pepper, butter and chopped mint. Pour your sauce over the top and eat.
(An addition to this meal is also chorizo a la sidra, which is just slices of chorizo fried a little and sat to bubble away in about a third of a bottle of the farmhouse. Serve with good, crusty bread as well.)

Return To Iberia

As if everything in the last post was a lie, the blog is not dead. I have woken it up. Hear it yawn after its Russian hibernation.

I am writing from a fifth floor flat. There is a fig tree standing out in the sun on a terrace that it shares with a Victorian lampost and scattered chairs. I can see the Royal Palace gleaming over in the distance as cars honk in the roads below. Andres Segovia and his Spanish guitar are trickling out of some speakers as little puddles of yellow light filter through the open windows and doors of the room I'm lodging in. I'm staying with Anna, a friend from my time in Madrid two years ago, and her wildly attractive Canadian housemate Jenny. My plan is to come back to the city and country I love so much and live and work; tired of constantly uprooting my life. Holidays are fine, but year in year out total change takes its toll. The differences between Maidenhead, Moscow and Madrid couldn't be more marked.

Packs of clueless tourists wander round the Puerta de Sol, clutching at their maps and guidebooks; remnants of the recent protest/sit in - the Movimiento de Indignados or 15-M - pepper the square and people take photographs; bars sit purring in the side streets, doors flung wide, with young friends and old men gesticulating, eating tapas and drinking; the air is hot but the wind, this week anyway, finds its way through the little lanes. I thought I would be excited coming back - 'oh, there's that!' 'and, oh my God, there's the plaza de Cibeles!'. Instead I walked the streets in a comfy daze. I was at peace. I was home. It felt like some natural resting place. I met friends, drank, ate, went swimming, cycled along the river, visited some towns outside of the city - the mesmorizing romance of Segovia and the geographic unknown that is Manzanares el Real - and generally let Spain once again lay it hands over me and have its sultry way.

I know it can be as infuriating as any country. But the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Jenny, Anna and I walk out around the Templo de Debod and see the lights of the city and the Royal Palace.
'Yeah, this is where I want to be'
It's a shame Anna won't be here when I return, hopefully, in September. My Spanish friends will though. It's quite scary to finally think, 'ok, so this is where "life" starts'. There's still the little coward in me telling me to just stay in the UK. But at the age of 24, with potentially a flat on arrival - with some friends of mine - and an instant job - I could return to Talking Point while I searched for the job I really want - it seems silly to not press ahead with Spain.

Spain is in. Rick Stein has just filmed a series of cookery programs about the country. Jamie Oliver's been there. It's still sunny there and tourism is alive. Now is the time to go there. This blog will be more about Spain itself rather than just 'this is what I've been up to'. So I hope you are ready to learn.

As the sun continues its fiery tirade against the world and the gutteral strums of Andres' guitar float around the flat, I sit, in my shorts, hoping that I'm making the right choices. I hope I'm not just being blindsighted by blue skies and sanguine Riojas.

A final word.
My book is finished. Its title is 'The Sun Struck Upwards' and it should be available for purchase in the coming couple of weeks.

Good night Spain.

This is the end of this blog.
I'll not kill him. I'll let him be, but I'm basically putting him to sleep.

I thank anyone who has read it, that was the point.

I am currently still working hard on my book, still nameless.

I go to Moscow on 8th October 2010 so I have created a new blog, should you care to follow:

Hopefully I won't be nabbed by the FSB.

Goodnight Spain.
Lot's of love,
Luke

Goodbye for a while

Right.
I left my job. Planned.
I am now about to embark on a trip of all of Spain for a couple of months. I am starting tomorrow morning with Salamanca.
The idea is to travel to every autonomous community and eventually write a book.
Therefore my blogging shall be sparse/non-existent. I will, when I remember or have the chance, update as to my location but I don't want to spoil the surprise for when I finally scribble out some pages.
Other than that, I'll speak to you all soon.

Adios amigos.


Chin chin to Chinchon!



The road in drifts through blood-red poppy stained fields. I entertained the hope that the pretty girl behind me would strike up a conversation and we would get together, live together in a village and have curly-haired, blue-eyed, olive-skinned children. They would run around wielding their names Tarquin Baltasar Sanchez Darracott and Eva Emily Sanchez Darracott - Sanchez being the imaginary name of my imaginary wife. We would spend lazy afternoons getting tipsy with chilled wines and olives in the sun as we had no other worries but to remember to take the roasting lamb out of the oven before our friends arrived for the cool evening dinner. That didn't happen. Instead I got off the bus at the first stop that indicated my arrival into Chinchon and blasted away my silly thoughts. I walked in the direction of the large church that I knew, with the help of Google images, loomed dramatically over the famous picture perfect plaza mayor. The square in question is more of a ring. This is no accident as in the summer it doubles up at the town's plaza de toros.

I then spent about 40 minutes wandering around the beautifully beaten streets. There are whiffs of the prettiness of Cuenca's lanes and Toledo's backstreets but with more of a genuine, naturally scruffied and inhabited air about them. This day was hot. I stupidly chose a black t-shirt as a dry run for my upcoming trip in the summer. The annoying science behind why dark hues are a bad choice in the sun was present, although it wasn't as potent as I thought it could have been. I started to need things: water, a place to go to the toilet and a bank so that I could recharge my phone. I was about to call it lunchtime when I spotted a castle over in the distance, on the other side of the town. I like castles me. It wasn't open, or that impressive. It was a - more or less - large square 15th century blob of stone and turrets. What it did do well was command a good view of the bullet wounded poppy hills that formed the outer stretch of Madrid before it flumps into La Mancha. I found a water machine and head back to the main square. I then found an atm - always tricky in a small place - burnt my fingers on the sun-heated metal buttons and sent the texts I needed to send.

I finally buckled to the whim of both my belly and my bladder and found the most populated outdoor cafe on the plaza mayor - La Taberna Conrado, helmed by a waitress as ugly as she was efficient. And my she was ugly. I ordered a beer, some patatas bravas and two croquetas. The potatoes had one of the spiciest bravas sauces I had tried and were also coated with coarse salt. I don't really like all that much salt on my food but I found these little golden starch cubes strangely morish. My nose ran and my belly filled as I relaxed, reclusive in my little pool of shade. There is something inexplicable in the way one is able to pick out one's countrymen before they even speak. I think it's two parts physical and stylistic appearance to three parts mannerisms and body language. I thought about this as I regarded the green and white multi-tiered balcony-laden inner walls of the square. It reminded me of the hanging houses at Cuenca. I saw a prowling cat, walking like John Wayne, under the tables, well-fed and well-kept. No collar. Maybe a pet. Then I asked for the bill and an anis Chinchon. This a sweeter version of anisette liqueur that you can find anywhere. The famous, harder version is Sambucca. Anis is a typical drink of Chinchon. In fact it is the product of Chinchon. In fact it is the only product for which the Madrid Community has a denominacion de origen, giving it the same status as Rioja wine or Manchego cheese.
The smell is a heady mixture of vodka and liquorice. The taste is pleasant and delights in curling up around ice cubes.
The sky couldn't have been bluer as the hundreds of sex-mad swifts danced around the heavens trying to impress and catch and fight each other. My head started to spin lightly as the heat and alcohol cushioned me. I asked where the bus stop was, got on my number 337 and slept most of the way back to my capital.

It was my first little taste of wandering through Spain on my own. Eating on my own. Drinking on my own. Leading me to think and write there on my own. It's quite nice really.

How much can you squeeze into a week?

Consuegra
Ubeda
Baeza
Granada
Cordoba
View from Calatrava La Nueva
Avila


The following adventures were sponsored by the Mum&Dad Inc. (a visiting corporation).

After a fun visit from my favourite Valencian girls Malou and Imogen I had to play Mr. Host with my parents. I had managed to book a week's holiday prior to the visit so we made plans accordingly:

Sat/Sun - Madrid
Mon/Tues - Consuegra, Ubeda, Baeza, Granada
Wed - Cordoba
Thurs - Calatrava La Nueva, Ciudad Real
Fri - Avila
Sat/Sun - Madrid

Not the most relaxing week, but one of the most satisfying of all my time here.

Consuegra
After negotiating the melee of roads that wind, cross, overlap and get tied up in the centre of the capital we managed to find the exit route. The road leaving Madrid lead us out of the glum, lonely looking outskirts of Madrid - massive advertising boards and washed out warehouses offering furniture - into the low, green plains of Castilla La Mancha. Our first stop was my request, for Consuegra is the home of those famous white windmills that show up in that perennial Spanish classic Don Quixote De La Mancha (the old knight of the book attacks them thinking them giants...silly knight). I wanted to see them. They sit proudly, 11 of them, on a ridge that stands on its own surrounded by lowlands. Chalk-white and perfectly preserved they provide a quixotic (ha ha) contrast with the rusty orange town below and the coppery red and green fields in the distance. These little sail-bearing teeth share the jaw of land with a bulky 12th century castle. When you managed to squeeze past the four separate groups of school children being scared, taught and spellbound by actors in costumes, the view from the top was superlative. If it weren't for the coaches the view would have been as classically Manchegan as a slice of cheese, with a glass of Valdepenas wine and a few lines from the great book.

Ubeda and Baeza
Another two of my requests. These two little Renaissance beauties are a couple of often unknown and little visited towns. They are World Heritage Sites and are just, quite frankly, delightful. I caught wind of them when one of my students recommended that I visit them at some point if I could. I don't like to let down my students. Enter parents. Enter hire-car. Enter handy location on the road south.
The road in question took us into the community of Andalucia and through Jaen province. Jaen is the major olive producing region in Spain and you can see this if you just look out of your car window at any time and any place in the area. The hills, rolling and broad as they are, are studded with little olive bushes. If you imagine a roast turkey studded with so many cloves you can imagine Jaen. Rarely visited reservoirs surrounded by olive-bush dappled hills with copper red, dirty white and green soils, dotted with farm buildings and everything tinkling in the limited sun produced a scene worthy of literature. Unfortunately Quixote didn't get this far. He was too busy chasing sheep and staring down windmills in La Mancha.
So to Ubeda. Nestling up a hill and surveying the great Jaen valleys Ubeda is the bigger of the two sister towns. Its 'zona monumental' houses an impressive array of Renaissance palaces and squares. The small town was shut up and closed due to the time of our visit - the Spaniards will have their siestas - but we could still see the bulk of it. A little visit to the 'Jaen' shop meant that I could procure - via my parents - a 1.4kg plastic jar of Jaen olives. Lovely. We departed from sweet little Ubeda and drove 9km down the road to her little, maybe even sweeter, sister Baeza. Baeza is really small. It's weeny. In fact were it clothing it'd probably be a yellow polka dot bikini. You get my drift. It too sports a selection of grand buildings far larger and more ornate than its size would usually allow. It also does have that 'Sunday morning' air about it that the guidebook mentioned.

Granada
As the road drifted into the wide and high peaks of the Sierra Nevada we arrived in Granada. Having stayed in the city previously in 2003, my first thoughts were those of nostalgia. 'Oh, there's that bench I sat on with Ollie'; 'oh, haha, there's that shop where we struggled to buy a bottle of water'; 'there's the square where we always used to relax'. I took my parents to that square first thing. Plaza Nueva is in the heart of the city and sits by the river in the belly of the valley - the Alhambra perched on a hill on one side, the old Moorish (and World Heritage Site) quarter, the Albaicin, rising up on the other.
The Alhambra was our target the following day. In the sun it glows. The Alhambra (Arabic for 'The Red One'), for those of you who don't know, is a vast fortress and palace complex that surveys the whole of the city. This UNESCO site is full to bursting with towers, colourful gardens, glittering ponds, flowers, ochre walls and about two million arches. Beautiful. For us the day was slightly sullied by a prolonged and unforgiving weather system. The clouds wept on us for almost our whole time in Granada. Grand but greyed was our visit.
The brief moment of sun we did have we spent waking around the other UNESCO site, the Albaicin. Twisty, narrow streets, cobbles and white-painted houses create a near impossibly complicated web-like district. It's fun to get lost though. And on our last evening I walked around alone and to the top in order to get a glimpse and photo of the big, beastly Alhambra by night.


Cordoba
Leaving the climbs of the Sierra Nevada and the Arabic muscles of Granada we sped into the bowling over-green hills of the Cordoban countryside. It was like some vast pod of harlequin, myrtle and straw-coloured whales breaching their way across the fields of Andalucia; never showing their heads or tails. After not much time we pulled into our horror-film cheap Cordoban hotel, with its peeling walls, creaking doors and flickering buzzing lights.
Cordoba, after its morning drizzle, was a glorious little pearl of Spanishness. The main calling card of Cordoba is the mezquita and surrounding buildings. You enter the city by crossing a big, clean, preserved Roman bridge. You are then faced with an historic area. You can walk around the majority of the buildings in an hour or so. Big, Gothic/Arab, yellow/brown, dramatic. There are some words.
Before we went into the building I popped into the tourist information office and got us a plan of another little shindig that was going down in the city. The week we had chosen to travel also happened to be one of the weeks that held the Festival of the Cordoban Patios. A festival where the luckier members of the city, who have internal patios, open them to the general public and the competition judges.
Little fountains that dropped water serenely into little pools while little flower pots dotted little walls with many little flowers - flash purple, pink, red, yellow, colours of rainbows - and little tourists with their little cameras take little photos.
These patios lay hidden inside small, pristine white houses - similar to those in Granada but more stately. We left this area, smacking with smells: flowers, pollen, warm leathers and hot boiling pork, and moved to the older barrio.
Prior to our 'history bit' we had some tapas in a sweet little cafe run by a very funny and animated chap. When we paid, he graciously told me that I spoke Spanish perfectly. I beamed modestly and truthfully informed him that I speak well, but hardly perfect. I then made a joke that I'm called a 'guiri-gato' by my housemate. A 'guiri' being an endearing term for a foreigner (similar to gringo) and 'gato' meaning someone with both parents and grandparents from Madrid (basically someone who can truly claim to be 'from Madrid'). He laughed and told me that he once lived in Mexico and Miami and that in both places they called him gringo. I quizzed him as to why. He was Spanish surely. He told me to hang on. He trotted inside for a minute or so. I filled my parents in. He trotted back out. 'This is me when I was thirty'. Some crusty old photos of a young man with wild ginger hair and fair features. 'This is why they called me gringo!' He also lived with the Mayan people for two years, but that's another story...
The mezquita was something else. Proof that sometimes a photo really just doesn't do it. You enter surrounded and confronted and wrapped up in a blanket of endless dark red and white stripy archways. They caterpillar away as far as perspective will allow you to see. Stunning. Mosque-y and stunning. Then, right in the centre, where you can't see for the arches, a massive ivory-white Christian cathedral rises up 50 metres to the heavens. You blink and try and work out where it came from. You walk back a few metres and you're back with the Muslim arches and its spongy half-light. Then back into the light and Christendom. It is, in the very literal sense of the word, unbelievable. And, you know, it's magnificent.

Calatrava La Nueva
Our last stop before returning to Madrid (ignoring the normal but comparatively rubbish Ciudad Real) was a hilltop ruined castle complex called Calatrava La Nueva. The Calatrava Knights were a sect of Cistercian soldier-monks who went a bit power mad and caused the then king - Alfonso X - to set up Ciudad Real in order to keep the prayer/sword wielding nutters in check. The Knights set up the settlement up in 1216 in order to have a vantage point against the Moors. They chose a cracking spot. After driving up the precariously bumpy and badly laid stone road, juddering the car to pieces and causing my seatbelt to lock and choke me, we arrived at the small, empty car park. The weather improved for us and the views from the top were arresting. I spent the next hour and half running around the ruins alone but for my parents. It was like a private school trip, without teachers and with no 'don't do this' signs. We hit the road again and drove through the flower-splashed fields of La Mancha, looking like so many paint dots of an artist thrown lovingly against a green canvas: white daisies, red poppies, yellow ones, pinks and purples spattered the world around the car. We were driving through a piece of landscape art.

Avila
After a quick spell in Madrid we took a train to Avila and its famous wind-beaten walls. I shall begin by saying that Avila was cold. Absurdly cold. Bone-shakingly, arse-clenchingly, finger-numbingly cold. Why? Because I only took a cardigan. Why? Because I'm a crap boy scout. Avila was not what I expected. I imagined something twee and preserved like the old quarters in Granada, Segovia, Toledo, Cordoba, Cuenca and other places I'd visited. Instead the town inside was a bit scruffy and bland. However the star of the show and, in fairness to Avila, the 'thing' to see, was the wall. The whole town is surrounded by a perfectly maintained medieval wall. Tall, broad, attractive and imposing, the (so Spanish) yellowy fortifications wind their way around the 'old town' forming a large oblong perimeter. After lunch (the famous chuleton de Avila a.k.a. the big mental steak of Avila) I split with my parents to walk around the outside by myself. I ventured away from the town a little in order to run up a hill (scrambling through a fence I wasn't supposed to and performing some amateur wall-climbing) and get more of an all-encompassing shot of the wall. It's a marvel. It reminded me, like with that massive Manchegan castle, of the focus of a really good school trip.

We came back, dropped off the car, enjoyed Madrid's San Isidro day and put the holiday to sleep.
And that was the week that was.
I now have one week of teaching left.
Time to prepare a bigger trip.

A Tale of Two 'A' Cities





Aranjuez

This place is green. I mean seriously green. If you took the colour green and then added another pot of green to it, upped the fluorescence and set brilliance to 1000, you'd get Aranjuez. It's only a short hour long train journey south, but it couldn't look and feel much more different to Madrid if it tried. Sure, there are parks and trees in the capital...but they're not as green.

We (Anna and I) pulled into the station, debarked and, mapless, started walking. The area around the station was - as the area is around almost any station in the world - a bit bleak and grimy. These were not the luxurious palaces and gardens we thought we would find. However, after a short walk a vast creamy pink palace flickered into view through the trees. It was very casually placed. No massive signs or 'THIS WAY TO THE PALACE' boards. It just sat there, subtly majestic, 10 minutes from the station. The Palacio Real was fantastically beautiful, maybe because of the contrast with the station and the way it sat adoringly amongst the gardens. It could have been more due to the fact that it was originally built by those Spanish bourbon monarchs to be a Spanish Versailles. It isn't, of course. Versailles is frankly ridiculous. Aranjuez is more quaint and shrunken. Nevertheless the building is gorgeous. Smaller, but more personable than the vast, cold Palacio Real in Madrid and un-touristy enough to feel like you are one of the few people enjoying it. Around the place are the wonderful gardens. It felt like I was walking through England, like I had absent mindedly tumbled into Much Ado About Nothing. There were copious fountains and benches and bushes and flowers and statues (my favourite being a naked Bacchus riding a barrel of wine). Lots of water in Aranjuez, clever irrigation and a lot of rain in winter made for a turbo-charged vegetative experience.

We had some cheap-o tapas at a franchise tapas joint, stole a glass, saw some more historic buildings and then bought an ice-cream. On buying the ice-cream the heavens finally opened. Why should we be allowed to remain dry all day. We scampered to safety under the archway of the palace where a few Spaniards were hiding. My umbrella took a beating - 3 euro piece of crap.
When the rain finally stopped and the little girl who was staring maniacally at Anna eating her ice cream had left with her parents, we walked back to the train station.

Nothing remarkable about the trip back apart from a far off city on a hill that sat bathed in the sun's rays while everywhere else was cloudy and black. The golden city.

Alcala de Henares

Another day-trip with with Anna. Alcala de Henares boasts one of the oldest universities in the world and the second oldest in Spain behind the larger Salamanca one. We left the little modern station and wandered out into the town and its 28 degree sunny weather. Shorts weather had finally arrived [Note: it is currently making teaching almost intolerable]. We chose a direction, based on the other people leaving the train, and headed off. We had no maps. Maps aren't fun. We soon - after I expertly noted a bus with 'Universidad de Alcala' on it going past - went along the road that lead towards distant old buildings. Thinking back on it, buses can go one way or the other. Thank God for spires, they also help.

The main square and centre of the casco historico, historic quarter, was like a toy town. A plaza with a bandstand and Cervantes statue in the middle, lined with trees and surrounded by low ornate buildings. Only the spires felt brave enough to try and touch the sky. The spires themselves weren't that tall so the juxtaposition between this non-height highness and the apparently grand small buildings made it feel like you were walking through a large miniature. Then there were storks flying heavily through the cyan blue sky and crunching down on their massive nests that clung to the old catholic crosses like mistletoe on a tree. The roads were mostly unpopulated and we walked for over an hour around the academies and holy buildings almost alone.
We then attempted to locate a tapas bar I was tipped off about. Around 4 o'clock the main street had burst open. Scores of restaurants down its length had spilled their guts out onto the pedestrian area that passed Cervantes' birth home. Chairs and families and friends all tucked into their lunch (except the chairs of course, they tucked into the ground). We found our place - Indalo. Why did I want to go there? Well, you get free tapas with drinks almost everywhere in Spain. Not usually in the Madrid Community does that tapas turn out to be toasted ham bagels or small hamburgers and chips. Bless you Alcala. Fed and rosy we got an ice-cream and lolled about in the remaining sun for a while before trudging back to the station.

We finished that weekend off with a Sunday in retiro park with some other teachers and an evening bbq-ing on Nick's terrace. Well done Nick and well done weather.

Bidding you a sunblushed goodbye until the next one!


As I Walked Out One Spring Morning...



A writer called Giles Tremlett ('Ghosts of Spain') said this of a particular Spanish trait:
'They like the warmth, the solidarity, the sense of belonging that groups give them. That, perhaps, is why their towns and cities pack people together, ignoring the acres of open space around them. Individuality, I discovered when my own children reached school age, can be viewed with suspicion'

Whereas I can't relate to this quote from the point of view of having children, which I don't, I think, I can find truth in it. They do have a tendency towards grouping like sardines. It's natural. It's a family-based life style, like Italy. Big groups, big get-togethers, patriarchs and matriarchs and small streets. Also, on the subject of individuality, I think he may have a point. Last week, from Thursday to Sunday, we had the Easter holidays. I still had to teach the morning of the Saturday, but my Thursday and Friday were free.
On Thursday I had a 'me' day: watched some films, went for a long walk in the milky sun to a lake, watched quiet families herd their unsteady children around the perimeter on feet and bikes. I read my book and watched the silky water play with the light that tinkled through the lolling arms of my private tree while parrots and sparrows showed off and sang for my attention.

On Friday we decided to make the most of the little time we had and go on a day-trip. there were five of us in total: me, Matt and his girlfriend Raquel, Euan and his girlfriend Mahal. I was a welcome fifth wheel. We took Raquel's car and drove at an alarmingly breakneck pace to Cuenca, a small city (large town really, though the locals are proud of its status) some 160km East of the capital. On arrival we raced up through the town, dodging the aforementioned locals and screamed along impossibly narrow streets, lined clumsily with badly parked cars. Raquel wasn't used to this style of 45 degree uphill driving and thought the best course of action was to speed up. Matt closed his eyes, I thought we were going to violently make friends with a wall, and the wing mirror took a bashing. We parked and walked down into town, our legs a little bit more jellied than before.
It was the 'viernes de Pasion', the Friday of the Passion (of Christ), and the town was bulging and straining with the sheer number of people in it. Hundreds, maybe thousands were there. Half were tourists and locals and maybe half were participants in the city's processions. People walked through the streets, some barefoot, in differently coloured robes and cloaks, topped with a traditional (now aggressively lampooned) Klu Klux Klan style hood. They hauled large wooden icons of Christ's struggle and stamped staffs to the beat of the band while locals looked down from their windows. http://img.diariodelviajero.com/2009/04/nazarenos.jpg
It was all very strange, but impressive and at times clearly quixotic.
Something that made me laugh was that people were trying to walk along the pavements by the procession, like we were, but with difficulty. Logical option? Cross the road. I mean, if you have to cross the road you have to cross the road. A road's a road and surely I can cross it. Some people tried this, but were quickly reprimanded and chased away by one of a variety of tall men in full robe/hood combination brandishing a staff and sweeping his clothing authoritatively. It was ridiculous of course. It was probably Jose Fernando, father of two, mechanical engineer. But today he was something else, something more. Empowered by purple.
We finally freed ourselves from the procession and its noise and its confusion and went to look around the old part of Cuenca and the famous 'casas colgadas', hanging houses. Rickety old houses, perched on cliff faces, with makeshift wooden balconies that bravely hung over nothing. A local tourist attraction. The city had a rustic, golden charm that was so reminiscent of many pueblos in Spain. Cuenca, and Valladolid, have a rather sad tale though. They are considered forgotten towns. Once great, they are now places for day tippers and quick holiday seekers. Still, I found it charming and would happily return.

Our next stop? 34km away to Ciudad Encantada, Enchanted City.
Ciudad Encantada has the status 'Sitio Natural de Interes Nacional', natural site of national interest, and it deserves its status. It is a 20km squared natural park of limestone formations formed by a 90 million year old karstic process. It is a landscape spat out of true fantasy. It was in fact used in the classic film 'Conan the Barbarian' with Arnie yelling and running about with a big shiny sword.
Instead of trying in vain to describe the place, I'll include a little youtube video so you can see a few of the different aspects of the park. The best stuff is about half-way through.

This brings me neatly back to the quote from Tremlett. The Spanish tourists in the park seemed to travel in herds. Now, of course, in a park with arrows you tend to follow the arrows. But this was no UNESCO World Heritage Site with strict signs. You - as far as I know - were allowed to walk around wherever you liked. The Iberian flocks stayed to their paths. Sometimes small groups would venture a few metres from the route then gravitate back. Now, I don't know if this is a particularly Spanish trait but it seemed to coincide with what Giles was saying in his book. As the fifth wheel I thought I would give the couples some privacy and go and sate my sense of adventure. I walked off and climbed to the tops of the large karstic arms. Five metres up and alone there was a sea of scratchy stone before me. The wind was blowing hard and brought me smells of dusty pine and sun-baked rock. I ran around for hundreds of yards above the throngs below. I jumped over deserted gulfs between the arms of stone. I regarded the moon-like surface that was once a roof over all of this park. I contemplated the tourists below in what was first solid rock, then a limestone cave and now ground. I then thought I might not actually be allowed up there. I descended in a precarious manner, rock-climber mode, camera slung round my back and all limbs in use. I later burst out of the undergrowth covered in needles and earth and confused a group of sightseers. I was back with the hordes. For a moment though, just a brief moment, I had the craggy, spiky, tops of this park's world to myself.

Tourists and anger...what a to-do!


Two weeks ago Tom blundered into my Spanish life an hour delayed at 12:00pm. I was reading some Douglas Adams in the arrivals lounge when news of his plane reached my ears. He exited the gate, had a quick bitch, and we greeted each other. It was as if we'd never parted.
That same night we went to a club after having met-up quite coincidentally with our American friend Taylor who was visiting Madrid for one night. Tom had never walked home from a club with the sunrise. Neither had I. It's a strange feeling. Drunk or tired Spaniards and foreigners fumbling their way home, eyes straining with the light, while men in suits 'tsk' past them on their way to work.

Friday was sightseeing so I made sure he saw the sights. When he and we'd seen the sights we had a siesta. Selina and Nicky arrived that evening, within half an hour of each other at 10pm-ish. We hosted a little tapas party at my flat with some of my Spanish friends. There were 10 people in total. Five Spanish on one side of the room chirping away, four English on the other side too nervous to speak and wrapped up in their own catch-ups, and me in the middle flitting between the two groups and the two languages. We had lots of food though: bowls of olives, mussels, crisps; plates of ham and cured meats, croquetas and chips with Bravas sauce; chicken cooked in cream with onions, a quiche and some balsamic flashed salad. With this banquet we had candles and arranged flowers. After the meal we celebrated Nicky's belated birthday with gifts: a notebook, a bottle of wine, a stylish pink Jonas brothers pen, a bar of healthy chocolate and some plasticine. Anna had made her a fantastic cheesecake which would even make a large American baulk and say 'no no, I couldn't'.

The only other real noticeable features of the weekend were: lunching at 'Rasputin' - a Russian restaurant, attending a ridiculous hat party and rowing at Retiro park on the Sunday.

Last weekend I had my brother and some other guys visiting me. Round two of the sightseeing and eating routine. It was free for me this time though, which was nice. I also got sunburned for the first time since my trip to Cuba last year.

Maria: 'All you guiris (affectionate name for foreigners) are the same, one bit of sun and you go red. Didn't you have any cream?'

Luke: 'No, no I didn't' (hangs head in shame and weeps a little)

It has at least provided a few minutes of chit chat with my students this week.

On the subject of this week, it is Easter and I am hoping that today some of my students will take it upon themselves to find something more interesting to do than come to class...like have a life. Although, as a fellow teacher at Talking Point said 'at Easter the ones that come are the ones that literally have nothing else to do...' So I imagine that they will be the extraordinarily interesting students that always have 'normal' weekends when they do 'nothing special' or have lunch in their village... Don't get me wrong, I'm sure their villages are little bubbles of beauty teetering prettily away from the hustle and bustle and tourism of the capital, but, let's be honest, it's not...exciting is it? I always need a plan. I always need something to do. Something to make me seize the day. Carpe Diem or nothing. This Friday I am going to Cuenca for the day.

I can't - well I can but I don't want to - understand how people can laze around in bed until 2pm in the afternoon. I know it's nice and comfy. I know very well, too well, the seductive attraction of warm blankets while the outside world is cold and ordered. Go away! Leave me to the fuzzy chaos of my dreams and my warmth. I'm not saying you need to get up and work. Heaven forbid! But you have this little world, go and see it. See it before you have to go back to real work on Monday.

I recently watched an Australian version of 'Question Time' called 'Q and A'. It was quite good, lively. I was watching it because Richard Dawkins was on it. Some of you may know that I rather like the guy. Another panellist was Julie Bishop, who is the deputy leader of the Opposition and shadow minister for foreign affairs. An intelligent and liberal woman. She coped pretty well throughout the whole debate, which mostly focussed on Dawkins and his views. Good for me as that's what I wanted to see.
Anyway, at the end, to conclude, the presenter asked a question to all the panellists (God-folk: a creationist, a couple of Christians and a rabbi).
He said: 'Do you wish for or indeed hope for an afterlife?'
Julie Bishop's response was: 'Well, I hope this is not it. I mean, is this it?', she laughed.
They ended with Dawkins: 'Let's be realistic about this. We have brains. It's the brains that do the thinking. Our brains are going to decay. That will be that. - cue titters from the audience and scoffs from the panellists - But when you say, "is this it?" How much more do you want? I mean, this is wonderful!' Cue round of applause.

I couldn't agree with him more. Talk about summing it all up perfectly. People who take it all for granted for whatever reason, religious apathy, general laziness, simple-mindedness, you people, hear me.
I don't like you.
In fact, you suck.
You are wasting all the oxygen.
Go to France or a cave. (No offence France, you're lovely really) ((No offence cave...I'm sure you're great too))
The wasters, the polluters (a little hypocritical, but I mean proper polluters), the rubbish throwers, the animal mistreaters, the 'oh...wow...mountains...thanks for the holiday, where's the McDonalds' people, the I-look-forward-to-the-afterlife and the 'this world is boring without computers' people. Take solace and know that I hate you all. I'm not talking biblical or murderous hate. I mean that 'I'd happily slap sense into your face if it were legal' kind of hate.
Open your eyes.
Turn off your console if it's a sunny day.
Go for a walk.
Breathe in the sweet air.
Remember what social connections used to feel like.
Remember what natural connection used to feel like.
Remember that you're lucky to exist.
Or take a hike.