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.