Blogfolks, hello.

1. Did you know that quite a few places around here were named by English people? Thought so.
Well, In Seville, there is a square called Plaza Foconeh.

Foconeh, I frowned.
That doesn´t sound very Spanish.
Or English.
Or Arabic.
Or anything.

And then I saw the light.
Four corners !

¡Por supuesto!

Well, it made me laugh.

2. Apart fom that, just the same. Drinking, sweating, not sleeping because of the heat. Not shopping. I promised my SLF a cowboy hat before I left, but there aren´t any. I thought I´d buy some shoes, but there is no way I could take more than one step in anything that passes for shoes around here. I feel so... sensible! so.. German!

3. I´m being kicked out of the building, so farewell. It´s 6 pm, and 38 degrees out there. Wish me luck.

Gente del Pueblo de Bloglandia, parte II

Still not dead. In fact, I have been :

1.wondering. How are the pavements in Granada compatible with the shoes that the women wear? Marble pavements. Shiney. Slippery. Deadly. Shoes: high heeled, hoochie mama shoes with heels like this. Do they have a special section in the ER for heels/versus pavements conflicts?

2. eating melon, watching Mujeres Desperadas, drinking beer at night on my lonesome, reading books about corruption and drug trafficking in Málaga. All at the same time.

3. Waking up at 2 am with what can only be described as a Glorious Nosebleed. After two hours of sticking my head under the cold tap/in the freezer it finally subsided - just when I was starting to wonder what the emergency number was and if the ambulance people would hit me across the face for calling them for a nose bleed, however deadly it was. That made me laugh, and then the bleeding started again. Since then I am keeping exta ice in the freezer for when the next one strikes.

4. contemplating flamenco lessons. Then deciding not too. No deodorant can withstand that kind of heat. None.

5. Contemplating going to mass on Sunday morning. To alleviate boredom. Nothing else is open, you see. I supect my SLF will try to talk me out of it. It´s so good to know I have support at home!

6. walking around, but only after 7pm. Went up and down the old Arabic quarter of the Albayzin, and only met one cat, lazily stretched across a forged iron balcony. We chatted a little; his Spanish was better than mine so I said my goodbyes and went on for more adventures. Mostly, I bought a melon.

Este verano, el calor me la suda.

1.When the temperature reaches 42 degrees, being hot becomes an occupation in itself.

2.Everything you do revolves around drinking water, buying more water to drink, eliminating water by every single pore in your body, buying more water.

3.The only way I get some sleep in my non aircon flat is by having a cold shower right before bed, then getting up half an hour later, putting on a tshirt and going back under the cold shower. Between that moment and the time my tshirt has dried up, I can easily get an hour's sleep.

4. I am slightly worried about fungus, but probably unduly. I'll let you know. Now I really need to go get some water.

!Gente del pueblo de Bloglandia!

Today I would like to offer my 'Lose 2 kilos in two days' diet.

1. Book yourself a flight to Granada. On a Sunday night.
2. get sick with nervousness before flying just to ensure your trip preparation acts as a mild laxative.
3. Do not pack any food.
4. When you land, check that, as you thought, there isn't a single food shop open. Anywhere. Crash until the morning.
5. Stay in an empty flat with two Germans who won't talk to you or offer you any food. Why would they?
6. In the morning, wake up late and rush to your first class. Without breakfast.
7. Make sure you have signed up for the intensive course, meaning you'll be studying Cortazar until 2pm. At which time foodstores have closed.
8. resign yourself to the fact that a temperature of 41 degrees is too much to even entertain notions of food. Go and have a nap.
9. At 5pm, weak yet resolute, venture out in search of a supermercado. Bingo!

Damn, people, it's hot. This morning the temperature dropped down to 36 degrees. It felt almost cool in comparison.

Sweatily yours,
y

!Gente del pueblo de Bloglandia!

Today I would like to offer my 'Lose 2 kilos in two days' diet.

1. Book yourself a flight to Granada. On a Sunday night.
2. get sick with nervousness before flying just to ensure your trip preparation acts as a mild laxative.
3. Do not pack any food.
4. When you land, check that, as you thought, there isn't a single food shop open. Anywhere. Crash until the morning.
5. Stay in an empty flat with two Germans who won't talk to you or offer you any food. Why would they?
6. In the morning, wake up late and rush to your first class. Without breakfast.
7. Make sure you have signed up for the intensive course, meaning you'll be studying Cortazar until 2pm. At which time foodstores have closed.
8. resign yourself to the fact that a temperature of 41 degrees is too much to even entertain notions of food. Go and have a nap.
9. At 5pm, weak yet resolute, venture out in search of a supermercado. Bingo!

Damn, people, it's hot. This morning the temperature dropped down to 36 degrees. It felt almost cool in comparison.

Sweatily yours,
y

Repeat after me: ¿Dónde está mi pasaporte?

I’m leaving on Sunday! I’ve started my mental list of Things to Bring with me to Granada.
Spanish slang glossary.
French-Spanish dictionary.
English-Spanish dictionary. Just to make sure.
Extremely cool-looking sunglasses to hide behind and watch people.
Strappy tops and other minimalist garments (38°, people).


2. I’ve also started fretting pretty much full time now. Will I cope? What if the Andalusian lack of consonants really really throws me and I have no idea what they’re talking about and I can’t find the words to respond? Words are my crutch, my insurance, my passport. I’m not pretty enough for people to like me if I don’t talk, you see. I need words, I need speech to flow freely out of my mouth, or I feel like an invalid.

One of my (very distinguished) university professors accepted, at the pinnacle of his career, to lecture for an academic year in some L.A college. He lasted two weeks; everything was just too frightening. The food was wrong –eg, neither French, nor English.). The people behaved strangely (neither in a French, nor in an English manner). He kept getting the wrong impression, getting the rules wrong. There were huge whale-like places called malls instead of civilised town centres. He had to drive everywhere. One evening, he was picked up by the police for walking around his neighbourhood in a city where no one walks. They thought he must have been some kind of illegal immigrant.
At least, he had the words to talk himself out of the police station, hand in his resignation letter and fly back home.

4. Note to self: make sure I look around carefully as to get the rules right. From behind extremely cool sunglasses.

Montagne russe

Minus
My Special lady Friend has been in a bad mood for the past two days, and I didn’t manage to make it better. Nor did I really have the time or the energy to try harder because work’s been a bitch.

Plus
Today, someone at work who likes me gave me various Italian delicacies in a basket, and a bottle of champagne.

Minus.
Italian food. Perhaps it was a subtle way to allude to the world cup final?
I don’t like champagne.

Plus.
I don’t give a rat’s arse about football, and if you add Crème de cassis to a glass of champagne it’s a drink worthy of the gods.

Minus.
Yesterday, someone I know lost three fingers in an epileptic fit/freak hairdryer accident.

Minus.
She is was a pianist.


In my most childish, impossible, fairytale daydreams, I’m always a healer. Of moods, bumps, bruises, breaks, pains, and of lost fingers. Once I read somewhere that wishing for magic was one of the signs of depression. I do it all the time! Don’t you?

The Pink Badge of Gayness

1.People of blogland, something disturbing is happening – Abi wants to take away our gay badges for not staying out on Pride night!

2.After all there were thousands millions of gay homosexuals revelling around Soho square that night, clad in gay rags/gold leather hotpants/matching suede lederhosen, and we could have been two of them for a little bit longer!
I can tell you what happened, blogfolks, it was the gold leather hotpants, I just had to take my special lady friend home.

3.Therefore Abi wants to remove our pink badges of gayness from us.
What she doesn’t know is that we went home to do further gay things, which also involved lederhosen.

4. What did other people do?
look after a drugged up ex. (Perilous behaviour factor: 2/5)
kissed an ex. (Perilous behaviour factor : 9/5)
proceed to have a fight with an ex.(predictable behaviour factor: 12/5)
received the obligatory apologetic 2am phone call from said ex. (pathetic behaviour factor: 5/5)
got dumped. On Pride night. (duh factor: 22/5)


5. Perhaps Pink badges of courage shouldn’t come with compulsory drunkenness.

6. We don’t care. We’re way gay.

Pilgrimage…

1.Last night, I dreamt that Britain’s pigheadedness reticence to join the euro was the result of occult lobbying on the part of a group of cashiers from bureau de change around the country. Something about fears about losing the business of millions of holidaymakers en route for Málaga.

2. Why the dream, I asked myself; and myself answered: perhaps because I have to jet get the train over to France tomorrow morning; and in the little purse where I keep my real money, there are only 2 euros left.

3. What can I get myself for 2 euros, blogpeople? I don’t know! How do I know how much things cost anymore?! I leave my country for a mere 13 years and hey, everything’s different. Government. Currency. The National Front’s score in the presidential elections. The price of beer. The price of espresso.

4. When I was an impoverished student (not impoverished as in ‘I’ll be paying back my loan down to the 13th generation’ like over here, since higher education is pretty much free in France), an espresso was the cheapest thing you could order in a café. That was around 5 francs –50p- at the time, and I wonder how I didn’t suffer from caffeine-induced tremens between the age of 18 and 22.

5. Sometimes we would splash out on something really special – half a pint of Guinness.

6. Next time if you’re lucky I’ll let you know how much an espresso is in Lille. I might also tell you why I’m going there, although it’s a really personal story; you and I don’t know one another that well.

P is for..

Blogpeople, have you had a good Saturday? I have. This morning I set out to meet up with my Special Lady Friend and be Proud. We were Proud for a few hours but mostly we people-watched from a Perfect Vantage Point (a bench in heaving Soho square.) There was very little leering involved, and it mostly involved gay homosexual boys rather than girls. There are some couples out there I would gladly watch, let me tell you that. Later on I panicked a little when we almost got swallowed up by a forest of sweating torsos; I let my SLF lead me by the hand and tried to banish any thoughts of crushing and crowd-induced dismemberment from my mind.
People of blogland, my Special Lady Friend missed the England-Portugal match to hang out with me! She must really love me. I did push her into a pub to allow her a token five minutes of footbalistic action, but I spoilt it for her by repeatedly nibbling her earlobe, at which point she gave up.