Il Padrino and the pork flu poem

No, I am not still in a cave, fool! I wish I was. It was slightly damp smelling but white-walled and incredibly fun. But nuff stuff has happened since then blad, and nuff stuff before. So re-re-wind; the crowd say bo, selecta. (I used to think it was “no… projector!”. But then I also thought that English MC sensation Estelle, when she sings “take me to Broadway”, was asking to go to Bahrain. Which is not the same.)

Anyway, I re-re-wind to the visit of el padre. More specifically my padre, not the generic Christian padre a.k.a God. Although he did drop by too, being, as it was, holy week.

I would like to say first off that my father, after his visit, asked me if I was going to blog about it.
“Yes”, I said, thinking he would be proud and adoring.
“You are not to make me sound like a plonker, you frightful child”. He added that if I did I would be disinherited, and put a skype emoticon of a stick man doing a kung-fu kick, so I knew he was not to be messed with.

There is a 1930’s three-bedroom pebbledash semi at stake here, so I will definitely not mention that he went to Luton… when his plane was actually from Gatwick… and so ended up buying a new flight from Stansted!!!! TONTO!!!! Lol rotfl :D :o) EMOTICONS BACK IN YO’ GRILL, PADDYWHACK!

For this reason, he arrives some 5 hours late, and with a beard because my mum is in Scotland and cannot control him. But he is handsome and wearing a milky panama hat and I am Jenny Agutter, on a steam-clogged platform, finding her father at the end of the Railway Children.

We drink Alhambra Reserva beer (big green glass bottle, v. pricey, vaguely less like sour death juice than other beers) on my sun terrace and… dayyyum son, he speaks way better Spanish than me! Shaddapa yo face! It is so annoying when guests come and shame your name. I shall be gobbing on his pillow.

We do a trail of tapas; triangles of tortilla here, mini maki rolls there. Dad thinks the beers are small. Some people are never happy! But we are all about to be very happy.

Just as we leave our last bar [“But this isn’t risotto! It is cold rice pudding. Horrible, cold, farty rice pudding!”] , we are stopped in our tracks by the first of the Semana Santa processions. Our luck is Irish, and we arrive just before Jesus.

He stands, leaning forward, the cross on his shoulders, his face long and melting with sadness, aboard an enormous float. The word “float” is ill-chosen. This is no Ikea jobby. This is heavy dark wood, with a thick gold armour: the base of a giant four-poster bed, whose weighty canopy shields Jesus from the street light. It shuffles along, swaying slightly, because it is a millipede. Underneath Jesus, and all this wood, and all this metal, are forty men, tightly squeezed in a sweaty velvet underground, carrying their own cross.

The “float” is 200 tonnes. They are each carrying 100 pounds on their shoulders. For 8 hours. Occasionally they stop. The lucky ones on the edge briefly emerge – white plastic clogs first… hot, Spanish, jamón faces second. And this is a privilege. These members of confradias wait all year for this, practicing with rafts of cement sacks for months beforehand.

In front of them are the Nazarenos, with massive silk-draped Cornettos on their heads. Even though bottle-bottom glasses peer out though the eyeholes, I do not like them.

Here are some Nazarenos. You may recognise them from the Klu Klutz Klan, or Dan Brown novels.



The best bit though is the band. The beat meets and greets my heart’s. There are low thuds, and rousing rolls, whipped up like cream. And over the top, the brass, loud and thick and clear and metal. It is at moments like this – during Christian camp days it was always at moment like this – that you can understand why people believe.

Dangerous thoughts, which must be extinguished with binge-drinking: “Anyone fancy another glass of wine?”

My father thinks I must be extinguished. Well, no, he doesn’t. But he is appalled at my lack of knowledge. I don’t know the names of churches, and I don’t know much about the Spanish civil war. I try and defend myself. I know lomo, not Lorca. I like mountains more than museums. But he has a point. And I am shamed. Because I do want to know things, I want to know as much as him. I want to be like him (less the beard) because he can be silly but he really knows his shit.

And so, I shall leave you with a poem. (written during a spontaneous poem-off, in a Mexican restaurant – great choice Natalie, thanks for that – in Paris.)

Bacon was great
I ate it with toast
And on Sunday evenings
Pork shoulder I’d roast
Tequila, a wonder
From el mejico
One, two, three, chunder
Latino free flow
But then came the swine flu
(Sausage flu to friends)
Sombreros and limejuice
These joys had to end
I think that I’ve got it
My throat's a bit sore
But Lemsip in max strength
Will keep me from death’s door

Perhaps.

On the subject of swine flu, my mother just sent me homeopathy and medical masks in the post. With this note:
“Next parcel will have better quality masks we are awaiting from the US. They were made by a company called 'Skam Makemoneyfromtheinternetswineflupanic.hahahayouwilllnevergetnothing.com'. They haven;t delivered yet. Why not? They only cost $1000 per mask, so I thought it was a bargain. All my love mum. Xoxox”

Cave

I'm going off to spend the night in a cave. Right now. Bye.

That’s the shizz, Laurita’s vizz.

It was the last day of school before Semana Santa, holy week. On the last day of school you cannot do work, you must play Hat and get drunk on cherry liqueurs. I told this to the teacher, who said “no, you fish”. But then said we could watch a film.

It was Almo-D’s Mujeres al borde de un crisis de nervios, which was fitting, because I was almost bed-burningly excited. Laura “The Bum Weavil” Ketteringham from sunny Yorkshire was on that midday train to Granada!

I went home and tidied my room. That doesn’t sound interesting, but it was. Because it was the first time in two months that I had swept the floor: I found paperclips, bouffants of fluff and a lot out about myself.

I waited for Laura at the bus station with a bag of overpriced zingy watermelon sweets. I had forgotten what she looks like and nearly pulled a girl from the soviet bloc into a deep embrace. But there she is! The real Laura; my friend, look at all her brown freckles!

Tonight is the birthday of Tara – yeah, another friend… I know! - one of the original All Day All Day Sandwich dreamteam. It is Oreo cake time. This is not just a pile of Oreos, melded together with cream cheese or something stupid like that. It is one giant Oreo… a giant Oreo cake. (Which turns out to be very salty and structurally insecure, but you try following cooking instructions in Portuguese)

The rest of dinner however is superb, and a logistical feat. We are fed in Tara’s flat, by Tara’s fine-fingered French housemates. 16 hungry yout’s sit around a table amalgamation shaped like a keyhole and eat tomato bouillon, hunks of roast lamb and potatoes with garlic cappuccino, and a cheese course, and an assiette of desserts featuring a pear, banana and chocolate crumble which does dances through salty, sweety, crunchy and creamy and melts my mind.

Some 16 stone heavier, we make our way (in a taxi/fatmobile) to El Camborio. The king of Granadian discotecas. Discoteca: what a word. Camborio perches high up in Sacromonte and its window wall and ivy-hugged terraces overlook the Alhambra, which is lit up by night. We dance in turns with Pepe, an elderly man whose principal move is the classic ‘sex thrust’, and an overweight breakdance collective called Soul Power. They pronounced Power ‘poo-er’, which I think worked well.

Saturday, we just need to get out of the city, man. But before we escape and begin our walk we are accosted by a bald man with brandy on his breath.

“Listen, how old are you?” he exhales into our faces, trapping us against a church wall “Because I’m forty and I want to know if we’re mas o menos the same age before we get into anything”. This isn’t very flattering and so I put a lot more sun cream on.

The walk is great! There is no path, and I keep letting branches spank back into Laura’s face. She is dressed very inappropriately the silly mare, in leather city boots and with a big handbag. You can take the girl out of metropolis Harrogate, but you can’t take Harrogate out of the girl.

I think we are being followed by a naked mountain elf, but it turns out to be a topless man called Jaz. Standard. He is from England, our country, and he has a brilliant hat and a green-beaded string necklace and rollie cigarettes and a first edition of Wordsworth in his bag. That is the kind of man you want to meet on a walk.

We scramble down from the non-path into the valley. We are trapped in a fenced field with hollering mules. I have already made it clear what I feel about animals. Fortunately, a purple-faced gypsy is sitting smoking on a stained exercise bike outside her shack. We negotiate with her and she lets us out of the pen.

I am feeling pretty bushwhacked by then, but wash off tiredness with an invigorating almond milk shower gel. It’s Saturday night in Andalusia; flamenc-o’clock! We are led to a bar with lemon walls, bad art, and a frightful waitress. But I have come to give flamenco a chance; the last time, my first time, that I saw it, it was in a brightly-lit pizza restaurant and the woman was a horse, so I don’t think it was flamenco at its finest.

The thing about flamenco is it is very, very easy to laugh at. The singer wobbles between curdling howls and milk-sweet song. The Man dancer has a Croydon facelift top knot and an under-forest of gelled curls. It’s almost ghastly.

But it’s also not. Personally, other things in this world move me much more; mountains, the Beatles, limoncello, Richard Curtis films. But the flamenco moves the flamenckers, and that moves me. The voice is horrible and beautiful and that is what life can be. And when Man dancer is with Woman dancer, their arms wine glass and egg timer, and the dance makes sense. They also hold watertight eye contact; something, which I, as a Londoner, sanded down by tube trains and high streets, cannot do. It looks good! I shall try it one day.

Finally, we hit the Casa Cubana, an enclave of florescent Caribbean tucked up a dark side street off Plaza Trinidad. It is run by Cuban Nancy, who smiles and wears rimless glasses and a white turban-y thing, and this woman who may be her sister or her lover, but stands guard and tries to makes sure you don’t have too much fun. But boo hiss to you party pooper, Nancy makes a mean-ass mojito and I’m transported back to a time in central Havana, when I had no underwear on, and was being pursued by massive dreadlocked black men. (This sounds like a dream/nightmare, but it really, really did happen… I am OK now). Talking of black men, and exposed groins, Laura, who is a pervert and should be CAGED, orders a “polla cubana”. A Cuban manstick. Thankfully, it is also the name of a drink in this bar, but I know that a drink wasn’t what she was after. Jezebel. In any case, here it is:

[as you can see, it is not here. Watch this space; willy tipple on its way]

Best of all, Nancy has decorated the entire casa – three floors of casa! – with enormous pictures of herself. That’s exactly what I wanted to do when I lived out in Durham, but I just didn’t have the nerve or the Prontoprint budget. There is always fourth year.

Sonntagg is very much a sonnytag and it is sonn terrace time! English girls + sun – all clothes = very red bodies and faces. Sun burn in April!! How cool is that?? My skin feels like half-cooked pork chop, which, in anyone’s language, is a grade-A resultado.

Postscript: When all this happened with Laura, she was a child. A flibbertygibbert of 20 years. On this very day, she is 21, and I wish her happy birthday, and thank her from my big toe to my big forehead for making moments she touches magic.

Carry on up the Mountain

I was told we were going walking in the mountains. I was under the impression that this was going to be a sporting excursion. For this reason, I wore spandex, Primarka hiking socks, sports bra and white trainers with spangly, light-reflecting bits. And a cap. Who wears a cap? Not me normally. And not me, ever in the future. This is why:



Yes, yes, the cap was originally bought as a joke. Yes, yes, it says Austria, a place I like because of the lakes and the Sound of Music and that garlic soup that came INSIDE the bread roll. I had not counted on fricking Fritzl buying a house with a basement and souring the definition of the country.

Anyway, the point is, my cap was a clanger and everyone else wore jeans.

The café was shut at the bus station so I bought swits for breakfast. Pic’n’mix is a big deal in Spain. Big deal… big deal, huge. (That’s me pretending to be Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman shouting at the Chanel girls. Julia wore Spandex too, we are alike in a lot of ways) ( - Oh jamrag, on reflection she said “big mistake, big mistake, huge”, but… as we saw in the piano scene, she is very flexible)

Anyway, really, pick’n’mix is all the rage. Once again, you buy it from a “chino”. There are two types of chino; the one that sells plastic earrings and umbrellas that break at the merest cough of wind, and the one that sells “frutos secos”, which literally means dried nuts and fruit, but is translated by the Spanish/Chinese as gummy bears. Both “chinos”, however, whisk noodles into their mouths and watch telly as they serve you, their eyes never swerving from the screen.

Talking of swerving, that’s what our bus is doing. Round hairpin corners on a thread-thin road. Sweets for breakfast are never a good idea. I feel unhumanly ill. I think about that time at Horse camp when the quiet girl ate 2 Mars bars as breakfast in bed and then blew chunks out of our caravan window. Not today please.

I try and distract myself by beating everybody at travel scrabble in Spanish. The trick is to wildly invent words, but just look very, very confident when you put them down. Had I had the letters, “el cheatingo” would have been on the board in a flash. Triple word score; bing bang bosh, it’s in the (green, felt, letter-)bag!

We’re getting to the good stuff now, and the sweetsick sinks back down my gullet. We’re going to three of the highest towns in the Alpujarras mountain range. Lonely planet describes them as “splatters of white paint, Jackson-pollock style, against an arid background”. Nice reference, but first of all ‘arid’ is not a pleasant or fair word, and ‘paint’ is not the point. Being white, the villages have perfect, natural camouflage: they look like floats of snow.

We arrive at Pampaniera, not to be confused with Pamplemousse, which is French for grapefruit.

“Right gangkids, to the tourist info it is!”

It is closed for the foreseeable future. Gre-aayyytt! I ask an old man with angelhair broken veins for directions. He looks terrified. It is the combined effect of the cap and the spandex. He points up the mountain: this could be the path, or he could be trying to get rid of us. Either way, we can’t stand around all day chatting.

We trudge into the sharp jaw of the valley. We are not alone. There are Sheep. Everyone else gets soppy, but I’m not sure. There is a child-one which is ok, but there’s a crip up the back which puts me off again. I think I might not like animals much/ I definitely don’t like animals at all. I pretend it’s cool indifference, but it is actually terror. I am Shakira from primary school who cried with fear at a drawing of a cow. Cows can be big, mind. And please don’t get me started on fish.

It is good though, to be out of the city, and the path is downhill and dusty. We read the signs like good tourists, and take “photo breaks” to catch our breath. There’s an awful lot of photos for my liking – this could have been a moment to shine, but I am wearing paedocap.

We scramble down to a river to break for lunch and wash our hands in ice-cold mountain water. Pierre has brought French farmhouse cake made by his mother in France, in their farmhouse. Well done, Pierre!

We walk on, and the other side of the valley is even better. We see a horse AND Paul turns a branch – wait for this – into a Gandalf stick with a shiny rock/magic crystal!

Before we climb back up into Pamplemousse, we sit on silk smooth rocks and dip our muggy feet in the water. It is so clean and fresh and cold. I have happy feet; coincidentally also the name of an animated film about penguins which I liked though no one else did.

Back in village, we drink undrinkable water because some goose has broken off the “no” of the “agua no potable” sign. And we get a raft of local meats and cheeses. Jumbo chorizo, shavings of handcut cured ham, bruise-y black pudding, and soft hypotenuse triangles of goats' cheese.

On the bus home, the sky is apocalyptic. There is only one Zorro sword-slash of light, running right along the ledge of the mountains. Their trees look like ants gripping to the cusp of a leaf. But before the first thump of thunder, we have already ducked back down to Granada, with its flamenco shows and strawberry-salesmen and safeness.

A different doll at playtime

The other day, I heard deafening music coming from the street. I am brave like a lion so went out onto the terrace to investigate. It was but lunchtime, but being el Dia de la Primavera (Spring Day), I thought maybe the yout' woz already hitting the razz. Wa-hey lads, I thought, get on it!

But no no, the music came from the local primary school. Which now plays music (and reprimands to naughty students - "Oye Esperanza! Stop climbing the fence" etc), over very, very loudspeaker, during every break.

"You know that lazy school where the kids are always in the playground.." I said to my friend.

"Shhh, they're not lazy" she interrupted "they're [she looked round] special"

"They must be! Their faces are always buckled with joy. But anyway now they now have blaring music at every playtime..."

"That's a good thing. Music encourages harmony and peace"

Yes love, but not if the music is 'BUTTONS' BY THE PUSSY CAT DOLLS.

I could not believe my ears.

Universidad? Que significa?*

A lot of people say to me, “Is all you do eat sandwiches?”.

When I say ‘a lot of people’, I mean my mother. Who worries that university is for studying! I mean, please - get with it, gran-ma! It is for wooing boys, and cheap cinema tickets.

That said, I have grown fond of the university brethren. There’s Blonde Janine in the international relations office, who has cream-cheese cheeks and speaks like a slow songbird. There’s the librarian with thumb rings. And “Call me Natalie”, who teaches us about Quebecois slang, and has hair horns, and dresses entirely, entirely in stonewash denim.

Then there’s Gabriel, who has suspiciously black hair and no official position in the university, but wanders around preying on lonely German Erasmus students. Once he caught me, and forced me to take his number.

On the scrap of paper he wrote “Voy a enseñarte Granada! Y traigo un niño!” [I’m going to show you round Granada! And I shall bring a young boy!] I'm not sure what he meant by this, but I wish the child well.

You may read this and think: Why are all these people teachers/administration assistants/sinister? Do you not have any friends your own age?

The answer is yes! There was a time when I wasn’t sure I was going to pull it off. The typical student here is a bit odd. Apparently, they are known in Spanish as “the camping type”. This is not because they wear sensible walking boots, it is because they are dirty and pour beer on their breakfast cereal. And the hair, the hair! Sometimes they have a bog-standard fringe from the front. But they turn around and wham – that’s 8 kilos of caveman dreadlock smack down their back. Also, they all have 3 dogs each, and don’t wear shoes. Not even flip-flops, which are inexpensive and aren’t at all difficult to put on.

In any case, through this mist of drug smoke and cheek piercings and stripey shorts, I found friends. Curly-haired French girls who barbecue honey-soaked aubergine; English comrades who want to speak Spanish without calling me “a smug twat” through kebab-wet lips for doing so; a mountain of Italians, a Pole here, a Turk there. It genuinely is like a microcosm of Europe. In fact, it is a bit like the European parliament, except that everyone is kissing eachother and speaking in a Long Island Ice Tea tangle of tenses. But I do like it. There is an innocence here; we gather round lyrics on laptops and sing George Michael; we do French cheese tasting evenings and show pictures of chubby uncles and old loves. It’s not Paris shiny, but it has different charm.

Yesterdazzle, after accidentally running up a mountain which blended my lungs into Gazpacho, a couple of us tried out the university eatery. It was boom, yo. An old lady gives you a ticket and a GLASS OF WINE! Wine! It tastes like church, but wine (!) from the official student canteen at lunch! Bladdy hell, no wonder everyone is kissing eachother. Anyway, then you get, por ejemplo, an entire ham and mushroom pizza, 2 little chicken breasts, vegetable tempura, a big brown baguette and a bowl of strawberries… all of this, all of it, you don’t have to choose, you get it all, for 3 euros! What can you get in Elvet Suicide (Durham) for this money? A “smoothie|” made from a duff apple and a horrible badge from the Christians.

Tomorrow we are going walking in the Alpujarras. I am a little bit scared because I am without Kendal mint cake. But mostly because the last time we went walking round these parts, a little man in a purple Fiat Brava followed us. And the path was strewed with fresh bullets. This is not even a lie.

On the plus side, we found a mustard-coloured sofa, which Paul sat on.



*The title refers to a question asked by someone 8 months into a Spanish course at Durham University. We were all saying the sentence "Soy estudiante en la universidad", and this Brainbox piped up with "Universidad? Que significa?". I mean, really. No wonder that when they taught us to tell the time, they literally taught us from scratch, as if we couldn't do it in English.

The All Day Breakfast-Lunch-and-Dinner (and Snacks) Sandwich of Dreams

Like a lot of good things – Martin Luther’s vision for the future of race relations, the Beatles’ name, “Poor, poor Pharaoh” sung by Jason Donovan in the Joseph musical – it came to be in a dream. [that’s “to be in a dream”, not to me in a dream… me and Martin never even met!]

I couldn’t sleep for ages because I’d been a little kettle-happy with a new jar of Lidl coffee. Feeling jittery, I held my left breast for comfort and thought about Marks and Spencers’ sandwiches, which I miss. When sleep finally lets me in, in a tickly, half-hearted way, these sandwiches - like stars - aligned.

If you can have an all-day-breakfast sandwich, why – why – couldn’t you have an all-day-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner sandwich? An all-day all-day sandwich. A long and beautiful sandwich filled with all meals, and inter-meals, in chronological order.

When I woke up, I thought: was that just full-moon craziness? But I broached the subject with trusted friends and found they too were able to free their minds and think outside the fridge.

On the 7th of March, three musketeers set about turning fantasy into meal-ity. The All Day Breakfast-Lunch-and-Dinner (and snacks) Sandwich / El Bocadillo de Sueños was born.

First, we metaphorically drew up a menu. Here it is: unmetaphorically, so you can read it.

Breakfast: English - sausages, baked beans (Heinz), bacon, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and eggs plural (fried).

Lunch: Sandwich – tuna mayonnaise on brown bread, cherry tomato garnish, crisps (for crunch)

Afternoon tea: Scone, jam (strawberry), cream (spray)

Aperitif: olives (stuffed with anchovies, salty)

Dinner: Lasagne (meat), broccoli (health)

Dessert: Crème Catalan, a plum the colour of sunset (5-a-day)

With a list written on a wet piece of paper, we set out for Al Campo, a supermarket big enough to spark panic attacks. Being in Spain we had to make certain compromises: the sausages would have to be the sort that stay pink as a party ring no matter how long you cook them; the scone would have to be a muffin, that came in a hermetically- sealed plastic bag. I don’t know what hermetically means, but I think it works well here.

Additionally, regarding the bread, I’m just going to come right out there and say it: there were no French baguettes left, ok? So we bought two of the longest loafettes they still had. We would weld them together with mayonnaise.

Once home, we spread out the goods on the kitchen floor. This was so I could take a photo, rather than to get them dirty.



And here is the oven we would use. Her name is Agni.



I was charged with the tuna sandwich, which I immediately ruined.

Paul took control of the breakfast; laying meats on the grill pan, flipping them over when they needed it, shuffling them around, taking them off when they were done… he worked hard and efficiently. He did the eggs too, with too much grease for my liking, but since his grilling was good, I forgave him.

Tara sliced mushrooms, and sorted out the olives, and played a lot with a dog, so I hope she frequently washed her hands.

Soon, it was starting to come together. The lasagne, flamboyantly sprinkled with oregano, was blistering away in the microwave... the crème Catalane was lying, lumpy and lactose-y, in its terracotta plastic pot.

I re-crafted the tuna sandwich, prepared the beverages (orange juice-slash-Fanta for breakfast, tea for the scone, and vino for the olive aperitif) and, with the long knife of a murderer, performed the bread surgery. The journey was long, and the road was slippery with Paul’s excessive oil, but we’d nearly made it.

The components were completed.

Breaker

Lunch

High Tea

Apero on the terrace

Dins

Pudding

Captain Birdseye's View

A last minute addition to the table was a little fish finger salad (above, left). Why, you ask? Why not, is surely a better question.

Finally, to use the culinary term, we squodged all the meals into the bread, using our hands. We sucked our fingers clean in disbelief.

And from the skies above, we heard Carmina Burana.

He was ready.

Bigger photo? Here

And then we began to eat. I think I speak for all of us when I say it was a seminal moment in our lives.

There are very few times during your time on the planet when you will get to say “oh, I just found a bit of jam on my sausage” or “I think I’m going to quickly eat lunch first and save breakfast for last”. This was one of them.

In fairness, the latter was a good strategy. Lunch was a mildly crap; too much bread and too little tuna, although the crisps (Walker’s Sensations, no less) held their own. The scone-in-sandwich – with extra cream and jam layers betwixt the scone perimeter and the bread – was sugary carbohydrate joy, though unfortunately close to the fish-olives.

The lasagne section was always going to be a winner, and cross-contamination with the crème Catalan only lifted it to another level. The broccoli let me down somewhat, but it has been such a faithful friend over the years, I will not badmouth it.

Breakfast was operatic – pretty pink sausages, bacon caramelized to leather, squeezy mushrooms, a lost crisp… all doused in baked beans and egg yolk. Oh my.

In its entirety, the sandwich is perfection. It takes little under 30 minutes to get through the entire day.

Afterwards, as we lie very still and try to avoid unnecessary communication, our stomachs make noises I have never heard before.

“They are singing with happiness,” I try and reassure the others.

Fortunately we watch a film that is so unfathomably long (The Curious Case of Benjamin “Bad acting” Button), that by the time we are finished, our stomachs are merely whispering.

I am sure I hear them say thank you.

The rain in Spain falls main-ly... on my head.

What is this? It is supposed to be sunny and it is raining plump drops which crack like eggs on my face. I bought an umbrella from a nice Senegalese man on the street and already - 1 poxy hour later - the boombatty Spanish rain has bruck it.

But nothing can get me down today. A fine day!

I knew it was going to be a blinder when I bought my morning apple at the Fruteria. Normally, it's a toss up between the Granny Smith, the classic Braeburn, and when I feel like straying from pastures European, the Fuji. Today, there was no choice. The labels had been redone, and poking out next to the pears was... "Granny Shit". Granny Shit! One of your largest Granny Shits please! Make it two!

I spend a couple of hours in blunt-fringed Esperanza's French to Spanish translation class. We are the worst in the group, incompetent in both necessary languages. We do a personality test; I am outed publicly as having a tendency to lie. A great way to make new friends.

Lunch is eaten under a blanket. Mostly for warmth, but also 'moody' restaurant atmosphere. Next, next, the best class there has ever been: Julian's Spanish to English translation class. Because we are English and everyone else isn't, it is the class we excel at. It is like Enrique Iglesias or someone else really, really Iberian doing Spanish GCSE in Croydon.

But anyway, Julian is the man I would like to be if I was a man. He's kind of a half-way home, because he has a bag which says the word 'pansy' on it. And otherworldly shirts. Anyway, he is the Romane lettuce of salad varieties: sweet and multi-layered.

Today we are translating menus. That is practically my profession! Modestly, I refrain from telling the class about my burgeoning Menu Translation business (I like to call it Empire) in Paris. This one is in the bag.

Our task is to describe pictures of viciously unappetizing food in an attractive manner for a menu. Two planks of bread draped with cheap sandwich fillings and eggs I describe as a "Farmhouse platter. Martha's hand-churned Cheddar, oak-smoked Wiltshire ham and butter baked eggs on oven-fresh granary bread". Sounds good, I'll have a piece of that. Bring it, Spaniards! You ain't got nothing on me.

I am well and truly whooped. A girl comes to the board and writes the immortal line:

"Children will love this: open ham and cheese sandwich with fried eggs, and a grilled tomato presented with a funny smile".

What does she mean? Do they put the open sandwich down first and then follow it up with the tomato? When the waiter's doing the 'funny smile' - which a google search suggested could be like this -



is he thinking 'mmmmm, children will love this!". Responsible parents certainly won't.

How well the Spanish bodge up English, I think. Granny shits, and meals presented with funny smiles...

In the end, it turns out funny-smile-girl is not Spanish. She is from Wales.

With tapas and transexuals; what better way to spend a thursday night?

The night commenced on a bad sofa but with brilliant tapas. Granada is excellent in this way; it is one of the only places in Spain where you still free tapas with every drink. Brraap yo. You amble into a nice bar, pay 2 euronicles for a sturdy vase of sweetish wine... and they plonk these puppies down in front of you:



On the left we have a thin pork steak, buttery golden, and to the right, 4 mister prawns, texturally unbeatable. Crisps and salad complete the canvas. Muy bien, senor!

Tonight is something of a tapas tour. I think of tours as great because normally you go from somewhere rubbish (i.e Aguas Calientes in Peru) to somewhere dizzyingly exciting (Macchu Picchu.). Unfortunately, we started at a superb tapas bar so, no, it wasn't like that. It was like this.

Bar 2: Dessert wine, excellent calamari (albethey oddly stewed in a sauce with... what is that? Oh... chips.), meatballs with ice-y centres (but successful in a sort of savoury icecream way). Clientele: the sort of person that keeps a dog on a string.

Bar 3: once we had ordered (otherwise we'd have been out of there in a flash.. these things can be catching!), we realised we were in a homosexual bar. Yes. There were postcards of TWO MEN KISSING (!) on the wall, and, and the female cook had suspiciously short hair. But this wasn't the real problem: the wine tasted exactly like sweetcorn. On the plus side, a tapa (for that is the singular of tapas) of rice with vegetables sounds uninspiring but was like a four-part harmony in my mouth.

Bar 4: The best of the wines. Smelled like Chanel perfume in comparison to the last place. Tapas portions robust and served with an overwhelming monton of crisps. Tortilla plump and potatoed, but, as ever, thickly painted with mayonnaise, of which I am not a fan.

By this point I definitely do not want anymore tapas. Tap off. And I may well have a sizeable bit of meatball stuck in my throat.

We decide to head to the club. Granada/Spain is not excellent in this way. No one goes to a club before three o'clock. WHICH IS TOO LATE! WHICH IS WHEN YOU SHOULD BE IN BED WITH A BOOK! It is obvious that everyone is just sitting at home, silently on the sofa, watching their watches for three o'clock so they can go out. Well don't, knobflops! Go out at 7 o'clock like they do in northern England, and wobble home carrying a shoeful of vomit by 10.30.

In any case, we are essentially the first people to arrive at the club. Cool!

And we have not read the poster advertising the night carefully enough. We are greeted by these men.



Yes, all men. Even the one that looks a lot like Victoria Beckham in the spangly LBD. The boys in the cage (who are blurry here because their dance moves are so wild) have their nipples out. I can't get over the capacity that nipples have to shock me. I don't know what it is. They are just so perky and pink and private.

Anyway, for a good half an hour, it is just me and Paul Fox and the trannies, maxi-relaxing, pretending it isn't awkward, cracking out the odd 'wacky' dance move, thinking that actually, Aguas Calientes in Peru was a pretty nice place all things considered.

Dios be blessed, other students start to trickle in. (It was a student night, advertised to all Erasmus. We hadn't just typed "gay granada" into google - unless... had you, Paul?). It is fun to watch fresh Scandinavian faces liquefy as they see catch the sight of orange tanga panty on male bottom.

Soon, as Beyonce sometimes says to me when we're hanging out, the club is jumpin' jumpin'. A chiseled American boy kisses about 8
wildly unattractive girls, and some skinny plonker turns up with a cigar and a hat. It is always the same. But dance we do and by the time we get home, the birds have already got their whistle on.

(And we have no shoeful of vomit in our hands.)

A carneval to leave you cold.

So, for a reason unbeknownst to man, flatmates suddenly dropped the puta madres idea. And decided to go as… flowers. An extreme change of mind if ever there was one.

The thing was, my principal aim was to incorporate my fur jacket into my costume for warmth come the night. This would be impossible as a flower, so for some reason – panic in the chino, the pressure of having 10 minutes shopping time – I decided to go as a dog. (this is not entirely unrelated to the flowers. The boy flatmate was going as the gardener. I would be his pet).

I wish I hadn’t gone as a dog. Because I didn’t really look like a dog. With my dog collar, and S&M leash, I kind of looked more like a goth, but in beige.

Anyway, re-re-wind, the day commences at 9 o’clock. Spanish Pastries. An error if ever there was one. Why is it only in France that they can make pastries? Spanish croissants have to be cut with a bread knife, and even then they retain their shape and taste of dried chip fat.

The coach ride is long, and they play 300. The film about the Spartans. They have nice bodies. When I am not looking at their bodies, I look out the window. The hills looks like Craig David’s scalp; braided into bushes.

Once in Cadiz, we paint ourselves. Unfortunately the brown paint, allocated to Doggy Rosa, does not look like face paint, it just looks like dirt. The flowers are great though, and we have a mariposa - a butterfly - which dances over the flowers, and which I, as a dog, try to attack.

In brief, I’m not sure what the premise of Cadiz Carneval is. I read about it on wikipedia, which promised me live music and comedy. This is not what there was. There is only one way to describe it: it is a massive, massive, MASSIVE piss up in front of the cathedral. A kind of “we’re taking your idea of wine at communion… and running with it. A very long way”. Super Sol the supermarket, in preparation, has got rid of its vegetable section to stock more alcohol. The day drink is teeth-melting tinto verano, and the night drink Ron. Ron: not the abbreviation of cool name Ronald, but rum. Amber, ethanol-y rum.

The costumes, however, are incredible. And a great gauge of the time. New this year: teams of Amy Winehouses, with shiny beehives and outsized syringes; spectres of the credit crunch (plastered with signs saying sale, discount, closing down); and the great man who came as Facebook. Look! There he is:



Timeless classics included homages to aforementioned wine god Don Simon and, of course, human sanitary towels, complete with blood and little black hairs. And they say chivalry is dead.

Shout out also to the 86-year-old lady who came dressed as a baby. In a diaper, with no tights. Having tried to speak to her, I’m not sure if she knew what she was doing or who she was, but nice effort anyway nanna!

Later, after sangria in the sun on the side of the sea, we eat patatas asadas. Baked potatoes. You choose what you put in, except you can’t have what you want which is obviously baked beans. I ask for a bit of everything. When the lady gets to the mushrooms, I guess from looking at them that they are from a tin.

“They are from a tin” I say to my friend.

“Mira,” he replies, “it all is”. And right he is: it is all from a tin. Carrot. Beetroot. HAM. And, this is the worse bit. Cheese. Tinned cheese. Oh no they did-en! Oh yes, yes they did.

As the night progresses, coherent bands of surgeons or slappers separate off into odd pairings. A school girl has shenanigans with priest on a bench (and she’s consenting!); Facebook looks like he might punch a dominatrix nun. Later, I see (a male, I think) Amy Winehouse pissing against a wall. It is all very confusing.

Definitely not confusing is how cold is it. By this point, I am wearing my tail as a scarf and have stuffed some of the flower’s cardboard leaves down my top because I have seen tramps use this nifty insulation technique.

Our bus isn’t until 8 in the morning, and, freezing and undrunk, we trudge the streets, which are wet with wee and beer. Finally we find a bar with soft square sofas. One person at a time dances, allowing the others a short nap. Dancing alone is never fun; when your friends are sleeping and you’re semi dressed as a dog, it is even worse.

The two hours between the shutting of said bed bar and the arrival of our bus home at 8 in the morning are two hours of my life I will never have back again, and never want back again. We buy Spanish omelette sandwiches to hold against our central organs if nothing else. We huddle. We consider weeing on each other for temporary heat. (No one mentioned this, but I know we were all thinking it.)

Somehow, we survive the night. I have never been so happy to be in the direct firing line of a coach’s exhaust pipe bursting into action.

But by a little after lunch time, we are home, home, and it is home. My bed is hot, my socks are off, and I sleep until 8 that evening, a deep dreamless daytime sleep.

The earth is flat, therefore my flat is the earth?

Wherefore I have gone over the top. But it is well good.

So I was about to sign up to live with an anorexic and an unctuous business man (O Tony Baglioni, did I not learn anything from living with thee??), when I saw paper fingers of phone numbers tickling the breeze. I called, I ran - up 5 stairs, with no light, feeling the walls like a blinky on braille - and the door is opened by about 8 people simultaneously. Oh and they are young and smiling and not anorexic or business men and it is like a film. Actually it is like a film. Exactly like a film. Auberge Espanol. But do not see it, it pretends to be happy but it is depressing and sad and I don't think you'll like it.

But back to flat. The walls are yellow, and the sun terrace is red, with a plastic table and muscly cactuses, and sketched mountains in the distance. The kitchen is clean with denim blue cupboards and there is a wooden thing with tall jars of jammy tarts and tins of sweetcorn and balsamic vinagre.

My bedroom has a cold grey marble floor and high ceilings. Josephine Baker dances on my wall, Charles and Di kiss, and they are joined by a new picture of Huevos con chorizo in a fatty breakfast smile. I bought very inexpensive bedclothes from a chino (trans: chinese shop but also chinese man) which have turquoise circles and scratch me. And I will buy a lamp too, because you can never have too much light.

But I like it here. There are the italians - Simone and Gabriella, who come from the stiletto heel of Italy's boot and are beautiful architecture students - the Spaniard - Omar who is very clever and in a metal band called Dilemma - and a French girl who I haven't met but is called Amelie so is obviously going to be great.

We eat together off brown glass plates, mountains of chicken prepared by Mama Tullia. We drink together in featherlight plastic glasses, vino Don Simon, patron saint of street drunkards, 80 centimes the litre. The italians give me their accent for my Spanish, I give them the art of the braaaaappp. And gun hands. (They use both when we play Trivial Pursuit; it is not the time or the place, but how are they to know?)

And this weekend we are coaching, as a team, to Cadiz carnival where we have no accommodation and will have to cultivate Vodk-coats to survive the night. We shall dress as Puta Madres. Hos wielding babies. They have yet to let me know whether these babies will be dolls or whether we have to secure a real one... Shouldn't be too hard either way; those pesky registers don't bother me when I'm on the continent!

Grenadine turns into Granada

I have come to place where they sell tuna paté ready mixed with ketchup, and many men look like hedgehogs.

Goodbye Paris with your fur and your fizzy wine. Hello Granada. Neither Canada nor the Caribbean but apparently a nice place a bit upwards from Malaga in Esh-pane. Who knew?!

At least it starts well. Dad takes me all the way to Luton without even once telling me in pulses to “STOP. BEHAVING. LIKE. A. PIG!”. And even pays my excess weight charges (baggage not blubber.. I think. Thanks Ben!) to Easyjet.

On the plane, I sleep on the man next to me because he is soft. Soon, we are to land. Hola España! It all rushes back: Una cerveza por favor! Montañas! I do like mountains generally and these ones are particularly great. From the air, they look like piles of ash, squashable, moveable, manageable, like cat litter.

And then we touch down and I am in Spain. Flying’s funny like that. And dayyyyuum son! Or rather sun. It is hot in herre. 18 grados, papa! Mr. fur hat comes off.

I see unsmiling girls with thick eyeliner eating pizza-flavoured crispy puffs. I see signs in Spanish. Doner Kebap. Just a ‘p’ different, but it speaks volumes. Everything is new and strange. I am Ariel singing “I wanna be [pause] where the people are”. Or rather Aladdin and Jasmine where they’re on that carpet...

I am slapped out of this festive moment by arriving at Hostal AB. Where I am to stay. A pipe-cleaner of a girl leads me to my room. It has but one dying light bulb and the air tastes like cigarillo.

I am saved by a man called Paul Fox. Also at Durham, we know each other from Tonk Hector’s oral classes. We meet at the cathedral and even though a gypsy wearing a Kickers t-shirt tries to make me buy some heather, it is beautiful. Where my hostel is, is straight streets and high-rise buildings, with green and white plastic sunshades. But here the streets are thin and odd and cobbled and feel hand-drawn. We wander, we talk… and thar-she-blows! I find 50 euros on the floor!

Dinner is on me. A strange affair in a deserted pizza restaurant with a flamenco show. I’m not sure what I think about flamenco. It requires great bodily control and all that but it does rather make one look like a horse. It certainly makes this woman look like a horse. Her tufty pony tail does not help. But anyway, the best thing about the meal is that the food comes through the front door. A.k.a from another restaurant/ a man on the street.

The next day flat hunting begins. You find flats by reading adverts in the place in phone booth where prostitutes usually put their cards. I visit some crackers. A place that smells heavily of dog (there is a dog there) and cheap cheap banana sweets. A place with two Cypriot sisters of forty, with grey faces, grey dressing gowns and Malboro reds. A place that has no windows. Not a one. Not a single window. A place with windows… but Taiwanese midgets.

All of these places I see. None of these places I can bear. And it is Valentine’s Day. There was a time when I was 14 and got 2 cards through my door, and only half of them were from my dad. Now I am 22 and allein, ganz allein. In Host-hell AB.

Once again, I am saved by a man called Paul Fox. And an invention called buffet libre. Fresc Co is the Best Co in the world. Rafts of salad components, pizzas, soups, pastas, chicken in yellow sauce, little, bashed-up fruits, whippy desserts, beer, coffees and infusions : as much as you like, 10 euros. 10 piddly little eurons. And, as a Valentine’s day gift, a bottle of 8% abv Lambrusco Rosado given – given! Can you imagine! - to each couple. The hall (for it is a hall; of the church- rather than Harry Potter kind) pings with bottle pops, and happiness. Maybe not happiness for wives brought here 12 years running by sweaty husbands. But for Paul and I, and our many, many plates, happiness is here.


Fast-forward three days, and happiness is found in less edible, but better things. In lying on hot white stone in a park with strong sun on my back. In seeing “Mong. Because Mong is your friend” oil paints in the Chinese shop. In having found a good flat. With 2 Italians, a Spanish boy, a French girl, a sun terrace and no smell of dog/sweets. And in listening to Blazin’ Squad in my new yellow bedroom, writing this.