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.)