además ...

real-life facebook / twitter ...

2011-06-28T16:21:00.001+02:00

had to *share* this...

Real-Life Facebook / Twitter | SadAndUseless.com

not posting, playing...

2011-06-15T13:56:00.002+02:00

Hello, yes, it's me again. Posting has been temporarily suspended due to end of term chaos, scheduled nervous breakdown, and various other day-to-day worries like, for example, having stand-offs with the increasing number of dust bunnies blowing down the hall. But, I have been playing, in particular with instagram, a lovely little iphone photo app, and have set up a photo blog over at tumblr which you can see here. There will be more later, I promise.

the cock files...

2011-05-24T11:02:00.002+02:00

At some point, in any given academic year the inevitable conversation about cock rears its ugly head (metaphorically speaking of course) in my english classroom. It's not that I have cock marked as one of the "must teach" topics of the semester, nor does it appear in the list of "1,000 english words you simply must know", but somehow or another it always manages to work its way into the conversation. The conversation can start in one of three ways:

1. The innocent quest for knowledge: "How do you say gallo in English?"

2. The possibly not so innocent question out of the blue: "What is cock"? Is it just me or is it the absence of an article in that sentence that instantly cues tacky music and images of impossibly busty women writhing suggestively with muscly, naked men endowed with gobsmackingly large... members?

3. And of course, the teenagers who never knew it had anything to do with the male of the poultry family, and who have no doubts whatsoever of its function in phrases like "Show me your cock" and who use it with startling regularity whenever the opportunity presents itself. "I would beat him to death with my cock" would have to be one of the more creative examples I've seen in a 3rd conditional Q&A exercise.

Some weeks back...

Student A: Mondraussie, what is "cock"?

Me: Well it can mean either a male chicken or it can also be a slang term for penis. For that reason I suggest you use "rooster" when talking about chickens, just to avoid any confusion.

Student B: What did she say?

Student A: She said "cock" means "polla"!

Student B: Ahhh... of course. Suck my cock!!

There was a momentary stunned silence as other members of the classroom digested this extraordinary statement and its meaning. I politely suggested that 8.15am in the classroom was probably neither the time nor the place for that type of activity. The rest of the class fell about the floor laughing.

Apparently internet porn is also a useful language acquisition tool.

changes...

2011-05-22T10:48:00.000+02:00

My new flat is on the outskirts of town, with a balcony that overlooks a small plaza and an old church. The church bells chime every quarter hour, so loudly that my father, on the phone to me one day on the strike of 12, wanted to know if i was living inside the church.

From where I sit, if I lift my glance slightly to shut out the unsightly jumble of factory buildings below, I look across to the green manicured landscape of the cooperativa headquarters on the hill opposite. To the left the view is unremarkable, the eye travels down the street lined with row upon row of 1960s housing developments, to the right, past the last straggle of houses the view opens up to rolling green hills and mountains in the distance. It's quiet here, away from the bustle and chaos of the town centre. There is plenty of light. This is a Good Thing.

From my vantage point I watch the comings and goings of people in the plaza. The dawn and dusk parade of the dog walkers and the pram pushers, teenage couples necking on the benches, kids playing football, men taking the rubbish out. With time I have come to identify the good citizens of the dog walking community, those who set out armed with little plastic bags to dispose of their pets' business, and then there are the others who leave the offering where it lies, waiting to catch the unwary passerby. I make a mental note to myself to never walk on the grass. Ever.

There is one dog who never fails to delight. I call her Crazy Poodle. A little grey bundle of pure energy, she shoots off like a bullet from a gun when released from her leash, and races around the square, up and down the street, a toda hostia*, as they like to say here. She'd give a whippet a run for its money.

On Sundays I watch the ever dwindling processions of the faithful leaving the church after midday mass. They are mostly elderly, and I'm yet to see anyone under the age of 60 leave the building. I wonder who will go to church when all the old people have gone.

And so, I familiarise myself with my new neighbourhood and my new neighbours. My move here, of course, did not go unnoticed, but with the passing of time the looks have changed from open stares of curiosity to more familiar nods of greeting. Changes...

* ir a toda hostia = to go like the clappers

silence...

2011-03-12T23:57:00.004+01:00

i'm waiting outside the bar, friend is inside, paying the tab... it's windy, a south wind they say, but it feels cold to me... impatient to leave, i look for a spot a little more protected from the draught...

i hear someone call my name, i look around and see an ex-student, smoking a cigarette in the doorway of the bar next door... i head over, the usual greetings ensue, friend exits from the other bar, looks for me and joins us... more pleasantries, and then the inevitable question...

"where is habm?" ex student wants to know...

"working" i say... i'm not sure exactly what time it is...

the conversation flows in that way that only a few drinks under the belt make possible... ex-student's wife joins us, as does the wife of ex-students friend... more banter and laughs, they show me photos of their holiday in china... finally it's getting late, and we go our separate ways...

on the way home i pause and take stock of the evening... i feel uneasy, unsettled, unsure of why i was unable to give a straight answer to a simple question... not the right moment? not appropriate to drop a bomb like that in the middle of a chance encounter?

habm and i separated almost two months ago and i still don't know how to tell people...

winter afternoon walk...

2011-01-18T18:50:00.000+01:00

so, how was your trip to australia?

2011-01-16T17:38:00.006+01:00

intense...

i could go into more detail, i could for instance tell you about how i missed the plane and arrived a week later than originally planned, and i could make it witty and amusing and you'd laugh until little tears would squeeze out of your eyes and your belly would ache... oh the good times, how we could sit about and laugh about that for years to come...

but i won't.. or better put, i can't, my brain is currently lolling about on the floor, like an upturned beetle waving it's little legs feebly... i can run faster than i can think at the moment.. crossing 17,000 kms in 24 hours will do that to you...

so i'll leave you with some photos instead... a bit of an odd collection to be sure, i'm not sure if it's the camera, but i just can't seem to do the tourist happy snaps back in my home town...

we'll talk later, when brain and body are located in the same postcode...

(semi) anonymous...

2010-12-05T22:50:00.001+01:00

this blog is at a crossroads... some choices have to be made...

the same could be said about my life...

landofnospice started with no clear objective, merely a place to document my experiences of setting up life in a strange country with a new man, a place to publish photos and keep friends and family back home up to date on my happenings, a place to laugh (and vent) about my attempts to assimilate... the more i struggled with things, the more i wanted to cry with frustration, the more i turned to the blog and tried to turn the tears into an anecdote i could look back on and laugh about later... it became an outlet, a kind of therapy...

i discovered that i liked writing...

in the early days i didn't think too much about my anonymity, friends and family (the initial target audience) knew who i was and the occasional passing stranger didn't bother me... i didn't put my name out there, and was always careful to never mention names of others, but photos were published and i certainly never made a secret of where i lived...

blonde haired, blue eyed australians are fairly thin on the ground around here, it wouldn't take a genius to find me...

the readership demographic of the landofnospice has changed considerably since the early days and the circle has widened to include fellow expats, fellow bloggers and even the occasional ex-pat basque curious (and sometimes furious) about an outsider's take on their homeland... i've met people through the blog (which has been lovely) and i got a new job through the blog (which was frankly a little disconcerting), and some of my students read the blog (the worrying question here is which ones??)... each category comes with it's advantages and disadvantages, but lately, it has been the disadvantages of being (semi) anonymous that have been weighing on my mind...

many, many times this year i have started to write things that have inevitably ended-up in the trashcan.. worrying about the possible repercussions, if x reads this and tells y etc... it's not just me i have to worry about, it's the usual suspects who turn up on these pages as well...

the self-censorship thing is starting to get me down...

the landofnospice, my little corner of the internet which has served me so well for so long, is failing miserably to be my faithful friend in the current phase of upheaval and change in which i find myself at the moment... and i miss my faithful friend, i really do..

perhaps i need to stop, perhaps i need to change, perhaps i need a new space altogether...

crossroads...

at least my job is intellectually stimulating....

2010-12-03T21:16:00.003+01:00

scenario:

in the classroom with twelve hormone-charged teenagers... the task at hand is to read, and complete a questionnaire, "how confident are you"... the students are complaining that the situations proposed in the questionnaire are a little lame... i can't help but agree with them... the murmur of "me aburro" grows ever louder...

when we have finally cajoled, finished, corrected and evaluated our scores to discover how "confident" we are, i propose a sweetener.. how about each group writes their own "how confident are you?" situation, with the corresponding a, b or c answers... the students settle down to this with enthusiasm...

i am suspicious.... teenagers, 5.00pm english class and enthusiasm are not words that collocate easily in my mind... i am even more suspicious when the group of boys, who "hate" everything, appear to be working hard (instead of talking) and even, dare i say, appear to be enjoying it...

my suspicions are not unfounded... when their turn comes, the boys, with great aplomb, deliver their masterpiece...

You are in the changing room at school with no clothes (on) and a girl enters in.. Do you:

a. fuck the girl?

b. run out with no clothes (on)? or

c. show her your cock?

i suspect they were trying to shock me.... little do they know....

making friends...

2010-11-28T09:13:00.003+01:00

driving out along some goat track in the middle of nowhere we came across a donkey standing in the middle of the road... in the ensuing stand-off, it became clear the donkey wasn't going to be the one moving first... so we carefully edged the car around, half on the road, half off until he was level with the passenger window... he didn't move so i wound down the window to have a chat...

and the donkey liked the chat so much that he stuck his head right in through the window...

and he spent so much time with his head inside the car that the other donkeys got curious and came over for a closer look

until there was practically a queue of them, waiting patiently for their turn to stick their head in the window...

i don't know what it was all about, but what i do know is that it took us quite some time to persuade our new friend that his head was better off outside the car.... and then we continued on our way....

damaged goods...

2010-11-01T18:03:00.003+01:00

time for a little bit of the past, a bit of purging...

****

i first met him when i was going through my divorce... things were getting messy, i was advised to get a lawyer, and after asking around I was given two names... one was a woman, a pitbull they assured me. she would go for the jugular... the other was a man, a less flamboyant personality, more cautious, more reasonable, but quietly persistent just the same...

i chose the man, i didn't feel comfortable with the hard-nosed approach, and it had never been my intention to clean the ex out of everything he had, i just wanted my share... i didn't want the jugular, i just wanted to tap a small vein...

throughout the 2 years of demands, counter demands and court appearances that followed, we saw quite a lot of each other... as was to be expected in those circumstances we became quite close, he knew so much, and more, about intimate details of my previous life... i felt comfortable and safe in his hands. he was an intelligent and sensitive man, and although not ever likely to make the hottest 100 list, there was attraction there... and an element of flirting, if i am to be honest, on both sides...

court case over and settlement agreed, we continued to meet for the occasional drink, every few months... he was in a long-term relationship, and i too, was involved and living with someone... we were friends with that occasional sparkle in the conversation, and the knowledge that each finds something attractive in the other, nothing more... and nothing more crossed our minds...

one day he called me... we were planning to meet that night, and did i mind if he cancelled? it's just that his girlfriend of 9 years had just up and left him without warning the day before and he didn't feel up to socialising... he sounded devastated, shattered... my heart went out to him...

a few weeks later he called again, to reschedule the drink... we met more frequently after that, I listened to his tales of woe, and he listened to mine... my relationship too, was on the rocks, and i was moments away from starting that god-awful process of deciding who keeps the sofa, who gets custody of the cat....

many drunken evenings spent consoling each other, and the inevitable happened, of course it did... i marveled at my ability to slide right from one into the waiting arms of another, ignoring the danger that lurked... it was not easy, both of us were damaged goods, sensitive to the tiniest details... but, with time and patience we could work it all out...

we always socialised over my side of town, never his... he met my friends, i never met his... i didn't think about it much at the time, wrapped up in those heady early days, when you can think of nothing else but the other, wanting to spend every waking minute with them... and he didn't mention me to her... not that i cared, she was history, right?

and so we carried on for a couple of months...iI ignored the external signals that all was not right, and i repressed the internal ones... the monster inside me, the depression, was breaking out of its box, but i put the tendency to lurch from euphoric highs in his presence to devastating lows in his absence down to the stress of the months that we had both passed... breakups are difficult, but we're on the mend, i've got a new man, and everything is going to be alright...

then one day, she came back... after months in her own personal wilderness, just like that, she came back... and decided that it might be a good idea to try again, one doesn't simply throw away 9 years, does one? and by the way, how about a spot of couples counseling?

and she didn't know that i existed...

he came over to my flat to tell me the news... what did I think he should do?

it was winter, and cold... in my memory of the years that followed it was always winter, and cold, and the watery sydney sunshine failed to penetrate the inside of my north-facing flat...

the black monster broke free of his constraints and put his hands around my throat...

i was stoic... of course one doesn't throw away 9 years like that... it's good to resolve these things, closure, etc... i convinced myself i wasn't worried... i was much more attractive than she (judging by the photos i'd seen) and if what he'd said was anything to go by I was a star in the bedroom... i would win...

he was a thinker that man... at first, that was what i liked about him, but after time passed it was the thinking that nearly killed me... it took him several weeks to decide whether he wanted to try the counseling or not... in which we carried on as we always had, me constantly fighting back the anxiety, trying to be the light, bright, better alternative... the monster tightened his grip...

i left for a trekking holiday in Peru... i left, still not knowing if he was going to go back and try it all again, or not... and in one single moment, on top of a mountain, i knew with a certainty, with a sinking heart that the decision had been made... and when i returned, to about 20 messages on my answering machine, my fears were confirmed... they were going to try again...

no worries... i am light, i am at one with the universe... i am prepared to risk my heart for this man... i will wait... i am more attractive, more fun, better in bed, closure is good... etc...

so he went to counseling and he lied, by omission... he never once mentioned my name... i didn't exist...

she moved back in to his house... across the other side of the city i settled in for a long drawn-out siege... he still never mentioned my name...

but he never gave me up either... he emailed, he called, he visited... moments of cold, stolen, gut-wrenching passion... and me alone in the eternal winter... he couldn't lose me, i'd come to mean too much to him, but now was not the right moment to tell her... she's not ready for it, he's got a major case coming up... then there were bushfires, someone's mother in hospital, major projects at work, illnesses, depression, something to do with some teenage kids... i swallowed it all, wondering when the universe was going to hand me out the prize for longevity...

days, turned into months, turned into years...

i fantasised about leaving him, i threatened him with ultimatums, deadlines... all of which dissolved into nothing the next time the phone rang or an email pinged it's way into my inbox... i needed him like a junkie needs his fix... i needed him to make me feel sexy and attractive, and to feed into the dark, desctructive, all consuming certainty that i was a shitty, worthless person, who didn't deserve to be loved... i lived for the drama, the angst, the stolen passion, the tears, the recriminations, the sadness, the guilt and the make-up sex... this must be love...

the black monster was the one taking all the decisions now... inevitably those were the decisions that caused the most pain... your life is fucked up, let's fuck it up a bit more... i lost my resolve, my strength, i was broken... i bored my family and friends with endless analysis and re-analysis... i went to a shrink who told me i had serious clinical depression, wrote me a script for anti-depressants and asked me a lot of questions about my mother... i threw the script in the bin and never went back...

i toyed with the idea of suicide, seriously... the only reason i never took that step was because of the obligation i felt towards those who cared about me... it's not natural for children to die before their parents... imagine the hurt they would feel... i hated them all, for caring about me, for loving me and forcing me to stay and live through another shitty day...

i carried on... i went to yoga classes in the mornings, and curled up in the bath, or on the bed, crying for 4 hours at a stretch afterwards... i worked like a dog, many late nights and weekends... i went out and partied... i drank, a lot... all the time waiting, filling up the hours/days/weeks between one visit and the next...

as time passed, the contact became more sporadic, weeks went by instead of days... i started to cure, and the eternal winter started to show signs of spring... sometimes I noticed the sun shining, sometimes I smiled, and enjoyed myself, deeply and from the heart... but always, there was another phone call, another visit, and I would be reeled back in...

there is no dramatic end to this story... the contact just petered out, months and months went by and he didn't call again... and slowly i joined the land of the living... i took out the hammer and nails, boarded the monster back up in his box and decided I would be fine on my own, that i would do all those things i'd wanted to do, but never got around to... i quit my job, gave up my apartment, packed everything in boxes, and with a backpack on my back, set off to do all that traveling i'd never done... live in a city I'd never been to before... destination: europe, london... unexpected, extended stopover in mondragón...

****

sitting in an internet cafe in paris, some 18 months after the last time i'd had news of him, i checked my email, and saw again in the list of unread messages that name that always had made my heart beat a little faster... except this time my heart didn't beat quite so fast...

he wanted to get in contact with me, to explain his absence for the last little while... he had contacted the office, they said that i had left the country... he wheedled my new email address out of them, he had so much he wanted to tell me... and there he was, stretching out a hand to join him in the blackness again...

fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

****

everything you ever needed to know about me...

2010-10-20T12:12:00.004+02:00

post hike, lunch, bottle of wine, mountain-top siesta...

fun fact...

2010-10-15T15:00:00.000+02:00

it is possible to completely submerge a hairdryer in water, let it dry out for a day or two and then use it again without giving yourself a cheap home perm in the process...

tried and tested here in the land of no spice...

*****

habm: darling can you come here for a moment? we have a problem...

in the bathroom i find him gazing anxiously at the bidet... the drains seem to be blocked and all the water from the washbasin has emptied itself into the bidet... my hairdryer (which is normally left lying in the bidet*, because i'm a slattern, remember?) is sort of half floating at the top...

me: do i look like a plumber? call a plumber and throw away that hairdryer while you're at it...

habm: no, no... we'll dry it out and it'll be as good as new...

me: (withering look) ...

habm: no, really...

me: are you trying to kill me?

habm: don't be silly darling, i'll dry it out and it'll be fine, you'll see

me: over my dead body will i use a hairdryer that's been submerged in water... elementary science: water + electricity = VERY BAD... if you're so keen, you try it first and tell me how that works out for you...

habm: well obviously it's not safe to use now...

me: do i look like i'm stupid? you're trying to kill me...

several days later habm plugs in the hairdryer... i keep a safe distance... and you know what, the bloody thing works!

*****

* a full and detailed analysis of "why does every home in spain have a bidet, but nobody uses them?" can be found here

in which i alter fitted sheets...

2010-10-13T12:24:00.002+02:00

and contemplate murdering habm...

*****

i hope you are sitting comfortably, with a big tall glass of your favourite vino or whatever yanks your chain, because this one's going to be a long one folks... and it's got even longer since i started to write it 3 days ago...

a couple of weekends back, in a fit of pms fueled "need to change my life, let's buy stuff for the house" frenzy i decided it was time for a trip to ikea... ostensibly, the trip was to stock up on serviettes and special favourite chocolate only found in the ikea food store... 320 euros and several hours later we staggered out of the store...

that's a hell of a lot of chocolate... no wait, i found sheets...

it was a particularly momentous occasion... i've only been looking for about a year... and there i was in the bedroom section, looking at colours, patterns and fabrics that i actually liked... a rather tense half-an-hour or so ensued, as we scrambled to assemble a matching set in the correct sizes... love that colour but there aren't any pillowcases left... this colour has a double fitted sheet, but only a single top sheet... etc... and ad infinitum...i call it the ikea dance...

habm started gazing fixedly at the wall, agreeing to every "what about this and this?" combination put in front of him without actually looking... words were had behind the pillow display...

the pile of "possibles" was growing larger and larger by the minue, and a very stupid man mistakenly started pawing through it.. "don't touch those" i snapped... i mean seriously, do not fuck with a woman's pile of stuff in ikea, especially when that woman has pms... startled, the man scuttled away, exchanging a sympathetic look with habm...

back at home, i stripped the bed triumphantly, ready to try out my prizes from the ikea hunting expedition...

"oh my fucking god... i can't believe it"

habm, looking more sullen and hangdog than ever, reluctantly entered the bedroom to see what all the fuss is about...

"the sheets are like half a metre too long.... the doona cover is about half a metre too wide, and the pillowcases are too wide as well... how is that even fucking possible?"

a spate of teeth gnashing, wailing and bed kicking ensued... i may or may not have wept...

apparently we have the weirdest sized bed in the world...

the choices were:

1. take them back

2. live with them the way they were...

3. alter them...

habm dismissed option 1 out of hand because i had opened the packaging.. "what do you mean i can't take them back?? you just watch me take them back"... but even i couldn't face the prospect of yet another year of fruitless searching..

option 2 was short lived... i mean what is the point of fitted sheets if they're not fitted?

habm seized on option 3... "we'll get my sister to alter them..."

i wasn't at all happy with option 3, and less with the added family dimension... for one thing i'm heartily sick of this tendency to take problems home for the inlaws to resolve, and for another i could see that it was going to be an enormous amount of work... measuring, fitting, sewing, fitting again.... i didn't feel comfortable with asking another person to take that on...

then i had a bright idea (or so i thought)... "would your sister lend me her sewing machine, do you think?"

habm was certain she would and bustled off to make the necessary arrangements... anything to placate the pmt monster...

a lengthly conversation ensued, which seemed to involve endless repetitions of "no, no, we'll do it", "no, no, we'd prefer to do it ourselves"... but in the end the battle was won and the sewing machine would be ours for the next few weeks... (or so i thought)...

about 20 minutes later the phone rang again... this time it was mother-in-law... variations on the "no, no, we'll do it", "no, no, we'd prefer to do it ourselves" theme started again and pmt monster started to get a little testy...

realizing that this approach was not working, she changed tack.. "a sewing machine is like a car" she informed us.. "each one has it's own particular quirks and foibles and only the owner truly knows how to drive it"... i found all that a bit rich, coming from a woman who does not possess a driving license, nor has been behind the wheel in her life..

the conversation took a nasty turn and in an effort to placate the mother-in-law hell bent on martyrizing herself over the bedroom sheets, a compromise was suggested.... how about we do the difficult fitted sheets here, (as they would require a bit of fiddling to get them right) and she do the easy, straight line stuff?

"if I'm not doing the whole job, i'm not doing any of it" she shouted and hung up...

great, so by then it was 12.30 on sunday and i had sheets that didn't fit and a pissed off mother-in-law... anytime after midday is a fine time to start drinking, in my book... i reached for the bottle...

the phone rang again, mother-in-law just wanted to tell us that she wouldn't be lending the sewing machine to us after all... now i could have sworn that the sewing machine belonged to sister-in-law, but whatever...

things were just getting better and better, sheets that didn't fit, a pissed off mother-in-law AND no sewing machine... like a grand russian chess master, she had just checkmated me...

(or so she thought)...

after consuming all the alcoholic contents of the fridge a cunning plan began to form...

"does other sister-in-law (ie sister-in-law married to brother-in-law) have a sewing machine??"

oh yes she does, and she's just on her way to mondragón, so she'll drop it off now...

cue victory dance around the living room...

fast forward through a couple of weeks of measuring, cutting, sewing, and fitting... and now i have sheets that look just like the day they came out of the packet... except... THEY FIT!!

and that dear friends was where the story was going to end... with you dazzled by both my skill behind the wheel of a sewing machine, and my extraordinary ability to out-maneuver the martyr-in-law from hell... but sadly, before you fondly imagine the inhabitants of the land of no spice living happily ever after with fitted sheets that fit, there's more...

*****

after such a build up there was great excitement on saturday when the job was done, the sewing machine was packed away and the new bedding was premiered... i admired my new movie-star bed, settled myself into the luxurious crispness of new cotton and drifted off into a blissful slumber...

habm complained that he felt itchy...

ok, no problem... we'll wash them (which i should have done in the first place, but was too lazy and too impatient)

last night, i put the freshly washed new bedlinen on the bed for the second time, and again drifted off to sleep... rudely awoken around 5am by a noise outside i realised that habm was not in bed with me... i went out into the living room and found him on the sofa...

in fact, he had spent most of the night on the sofa...

because he still feels itchy...

and he thinks he's allergic to the sheets...

I. DO. NOT. FUCKING. BELIEVE. IT...

i may actually kill him this time...

i worry that i am becoming a slattern...

2010-10-08T20:36:00.006+02:00

habm comes out of the bathroom and into the living room with a concerned look on his face...

"what do you reckon about cleaning the house this weekend?" he says...

i give him a withering look and tell him that i'm over cleaning the house...

and it's true, i am over cleaning the house... it just gets dirty again....

i think you can now officially call me a slattern....

es lo que hay...

2010-10-02T18:44:00.007+02:00

the barman serves up two glasses of wine and the pintxos...

"es lo que hay", he says by way of an apology...

it's thursday evening pintxo-poteo, where you get a glass of crianza and a pintxo for one euro... just the kind of activity to attract a cheap lush like me...

we've apparently arrived late to this particular bar and all the special offer pintxos have run out... we're served up "gildas" instead...

friend and i gaze at the "inferior" offering thoughtfully... i take a picture, we're a little bit pissed...

i tell friend that the little pickled onion, gherkin, olive and pepper squewered on a toothpick, the secondary offering, is a metaphor for my life, it's not what I imagined it would be but you do what you can with what you've got...

friend snorts and says my life is more like a julia roberts movie... i'm not so sure, but i'm pretty bloody certain that julia roberts wouldn't end up living in mondragón...

i eat the metaphor, savoring the crunch of the gherkin and the sharp tang of the vinegar...

es lo que hay...

going to the beach....

2010-09-14T14:06:00.002+02:00

i've been pretty quiet on the holiday front... mostly because we didn't do a hell of a lot more than go to the beach and cook bbqs... sounds boring i guess, but for us it was just the ticket..

our favourite campsite ever (well leaving aside the fact that the hot water always runs out in the afternoon just when you come back from the beach and want to have a shower) in aldeia do meco was pretty much the same as the last time we visited, 3 years ago, so we basically just plonked ourselves down in the best site in the park (we got that all figured on the last visit) and didn't move for nearly 3 weeks...

the campsite is strategically placed on the top of a cliff, overlooking the most gorgeous beach (and never crowded, even in august), which meant a fair amount of schlepping up and down the stairs that some nice old guy with too much time on his hands has installed... just in case you were thinking we were getting fat and lazy with all that lying on the beach and eating bbqs...

first you have to lug your fold-up chair, beach umbrella, books, etc through the hole in the fence

on the other side of the fence the beach awaits.... all the way down there...

then you have to pose for a photo

then you go down some stairs...

and some more stairs..

down on the beach there's a place where people collect grey/green clay and rub it all over their bodies... apparently it's good for the skin or something... i resisted the temptation....

and at the end of the day you schlep all the way back up again to the campsite...

for a bit of well deserved r&r.. see exhibits a and b below:

(yes i know, vogue goes camping! i don't normally read vogue, and even less in portuguese, but they were giving away free beach bags....)

bloody trick cows...

2010-09-13T09:47:00.005+02:00

out hiking with a friend in txindoki on friday... on the way back down friend suggests i take a photo of some cows that had taken up residence on the track... suspected that friend was taking the piss after an earlier conversation in which i'd recounted my theory that despite docile, cud chewing appearances, cows are in fact highly intelligent and probably contemplating the big issues, does god exist? what is my purpose here on earth? how can i reduce my carbon footprint? etc etc...

i nervously approached the nearest cow (they're bloody huge you know) who regarded me impassively...

"she's got very big horns" i said

"all cows have horns" retorted friend...

apparently friend was going to make this as difficult as possible, thank god for zoom lenses... click!

i turned to find some more photogenic specimens in the herd, when suddenly....

"holy fuck friend!" i said "wtf is that one over there?" click!

"well it looks like a toro" he replied cautiously...

oh my god... oh my god... oh. my. god. i'm going to die up here on this mountain... it's a fucking bull... and it's black... wtf is a fucking bull doing up here on the mountain... i've seen all those macabre photos on tv of people getting gored... isn't it illegal to let them wander loose... maybe it escaped... oh fuck, it's in the middle of the trail, how are we going to get down? thank god i'm not wearing red... do you think i can defend myself with my walking stick? oh. my. god...

friend didn't seem as shattered as me, just quietly cautious...

pull yourself together girl, what are the chances of meeting a real, live toro of the bullfighting variety up here in txindoki?? they breed them in andalucia for gods sake... maybe it escaped and headed for the hills??

friend started moving quietly in the direction we needed to go, skirting around the back of the bull... i followed, wondering if a distance of several kilometres between us and it might be better than the couple of metres currently at our disposal... the bull ignored us... we continued walking... and the bull studiously ignored us... safely on the other side we turned back for another look...

click!

bloody trick cows... they're probably still rolling around up there on the mountain pissing themselves laughing at me..

correction standoff...

2010-09-08T16:33:00.000+02:00

chance encounter with a stranger out hiking in the forest (no not that kind of chance encounter - read on)...

stranger: hello!

me: hello!

stranger pointing over my shoulder: what's that farmhouse up there on the hill?

me: the name* of the house i don't know, but it's one of the houses on the outskirts of the hamlet of bedoña...

stranger: ah, of course, beGoña...

klutz that i am when speaking spanish, i am used to people correcting the errors that i strew randomly around me... the most common technique is to repeat back more or less what i have just said, with a slight emphasis on the corrected syllable...

i stared at the stranger for a moment, was he correcting the name of the hamlet?

me: yes, beDoña...

stranger: it's years since i've been here and i'd forgotten that beGoña was up that hill...

now there was no doubt, he was clearly correcting me... i was sure the name was bedoña, but maybe i've been mispronouncing it for years... oh god, how embarrassing...

the conversation continued in this vein for another 10 minutes, each one politely but firmly defending their respective "d" and "g"... i won't bore you with the details, pueblo girl has rather eloquently covered that territory here...

finally i managed to extract myself from reminiscences of a boGoña that never was, and sped up the hill, confidence shattered to check for myself... the relief washed over me as i checked the walking map near the church... there it was in black and white - beDoña...

recounting the story later to habm, i was interrupted immediately:

"but it's beDoña, not beGoña"

"yes i know"

"well why didn't you tell him?"

"because i'm so used to being wrong all the time in spanish, that i thought i was the one making the mistake"

he shot me a look reserved for the mentally infirm and went back to reading the newspaper... i went off to look for a pair of balls...

*all basque farmhouses have names, and up in the hills generally no street address... if you're a "real" local (which i'm clearly not, you'll know the names of all of them in your area...

lisboa en azulejos

2010-09-07T13:14:00.005+02:00

i've been to lisboa several times now, and the image i always take away with me is of the colourful buildings, decorated with ceramic tiles (azulejos) in every colour and pattern imaginable... the ones that always catch my eye are the classic blue & white, but i've included some others as well...

parking problems?

2010-09-01T11:22:00.002+02:00

this woman is a genius!

sent to me by my blogmate erik

we´re baaaack...

2010-09-01T10:18:00.004+02:00

couldn't help but notice the clouds looming on the horizon as we crossed the border into pais vasco, one month with hardly a cloud to be seen, good to see nothing had changed back home...

now wading through the 252 emails that awaited me on our return... don't worry, i'm not incredibly popular, or important or anything like that, most of them are spam...

oh, and for those of you who took a plane these holidays, a little visual diary of the joys of cattle-class flying can be found here for your amusement...

more soon...

holidays...

2010-07-30T20:09:00.002+02:00

for those of you who have commented on the dwindling output of this blog, don't worry, i'm not dead yet... just not writing very much... and tomorrow we're off chasing the sun for a month in portugal, so you won't be hearing much from me in august either... but don't worry, i'll be back with lots of tales to tell...

happy holidays everyone, and thank you all for your kind comments...

xx

guts...

2010-07-16T23:24:00.004+02:00

he was sitting there quietly, close to the metal bars of the fence as i walked by... instinctively i squatted down and made that universal, cat calling, squeaking noise fully expecting him to bolt in the opposite direction in the manner of all self respecting street cats around here...

"look" i said to habm, "it's a kitten"

to my surprise he rushed towards me, squeezing through the bars and plopping out onto the footpath at my feet... he was a tiny, scrawny little thing, tortoiseshell, white paws dirty with neglect... instinctively he started weaving around my feet and i saw his face, eyes streaming with discharge... cat flu...

habm urged me to hurry up, and reluctantly i turned away... we walked a few paces and he followed... the footpath fronted on to a busy street, so i picked him up and pushed him back through the bars..

"go back to your mother now"

we walked on a few paces and looked back... our new little snotty friend had pushed through the bars again and was trotting purposefully in our direction... habm started to look panicky and a little twitchy... he knew full well what was coming next...

"come on, leave him, we've got to get home"

"but he's following us, street cats never follow people"

"walk faster and he'll give up"

habm picked up the pace and reluctantly i followed, all the while keeping an eye on what was happening behind us... the kitten followed...

a few metres down the road, some people passed us going in the opposite direction... the kitten sat down and eyed off both sets of feet departing in different directions... he chose us, got to his feet and picked up the pace after us...

"don't look back, you're encouraging him" hissed habm... but i couldn't help myself worrying about the little thing running along behind us and hoping he didn't stray onto the road

we turned into a side street and then onto the pedestrian walkway that runs between the factories and the river... the kitten followed...

we argued the pros and cons of what to do, it was more than likely he was lost, he'd appeared out of nowhere in the middle of industrial area and there were no other cats around... habm was getting increasingly panicky and i, increasingly obstinate...

"we can't just leave him here, he's sick and hungry and he's obviously lost, and whoever saw a cat follow people like that"

"we can't take him home"

we continued and the kitten followed, alternating between running to keep up with us and sitting down in the middle of the path and crying piteously... i couldn't take it anymore and picked him up... habm turned and kept walking...

we reached a compromise... a bit further along the path was an abandoned farmhouse, home to a community of street cats... we would leave him there... habm was adamant that he wasn't coming home with us, and deep down i knew he was right... el gato would not be at all welcoming to a new arrival, and bringing home a sick one would be downright irresponsible...

so we continued, and the kitten followed...

at the farmhouse, the usual suspects were sitting around sunning themselves outside... i picked up the kitten and put him down in the middle of the group... they immediately moved in to inspect the new arrival... we watched the cautious interactions of the group... no signs of violence, and with the kitten well occupied we headed for home...

the next day i went back to the farmhouse armed with catfood... the kitten was still there, but seemed considerably worse than the day before, sneezing and disorientated... i fed him, and kept the other cats at bay before heading off to work...

i tried to go back the following two days, but each time there were a lot of people around and no cats to be seen... this evening habm and i both went back, again with food, the other cats were all lounging about in their usual positions but there was no sign of our little friend... i worry that in the end the flu proved too strong for him... and that's such a pity, he was such a plucky, gutsy little thing, he deserved a better chance at life than that...

how's that diet working out for you tubby?

2010-06-05T12:27:00.004+02:00

if one didn't continually try to sneak expensive french cheese from others' plates, perhaps one would not weigh 7kgs? just saying...

walking around eskoriatza..

2010-06-03T10:25:00.001+02:00

i've been doing a lot of walking lately (weather permitting)... springtime here is absolutely beautiful, it helps me forgive the cold, grey winters... lets me get out and live a little...

let me take you on a favourite walk, around the countryside surrounding habm's home town...

a typical basque casario (farmhouse)

along the roadside, between the casarios there are still many lavaderos where the women used to gather to wash the laundry by hand

a friendly donkey

saying goodbye to the donkey

apple trees treated with some kind of white substance to prevent certain parasites from climbing the trunk and attacking the apples

the hamlet of bolivar

looking back from bolivar towards udalaitz

a shrine in bolivar

gate with a view

another lavadero

a glimpse of anboto in the distance

another caserio

and more friendly donkeys

rolling green fields and blue skies

a better view of anboto

a small shrine embedded in the wall of a house

kurtzeberri

a field full of dandelions

landes, france..

2010-06-02T10:10:00.000+02:00

this was the panorama that awaited us friday evening...

looks promising, doesn't it... saturday unfortunately dawned overcast and grey... and didn't lift for the whole day..... no matter, we lazed around the campsite, poked around a few local villages and generally relaxed...

sunday also dawned grey and overcast, and then proceeded to piss down about 10 minutes before we were preparing to leave... which would have been fine if we hadn't been camping... in a tent...

do you have any idea how difficult it is to dry out an approx 6m x 4m tent in a tiny apartment? we provided a certain amount of entertainment for the locals, by hanging it out over the balcony, where it completely obscured the shop below...

meanwhile in the south, they're having a heatwave, with temperatures up to 39 degrees...

jolted...

2010-06-01T11:00:00.005+02:00

i am jolted awake by something heavy, furry and with claws landing heavily on my head... el gato has tried to jump up onto the bookshelf above the bed and has missed... one day he's going to bring it down off the wall... he disentangles himself from my hair and shoots off into the darkness...

i look at the clock... it's 6.05am, 1st of june...

i worry that such a violent start does not bode well for the rest of the month...

disorientation...

2010-05-18T10:53:00.003+02:00

sunday morning 10.00am...

i stumble out of the house with a splitting headache... hangover....

i think last night went well, everyone seemed to have a good time, lots of food, wine and conversation flowed freely... why did i think that last whiskey was necessary though?

i walk through the portico of the church and see a donkey, saddled up with one of those old-fashioned side basket arrangements, tied up outside the door of the church... i stop and wonder what that could be about, and one look at the donkey's patiently resigned face tells me that he's not really sure either...

i continue on and round the corner into the plaza... there's a group of people gathered around a vehicle down one end... something about them is strange, but my fuddled brain fails to make any likely connections... what are they doing?

i stop and peer at them, trying to make sense of it all.... two men, dressed smartly in olive-green military uniforms, and crazy little shiny pointy hats step out from behind the truck and salute each other....

my heart literally misses a beat, and a feeling of panic washes over me.... i still can't make sense of the scene in front of me and i feel very scared.... this can't be happening... maybe i should go back home and book a ticket to the land of oz... NOW?!

then i see the guy with the camera... they're shooting a scene from a civil war film in the plaza...

technical issues...

2010-05-06T11:02:00.003+02:00

i've been having some email problems for the last little while, which (fingers crossed) i think i have sorted out now... however, the upshot of all this is that i haven't been receiving my comment notification feed from the blog.... so, unless i manually went in to check comments on a post i wasn't aware that there were any...

why am i telling you all this?? well... just in case you were wondering why i didn't reply to your comment, or why you comment hadn't been published at all, it's not because i'm being snobby, it's just if a comment turned up on an old post i may not have been aware of it... i'm working through the backlog of emails now, and hopefully i'll catch any that have been missed..

hopefully from now on all will be fine and back to business as usual..

traditional human/donkey greeting ritual...

2010-05-03T08:43:00.000+02:00

wtf??

2010-05-02T12:14:00.002+02:00

i'm in the loungeroom, i hear el gato miowing frantically in the bedroom... i rush down the hallway to see what the matter is... el gato is lying on the bed, with el pollito by his side... looking guilty...

wtf is all that about?

the flysch...

2010-05-01T13:41:00.000+02:00

the coastline between zumaia and deba is one of the most spectacular stretches in all the basque coast and home to the "flysch cliffs"... wikipedia explains the mechanics of a flysch better than i ever could, so i'll leave the technical stuff in their capable hands and simply present you with some photographic evidence of what happens when all those layers upon layers are pushed upwards to form cliffs and rock platforms...

it's like a map of what's happened on this planet in the last million years, all the geological and climatic changes laid out in neat orderly rows and slowly crumbling into the sea...

oh yes hello... it's me...

2010-04-29T20:08:00.003+02:00

i've been an absolutely shocking blogger of late... lost my mojo or something... looked down the back of the sofa and under the bed, but it's not there either...

and so i notice that almost a month has passed and i haven't written a word... i've been thinking a lot, but not feeling the urge to write it all down so much recently, some things too trivial, some too boring and some too controversial...

mostly i've been thinking green... walking and walking and walking a lot, and delighting in that wonderful vibrant green that touches the countryside everywhere here and marks the beginning of spring and long summer days.. reveling in the sensation of a warm breeze on newly bared arms and legs... thinking, thinking, thinking... but not writing...

so forgive me for the silence... perhaps while i'm out there looking for the mojo i'll share with you some photo posts instead!

old wounds that never heal...

2010-04-06T19:22:00.001+02:00

inscription reads: martires (martyrs)

inscription reads: a la memoria de nuestros vecinos defensores de las libertades constitutionales, victimas de la represión franquista (1936-1942) (in memory of our fellow defendors of constitutional liberty, victims of franco's repression)

the irony of these two memorials, facing each other in an eternal stand-off across the plaza de la paz (peace plaza) in the palencian town of dueñas was not lost on me... there do seem to be considerably more names on the list of franco's victims than franco's martyrs however...

llave...

2010-04-01T19:46:00.000+02:00

in case you're wondering how to break into this house and steal all their stuff... well, they've made it just that little bit easier for you...

(llave = key)

a weekend in PA-lencia...

2010-03-30T11:51:00.004+02:00

last weekend was a long one, father's day or something... in the grip of "if i don't get out of this valley anytime soon i might just kill someone" fever, i rashly agreed to habm's suggestion that we take the cat and go and spend a few days in the family pueblo in PA-lencia...

"there are some roman ruins and lots of romanesque churches in PA-lencia" he said, "it'll be great"...

"ok" i graciously agreed "it couldn't be any worse than watching the rain piss down from the sky here"

i went to work.. the students asked me what i was doing for the long weekend...

"we're going to palencia" i said

"PA or BA?" they asked..

"excuse me?"

"PA-lencia or VA-lencia?"

"oh right... no unfortunately we are not going to VA-lencia which is all warm and sunny and down on the mediterranean, no we're going to PA-lencia on the cold and windy plains of castilla"

so we packed the cat in the car, who made his displeasure known all the way there and all the way back, and we headed off to the cold and windy plains of castilla... PA-lencia...

the family home in PA-lencia is god knows how old and had been shut up for the winter...

"it's been a very cold winter" the neighbours told us "for three days in february it went down to -17 overnight and didn't get above 0 during the day"

right, well that explained why the inside temperature of the house hovered between 11 and 12 degrees during the entire weekend... they do have heating, some under the floor wood fire heating system, which was apparently invented by the romans and is "de puta madre" but unfortunately takes about a week to get going... we made do with the radiator circa 1962 that we found in the bathroom... i spent a lot of time popping outside onto the street (around 15 degrees) to get warm...

during dinner on the first night we switched on the television... to seven stations of static... habm called his father to see what was going on... apparently since all spain has changed over to digital, they need to do something to the antenna... or something... whatever, i decided i could do without television...

"did you have any problems getting the hot water started?" asked his father

now to tell the truth we'd completely forgotten about the hot water, so habm bustled off to get it started...

"it's a bit tricky" said his father "you've got to hold down the thingie and jiggle the whatsit... and stand on your head reciting the names of the apostles backwards... actually it's better if you wait till the cock crows on the full moon..." or something... after an hour or so it became obvious that hot water was a luxury for city folk that we were not going to be blessed with this particular weekend...

i tossed up the alternatives... kill habm on the spot for the sins of his family or return home to mondragón and kill a random stranger on the street as an outlet for cabin fever...

in the end i decided that it's no big deal to go 3 days without showering, and anyway with an inside temperature of 11 degrees, no-one's going to smell...

so we stayed, and we spent a hell of a lot of time outside, and we saw roman ruins and churches and stuff... photos to follow...

marital conversations II...

2010-03-28T22:48:00.004+02:00

habm: i parked the car* in "la calle de el registro civil"**...

me: ok

habm: it's the in the last parking space... well, it's half in the space and half on the zebra crossing...

me: ??

habm: don't worry... it's parked well...

me: exactly which part of "it's half in the space and half on the zebra crossing" is parked well?

habm: the front half...

*one car, two users and no garage requires a fair amount of coordination...

** after living here more than three years i have proved incapable of learning any of the names of the streets in this town, except the one on which i live, which means all streets have to be identified by known landmarks: "the street with the music shop", "the street with the butcher shop" etc...

marital conversations...

2010-03-26T20:53:00.004+01:00

(in the car with el gato howling in the back... we pass a large and expensive-looking motorhome)...

me: now, a motorhome like that would be good for travelling with el gato...

habm: a bit of an expensive thing to buy just for a cat, don't you think?

me: ....

habm: i can just see it now; "look everyone, at this motorhome we bought for our cat... we even let him pick out the colours!"

he spends the next five kms chuckling to himself... i maintain a dignified silence...

i have turned into my parents...

2010-03-24T19:21:00.004+01:00

not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you...

a while back i mentioned something about my parents' geriatric cat and how he goes everywhere on holidays with them... in his glory days he was known to participate in a spot of canoeing... these days he's more into sitting and watching the world pass by...

anyway... last weekend we decided a weekend away was just the ticket (more on that subject to come)... we took el gato (as you do if you are a member of my family), who participated in such activities as tearing up the inside of his carry cage and howling in the back seat of the car, freezing his arse off in the two storey fridge that passes for the family home in the backblocks of palencia, picnicing, and exploring the occasional roadside chapel...

laugh a minute it was...

untold story...

2010-03-09T22:40:00.002+01:00

this past sunday marked the second anniversary of the death of isaías carrasco, a former mondragón councillor, assassinated for what passes for the greater political good in these parts...

i would like very much to tell you a story... a true story, told to me by someone i know from here, that is related to the story of isaías, and which sheds a very personal light on the complex reality of living in the midst of all this.... my fingers have hovered over the keyboard for over a day now, because i would like very much to try in some small way, through the story of this person, to explain exactly how many suffer under the politics of silence in this conflicted little corner of the globe...

and it would be an important story, a story that maybe even those of us who've grown up in places where one doesn't have to think twice before shooting their mouth off on any aspect of politics, might stop and take note... but... it's not my story, and not even changing the details to afford a little privacy to those concerned would be enough...

this is a small town, and while i don't publish my name on this blog, or the names of others that may feature in my posts, i don't fool myself that this blog is anonymous... it would not exactly require a rocket scientist to figure out who i am, and by default who else i may be talking about...

and so i won't tell the story, out of respect for the person who trusted me enough to share it with me, and perhaps more importantly because it's not my story to tell... and if that doesn't tell you something, then nothing will...

i guess this means i'm officially old...

2010-03-08T18:37:00.001+01:00

was checking with a group of students if the exercise i was about to give them they had seen before, ie if their teacher from the previous year (who i know used some of the same books as me) had used it before in class...

most of the group looked bored and disinterested, as is their wont, one twenty-something (who i suspect may have a wee crush on previous teacher) got suddenly animated at the mention of previous teacher's name...

"previous teacher used facebook all the time" (actually i think that's what she said, i couldn't be sure if she said "used" or "uses" because like many here she can be quite sloppy on the terminations, and yes, sometimes it is impossible to tell "from the context" if we are speaking in the past or the present)

i stared at her blankly for a moment, trying to mentally calculate if it was "used" or "uses" and trying to imagine how the hell previous teacher could manage to work facebook into a class as a teaching material, unless it was a lesson on the expression "wtf have you been up to?"

"previous teacher used facebook?" i repeated trying to get a grasp on what exactly it was she was trying to tell me...

"yes, for photos and things"

"previous teacher used facebook in class?" i repeated

she stared at me for a moment with a look of condescending pity on her face...

"do you know what facebook is?" she asked...

"yes, i know what facebook is, i was just..."

"it's a social networking site, previous teacher uses it all the time, he's always putting photos on his page" she informed me importantly...

i considered setting her straight for a moment, but why bother... in her worldly 20-something view i have been mentally catalogued in the age of the dinosaurs and that my friends is that... i'm officially old...

consider yourself told...

2010-03-07T08:50:00.004+01:00

the joy of the righteous begins here,
the pleasures of the sinner ends here...

sign on the entrance to the cemetery in the village of areatza...

when i grow up i want to be a mad donkey lady...

2010-03-02T18:29:00.000+01:00

goodbye february (and don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out)...

2010-02-28T18:35:00.006+01:00

after the excitement of yesterday's cyclone (yes people we had a cyclone yesterday, winds up to 150km/hr, don't go outside just in case you get hit on the head by a flying garbage container, that kind of thing) february decided to put on a good show for its last day: blue skies, no wet stuff (of either the liquid or the frozen variety) falling from above, sun and temperatures up around the 20 mark... and so the inhabitants of the little house in the land of no spice decided to go outside and take advantage of these unseasonal conditions...

the day didn't start well... first of all the alarm that habm promised faithfully he would set for 8.30am didn't go off (or someone just "accidently" forgot to switch it on), then we squabbled about where we were going to go, then we squabbled about what food to take, then we forgot to buy bread and had to queue up in another bread shop which i hate, then when we arrived at the carpark and setting-off point for the day's hike somebody realised they'd forgotten to pack the bottle opener, so we got back in the car and went home to get it... at around 12.00pm we finally put foot to pavement, which may go someway towards explaining why i have an overpowering urge to kill habm when the phrase salimos a las 9.30 como muy tarde (we're leaving at 9.30 at the very latest) drops from his lips...

so we walked... around the many little barios that are dotted around in the hills above aretxabaleta and eskoriatza...

first we passed by the autopista... i agree that it's a bit of a blight on the landscape, but i do like the lines of this bridge...

then we passed a rather nice view of udalaitz...

further on we came across my dream home... no kidding folks, habm is kinda doubtful about the whole project but i reckon with a cool half a million or so we could turn this into something inhabitable...

the thing about my dream home is not so much the crumbling house that now serves as a cow barn, but the location... just look at those views....

the bario of galartza, which features a rather impressive casa torre and church....

close up of the church, i love the way the priest's house used to be built into the church building in so many of these little parish churches...

further on, and looking back towards galartza, another church (the name of which i don't know) in the foreground...

approaching the bario of apotzaga.. (i liked this photo so much i decided to use it for the blog header for the next little while)..

the church in apotzaga...

looking towards anboto from the porch of the church...

a little chapel just before the descent back down to aretxabaleta...

and so that was our day in the sun... goodbye february, i'll see you next year...

tish boom...

2010-02-24T10:49:00.002+01:00

overheard in class:

student a: how do you say "becario" in english?

student b: monica lewinski

btw: the lump turned out to be just another one to add to my apparently growing collection!

my very own english-spanish dictionary...

2010-02-21T09:39:00.006+01:00

cock [n] if you want to talk about gallos please do not use this word... yes i know, it is in fact correct and you learnt it in an english textbook, but i suspect that this is the same outdated textbook that taught you to say "how do you do?" when you meet someone, and we all know what i think about that... these days the word cock is also a colloquial term for the thing that men have between their legs and women don't, which yes, can be confusing, can't it? may i suggest you use the word rooster, just so there are no misunderstandings... unless of course you did actually want to talk about the size of your little friend, in which case go right ahead, i'm all ears...

constipated [adj] when we have a cold and we can't breathe properly through our nose, we say our nose is blocked, not constipated... we use constipated to describe a similar set of circumstances in a very different part of the body, and if that really was our problem we don't usually share it with the whole class... on that note, the next time you miss a class because you were sick, the explanation "i was sick" is sufficient.. details like "i had gastroenteritis" are neither necessary nor welcome... do i look like your doctor?

coriander [n] aromatic green herb, looks a lot like parsley... used extensively in a number of cuisines: mexican, thai, middle eastern cooking spring to mind... it's called cilantro in spanish... you've never heard of cilantro either? well i can't help that now, can i? you can buy it at the super bm supermarket in mondragón... no really, and i've even seen karlos arguiñano use it in some of his recipes... i can tell from the look on your face that you don't believe me...

couscous [n] couscous is couscous... it's even called that in spanish... it's a type of semolina made from granulated wheat... look this is pointless, if you've never tried it i can't explain it to you, that would be like trying to explain rice... they sell it in eroski, why don't you live a little and go out and buy a packet?

embarrassed [adj] if i tell you i am embarrassed do NOT ask me if it is a boy or a girl…

emu [n] large flightless bird native to australia, featured on the coat of arms... emú in spanish... the ostrich (avestruz) is a large flightless bird native to africa... africa/australia, australia/africa: different continents... no, i don't know which one would win in a fight...

footing [n] is not a word in english... well it is, but not in the sense you want to use it... for the activity of keeping fit by propelling ourselves along at a pace faster than walking we say jogging or running... NEVER footing...

hardly [adv] is NOT the adverb of hard, in fact it means almost not at all... apenas if you will... so as you can see it's very important that we remember this, otherwise the sentence "she hardly studied" will take on a whole new meaning, quite different to your original intention... yes, i can understand why you might think that is stupid... and yes, i have mentioned this important fact once or twice before in class...

how do you do? [exp] did you seriously all learn that as the correct greeting upon meeting someone for the first time? no, it's not incorrect, just maybe a little pompous... i'd reserve it for very formal occasions... so unless you think a meeting with the queen of england is on the cards sometime soon, i'd probably forget about it... just saying...

limes [n] small green citrus fruit, similar to lemons but sweeter... limas in spanish... no not limones, i said SIMILAR TO lemons, not THE SAME AS...

peanut butter [n] basically it's peanuts ground up into a paste... you use it as a spread on bread and toast and stuff like that... mantequilla de cacahuete in spanish... yes, they eat a lot of it in america, no, i don't know if that is the reason why all americans are fat... do you think it might be an overgeneralization to say ALL americans are fat? it's just that i've met some who aren't... oh you tried peanut butter when you were in america and it was sweet you say? well i don't know if i would describe it as sweet, more of a savoury flavour really... definitely sweet you say? well i don't know, maybe you ate peanut butter and jelly, they're quite keen on that over there... jelly is what american's call jam... no JAM as in mermelada not HAM as in jamón... oh god, how did we get on to this?

plan [n] [v] this one is very simple, we use it as both the noun and the verb which is handy as that's one less word for you to learn... so let's keep it simple, shall we? variations on the theme, such as planify and planificate will not be accepted...

scantily clad [exp] how you might explain the state of (un)dress of a pole dancer in a strip club... yes, very scanty... i wouldn't really say that the nice asian family of four in the photo, having a picnic in the park, were scantily clad, would you?

sofing [n] i don't know what the hell you're talking about? NOT a word in english... oh, it's "sitting on the sofa" you say? is that really one of your hobbies?

tofu [n] curd made from mashed soy beans, used extensively in asian cooking and vegetarian cooking... there are hundreds of different types and ways to prepare it... you tried it once and it was a bit like cheese you say? well i suppose you could say it's a bit like cheese... in kind of the same way that tea is like coffee if you get what i mean....

vegan [n] kind of extreme vegetarian, never seen in the basque country, doesn't eat any kind of meat or animal products... you know, like milk and eggs... no, they don't eat chorizo either... what do they eat? well i suppose things like lentils and vegetables and stuff like that... they're called vegetarianos estrictos in spanish, i've also seen the term vegano used... no, i am NOT making this up, why don't you do a google search on it after class and come back to me next week with what you've found...

well [adv] good is the adjective and well is the adverb... as in: "he speaks english very well" and "his english is very good"... well is only used as an adjective when you are talking about your health... so the answer to the question "how are you" is "good" if you are talking in general or "well" if you are talking specifically about your health... the answer to the question "how was your weekend?" is NEVER "well", for the reasons mentioned above... as this is the 415th time we have revisited this subject, may i suggest you skip the whole good vs well conundrum and just say "fine"...

february and i are not friends...

2010-02-19T21:06:00.006+01:00

apparently i don't get on very well with february on this side of the equator... apparently we are not friends... a quick look at my blog archives reveals that last year i managed only 3 posts in february... this year we might just manage just one, and as that "just one" is likely to be this one, i wouldn't hold my breath...

back in the days when i lived in london a british friend informed me that february was traditionally the month with the highest number of suicides in the uk... apparently after plodding their way through the cold, dreariness and lack of daylight of november, december and january, the poor souls couldn't hack another bleak month of more of the same... i'm starting to get it now... while i feel compelled to point out that i am in no way suicidal, the SADs have well and truly descended and i'm feeling decidedly too apathetic to get up and kick their arse...

today i came home from a visit to the doctor in tears.. because the receptionist was rude and dismissive in that special way that public servants can be in any corner of the globe... under normal circumstances i would have come home and ranted and raved and put my growing collection of spanish expletives to good use... today under the influence of february i cried... habm has taken to looking at me sideways with a bewildered expression, rants and whinges he's well versed in, tears are a whole other category...

how i came to visiting the doctor today is a whole other story... actually this whole thing is kind of "girly stuff" - male readers may want to wander off and check the football scores at this point...

so anyway... a week and a half ago i was experiencing terrible pain in my right breast, so bad that it was waking me up in the night every time i turned over and i had to take to wearing a bra to bed... finding myself unable to sleep at 4am one of those nights, i turned to the internet... in hindsight i would strongly advise against self diagnosis on the internet at 4am in february... the top-ranking hits against a search of "severe breast tenderness" all returned "early menopause pages"... fucking ace... at a more civilized hour (and month) one might be inclined take that with a shovelful of salt, but at stupid o'clock on a cold winter morning the imagination can take things to a whole other level...

the day after the early menopause internet diagnosis i found a lump... no, i should clarify that and say i found a new lump... my breasts are famously lumpy it seems... so lumpy that a doctor from years back in sydney referred to them as "impossibly lumpy" in a referral to the breast clinic for a scan (or "having my tits ironed" as a friend once accurately described it)... in case you're starting to think that i'm some kind of "impossibly lumpy" breast monster or something i'd just like to point out that i've never had any complaints from any of the men i've ever (ahem) been with, but it has meant i've had more than my fair share of "tit ironing" than for someone of the same age...

so let's just say that finding a new lump and making the requisite appointment, to get the requisite referral to be ironed and told it's yet another cyst is not exactly new to me... i have my appointment for tuesday, we'll got through the motions, i'll get the desired diagnosis, we'll discuss the relatives merits of draining fluid from the cyst with a syringe (yeah, that sounds great - why don't i just sleep in a bra for the rest of my life) and that will be that, just like every other time i've done this.. so why do i feel so nervous and jittery and teary?? it's bloody february, where the sun doesn't shine, the cold and rain doesn't go away and the spring seems like it will never come, that's what it is...

...looking at the doctor's referral i see that she has written that i have a lump in my LEFT breast... as she actually examined the offending lump, and touched it with her very own latex encased hands i refuse to take responsibility for any possible "communication errors"... the lump is in the RIGHT breast lady (i'm sure about this because i have this great trick of being able to make the shape of an "L" with my thumb and forefinger of my left hand in order to remember which is left, and the offending breast is definitely on the other side), so thank you for your care and concern, with that kind of attention to detail i'm just really, really relieved i'm not going in there for an amputation on tuesday...

santillana del mar...

2010-01-31T22:54:00.000+01:00

la villa de las tres mentiras - no es santa, no es llana y no tiene mar

the town of three lies - it is not holy, it's not flat and it's not on the sea...

how to answer the telephone in spanish...

2010-01-29T22:10:00.003+01:00

1. approach the ringing apparatus and study it thoughtfully for a moment..

2. pick up the receiver...

3. bellow "eeehhh???!!! into the receiver in a tone that is equal parts bewilderment (why is the plastic box ringing?), irritation (can't you see i'm doing something busy and important here and don't really have time for this?), and something else i can't quite put my finger on...

4. actually, "eeehhh?" is quite a useful phrase to master... if you don't understand what the person on the other end of the line has just said you can also repeat it in a kind of "i'm sorry, i didn't quite catch that, could you run through that again?" kind of fashion...

this, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much how habm answers the home phone... which means there is often an undignified scramble around the little house in the land of no spice to get to the phone first... just in case it's a real person (ie friends and family from back home) who might be so terrified by this unorthodox communication approach that they hang up after the first "eeehhh?"...

to be fair to him, about 80% of the calls we receive here are trying to sell us something... i fail to understand why our number keeps turning up on so many lists, but what is clear is that the fact that cold calling to sell shit is really irritating and a few privacy laws wouldn't go astray is a concept that hasn't really caught on here in spain... i'd complain to someone if i thought there was someone to complain to, but i'm not sure how to say "ombudsman" in spanish, and based on my clumsy attempts to explain what an ombudsman is to habm (and his look of bewilderment in response), i'm not entirely sure that ombudsmen exist here...

(on a side note to that, i've noticed an alarming increase in automated cold calling... if it wasn't bad enough to receive calls from some twat pretending to be nice in order to sell you shit (and then getting all narky when you're not interested), these days you pick up the phone and a fucking voice recording starts speaking to you ... "good afternoon, have you every consid...."... wtf is that all about?? i mean seriously, are there actually people out there who take the time to listen to a recording that has invaded their personal space to rabbit on about new internet connection options?! and is this a spanish cold calling innovation, ie, we're too lazy to actually call you, but we have a monthly call quota to do so we'll just switch the machine on, or is it a world-wide phenomenon?)

about 5% of our calls are from people we actually know, which is nice, except for the guilt-trippy ones about why we haven't been over for sunday lunch recently... the rest are wrong numbers...

for some reason i always seem to pick up the wrong number calls... inevitably they're for iñaki/patxi/edu or some other guy... i don't know why iñaki/patxi/edu keep giving people our number, but i really wish they'd stop... call goes something like this...

me: diga? (basically translates as "speak"... which is about as far as i'm prepared to drop the anglo saxon "politeness"... haven't quite mastered the "eeehhh?" yet)

caller: (screeching) iñaaaaaki??

me: i think you've made a mistake, there's no iñaki here... (do i sound like an iñaki??)

caller: iñaki's not there???

me: no, there's no one with.... (by this stage the caller has hung up)

apparently verbs are not necessary in establishing basic contact on the telephone in spanish... i'm working on it...

chasing gaudí (and discovering other things along the way)...

2010-01-23T12:06:00.019+01:00

i've always had a bit of an obsession with gaudí... barcelona was included as an obligatory stop on my "grand tour" of europe a few years back (yes, that fatal few months of wandering with nothing with no real destination in mind, a chance encounter in San Sebastian and here i am now, typing these words from mondragón), not because it was an exciting city but simply because it was there i could gaze in awe at some of his most famous works.. and gaze in awe i did... pictures in books are one thing, but to see these masterpieces in the flesh (so to speak) was something else... i didn't know where to point my camera next...

i've since seen other examples of his work outside barcelona: the bishops palace in astorga and another palace in leon... only recently however, did i discover that he had built a rather gorgeous little house (now a restaurant) in the small town of comillas, in cantabria and only a couple of hours from here... so there was nothing for it but to visit, which we did a month or so back...

the town of comillas, aside from being home to a guadí building is fascinating in it's own right... back in the 19thC an enterprising chap by the name of antonio lópez y lópez left his quiet little seaside town and went to cuba to make his fortune... several years later he returned, loaded with cash, had himself made the first marqués de comillas and embarked upon a project to beautify his home town, in which he invited leading modernista architects to contribute... which is where gaudí comes into the picture...

gaudí's "el capricho" (translates as "whim" or "caprice") didn't disappoint... it was smaller than i expected, more of a rich man's "folly" than a house, but a fanciful collection of turrents, tilework and details in true gaudí style...

in the garden there was a statue of gaudí, gazing at his masterpiece... i sat down to have a chat with the great man...

but he didn't seem very talkative...

taking a stroll around the streets of comillas we discovered another gaudí work... they say that gaudí got his inspiration for the design of this gateway called "puerta de moro" when he was walking on a beach nearby... the gate features three entrances: one for carrriages, one for people and one for birds!

puerta or no puerta, i wouldn't say no if someone offered me the house that lies behind the entranceway...

the palacio sobrellano, built as the new family home for the marqués was an over-the-top gothic fantasy...

as was the family chapel built next door... unfortunately the marqués didn't live to see the completion of his palace...

not far from the palacio sobrellano is this rather red house, which the marqués bought for his mother and had renovated by leading mordernista architects... the king of spain, alfonso XII, was a good friend of the marqués and spent his vacations there in 1881... during his stay, on the 5th of may, the king held a meeting of ministers, and for this reason comillas was became the capital of spain for one day!

during the marqués' day it was apparently fashionable for wealthy families to build "english style" houses, like this one...

the marqués also had a hand in the building of the university, which sits high on a hill overlooking the town and the sea...

unfortunately it was closed for renovations when we visited, but we did manage to get up close and personal with the entranceway....

the cemetery is located in the ruins of the old church, and features some modernist renovations as well...

the "new" church was built in the centre of the town during the 17thC following a dispute between the townspeople and a local Duke, who complained that he didn't have his own pew in the existing church (now the cemetery)... so the people abandoned the old and built their own church, in a process that took more than a century...

the marqués' contribution to his town was honoured with this monument on a headland overlooking the coast....

and what a view he has from this vantage point...

and the last few are a random collection of other photos i took on our walk around the town...

can't be arsed...

2010-01-18T10:48:00.004+01:00

i should:

- prepare for my next class which starts in less than an hour,

- wash up last nights dinner dishes,

- change the cat's litter tray,

- put on a load of washing,

- put away the clean washing that's been dry for two days now,

- fill in and return the "employee satisfaction questionnaire" (they are joking aren't they?) that i was given before christmas,

- go to the supermarket and the bread shop so there's something in the house to eat for dinner,

- go out and try and run off that extra four kilos that have mysteriously attached themselves to my thighs...

but i can't be arsed...

it's only 11:00am and already this monday is too tedious for words...

favourite...

2010-01-16T11:38:00.005+01:00

i realised this morning that i never did end up doing a holiday post about our trip to the land of oz waay back in august... and i probably never will now... there are too many half-finished posts of more recent events lying around in my drafts box that may also never see the light of day... and putting together a holiday post six months later is frankly exhausting... so today i post for you one of my favourite photos from our little adventure...

these are my parents, and the family cat (obv) sitting on the beach at cow bay... the family cat is about 90 something years old (in cat years) and goes everywhere with my parents...

what are they looking at so intently? i have no idea... maybe something really interesting was happening out of frame, maybe not... maybe it's just a split-second alignment of glances frozen forever into something that appears more significant than it actually was... and the fact that nobody, including the photographer, knows, is what i like about it...

vertigo girl does clavijas...

2010-01-11T18:17:00.003+01:00

habm understands the THEORY of vertigo, and is very charmingly sympathetic about the whole thing... the PRACTICE however, as a non-sufferer, is a whole different thing... he thinks he can talk me down from the edge (literally) with soothing words and helpful advice like "don't look down" which does nothing more than tap into the rage seething just below the surface "do i look like the kind of fucking person who is going to look down??"

like the time we were in florence and we visited el doumo, as you do, and with his taste for going up things we duly joined the queue to go to the top of the dome... i'd been to the top before, and remembered that the views of the city are fantastic... what i'd forgotten about was the bit in the middle, where, after climbing miles of very small spiral staircases inside the walls (bearable), you are suddenly released back inside the building again, at a height of about 1 million metres, to traverse a tiny walkway which juts out over sheer nothingness and runs around the base of the dome... the point of this as i understand it, is to admire the architectural genius of the sadist who built the bloody thing so tall, and to get up close and personal with the rather alarming frescos... or something... i was the one hugging the wall and weeping at the prospect of having to do a lap of the dome on the walkway of death, habm was behind, trying to take my mind off things with "don't look down", "it's perfectly safe", "look - you can lean against the railing and it doesn't give, no really look, i'm leaning on it now", and "look at that fresco, isn't it amazing"... it's probably not appropriate to scream "shut the fuck up and leave me the fuck alone, don't fucking talk to me or i will do unspeakable things to your private parts" in a place of worship but at the time it was, i believed, the only way i was going to make it to the other side without collapsing into a gibbering heap and preventing the hoards of non-vertigo sufferers queuing up impatiently behind me from getting on with the rest of the tour..

going hiking is also not without it's dangers... going hiking also involves going up things, although normally i do not have vertigo problems on mountains... being dragged to the edge of a sheer cliff to admire how far down it goes on the other hand, can cause me to lose my cool, but i have hope, after five years together he is starting to learn that it's best to leave me where i am and do the drop admiring on his own...

going up mountains with habm also means eschewing the "normal" path whenever possible and taking the almost vertical "shortcut"... cause it's shorter, and quicker and more masculine... like a couple of months back when we went hiking in ordesa national park.. the walk through the valley i'd done before, but this time we decided to extend it by climbing up the embankments at the end of the valley and on to refugio de góriz a few kms further on... and then back again...

to set the scene let me show you the valley...

the way up, he told me, was via the clavijas, but, he assured me, was really easy... i have no bloody idea what we call "clavijas" in english, and until i met habm i'd never seen anything so barbaric in my life, so the best way to illustrate is with a photo...

yes, that is the way up that sheer vertical wall of stone, just hang onto those chains and metal sticking out bits... easy... and don't think too much about the psychopaths that installed them in the first place...

a short conversation that went something like this followed:

"are you sure it's safe?"

"of course it's safe"

"yes but how long have they been there? are they attached properly? what if they're rusty and break?"

"they've been here forever and thousands of people have gone up and down them.. it's perfectly safe"

"well that's just my point, what if one of the attachments has been slowly working it's way out of the rock and today is the day... straw that broke the camel's back and all that...?"

but he was already gone, scuttling and swinging his way up like some part mountain goat, part crab, part monkey person...

if you think i'm making up the "vertical" bit, well take a look at this angle...

and how about this angle... those little black specs are little people valiantly battling the clavijas of death...

actually, to be honest going up wasn't all that bad but going back down later in the afternoon was a little more hair-raising... helpful suggestions like "don't look down" don't really cut it when you're looking for the next toe hole that's going to stop you plunging to your death... luckily habm was nearby to ~~help~~ capture it all on camera..

that's himself helpfully holding the chain for me on the way down...

the view from the top was actually quite spectacular...

vertigo girl was, however, less than impressed to discover that there is another way up the embankment that doesn't involve "clavijas"... it's longer, and involves zig-zagging up a normal path, so obviously not for the likes of us... like i say, sympathetic in theory only...

a walk in the snow...

2010-01-10T16:22:00.009+01:00

as anyone who lives in the general vicinity of europe may have noticed, it's been snowing... a lot... for the last three days almost without stopping... a simple trip to the supermarket involved getting dressed up like setting forth for everest base camp and getting to and from work has not been without its difficulties.. but today, after below freezing temperatures overnight the sun came out and we went out for a walk..

we took some photos... maybe a few too many but what the hell... enjoy the walk!

yes, that last one is our car... i'll be the one taking the bus tomorrow morning...

it's snowing...

2010-01-08T11:02:00.005+01:00

it's 7am and habm is jumping around the living room like a hyperactive 3 year old...

"it's snowing, come and look" i drag myself over to the window... yes, it's snowing, almost horizontally... fantastic...

"hmph" i say..

that is about as enthusiastic as i get at 7am... i feel bad for a moment about dumping on his enthusiasm, and then remember that the person who has just finished nightshift, got home before it started snowing, and now has nothing but lovely bed to look forward to is bound to have a different perspective on horizontal snowstorms to the person who has to leave for work in approximately 45mins...

i look out the window again, the ground is already covering... i stomp off to the shower and contemplate the day ahead... i decide i will need to wear my hiking boots to negotiate the perilously slippery streets of the old town... sigh... it is so difficult to find office clothes that go with hiking boots...

madrid...

2010-01-06T10:22:00.001+01:00

trip to madrid was a success although i am getting a little tired of explaining to people around here that the fact that i like visiting madrid (i like madrid) does not make me some kind of perverted fascist, supporter of the spanish state, king lover or some such thing...

and at least the car behaved itself and we did not have to come back home in a taxi... we did have the same abysmal lack of success in trying to visit el valle de los caidos, it was again closed and i'm not entirely discounting a right-wing conspiracy to keep it closed every time they see a car with basque country numberplates trying to enter the zone... habm was visibly relieved, "franco sure likes to take a holidays" he joked and turned the car back onto the highway...

i'm not entirely sure why i feel compelled to visit el valle... at best you could describe the average spaniard's attitude to it as "ambivalent", it stands as a very uncomfortable reminder of a past this country is hell-bent on "forgetting", and yet it cannot be torn down and stored away in a warehouse somewhere, like so many statues of the dictator in so many town squares... yet with all my reading and digging into the civil war and the years that followed in my adopted country, i feel i need to see it...

and it's an uncomfortable place, i know that without even going inside, because that's where the car broke down last year, right outside the gates and we spent a good couple of hours hanging around outside, watching any number of very expensive black cars drive up, see the closed sign and drive away... those who profited in the days of the dictator have not lost many of their privileges it would seem... highlight of the non-visit was and overwhelming need to pee (standing around in the cold, waiting for tow trucks and taxis has that effect on me) and going to ask the guard if i could use the toilet... "no toilet here" he informed me brusquely and went back inside... although i found it hard to believe that a guard's post in the middle of nowhere did not feature something as basic as a toilet, i didn't push it further...

anyway, i'm wandering off the topic again (early onset dementia?) and need to get back to the task at hand... visited the chinese supermarket again (am starting to feel like i'm living in the wild west in the olden days and can only get into "town" once a year to buy provisions)... look at all the loot we bought back:

and one happy cat once all the boxes were unpacked...

unfortunately it was raining in madrid from the moment we arrived till the moment we headed home, which was kind of like living in basque country actually, except i was less than impressed when i heard that they'd had better weather here over those days...

so rainy weather means galleries... this time we visited the caixa forum for the first time, which features a rather spectacular vertical garden out the front:

and this lovely staircase inside (photo courtesy of habm, no way vertigo girl was going to be hanging over the edge to get that angle)

was lucky enough to catch the rather mesmerising multiple projection works, "current history" by hannah collins, and if anyone's in town would thoroughly recommend popping in for a visit...

we also visited the thyssen-bornemisza museum which is home to one of the largest private collections of european art...

had plans to do a bit of shopping as well but fear that old age is upon me already as i "couldn't find a single thing i liked" in the shops this year... old age or not, i simply can't bring myself to relive the glory days of hideous 80s fashion a second time round... stomping in and out of shops with wet umbrellas didn't help either...

we discovered that the atocha railway station is also home to an indoor tropical garden, complete with a pond absolutely chocka with turtles... were we the last people in the world to know that?

and we visited the templo de debod, an authentic egyptian temple which arrived in madrid as a gift of thanks for spain's work in helping to save artifacts from destruction resulting from the construction of the answan dam project...

and the rather cute castle in manzanares el real, to the north of madrid...

and finally, i'll leave you with a couple of rather blurry, rather rainy night shots of christmas lights, which, not withstanding the disclaimer, i quite like...

another hallmark family moment...

2010-01-04T21:43:00.004+01:00

i'm going to have a little whinge about the in-laws here... and about the unfavourable comparisons between families "from here" and anglo-saxon family relationships (because, let's face it, those of us from the uk, australia, america, new zealand etc, well we're all the same really) that are often held up to me to explain how we fail so terribly in the face of the spanish/basque concept of "family"...

some days back habm received a phone call from his sister... who had encountered their mother crying about a certain matter that concerns habm, wanted to let him know his mother was upset, and wanted him to resolve the situation immediately...

now at this point i need to explain the problem... about 5 years ago, habm bought a house, the house in which we live now... it wasn't a particularly expensive house (by mondragón standards) and if i'm to be perfectly honest with you dear reader, i hate the fucking house, it's small and dark (north facing "bajo" on a narrow medieval street) and a large part of my plotting and planning involves how to get us the hell out of there as soon as possible... but it's the house we have, and we diligently pay the mortgage every month and i console myself with trips to ikea...

i digress.. when he bought the house habm took out a 100% mortgage (ie no deposit, cause he didn't have any) and we're now hocked up to the eyeballs till we die... or something like that.... the good thing to come out of the global financial crisis, in my humble opinion, has been the drop in interest rates which means we're paying somewhere in the vicinity of 300 euros less a month in repayments... but anyway...

although i thought i was fully versed in the mortgage situation (ie no capital, lots of interest) when i first moved here, i was not aware of one important/unimportant (depending upon your perspective) detail... to take out a 100% mortgage in spain, as in many countries it is necessary to have a guarantor... fair enough, if the bank is going to take 100% risk they'll be wanting more than one person to guarantee the payments... so habm asked his parents to be guarantors... fair enough...

so, all three went along to the bank, father, mother and son, one happy family, to take out the loan... and apparently, according to all three, the notario told them that the parents were acting as guarantors until habm had paid the 20% of the asking price that would have been necessary to secure the deposit... so they tell me...

well the shit hit the fan a week or more back, when habm and parents went along to sign some documents to enable a drop in interest that is due to members of the borg collective once they have fulfilled their first year of full membership... and apparently at this meeting the notario informed all concerned that the parents were not only acting as guarantors for the 20% of the loan, but for the whole loan... i still knew nothing of any of this, habm came home, informed me that the reduction in interest had gone through and that was that...

until the phonecall from his sister... who rang to say his mother was so depressed about the whole situation that she was crying in the bathroom, she didn't know what was to become of us all... sister-in-law's suggestion was that we needed to "do whatever it takes" to get the loan paid off as soon as possible so as to calm her mother down... she even offered to loan us money... i would just like to point out at this stage in the proceedings that while we haven't taken out a large loan by anyone's standards (believe me!) we are still a while off paying off the 20%, let alone paying off the whole thing... it's a 30 year loan, and no amount of scrimping and saving on a combined english teacher's and factory worker's salary is going to knock off more than a couple of years at the most...

it took me a while to get to the bottom of what exactly "the situation" was... after all the details were finally revealed (based on the information i had up to that point it would seem a little strange to have a mother crying in the bathroom over her son's drop in interest rates, no?) it turned out that while mother-in-law was prepared to go guarantor for 20% she wasn't prepared to go the whole 100%... ok, but what difference would it really make to her daily life? habm has made every payment, without fail, from the beginning, even when interest rates were so high that the monthly repayments were coming in at more than half of his monthly salary... and we will continue to do so, even if it means we don't eat...

well, her response to that was a gobsmacker, for me at least... "what happens if you get angry with us and decide to stop paying the mortgage, just to fuck us up?"

wtf?? no, i mean seriously, what the fuck?? we're going to decide we weren't happy with the quality of the sunday lunch and decide not to make a couple of payments so as to, you know, fuck them around a little...

clearly, based on my anglo-saxon roots and the fact that i am apparently so casually able to live so far away from my nearest and dearest, i am devoid of appropriate spanish "family" feeling (as has been explained to me by more than one from here)... but i can categorically state that i could never imagine this type of conversation taking place in my family... but maybe i wouldn't have asked them for the favour in the first place, and maybe if i had begged the favour, i would have made sure the magnitude of the favour was fully understood... who knows...

the saddest thing of all, is that if habm had had any sort of problem in the last 5 years or so to make his payments, i am absolutely sure his parents would have been the first to offer him help... without questions... but now she's worried that he'll try and use a piece of paper to make her life a misery...

little wonder i drink to stay sane..

happy birthday...

2010-01-03T21:46:00.003+01:00

to the one who is ever patient with me, who thinks i look beautiful first thing in the morning, who bravely battles every "picante" dish i can throw at him...

to the one who can't leave the house without returning for that one forgotten thing at least once, who fills the house with hoarded junk that might just "come in handy", who never tires of turning out the lights behind me..

to the one who is slow to anger and quick to forgive, who loves me in spite of everything, and who has never once regretted the australian tornado he has welcomed into his life...

to this very special one i say happy birthday mi amor... may this year bring you whatever your heart desires...

xx

friends...

2010-01-02T21:34:00.001+01:00

just received a friend invitation on facebook... would like to say from the outset that i'm not a huge fan of facebook... my profile is languishing out there, i rarely visit, have only 31 friends, a couple of whom, i'm sad to say, i don't have a fucking clue who the hell they are, but have accepted their request on the grounds that i don't want to be a snooty citizen of the facebook network who's picky about who she hangs out with... i joined out of curiosity (and out of an urge not to be left out of the hip and happening) and was astonished to discover some real friends out there with facebook accounts... and it was fun for about 5mins, where are you? oh i'm in spain etc. but i quickly got over it...

and with the "real" friends came the "friend" requests and then the dilemmas... there are serious friend collectors out there, people who trawl the friend lists of their friends and want to be friends with whoever is on the list, however tenuous the connection because it's apparently important to have a list of 500+ "friends" listed on your profile page and that somehow makes you a mover and a shaker or something... at first i accepted all requests, but after receiving a barrage of "pokes", "hearts" and "farmvilles" (wtf?) from people i'm not entirely sure i know who they are, i decided enough was enough and i wasn't going to be "friends" with people i didn't know anymore...

so now i've stopped visiting because i'm ashamed to say i have a couple of friend requests languishing for months now, from people i don't know, or even worse from people i "sort of" know... and i don't know what to do with them... i can't quite bring myself to hit the "ignore" button, cause that would just be plain rude and snooty wouldn't it? who am i to say "i don't like you person i don't really actually know"?

so i just leave them sitting there, festering away, and i if i don't visit i don't have to give too much thought to my cowardly actions... until today...

today i received a request from a name that goes back to my school days... those of you who read this blog may have noticed i don't talk about my school days at all... without going into the gory details, let's just say those days of bullying and psychological torture i prefer to put behind me, i don't have many happy memories of that period in my life and i don't keep in active contact with anybody from those days... i've never been entirely sure about what i did to attract the wrath of the "cool" kids, but attract it i did, and the scars are there still... don't worry, this is not going to be a long tirade on the treaty of schoolyard bullying.. many, many people have been there and many worse than me... and i got over it, what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger and all that...

but today's request took the cake... it was from a name i remember well (and there are many that i don't) and someone who made every effort to ensure i was fully aware of his vitriol and distaste for my mere presence... and now he wants to be my "friend"... i see that he's got fatter and moved to another town, these may or may not be points in his favour... but i do wonder what made him get up today, trawl through facebook, find my name in one of those "friends in common" lists and seek me out? or was it all in my imagination?

and what, my friends, am i to do now?

the masterpiece...

2010-01-02T09:24:00.005+01:00

the jigsaw is now finished (the brown background was really doing my head in) and as you can see has undergone inspection by the feline quality control and passed... there was a nervous moment when we put the last piece from the box into place only to realise that there was one piece missing... obsessive-compulsive girl was nearly in tears by this stage, a jigsaw with a piece missing will remain in unfinished limbo forever... but the missing piece was finally found in one of el gato's hidey-holes along with a couple of spare pollitos and some dust bunnies... there was dancing and rejoicing i can tell you...

now life as we know it can resume again... after i've convinced habm that we will NOT be glueing it to a board, framing it and hanging it on the wall... that sort of nonsense i cannot abide - if i wanted to hang a klimt on my wall i'd go out and buy myself a decent print from the museum, not one which is clearly cleverly constructed from 1,500 pieces...

habm's only comeback so far is that at least he's not as bad as his friend "borderline lunatic" who apparently painstakingly numbers all the pieces on his jigsaws so he can put them together again easily next time (and i thought i had control issues)... borderline lunatic also never goes out, keeps a python as a pet, breeds mice to feed live to the python and sleeps in a cupboard (i kid you not) "to keep the noise out"... so i'm not really buying borderline lunatic as the standard against which all "normal" behaviour will be judged, and shortly i will be tipping all those little pieces back in their box...

btw ellie: "jigsaw puzzle" in spanish is "puzzle", but just so you don't feel cheated (like i did several years back trying to explain to the shop assistant that i wanted paper clips, and even resorting to drawing one on a piece of paper only to discover that they're called "clips"!) that's pronounced with a spanish twist: "puth-leh"

feliz año nuevo 2010...

2009-12-31T18:57:00.005+01:00

happy new year to everyone out there in blogland and to all flesh and blood* friends too! here's hoping it's a good one... may all your new year's eve dinners be abundant with plates of fried elvers (actually, they're quite nice)...

*umm.. that's not to say that blogger friends are not real people too, just to say that i don't know them as flesh and blood... i'm sure you understand... going away now to start (yes start) drinking now...

xx

habm is a fecking genius...

2009-12-26T12:24:00.004+01:00

he has managed to fashion a new wing mirror out of a plastic comb, a piece of alfoil, some metal bits he was guarding in the spare room for that very purpose, and no doubt lashings of loctite (he has great faith in the healing powers of loctite)... or something like that... apparently the real story is that he saved the last wing mirror that got knocked off by a passing car several years ago, and reconstructed a new one from the two dead ones... whatever, i prefer the alfoil and comb story myself...

anyway the upshot is we have two functioning wing mirrors that can be adjusted with the little gismo inside the car and everything... so stick that up your jacksie, mirror vandal, that's 250 euros i can now fritter away on champagne, caviar and cuban cigars...

in other news i have embarked on the annual christmas jigsaw, and basically can't speak or do anything else till it's finished... the project has been delayed somewhat by el gato who two nights running has snuck out and destroyed about a third of the days efforts... there have been words...

christmas has been and gone and i suspect i weigh about 10kgs more... operation bikini will start in january...

and we're off to madrid tomorrow, the spicy supplies in the land of no spice are running low and i view this as a good excuse to venture down to the big smoke and stuff my face full of kurdish, moroccan, indian and any other international flavours i can get my hands on...

if i find out who you are i will do unspeakable things...

2009-12-24T09:32:00.006+01:00

a big merry fucking christmas to the drunken (well at least i hope you were drunk, otherwise you have no excuse whatsoever) idiot who snapped the wing mirror off our car on monday night... no doubt you thought it was amusing at the time, i am however, less than amused at the 250 euros + labour that it will cost to get it fixed... perhaps you would like to contribute? or pay for it entirely? no? well remember this:

i am vindictive, i have a memory like an elephant, and i know which pub you drink at...

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

2009-12-20T22:33:00.003+01:00

it's been positively freezing around here lately... i thought when they started talking about a "siberian front" sweeping across europe on the television weather report that they were using "siberian" as a metaphor... turns out they weren't, and the front really is from siberia, with appropriate temperatures to match... last night they say it got down to -16 degrees in vitoria, and as far as i could tell there wasn't a town on the weather map that didn't feature some number in the minuses... unfortunately, for anyone who might be interested, i can't actually tell you from first hand experience what -16 feels like... i was the one staying inside all evening...

but today the sun was shining and i dragged habm out from his winter residence (the bed) to "dar un paseo" around a pretty little lake nearby: urkulu... i brought you home some photos... enjoy!

(sorry about the title, got the tune to a certain song going around in my head, it's being used as an advertising jingle for something or other on television at the moment, and it just sort of popped out...)

encounters of the expat kind...

2009-12-19T08:18:00.004+01:00

a few weekends back husband-acquired-by-marriage and i found ourselves in a bar in a town outside the basque country having a couple of drinks before dinner... sitting next to us was one of those gregarious types, chatting with his two companions, the barman, other staff and pretty much anyone who came in the door... i didn't pay much attention to him, or his conversations with all and sundry, i'd sized him up as a local from this rather small town and left it at that... until i noticed that the barman kept calling him "el inglés"... a whispered consultation with habm ensued, and he confirmed that yes, the guy sitting next to me was english... didn't i notice the accent?

bloody hell... the accent? i hadn't noticed anything... my curiosity was piqued and i started to listen more closely to the conversation... yes, he had an accent, and a fairly obvious one at that... how the hell did i miss that?

el inglés' companions got up to leave and he turned his attention in our direction and fueled by this time by several jack daniels started talking to us and another guy on our other side... i kept my contribution to a minimum at first but eventually he caught me out...

"you're english" he said to me (in spanish) with the classic cartoon look of surprise painted all over his face... personally, i'm of the opinion that you only have to look at me to know that i'm not spanish, but as i'd failed to notice his accent earlier i figured i'd let that one pass...

"actually i'm australian" i said

"australian?" he said "do you live here?"

"well i don't live here, as in this town, but i live here in spain, in the basque country"

he digested this information for a moment, the conversation moved on to how many australians lived there in that town (35), how he was the first to have moved there i don't remember how many years ago (oh god, so he's the christopher columbus expat around here), how long had i lived in spain, and did i know the australians who lived in another town in the basque country, there are a lot of people living in that town etc...

he kept pronouncing the name of "that town" incorrectly, and unthinkingly, stupidly i corrected him... the expression on his face was priceless...

"you've been living here for five minutes and now you're correcting MY spanish?"

oh fuck me... there was another jack daniels on the bar and i knew i was in for it... bizarrely enough, i could never have imagined how he was going to attack...

"you're not australian, you're english!"

i went on to explain that i was, indeed, australian and wondered fleetingly if it was only english people who corrected pronunciation... he wasn't having a bar of it, and went on to explain how my accent was english so therefore i was english... the barman and the other barfly were looking bemused at this point, habm was assuring him that i was australian, and i was getting irritated...

"as we are having this argument in spanish, it is only natural that my accent, in spanish, will be influenced by my mother tongue, which is english... perhaps you'd prefer to argue in english and then we can clear this up?"

the barman and the barfly were laughing... "go on, speak to her in english"

which we did... and a couple of sentences later he informed the bar that i was, in fact, australian...

well fantastic, glad i cleared the nationality test...

but, as they say, it's not over till the fat lady sings... about 20 mins of ramblings ensued, expounding upon confusing lines of thought from which i was only able to grasp something along the lines that australians are actually english, basques are actually spanish and the two nationalities are like peas in a pod always going on about independence... oh, and all basques have lots of money and are taking over spain and buying up real estate in his region, or something like that, i may have got the wrong end of the stick as it was one of the most ill-informed rants i've ever been subjected to...

i don't normally go around having arguments with strangers in bars but this time i couldn't help myself... to be fair to him, when things had calmed down he did apologise and we parted on good terms but the incident was a little eye-opener for me... and i wondered a bit about the source of all that pent-up aggression... and i found it a bit sad...

what i saw in that man (aside from several jack daniels) was someone lost... someone who had lived almost his entire adult life in spain, but yet belonged neither there nor back home... in that small town in spain he is "el inglés" a badge he can wear with pride, a mark of difference of specialness... there have been others since, but he was the first... but this difference can also chaff, you can live here forever and yet you'll never be "from here"... earlier in this post i called him a "christopher columbus", an explorer seeking out unchartered territories, these days there are foreigners carving out their little piece of heaven all over spain... expats are not so special or different anymore... and the "old hands", the font of knowledge of all things "local" maybe feel a little passed over...

or maybe he just hates australians... after all there were apparently a lot of them living nearby...

he is selling his house... i know this because he rather tactlessly bellowed across the bar to habm "you basques have a lot of money, do you want to buy my house?" the barman and the barfly (who as it turns out was from bilbao) all laughed, but i could see that they were shocked... i wondered if he was selling up to go back home, and if so what would be waiting for him there...

and i wondered about myself, do i play the "exotic" card living here? does that make me feel special? probably...

and would i be writing a blog, for example, if i was still living back in sydney? probably not...

so if you're passing through mondragón in twenty years time, look out for me... i'll be the one sitting in the bar downing drinks and ranting nonsense at newcomers... at least the people in this town don't call me "la australiana" they call me by my name... which has got to be one point in my favour...

i bore you with kitchen photos (again)...

2009-12-11T17:57:00.001+01:00

remember the kitchen project? that crazy time a couple of months back when we decided just for the fun of it, to turn our lives upside down, rip out the old kitchen and install a brand new one from scratch? all by ourselves? and barely escape divorce proceedings? yes that one... well i thought you might like to know that it's finally finished...

yes, yes, i know... we started in july, it's now december and what the hell have we been doing all that time? well it's been up and running for months (obviously, or else divorce proceedings would be well underway by now), but there were some cosmetic details that needed doing - like fitting the skirting boards, putting up the cupboard trim lighting and fixing the island benchtop into position... and after the weeks of hell back in july, well we just couldn't be arsed, and the months dragged on and we still couldn't be arsed, until one day habm had a sudden burst of energy, the house was filled with sawdust and chaos again and hey presto, we've finished!!

i promise this will be the last time i bore you with kitchen photos:

looks good eh? and the under-cupboard lighting is pretty cool too, now i can actually see what i'm doing!

the reason nothing gets done around here...

2009-12-10T19:28:00.000+01:00

an unfortunate name...

2009-12-09T21:18:00.000+01:00

driving along some roads in the back of nowhere the other day we came across this...

which did make us do a bit of a double take... in fact we did so much of a double take that we had to scream to a halt in order to take a photo (much to habm's embarrassment) and i insisted we visit the town... i can only assume that franco (the town) saw better days back in the days of franco (the dictator) because there didn't seem to be a whole lot happening there now... even the church looked like nobody had crossed the threshold in many years and the remaining residents seemed to be using the portico as a garage...

lazy tuesday...

2009-12-08T17:30:00.004+01:00

today is a public holiday, and as most of my students kindly took the monday off as well, i've been treated to a nice looong weekend... we've been out and out about, doing a bit of this and that, a bit of city, a bit of history, and a bit of culture, but i'll get to those later... at the moment i'm sorting through all the photos i haven't filed (and therefore haven't posted) for months, so while i'm doing that l'll give you something nice to look at...

this morning we took a little hike up to the valley of urbia and stopped there for a bite to eat... this isn't the first time i've posted photos of urbia on this blog and it probably won't be the last, but i thought today's offerings were rather nice... so here, for your viewing pleasure...

i have a medical...

2009-12-03T20:29:00.000+01:00

apparently, by law, my employer is supposed to provide me with an annual medical to check that i am fit to work... this requirement had never seemed to bother them too much (i've never been offered this service before), but after a major client asked to see evidence that the teachers working on their premises were not going to inconveniently keel over on the job, things swept into action with lightening speed (i think 6 months were spent arguing the toss) and check-ups were organised... mine was a couple of fridays ago...

for some inexplicable reason that i never got to the bottom of the test had to take place in a town some distance from here, apparently it was like, impossible to do it in the medical centre at the end of my street... on the upside this experience has taught me that there is a town in gipuzkoa where the parking situation is even worse than mondragón, so that's one less thing to moan about and now i feel positively cheery when it only takes me 20 minutes and several litres of petrol to find a space...

after arriving 25 minutes late to the appointment (i would like to point out that i arrived at the building 5 minutes before the scheduled time and the missing 30 minutes were spent driving around, finally abandoning the car on the top of a mountain and trying to find the medical centre again on foot) i was treated to a barrage of forms and questions and then ushered into the room for my eye test and hearing test...

the eye test i had a few problems with, which bothered me somewhat as i've never had problems with my eyes before and when it was over i anxiously asked the nurse if i'd done ok... "you saw what you were able to see" she informed me in a snooty fashion...

the hearing test involved sitting in a "soundproof" booth and clicking a button when i heard a noise... i say "soundproof" with inverted commas because my ability to do the test honestly was somewhat hampered by the fact that i could hear her fingers tapping the keys on the other side of the booth as she pressed the buttons to generate the sounds...

next i fished the urine sample out of my bag that i'd been instructed to bring with me (running to the appointment with that sloshing around in my bag gave me a few anxious moments) and plonked it on the table... she frowned at the plastic container (that i had purchased, as instructed, at the pharmacy for that very purpose) and told me that this wouldn't do... she handed me a test tube and my sample and told me to go to the toilet and tip my sample into the test tube... i told her that i don't, as a general rule, go around pissing in plastic sample jars, and i certainly don't want to know about what they do with the sample jars afterwards, as far as i was concerned she could tip it into twenty test tubes and leave me out of it... she was unmoved by my arguments and so i went to the toilet to do the transfer...

next i was seen by an equally humourless doctor, with the usual run of drink? smoke? take drugs? on medication? have allergies? do exercise? have a pre-existing medical condition? see dead people? questions... we hit a sticky patch when he asked me the date of my last period.. firstly i fail to see what my menstrual cycle has to do with my fitness to bore people with phrasal verbs and secondly i do NOT keep a period diary nor do i have a fucking clue as to the date of my last period... they are just things that happen somewhere between 12-15 times a year, i get irrationally angry for about a week beforehand, i have some pain and then i forget all about it till the next time...

i mumbled something about not knowing because my periods were very irregular... he stared at me with his pen poised over the paper...

"very good, but what date was your last period?" he repeated

"well i really don't know"

"what date" he hissed, and pushed the desk calendar towards me... i stared at it hopefully, but unfortunately it didn't have the date of my last period marked...

"well i think it was around the beginning of the month"

he stared at me, pen still poised... i stared back...

"well let's see..." i said "how about the 5th of november? how does the 5th of november sound to you?"

i sat quietly as he wrote 5 november in the correct box...

after the menstruation stand-off he asked me to retire to a corner of the room and take off my clothes... a sequence of inexplicable arms up/arms down/squat down/stand up/touch toes in underpants exercises followed (i am reliably informed by my mother that i'm very lucky he didn't ask me to squat down and walk like a duck... wtf?) and then i was released from my torture.... to be ushered back into the waiting room to sign a consent form (i'm sorry, aren't we supposed to "consent" BEFORE the examination?), and fill out another form containing at least half the questions he'd asked me not 10 minutes earlier... deciding that keeping my big mouth shut was probably the best strategy at this point, i filled out the forms without complaining, collected my dignity at the door and escaped...

two weeks later and i'm still waiting to hear the results...

winter is coming...

2009-12-02T07:15:00.002+01:00

the television news has been full of dumps of snow in various parts in the north, the ski stations are preparing for the ski season, the first sprinkling of snow has been seen on the mountains surrounding our town, the electric blanket is on the bed, and el gato has taken up residence next to the heater, only emerging for food or bedtime...

how to learn euskera..

2009-11-28T09:26:00.003+01:00

step 1: buy the book (check)
step 2: open the book and browse thoughtfully through the first couple of chapters (check)
step 3: put down the book and run screaming from the room (check)

it's all very well to have meaningful chats with people and read articles on wikipedia about how fascinating euskera is... "it's a language isolate, you know, and the last remaining pre-indo european language in europe..."

it's theoretically possible to nod wisely when people talk about ergative–absolutive languages, it's a whole other thing when you're faced with learning it... "what, you're actually expecting that i'll be able to construct a sentence with that system?"

god help me...

assimilating...

2009-11-21T09:48:00.002+01:00

i go into the bookshop in mondragón and search the shelves for the book... there were others along the same lines, but i'd been told this was the best one, so clutching my bit of paper i go to the counter... "did they have this?" i asked, handing over the paper...

the woman looked bored, not the reaction i was expecting, and tapped something into the computer... "computer says no"* she said, and handed the paper back... "could they order it for me?" i wondered... it was already on order she explained, but nobody knew when it would arrive... i would just have to call in some other time.. maybe it would be in, maybe not...

some days later i found myself in the same chain of bookstores in san sebastian... i handed over my bit of paper to the man on the help desk, expecting him to be impressed with my choice of title... he too, looked bored and directed me towards a display stand i hadn't noticed when i came in... the book was there! "how much is it?" i asked... he shrugged and pointed me towards a scanner where i could check the price myself... 19.95...

at the counter i handed over the book... the woman scanned it, smiled at me and said "hemeretzi eta laurogeita hamabost"... i stared at her blankly, my heart sank, and that familiar feeling of starting from scratch, again, washed over me... "no, i'm not quite ready for that just yet" i stammered.. "nineteen, ninety-five" she repeated in spanish... i paid, and walked out, carrying the book that is apparently going to open the door to a whole new world of possibilities...

yes my friends, i'm taking the next big step... i'm going to learn euskera...

*little britain: computer says no.

friday 13th...

2009-11-13T16:16:00.000+01:00

it's friday 13th which according to tradition is apparently a bad day for us anglo saxons... a student has just warned me about it, he told me to look out for viruses... i don't know if one can actually "look out" for viruses, but i was so proud of him using a phrasal verb without thinking that i didn't quibble... i made a mental note to myself to wear a mask for the rest of the day, turns out he meant computer viruses... oh...

strangely enough tuesday 13th is considered an unlucky day here in spain... if i was superstitious i guess that would increase the number of possible unlucky days in the year... or would i only be affected by friday 13th because i'm anglo saxon? or tuesday 13th because it's a question of geography?

genius...

2009-11-13T08:39:00.000+01:00

one of the advantages of teaching english in the factory from which you have just purchased your brand new kitchen appliances is that if something goes wrong, you can go to class and ask your students about it (all under the guise that it's good for them to practice their "technical english")... as was the case when the detergent drawer in the washing machine kept filling up with water after every cycle... luckily i have a class in the washing division and they were able to supply me with the little plastic blue thing (yep, under my tuition they're definitely advancing with all that technical jargon) that was mysteriously missing and problem solved!

the other advantage is that i get to hear the best of the "stupid customer" calls to the after-sales service centre... one of which i simply have to share...

a woman rings the after-sales service centre complaining that her new oven is faulty... she claims that the chicken she'd put in to roast has "disappeared"... the technician taking the call is naturally a little taken aback by this allegation, and asks her to explain how exactly the chicken disappeared... so she explains that she put the chicken in, turned the oven on to "P" for "pollo" (pollo = chicken) after a short while it went completely black, when she tried to open the door to take it out she found it was locked, and the chicken continued cooking until it disintegrated into a pile of ashes...

exactly what the technician said to the woman has not been reported to me, but i imagine it may have been difficult to not fall about on the floor laughing... the "P" function on the oven stands for pyrolysis, which is the cleaning program cycle that heats the oven to about 500 degrees celsius.. it runs for about 2 hours, and after a couple of minutes into the cycle, the door locks for safety reasons.. while the manual doesn't specifically prohibit putting chickens in the oven during this process, one can imagine that the two are not exactly compatible...

i could also share with you the story of the guy who decided to wash snails in the washing machine... but you can probably imagine what happened...

rest in peace...

2009-11-12T10:44:00.006+01:00

they're tearing up the old cemetery in mondragón and turning it into a park...

i know this because my regular running route (15 mins climbing up the almost perpendicular hill behind my house, 15 mins running back down it again the long way to the sports centre and 15 mins walking back home) has been rudely interrupted lately by bobcats speeding up and down the "pedestrian only" path, bags of cement in unexpected places and scores of industrial men rushing around digging up old bits of concrete in one part and laying down new bits in another... i'm no expert in park design, but it seems to me that by the time they're finished, the "park" will consist mostly of paved pathways and stairs, interspaced with the occasional patch of grass, destined to be nothing more than a dog shit repository...

i'm sad that the old cemetery has gone... it has been derelict the whole time i've lived here, it's inhabitants long since moved to the new cemetery up the hill, it's niches vacant and broken and the gardens overgrown... i rather liked it that way... i'm no expert on cemetery design either, but the new one (also on my regular running route), with it's two squat, grey stone pavilions and the chimneys of the crematorium out the back always makes me think of concentration camps... i shouldn't think things like that, i have no experience of concentration camps, but the thought does not fail to cross my mind as i pass through... it conforms to the obsession they have here that everything should be neat, tidy and above all, new, (right down to the plane trees that they trim into stunted, tortured shapes every winter) but it lacks a certain something... "soul" is the word i think i'm looking for...

the other day i saw an old man staring wistfully through the fence, watching the frenetic activity in progress... well i think it was wistfully, he didn't have the usual expectative expression you see on the faces of the old guys who routinely gather around construction sites, animatedly speculating on how the job could be done better... I wondered as i passed if he had had family buried there, or if like me, he had simply preferred the old to the new...

ode to autumn...

2009-11-02T23:20:00.000+01:00

photos taken at parque nacional de ordesa y monte perdida, saturday 31 october

cycling las vias verdes (part 2)...

2009-10-29T07:08:00.000+01:00

after the dramas of the first day on the vias verdes our second attempt went quite smoothly... we decided for the second day to try the route Cidacos, from calahorra to arnedillo... we started from the small town of autol, a total of 48 kms (there and back)... astonishingly the route was not undergoing major works, there were no bicycle breakdowns and i'd managed to sleep off the migrane...

autol is famous (not surprisingly) for being nestled in amongst some pretty striking rock formations...
view of the village

these two are called El Picuezo and La Picueza

on the outskirts of autol found the trail with only a minor argument and got on the bikes and headed off...

we passed through an old train tunnel...

and headed into the next valley where the route follows the rio cidacos...

the next town on the route was quel, with all the houses nestled at the base of an impressive cliff...

and the ruins of an old castle on top..

the whole region is dotted with tiny little caves, which provided shelter for many people until very recently...

the route took us past a pretty impressive collection of wine cellars burrowed into a hill and all stacked up on top of each other...

along a tree-lined path...

and onto the next town, arnedo, dominated by a strange rock formation complete with another old castle on top...

instead of going through the town the route wound through the vegetable gardens on the outskirts...

a few km on the route looked like this...

and we saw spectacular scenery such as this....

then we arrived at the last town on the route, arnedillo, which has a rather picturesque entrance...

arnedillo is famous for its thermal springs (we stupidly forgot to pack swimming costumes and had to content ourselves with eating lunch and watching others enjoy the waters)...

after lunch we cycled all the way back again...

and hopped in the car to take a closer look at the castle at arnedo...

the end...

autumn morning...

2009-10-27T10:41:00.004+01:00

i am running, feet striking the pavement, the leaf litter stirring in my wake... up here in the suburbs high above the town it's quiet, removed from the bustle of the shops and bars opening for the day... the sky is a perfect blue, the trees a riot of colours, flashes of gold, red, burgandy and orange catch my eye as i pass... i don't remember so much colour last year, did i not see it or did the leaves change from green to brown and fall to the ground in a day?

i am running, the air is fresh, crisp... i play with collocations in my head, a crisp autumn day, a crisp apple, a breath of fresh air... am l learning to appreciate a perfect autumn day?

i listen to the birds going about their business and think about the flocks of migratory geese we saw near bilbao a few weeks ago, moving purposely southwards in formation... for a moment i wish i lived in a town where storks built their untidy nests on top of the church tower, like the ones i see from the highway on the outskirts of vitoria, and habm and i play a little game when we pass "he's home today" or "he's out having lunch"... then i think i would be sad to see them go every autumn... better not...

i am running, falling in love with the sun every time i pass out from the shade...

cycling las vias verdes (part 1)...

2009-10-25T20:06:00.001+01:00

a couple of weekends ago we got all motivated, packed the bikes in the back of the car (no mean feat i might tell you - two mountain bikes in the back of a hatchback) and headed off to la rioja to try out some of the vias verdes that i'd seen in a program on television...

the vias verdes (green routes) form part of a wonderful initiative that converts disused and decommissioned railway lines into a network of cycling and walking path that stretches right across spain... 1,700 kms in total, according to the website... obsessive compulsive girl got very excited about the prospect of starting a project that involves cycling all of them and checking them off the list as we go... sitting on the sofa girl is currently having words with her...

anyway... on the saturday we got up at some ungodly hour and drove to casalarreina, the starting point for our first via verde: Rio Oja... after reassembling the bikes in the middle of the town, and arguing the whys and wherefores of special bike riding gloves under the bemused stares of early morning locals heading out to buy bread, we headed off...

things did not start very well... following the rather vague instructions on the official vias verdes brochure, we cycled about aimlessly in search of the start of the route, up and down streets and through vineyards, it was nowhere to be found... the brochure said that we would have to pass through a stand of poplar trees about 1km out of town, and scanning the horizon we located the only poplar trees in sight, so we headed off again through the vineyards until we finally encountered the trail... which was under construction!

now dear reader, when i say "under construction" i don't mean a couple of pothole patches i mean that the whole path was littered with craters, mounds of earth and plastic tubing... it looked like it had been carpet bombed... we saw a man working in the fields a few hundred meters further along the track and decided to ask him was this a temporary obstruction or was the whole route like this... so we hobbled, half riding half walking up to the man to get the real dirt from a "local"... when questioned he looked dubiously at us, the bikes and the field of exploded land mines that was our via verde, and then informed us that it was pretty bad for about a kilometre, and then it got better... as he warmed to his subject he got positively cheerful, we'd have no problems passing through on bikes, he assured us..

so we pushed on, half riding, half walking and trying not to fall down the side of the embankment... the "kilometre" of bad conditions seemed to be stretching on a bit, and then in the distance we saw another man coming towards us walking his bike... we asked again about the conditions of the track and he shook his head mournfully... no it was like this all the way to Santo Domingo de la Calzada (about 10kms further on), he said, and continued on his way...

we contemplated our options and decided to double back, pack the bikes in the car and drive to Santo Domingo and start again from there... which we duly did... at Santo Domingo the trail again proved elusive and after cycling around aimlessly tempers were fraying... habm encountered a cyclist washing his bike in a petrol station and decided it was time to ask an expert... i may or may not have made some choice comments about the previous "experts" we had encountered and left him to it..

habm returned with the bad news... the whole route was under construction and impossible to cycle... all 28kms of it... apparently it had been that way for the past 2 years with no signs of nearing completion... cursing the previous two men i made a mental note to myself to remember that spanish people will always stop and help you when you need directions - even if they don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about...

the cyclist informed us that you could cycle to ezcaray (the end of the line) along some backroads that ran parallel to the route and gave complicated instructions about how to get to the first turn-off... based on the advice received up to that point i viewed this information very suspiciously... habm assured me that he could get us to the next town on the route following the cyclists instructions and then after that we'd ask someone else for further directions... i wondered how someone could remain so overwhelmingly optimistic in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary... unwillingly i allowed myself to be persuaded that this was really our only option if we wanted to cycle that day, we'd already wasted more than three hours with all the mornings shenanigans...

so we headed off, and miraculously the cyclist's instructions proved to be correct... we did the 5kms or so to the town of santurde and stopped to look around...
old farmhouse, santurde
ruins of a medieval defensive tower, santurde
husband-acquired-by-marriage taking a break

heading out of santurde, disaster struck again - habm got a flat... which wouldn't be such a disaster in itself (we had a spare inner tube & etc) but he's been repeatedly getting flat tyres in the same wheel for the last few months, which suggests that there's an underlying problem that hasn't been fixed... inner tube changed we continued on our way, but the tyre started to slowly deflate... big problem.... by this stage it was 12.30pm and we'd so far completed 5kms of the anticipated 56kms... remember that this is spain, where the shops shut on saturdays at 1pm and don't open again till monday... a bike with a flat tyre and no more spare inner tubes was about to ruin not only the day but the whole weekend...

leaving me with the dud bike in a roadside stop habm rushed back to Santo Domingo in the hopes he could find a bike shop before 1pm... i could feel a migrane coming on, and lay down for a sleep on a park bench... some time later habm returned in the car with the good news, he'd arrived back in the nick of time, found a bike shop still open and managed to buy what he needed... we ate lunch and i tried to sleep again while he repaired the bike... by this stage the migrane was really closing in, and accepting defeat we decided to complete the rest of the route by car...

we stopped at the pretty little town of ojacastro where for some reason i have only taken photos of doorways and windows:

and then we continued on our way to the final stop - ezcaray...

ezcaray is a ski resort town that while quite pleasant, wouldn't be up there on my list of must visit again places (although that could be the migrane talking)... it does feature half a medieval bridge that goes nowhere (the other half was washed away by floods)...

and some more doorways and windows..

after wandering around the old centre for a bit we headed across the river (on a bridge that went all the way!) to the end of the via verde, where the former railway station has been converted into a restaurant... and a bit further on we headed up the hill to the Ermita de Allende, a lovely little church which to me seemed more portuguese than spanish in it's style...

and thus concluded our less than successful first day on the vias verdes...

parking mondragón style...

2009-10-25T09:22:00.004+01:00

try not to get up the teacher's nose, won't you?

2009-10-21T16:20:00.005+02:00

"you english people" said the student "think you control the world because everyone must speak english"

sigh... i do get a little tired of this one and very tired of having to defend my apparent objective of world dominance by means of my mother tongue (acquired by an accident of birth)... i got lucky and they didn't, and somebody, somewhere is always going to lose out whatever the "international language" is... and if things had gone the way the french wanted, i'd be in the same fucking boat as they are, slogging it out in french classes, struggling with "difficult" pronunciation and "stupid" irregular verbs...

too tired to argue, i opted for the easy way out...

"i'm not english, I'm australian... now, moving on to the next exerc.."

"i am not agree!" he shouted

i stared at him blankly... what on earth was there to disagree with? i am australian is right up there at the top of my list of indisputable facts, kind of like i am a woman... nobody's ever challenged me on my nationality (or my sex for that matter) before...

as an expat i've quite enjoyed being australian, it has nearly always been a convenient way of sidestepping controversial issues, the advantage of not being particularly important in the world scheme of things... to most people here i come from a happy, harmless little country on the other side of the world, populated by kangaroos and crocodiles with lots of sunshine and sitting around on the beach... and, according to a documentary screened on tv last week, a country where everyone lives the good life, earns heaps of money for not very much work and lives in fancy apartments with harbour views... so unlike my american expat counterparts i am not called upon to defend US foreign policy or unfortunate choices in presidents, nor do i need to take it personally when the drinking and bad behaviour of british tourists on the costa del sol is held up for public inspection... "i am australian" i can say, shaking my head "i don't understand it either"... but i digress..

"you are english because the queen of england is your king" he concluded triumphantly...

i waited a second, wondering if that was indeed the sum total of of his illogical masterpiece... he smiled smugly...

"are you spanish?" i asked him... the smile slid from his face...

"no"

"and who is your king?"

"i don't have a king"

"the question is not whether you want a king but whether you have one... and the sad fact is, the king of spain is your king, whether you like it or not.. this does not mean however that you are not basque, and i therefore fail to see why having the queen of england as my head of state contradicts my identity as australian..."

we continued quietly with comparatives and superlatives for the rest of the lesson...

coming from a basque i found the whole exchange just a little hard to swallow... am i not standing in the middle of a country that is not a country that is "not spain or france" and yet sits within the territorial boundaries of both? most basques would argue that they don't agree with that situation... fine, maybe i don't agree with the queen as my head of state either... most basques will also tell you, in spite of the geographical boundaries that they are NOT spanish they are basque... i'm fine with that too... and by the same token i am NOT english, i am australian... if i can take the time to respect a person's cultural identity in spite of the lines drawn on a map, i would hope that that person could pay me the same respect... basques are not spanish, australians are not english, end of story...

i think maybe i should go and drink some lovely wine now...

i've been a busy little bee...

2009-10-20T18:32:00.004+02:00

... making travel guides over at nextstop.com... here are some of my recent offerings:

a little collection of the best places to visit in tropical north queensland (inspired by our recent but almost long forgotten august holidays)...

a tour of the historical highlights of san sebastian....

and an overview of one of the cycling tours we did in la rioja the other weekend...

to see them in their full glory head over to my page on nextstop... there's lots of people creating great travel guides to just about every place you can imagine: www.nextstop.com

enjoy!

just in case you were wondering...

2009-10-14T10:55:00.006+02:00

i have been busy, with stuff, and not writing, not posting photos and not blogging... which is very boring i know, and you've probably all gone away and forgotten about me by now, because that is the nature of the internet...

so what have i been doing? well mostly stuff, work stuff that is, and trying to get my lazy arse back on the exercise circuit again because winter is coming and i don't want to turn into a depressed couch potato this time around... oh, and we went away for the long weekend for what i thought was to be a tour of Las Vias Verdes in La Rioja, and turned out to be La Rioja, Navarra and a bit of Zaragoza thrown in for good measure... I see a reoccurring theme emerging in our relationship...

highlights of the week

- the student who informed me that he often puts bull's eggs in his salads (we later established that he meant boiled eggs)... i'm trying out a new policy of deliberately not understanding my students when they make mistakes because i think they're getting lazy... "yes, but you understood what I meant?" is the common excuse... well no, i really did wonder, because frankly anyone who thinks snails are an acceptable thing to dish up for lunch could quite conceivably put a salad of bulls testicles on the menu, no?

- watching an early morning bus driver stop the bus on the outskirts of town, and pop out to take a piss on the side of the road in full view of everyone, despite the fact that the official bus stop (complete with public toilet) was a mere 1km further on...

- taking el gato to the vet to investigate the crop of lumps that sprang up all over his ears, and being informed by the new age touchy feely vet (not the usual one) that it was not necessary to restrain the cat while giving him the injection... yeah right, so you'll be ok with a trip to the hospital for stitches then?

- arguing with habm about the merits of riding a bike dressed like a normal person (pants, t-shirt, that kind of thing) as opposed to dressed like a lycra clown (special bike pants, special bike shirt, special bike gloves, special bike shoes, colour coordinated helmet)...

- thinking up new and interesting things to do with leeks (i've got a fridge full of them courtesy of parents in law)... any suggestions gratefully received...

reasoning with your cat...

2009-10-06T05:54:00.003+02:00

husband-acquired-by-marriage tries explaining cause and effect to el gato...

"now sama, don't go jumping up on the new white countertop with dirty feet and leaving footprints all over the place... wash your feet before getting up there, ok?"

el gato looks at him thoughtfully for a moment, bites him on the arm and rushes off down the hallway with habm in hot pursuit, shouting expletives...

i suspect this reasoning phase is not going to last long...

the two men in my life...

2009-10-04T10:37:00.002+02:00

on sunday i took on my nemisis and won...

2009-09-30T22:26:00.011+02:00

this was my nemesis...

this is anboto... one of the three characteristic "pointy" peaks in the basque country and the only one that had defeated me...

udalaitz, yep been to the top more times than i can count; aizgorri, ditto; txindoki, been there done that; gorbeia, done it once. and so on...

but anboto always eluded me... the peaks here are not particularly high by world standards, but like any mountain, they have to be treated with respect and with a careful eye on the weather... and so it turned out that every time we set out to climb anboto, the weather was never in our favour... too windy, unexpected rain showers or a rapidly approaching storm... until last sunday, and now i can firmly put anboto in the WAS my nemesis basket... and that makes me feel satisfied....

anyway enough about my primeval urge to conquer nature, here are some photos...

about three quarters of an hour into the trip with the peak in the distance..

from here is where the going starts to get pretty tough...

and by tough, i mean a gradient like this... i didn't do any fancy exaggerated angles with this photo, it really is like this...

near the top is the rather spectacular mari's cave...

and also near the top are some plaques commemorating people who have lost their lives on the mountain...

including this one for someone's dog...

and here we are at the top...

backpacks are so not fashion accessories...

view from the top...

and now we have to go back down... which frankly, i found harder than gong up...

and when we got back down, the clouds started to close in....

tuesday afternoon....

2009-09-29T21:42:00.002+02:00

this afternoon the streets are full of people going about their afternoon business before heading home... i'm about to cross a zebra crossing on my way to the supermarket... a car is stopped at the crossing (which is strange enough in itself, usually you have to stare them down before stepping off the footpath to be sure they will stop) and suddenly my attention is caught by a movement on the road, in front of the car.... it is a kitten which obviously has been hit by the previous car to pass by... the driver of the waiting car is stopped, unsure of what to do... some people step out from the opposite side of the road onto the crossing, look at the dying kitten as they pass and keep walking... i wave at the waiting driver and run out to the middle of the road and kneel down, trying to ascertain just how bad the damage is... what the fuck would i know, i'm no doctor...

realising the busy afternoon traffic is getting impatient, as gently as i can i pick up the poor little animal and move it to the side of the road... all the while some absurd voice in my mind, from the first aid course i did 100 years ago, is telling me that you shouldn't move an accident victim because you may well cause more damage... i squash the voice firmly, the traffic here is not going to wait much longer..

and so i wait, crouched in the gutter with the kitten, and i don't know what i'm supposed to do next... people passing by look at me curiously but no one is prepared to interrupt their afternoon plans and get involved in this... it is a dying cat, and nothing more... "pobrecito" (poor thing) i hear one woman say as she passes me by, but she doesn't stop... i hate these people for their callousness and at the same time i envy the clear classification they clearly have established in their minds... an animal is an animal and will not merit the same emotion as a human being.... for me the distinctions have never been that clear....

i am on the verge of tears... i contemplate carrying the little thing to the vet, but i know it is a hopeless case... and more than this i doubt that i am capable of doing it.. the rational and the irrational do battle inside me "there's nothing you can do" and "but what if?", "maybe i should..." but it never was anything more than a hopeless case, and the kitten dies, with me crouching over it in the gutter...

i pick up the tiny thing again and carry it to a garbage container close by... it's hardly a dignified ending, but somehow it seems slightly better than leaving it in the gutter... i go home in tears...

movidas...

2009-09-27T10:18:00.008+02:00

friday night:

i step out the front door, all dressed up and ready to meet up with friends for a night out in a town nearby... i turn up the small narrow street that cuts across the old town to the bus stop, weaving my way through the usual friday night faces, on their way from here to there, from this bar to the next... at the point where the street opens out under the church arch i notice a crowd gathering... standing silently and looking intently towards the plaza... this can't be good...

as i move closer a flash of red and black catches my eye... ertzaintza (basque police) are gathered under the church arch watching the crowd intently... damn... i have to go through there... i see that they are riot police, with their faces covered by balaclavas, on top of that protective helmets, shifting their batons uneasily in their hands... one of them has what i assume to be a tear gas launcher... i follow the gaze of the silent bystanders, down to the plaza which is overflowing with people, many holding up placards and banners... this crowd too is strangely silent...

someone in the plaza cries out something in euskera, the crowd heaves and starts shouting in response... i decide this is a good time to leave, and duck between the ertzaintza and under the church archway, intent on getting out of the centre quickly... on the other side of the church i see six police vans parked on the other side of the plaza and another group of ertzaintza gathered around the exit i want to take... i hesitate, and one of them turns towards me... we make eye contact, and he stares at me impassively, his expression unreadable behind the balaclava... my heart races, the masked face terrifies me... i keep walking and he lets me pass without breaking his stare... i make my way down the street to the bus stop where my friends are waiting, quickly, but not too quickly... i'm glad to be leaving mondragón tonight...

saturday night:

we are eating dinner when we hear shouting in the small plaza in front of our house... i go out to the balcony and see a group of teenagers standing in the street below our house, staring intently into the darkness of the street... more and more arrive and all stop and stare... i can't see what they are staring at...

i wait a few more moments and then i see it, a couple of guys moving around a garbage dumpster... there is a flurry of movement, the container shifts and with a loud crash it is overturned onto the street... this stretch of the street is quite narrow, no cars are going to be passing through there anytime soon... as always, i question the point of tipping over containers and throwing garbage all over the street, i don't understand why the fight for independence always has to involve trashing the very thing they are trying to protect... habm says it is to stop the ertzaintza vans moving freely around the town, he has a point i suppose... i close the balcony door and take refuge inside... tonight it would be better to stay home...

season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...

2009-09-22T21:45:00.006+02:00

in my senior years at high school we studied, amongst other things, the poetry of keates... although i wouldn't say the romantic poets were up there in my top 10, it was, looking back on it, a welcome change from the previous four years of answering comprehension questions about articles carefully cut out of the newspaper... unfortunately, i went to school in the age where grammar was considered contrary to our educational development, and i graduated from 6 years of high school english education with a grammatical lexicon which consisted of nouns (naming words), verbs (doing words) and adjectives (describing words)... imagine the horror and the shame a little less than twenty years later when i contemplated the fact that the best way to earn a living in spain might well be teaching english...

the teacher charged with installing in us a love of keates, or at the very least getting us through the final exams, was an unfortunate woman by the name of ms andronicus... ms andronicus was very, very fat, prone to wearing flowery tents and sported a rather impressive mustache... the fact that her name was identical to a common brand of instant coffee didn't help matters and our callous sixteen year old minds were not fooled by the "ms" either... nobody like that could have possibly hooked herself a husband...

but to my mind, ms andronicus was not unfortunate because of the abovementioned qualities... no, ms andronicus was unfortunate because she really, genuinely cared about keates... she loved his poetry passionately, and tried desperately to move us with his words... but we moved to a different beat, "wake me up before you go-go" was the kind of inspirational prose that touched our hearts and nobody was going to be turning themselves inside out about a season...

of all the poetry of keates, "ode to autumn" was the favourite of ms andronicus and she tried in every way she knew how to teach us to see the beauty of the prose... it was painful and embarrassing to watch and years later as a teacher myself i now imagine i know something of what she felt, when something "special" to the teacher is offered up to the students only to be discarded and dismissed as "boring" or "stupid"...

some years after school i did get into reading some more keates and i did learn to see the beauty in the prose... but i never could go into raptures over "ode to autumn"... my problem lies with autumn itself, i stubbornly refuse to recognise its beauty and my childish heart sees only the end of the summer holidays... the cooling temperatures, the shortening days and the "mists and mellow fruitfulness" leave me cold, signalling nothing more than dread of the dark days that lie ahead... depression and the demons within raise their ugly heads and are harder to suppress when the days turn cold and short... in winter i lose my happiness and my humanity... i am apathetic and ineffectual, unable to muster the energy to manage the simplest tasks; i am a screaming banshee set off by the slightest (imagined or otherwise) provocation... i sit at the edge of the precipice in my mind with my feet dangling and wonder what it would be like to fall...

today is the first day of autumn and i am scared...

signs....

2009-09-19T14:37:00.000+02:00

i love the yellow advisory road signs we have in australia... the classic kangaroo, everyone has seen of course...

(photo taken the first time husband-acquired-by-marriage visited australia in 2006)

but up in queensland they had some pretty kooky ones that i'd never seen before...

cassowary crossing...

a slightly more upmarket cassowary crossing sign, with colours and everything...

and in case you didn't get the message about the cassowaries....

a graffitied cassowary sign in the daintree rainforest... apparently famous, i saw postcards of this sign in a shop nearby...

livestock crossing, some wag had been down that stretch of road adding little hats to all the cows...

and yes, you might like to think twice about hitting one of those cows in a car, especially if it's wearing a hat...

then after you've seen one of the bulls on the road you decide they weren't exaggerating after all...

marine stingers sign complete with bottle of vinegar...

watch out for those slippery rocks...

tree kangaroo... normally when you see one of the animal warning signs there's not one of those animals within a 50km radius... the one and only tree kangaroo i've ever seen in my life was bizarrely enough right across the road from this sign...

they also need to warn you about roadtrains, a common sight in the north of australia...

road trains are semi-trailers towing up to 3 trailers... and yes, they can be up to 53 metres long... if you see one of them coming towards you the best thing you can do is get well out of their way (or come screaming to a halt, jump out of the car and attempt to take photos of them)...

and some others...

the crocodiles on the beach sign...

the "not only do we have crocodiles but we've seen them here recently" sign...

a must for any unwary american/european crossing a busy road...

and exactly what do you think they'll be serving in this restaurant?