I have a dream

There are times when I dream intensely, and become semi-concious as I pass from one dream to the next. Some nights I can remember as many as five or six dreams. Because they are so vivid, they are hugely gratifying, but also very disorientating. I thought I would share a few ongoing ones with you:

DREAM ONE
I am a soldier in a jungle that I suspect is somewhere in Africa as many of my comrades are black, as indeed am I. We are staking out a wooden slatted hut in which we know are some extremely dangerous militias who also deal in drugs. I give the command to enter, realising only when they burst out the door first that we have been set up. My men fall all round me as they are systematically shot in the line with which we had circled the hut, little suspecting a counter-attack. I know my only chance is to fall beneath a body, which I do. It is too late for them and I cannot afford to be repulsed by the nauseating smell of blood or the touch of luke warm bodies atop me. I must lift the house and hide under the coffins beneath and then hope for an element of surprise to help me escape. The problem is that I am claustrophobic.

DREAM TWO
I am an inmate in a prison in South America, quite possibly in Colombia. The prison is hugely overcrowded with tatty light blue or grey walls in each cell, and a veritable maze due to the constant splitting and resizing of cells. My comrades are frightened of me because I keep somewhat apart. But I have no time to waste. I must conceive of a plan to get me moved to another wing before the militia (again!) suss me out. The halls between cells are narrow and twisting not unlike low tunnels. Every night I hear the lullaby of the other inmates´screams as they are tortured and killed, either by guards or by gangs. Tonight is the night that I have made my plan. I cannot let them see me while I try and move, for my aim is not to escape, but merely pass a message, and possibly even get moved into a more secure cell, where the people I know are interned. That is how the messaging system here works. I start by setting a cell on fire. I won´t know what happens to the interns until later, but it´s a means to an end. The fire draws the guards. I start off up the tunnel, creating havoc as I go, but painfully aware that I am not familiar with this area, and I have to trust to my luck. The prison is in the throes of a riot now, and I reach my target and make the drop. That is only half the battle. I have to return through the corridors before being found missing, and without being scene. Some of the places I hide on the way back are pretty impressive.

DREAM THREE
I am a codebreaker in the first world war, and the entire world consists of a red maze with tunnels leading from people to departments to war zones. This is the only one of these dreams in which I am a woman. I have a charge of two kids, a boy and a girl, both of whom I am determined to protect, though not with my life. I want to protect them with my life but my job is too vital to be let down by two mere children. This is the constant struggle in my dream - how to save them for myself, without disobeying my orders. It is also a very claustrophobic dream, and it is only when I waken that the fear takes me, as I am hugely claustrophic in times of anxiety...

La Paloma and Clacking Shoes

Lately I have been rediscovering myself, and feeling like a concentrated version of the person I am. I am not very ambitious as an individual, but I have always had this really strong sense of self, but my passions strengthen and wain not unlike the moon. I feel like myself again, and like I know what I need and want from my life.

I wrote a few days ago that I needed to go mad (in the English sense of the word). I was preoccupied with my sudden realisation that I am still in love with my ex, and didn´t want to ruin it by describing my night out, but I had a great time.

I went to the Paloma club in Barcelona. I don´t know exactly where it is as we went all over the place to get there but it is somewhere between El Ravel and San Antoni. It is a huge ballroom with ornate boxes to the left and right and a giant chandelir in the centre rather like a grand crown. The crown was lit up like a Christmas tree. The music wasn´t particularly great although James Brown was on when we entered. Shortly after 1am a live DJ and vocalist started. Your man has a fantastic voice but all the songs were sadly similar, and after a while I just couldn´t dance to that beat anymore. But my Swedish and Dutch friends are nuts and we amused ourselves dancing outrageously with each other and body-popping.

Of course this month is another tight month money-wise for us, so we shared beers rather than buying lots seperately. I was down to my last 4 euro when it was my turn to go up again. The guy at the bar remembered me (it comes from being so pale compared to the locals) and once again made sure he was the one who served me. I mangled my words as I do when I am nervous. "Unslurvanilasermnmnm," I think I said. He smiled and arched his eyebrows. "Two beers?" I grinned rakishly. "I only have enough for one," I replied, and then chancing my arm:"Two for 4 euro?" He laughed and shook his head, and returned with two beers. I think at that point I shouted "I love you!" I think he knew I was only partly joking. Jaysus, the Irish and their drinks. Of course, the girls were delighted by this new development. My only concern is for the next time I go there - I hope he doesn´t remember me.

Lately I have been going a bit mad at the locals here because the men have this horrible habit of commenting on you as you walk by. Add to that the fact that my most comfortable shoes have a steel tip on the heel and clack, and you will maybe begin to understand how or why I always draw comments everywhere I walk. Yes, it sounds like I am shockingly arrogant, but honestly it is the truth. In Barcelona I stand out because I am taller than average, whiter than normal, red-haired and blue-eyed, and my shoes make a noise that make people turn around. I know I should just buy new shoes but I can´t find any I like, and as my mother will attest, I will not wear shoes I don´t like. I prefer being bare-footed anyway, but it is so dirty that it´s not really an option.

While it can be nice sometimes to hear someone talk about you, I mostly find it extremely intimidating, and if caught on a bad day will abuse whoever it is without a care as to whether or not they understand english. Men are the worst, because if they hear shoes clicking not only do they stand and stare, but comment as though you are not there. Women don´t seem to mind, perhaps because many of them clack too. I dislike the noise, but i can´t find shoes here that I like that don´t cost an arm and a leg (harhar).

Tonight I can´t wait to go home, as I have tomorrow off and we have invited some people from work for dinner. I am looking forward to it, and to a few drinks. I have been very good lately and not smoked at all, and I don´t miss it. But then I only ever miss it when I am out and about. I am truly a social smoker.

You

Only One Touch Warms me
It Saddens me too Sometimes
Golden Sun Falls On Your Brow
It Saddens me too Sometimes

Only One Look Holds me
Until the End of Time
Frozen Eyes Sear All my Fronts
They make me Feel Sublime

Only One Word Holds me
Reduces me to Mime
Even a Shoulder is Cold Comfort
This Path I choose as Mine.

You
Fill Me Up
Bring Me Joy
Kiss Me

Love is...

...a knowledge you never doubt, something that turns you inside out, a secret you want to shout...

I am sorry to announce that I am in love, and yes ladies and gentlemen, it is the same person I have been in love with for a long long time. I just can´t get him out of my heart. And when I felt I would hear from him and dismissed it,-well, he sent me a text message. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing pining for my return. Just a simple hello, but it smells of him and I am sitting in work now slightly shocked but mostly just sad that I have no choice in this part of my life.

I love a man who once said he loved me but can´t live with me. Whether he loves me or not is irrelevant, but I still find it hard and it still makes me cry.

Ah go on, go mad!

This is a really quick blog just to explain that I had two days off, and went to Darren´s house and forgot to eat but drank more than enough to make up for it, recorded some tracks, then slept on his floor....well...slept....i read actually, and didn´t sleep so when I woke up I was tired TIRED and then stayed lounging on his couch as he cooked and worked all day...

Ladies and Gentlemen, sometime I want to go mad and sometimes I want to be looked after. That day I needed looking after and today I need to GO MAD!

Clicking with Catalans...my confession.

Do you know that I am the proud owner on O (that´s zero) Catalan friends? Why is that, I hear your electronic impulses bleep, like one of those 60s-sci-fi-film-spaceship-dashboard-indicator-switches. Well, that is because:

A. Barcelona is a city full of foreigners. I suspect that Barcelona is actually devoid of Catalans altogether.
B. I can´t speak Catalan.
C. Catalan people stick to their own, especially in Barcelona where they view foreigners as dirt despite the economy´s reliance on tourism.
D. The thing is, I just don´t get on with them! Bring on the Basques, I say (and I don´t mean those funny things you wear around your waist). The few Catalans I did get on with have disappeared again, and they just don´t seem to bother properly if you are foreign. I feel terrible bitching about the people of the fine place I live, especially as many in rural areas are lovely, but I can´t help feeling this way!

So without further ado, I shall introduce my mind-bending Catalan paining that I can only describe badly because of the constant strife it causes me; my opinion.

Background on Catalan History

Having housed the proto-Iberian tribes, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, and then the French, Catalunya has seen a lot of battle. From the beginning, Barcelona was a trading centre, destroyed and built up countless times, and always jealous of its wealth. This is part of the charm and problem of the place. The cities are testament to the completely different cultures that moved through them, however intruders are not really welcome. The more recent mauling at the hands of Franco has added to the general feeling of guardedness, and you also have to take into account that Catalunya represents 20% of GNP for a region that is only 6% of Spain's land mass and 15% of the population. They make more money so they pay more taxes...

Everything else

Catalan people are proud and firey. And proud of being firey. They are stubbornly proud of who they are, something which has helped them withstand countless encursions. They laugh quickly and get angry quickly. They love entertainment and food. They are generous, especially with food. But not with money. Buy them a drink, they will not buy one back. Buy four drinks, they will not buy one back. You will have to ask them to (this is the norm). Do, because they won´t hesitate in splitting all charges (even for petrol for a journey they were making anyway)with you. I suspect this is related to the whole pay-more-tax-than-the-rest-of-Spain-and-see-less-of-it mentality.

Catalan people also have a unique sense of timing. They are late for everything, and generally stay for a few minutes before losing interest and moving on. While everyone is welcome to join them and it cuts out a lot of boring rubbish, they miss a lot of the good stuff too. Like the end of a song, or a free pint. On the other hand, if you are unfortunate enough to be waiting in a queue they can take for ever. And everyone behind you will tut and glare impatiently as though it is your fault if you are at the front of the queue.

And in a queue even the person in front of you will turn to stare, despite the fact that they probably look odder than you do. They are demons for the auld fashion here. The flavour of the stare depends on who you are dealing with, except in the bank where the flavour is always 1000W melt as everyone goes about their daily chat about life with the teller who is pleasant and strangely like a councillor you once had.

If you need something official done, not only will you have to go to 7 different buildings, but you will end up where you started with a totally new set of instructions. Difficulties will diminish invertly according to level of social status, money, or relation to the clerk. Alternately you can try raising your voice which also proves successful.

If someone shouts at you, you will have to shout back even louder, or else you will lose. It doesn´t matter who is right as they won´t listen anyhow. This applies to arguments as well as parties, as both are done at ear-drum-splitting levels. The exception is with the police. I find that if you cry or go crazy they react better, i.e. not at all, or with kind words.

Seperation is a delicate subject at the best of times. People seem to be totally for it or totally against it. Whilst Catalunya has prospered under Spain, I can understand the general feeling that it would have prospered anyhow as it has in the past. The tax thing is a bit of sour grapes but not unjustified. But in general I am of the opinion that if a people feel like a seperate nation, then they should be a seperate nation. Happily, the Catalans seem to be firmly in control of their cultural identity and working on what it is they really want.

Catalan culture itself is alive and well. The language has been reestablished by simple hard work. Human castle-building, dancing and Catalan music are seen during all festivals. There are festivals for everything and celebrated by everybody with everyone welcome. There is a fine tradition of demonstrations which I envy and suspect may be also due to their French history. All walks of life and belief are thriving, from Anarchists to Mormons. In all aspects relating to culture with perhaps the exception of desecration of buildings, I am impressed. Not necessarily by the quality, as the dancing bores me and some of the music is truly tortured, but then again the paintings and architecture are awe-inspiring.

I guess at the end of the day it´s really only Barcelona that does my nut in. Sorry lads, but that confession has been a long time coming.

Potato prattle and work waffle...

I have spent the last six hours alternately raiding the machine here for food (and it offers only fake plastic crisps or rubber waffles), surfing the web, having baths in the bathroom and laughing. From my office window, for it is at work that I do be after having been, I have a fine view of downtown Barcelona, or rather would have if it were light outside. I love being paid to sit here arsin´ about, and writin my blog!

I went to see Wallace and Gromit today with Julie whom I work with, and it was gas. Seeing it on the big screen is great despite all the distracting munching sounds surrounding you. The level of detail in the film is great, and although the film won´t translate well into Spanish because of the puns it hardly makes a difference. Besides, I think we were surrounded by limeys inanyhows. Next up I want to watch the Corpse Bride...íf I can take the excruciating pain that is walking through the soul-sucking mall in Port Olympico.

I ended up in a tiny little Basque bar in the backstreets of El Born afterwards, called Bidasoa(which I have just been informed is a river: how ignorant of me!). Patatas bravas and chorizo are the way of the future boys, but I also poisoned myself with some cola for caffeine content. Night shift can be difficult if you feel you´ve actually done something that day. Julie´s boyfriend was being slagged by their lanky Polish friends because of the purple bead bracelet she made him one boring night at work. He glared with displeasure when I brightly pointed out that I´d taught her that pattern.

Manga, our little kitten, has been driving me absolutely nuts. Nathalie has not been home much lately so the cat sleeps all night and when I come home she wants to play. She does this sideways gallop wiggling her ass, and jumps randomly in the air swatting imaginary flies. She eats my books and my clothes and hair. If I kick her out of my room she just mieaows incessantly til I let her back in. And I am not someone who can sleep through any noise. Nextdoor are listening to some dodgy 80s tunes the second I come home as well (around 08:30 I heard Tiffany) and so sleeping has not been easy of late. But my winter-food-feeling is here and I have been eating everything in sight, not unlike the were rabbit in that film, or the feckin cat. Potatoes, as I mentioned before, are where it´s at.

Which reminds me: My sister has a great knack for picking up names of famous people and making them stick (at least it works for me!). I still can´t look at Wayne Rooney without thinking "Potato-head"...not that I expect to put him anywhere near my mouth this winter, thank god!

Dinghy excursions and tasty Thais

I really must remember to bring my dinghy next time I go for a walk in this town. I was up in La Sagrera there two days ago for some music and ego-massaging and didn´t the heavens just open and throw down all their dishwater! Poor auld Darren had just hopped on his bike to come and collect me (cos I couldn´t find his house) and although it is less than a minute away by bike he was absolutely saturated by the time he arrived at the playground. Being the lovely person that I am, I exploded with laughter before having the presence of mind to apologise for dragging him out. I played a few tunes on the low whistle as we sheltered in the playground hut with a Pakistani man and a guy from Peru before finally braving the deluge to run down to his house.

We had a great time with Gordon drinking far more than we should have and bashing away at a variety of instruments of which my probably most annoying favorite is the glass with forks. Upon being fed a delicious green Thai curry, we were spoiled further with icecream and brandy coffees, and before I knew it, it was 2.30am and I still wasn´t home. I didn´t even have a jacket.

I made it to the bus stop with a borrowed red umbrella, but already my ankles were surrounded by swirling water. Unbeknownst to us, the metro station was already flooded, and Darren commented on the funny little river that seemed to be coming from it. My bus came soon though, near-empty thank god, and when I got out on the Ramblas, there was a veritable waterfall decending upon all and sundry. Some poor French lad tried to buy the battered umbrella which I should have sold him cos I only went and lost it anyway, but he should have been able to see that it was futile anyhow. I dragged my feet all the way down the street trying not to lose my shoes in the angry currents. I laughed manically all the way too, and soon had an entourage of bemused and charmed locals wondering what the hell was going on and testing my Spanish. Which is still crap, by the way.

The rain here has been amazing and terrible in the havoc it has wrecked, particularly in rural areas. Even the beach in Barcelonetta was flooded, but down the country people were killed and the telly shows countless overturned cars in the most unusual of places. Interestingly, I couldn´t read anything about it in BBC World News as they were too busy discussing Bloody Thatcher´s birthday. When is that old hag going to put herself out of our misery and just keel over?

In any case, I set out today with a mission: I was going to buy a pyrex dish so that I could make potatoe-y goodness and Shoven in the Oven, I was going to buy shoes that don´t leak, and a pair of trousers. I came home with bag full of potatoes, feta cheese, cider, grapefruit juice and chickpeas. At least I didn´t go to IKEA I suppose, the blackhole that sucks the life from you, but not before it has extracted your lifesavings from your bank account...

I had a great time bopping to French Circus music (with the cat) and cooking dinner before I finally had to admit I was working the graveyard shift and head into work. But I have a life, honest! Not only did I have TWO visitors today, but tomorrow I´m off to see Wallace and Gromit! In English! At the cinema-near-the-flooded-beach-that-I-don´t-know-the-name-of-and-that-I-have-never-been-to-but-that-I-will-find-goddammit! So there!

October falls...

October has definitely arrived in Barcelona. The days are cool and overcast, and the rain is more sporadic and less stormy than before. It starts getting dark early too, and the mornings are often dark until late. There are less tourists also, and the shops now have their lights on before the shut, giving me that festive sense I associate with, dare I say it; Christmas. Yes, I found myself singing the Irish language version of Jingle Bells this morning.

Lately I have been waking up with the uneasy feeling of a nightmare hanging over me. The themes are all fairly familiar. I betray someone, and then they betray me. I am abandoned. People are put in situations where I can do nothing but follow the rules set out before me and hope to conclude the whole horrible business. I am unsure if I have these nightmares because I have a hyper-active little cat sleeping with me, or if it is because I sleep fitfully at best at the moment anyway, or whether it is because of a general all-pervaisive sense of guilt over something. What I do know is that I dread once again waking up and I do my best not to recall the dreams.

Barcelona is still full of the little beercan sellers on every corner, but they are less insistant than usual. I think that they sense the summer is over and I wonder what they will do for the winter. Now the Romanian women and crippled refugees are back out in force, wailing pitifully in the lanes and arches of the city, amongst various mime artists representing Elvis and Che Guevara. There are two brown-painted german soldiers who look very like cast iron figures whom I loathe because they are so realistic. I have to remind myself that they are just a couple of lads trying to make a few pence to get by. I do get annoyed when I pass the closed petshop kiosks though, with all the animals chattering and screeching pitifully inside as the owners don´t bother opening up for days like this.

I have been thinking a little about what I am doing with my time again. Recently I recorded 3 more songs, albeit rough versions, to practice with Darren and Gordon. I will be going out to Darren again tomorrow to lay down some more tracks, and I am looking forward to it despite the horrible experience I had last week when I got the metro at the Red-line and was pressed against by an old man who denied doing anything wrong when another fellow on the train pulled him away from me and yelled at him. I was glad I´d a few minutes to pull myself together before Darren came to collect me, cos I really felt shaken. The tea and banana cake I had also helped. There is a night bus that means I don´t have to take the last metro home if I choose to stay late, which is great. And tomorrow it will be the three of us and I am not in work til midnight the following day which is great.

TV dinners and general updates

Living in Sant Miquel over the last week has been a lovely experience, despite being slightly overcrowded. Anyone who knows me knows that I can be difficult to live with, between my slightly obsessive need to do things my way, my door-closing, and my inability to sleep when there is the slightest noise, but as I suspected these may be exaggerated by disquiet in my life and haven´t been a problem lately, except the door-closing because my efforts to close doors just led everyone to laugh as there are several doors that just won´t close.

Being a pauper from the moment I moved in, the idea was I paid my rent as did Nathalie, and the lads would help out with food. But they really were great and every evening there was food ready and waiting as well as beer or cava. These South-Americans have their priorities right (plus they are chefs). Every night is accompanied by music or film and lots of talking and laughing. I think the most astonishing thing was the TV dinner left for me one day though - a monster of a whole roast chicken in orange sauce with roast potatoes! You wouldn´t be able to find a TV dinner like that in Ireland, and it was delicious. I made poorhouse soup with the bones, and flat bread which sustained us for the last day until payday.

Saturday night was the leaving party of Mauro and Tato. I swapped shifts with Nathalie so she could stay the night at the party, as she had the midnight shift. It was nice to be finally able to do something for her. I returned at 8 am to find five of the lads up and about drinking beer. I had every intention of going to bed, but my rubber arm was twisted into agreeing to go for a beer locally. So we went for a mini-tour of the area (for the lad up from Madrid) and I finally discovered the Square of the Fusiliers which features in the book the Shadow of the Wind, and is one of the most emotive places I´ve been to here. The square itself is small enough, with a small hexagonal fountain in the middle of greenish tiles and brackish water. There stands in front of it an old wall where you can see wounds in the mortar from where men were lined up by Franco and executed. High up the wall there are many bullet holes from when the executioners shot above the heads of the prisoners, but at heart level the wall is decimated from when the deviant executioners too were lined up and shot. It would be a beautiful romantic square if it weren´t so shocking and reminiscent of death. When you stand there you could be in the 1905 as easily as 2005.

We eventually found our way to a cafe bar and sat outside on the terrace watching goldfish ponder the morning as the Santa Maria Del Pi chimed every quarter behind us. The lads were drunkenly discussing plans for a food documentary that they plan to shoot when they reach Brazil, and eventually I left them to it and went home to bed.

When I woke up, I was being shaking by a really gee-eyed Tato shouting "I can´t sleep! Talk to me!" The poor guy doesn´t even remember. He fell asleep pretty much straight away, and snored his head off, something that lead me to discover that despite his size he is one heavy mother! I tried to roll him over and I am not weak, but it was a mission and a half. Poor Nathalie returned home at 4pm, after a morning at work without any sleep, and she was meant to sleep in the bed. But we couldn´t rouse Tato now sleeping diagonally across the bed, nor Mauro who was comatose in Tato´s bed, so I went for a juice with Nathalie and she went to sleep in a friend´s.

I ended up going for dinner in Audrey´s house then and staying the night there to give the guys some space. It was a very french affair, with myself and a Welsh lad called Owen being the only two who didn´t speak the language but it was great fun. I did the unpardonable and arrived without a bottle as all the shops were closed, but I promised to invite them, bottle-less, for dinner soon. Many glasses of wine and a lovely meal later we were playing name games and alphabet strings around the table - something that resulted in the usual male/female divisions in the name of sport. The women all wanted to play just for fun, the men wanted that losers had to drink a shot of whiskey every time they forgot something or took longer than 5 seconds. The women tried to help each other out, the men blatantly cheated and didn´t let on til the end, upon which they forced each other to down "punishment" drinks. It was great craic but I was hanging due to lack of sleep over the last week.

Eventually everyone left to go to a club, but I just climbed into bed and fell asleep...

The cat in our house has most definitely adopted me. Every night she climbs in under the covers and falls asleep until I get up. It´s nice and a little sad as she reminds me of the kitten I used to have who was run over.

Anyway, just to update you fully, Tato left last night for Brazil, and Mauro leaves tonight. I know Nathalie is sad but I think she is also relieved because they need the space and are driving each other crazy. Both of them could do with finding their own selves a bit and then returning to each other instead of being overly reliant and therefore insecure as hell. The amazing thing is that they both understand this. I finally managed to sign my account for my work, but still haven´t signed my contract. I have to come in on my day off to do this, which I am a bit annoyed about. The weather is still muck, but I got paid so I have been eating well and splashing out on stupid things. I bought 60 euro worth of beads and I have been making things for anyone who will have them! I also recorded 3 songs recently with Darren, met a possible drummer, and should be rehearsing again on the next day off I have, which is Wednesday. And I am already excited about going home in December! Woohoo!

Full circle...

Last night I moved house, having packed my entire life again into my rucksake and carrying it down the road closer to the lovely Placa Jaume 1 where I will start my new life. The living situation is slightly complicated by the coming and going of people, but they are so easy to get on with that I am sorry there will be any going at all.

For the first week we all live together, that is Nathalie, whom I work with and who is half-greek, half-dutch, Mauro her husband from Columbia, and Tato who is from Equador. When I climbed the 3 flights of stairs to the confusingly named first floor, I was all out of breath and feeling like a pack horse. So much so, that when Tato greeted me with a "Bienvenido", I had to ask 4 times what he was saying because I couldn´t hear him over my own breathing. Nathalie came home with beer, and we´d a lovely conversation about families and new lives until about 02.30am, when we went to bed. Of course I couldn´t sleep for more than 3 hours.

We got up early (Nathalie made fresh coffee) and went to clean the old flat and remove the last of her stuff before returning to the house. It was cold and dark. Hey presto, it was the eclipse! Woo-hoo! We begged the lend of polarised glasses to look for a few minutes, and then marvelled at the strange shadows falling on the wrong side of the square. Truly a new beginning, it seemed.
Dani called to offer to send me money cos I am completely broke, and then Mauro made a delicious lunch. Does life get better? Sadly, at this juncture, not, as I had to go to work. But in general I have again a bout of infectious "Life-is-great"ness upon me.

I had a look today at the web site of one Erik Refner, a photographer from Denmark. It is worth a look. Here is a man who photographs many of the human rights/humanitarian aid crisis I consider to be underrecognised, and seems to raise awareness and achieve something as well as take great photos. And he wants to go to Chechnya. I hope he does.

Ps, yes I borrowed this image from BBC. I hope they won´t mind.

My lovely lovely ....Horse....

I have once again just finished one of my "weekends" off, which in Barcelona is always a bit of an ordeal, or maybe that´s just my life.

The first day was lovely and relaxing and consisted of drinking coffee and beer with Nathalie and Nina in Placa George Orwell, a strangely triangular square which is always dirty yet seems to host a never-closing bar scene. Then Nathalie and I went to buy some meat so that her boyfriend could make us some soup while I did washing. There was a little boy in the shop who displayed typical Catalan manners when Nathalie helped him push the buggy out the door and the mother asked "what do you say", he looked at Nathalie and said seriously "You´re welcome". The entire shop was in kinks laughing.

That night we watched Lord of the Rings, and I couldn´t help but think of Father Ted when Gandalf´s horse came running through the fields....with a man on his back like a train in the night, like a train in the.....night.

Then last night I went out at midnight for a walk to get rid of my ya-yas cos I had been sat in the house all day laughing manically at all the rubbish music videos and doing embroidery, which is definitely a bad sign, and then I got a call from my friend Darren. We went for a beer in the self-same place I´d been the day before, and we sat with his sun-stroked friend discussing the ridicul0usness of irish slang when you say it properly.
"How are you what"
"Come here until I tell you"
"Ask my arse"
Great craic altogether. Somehow, we acquired 4 Irish people and 6 Swedish people and a halfcut Dane, and before you sould say begorrah we were trawling the streets for a club that said it was free in and actually was free in.

Of course we never found it and ended up on Place Real in a club called Jamboree. We spend 30 minutes dancing to American rock classics such as eye of the tiger before I realised that there was a hip-hop dungeon below. Well my dancing boots took me there as fast as they could carry me and I ended the night throwing shapes to some dude cruisin´ fo´honeys...

When we eventually got kicked out at the rare auld hour of 5am, two of the irish lads had nowhere to stay cos they are moving house today and staying in a hostel with a curfew, so we all went back to my house to eat cake and talk about Father Ted.