Things I Love Thursday

I've been bad at this recently, but we are back once more with "Things I Love Thursday" shamelessly ripped off from Lulu, who in turn lovingly borrowed it from Gala Darling.

The most obvious and most important thing I love this week: the girl is coming home.  After 4 months in exile and without pay, my favourite West Australian fisherman's daughter is coming back to England.  It's hard to believe after it took so long for her company's licence to sponsor her -- but her visa was approved within 24 hours of receipt of her passport, and a week on from there her flight back is booked.  We already have dinner plans for the day she comes home.  There's lots of songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane" but are there an equally moving songs about people coming back?

What I also love this week is my hat.  It is big and furry and I feel happy when I wear it because I look so damn cool.  I bought it for myself two years ago as a Christmas present to myself.  It may not be a Mau Mau hat, and I could ideally do with having a larger head (since the hat only comes in one size) because it has a tendency to slip over my eyes when I'm walking, and I have no peripheral vision.

But none of these things matter because it is the absolute coolest hat in the world!  It keeps me so incredibly warm, and it is perfect for when you want to sleep on the train to work -- it gives my head padding against the train window, muffles the sound and I can pull it over my eyes.  What's not to like?  Also, it reminds me of this advert with Rich Hall.

I also love London this week.  It may not be the prettiest city in the world, and it might not have quite the charm of European cities like Paris, or Rome, or Barcelona, or Prague, or the original colonial style of some buildings in Australian cities I have seen -- but it has a charm and history that many modern cities lack, almost by definition.  As I mentioned in my last post, London has grown organically from various smaller towns and almost anywhere you go in the city you can turn a corner away from Starbucks and McDonald's and still find old cobbled streets and disused gas street lamps.   London has a personality and a history that is undeniable, and unrivalled.

I guess following on from my love of London is my love of Europe.  There are still vast areas of Europe I haven't seen, but I love living in Europe this week -- I love that I can call people in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Scandinavia and with the exception of the last one I can usually at least say "good morning" and with French and Spanish "Do you speak English?".  I speak to these people and see bookings for them travelling across Europe to come to London, and they think nothing of it.  Then I'll speak to someone in the north of England and they will balk at the idea of coming down to London for the day.  There is so much anti-Europe sentiment in England, but I embrace it -- how can you not, when you can drive in to a foreign country in less time that it takes to drive to places in Britain?

Finally what I love this week is being one of life's winners!  A competition I entered randomly one day, as I do so often, actually came through for me -- I got an unexpected email telling me that I had won a place, plus one, on the guest list to see Har Mar Superstar at the start of December.  Of course, I am taking the girl as my plus one since I know she likes his music, too, and it can be another celebration of her coming home.

And I guess that wraps her up this week -- not a vast list of things, but I think the first is quite important.  Followed, albeit at a distance, by a good looking hat.

I want to live my life not survive my existence

So here we are, 2009.

It's time to take stock of where I am and where I'm going, but hopefully not so much of the looking back over where I have been.

I start this new year living with an amazing and wonderful girl, in our very own (rented) house -- the first time I have lived away from home since I was a student. I've curbed my impulses to try and turn the house into a mini art gallery of my photography, with the philosophy that less is more and all that -- plus nobody wants to see you endlessly stroking your ego, in the living room.

The house has its good points and bad points, but most important is that it is our space, where we can shut the door and escape the world.

In 2008 I had a bunch of goals -- rather than resolutions, it's what all the cool kids are doing these days. I aimed to get a new job, to move out of home, to travel to Spain and learn to speak Spanish, and I think to learn to snowboard properly. I own my own board, and I can't even turn properly -- so I can carve up a storm downhill and look damn cool with it, but I am in trouble with corners, with bends. That one never happened. I tried to sell the board, and failed -- this happens every year.

I started the new year working in a book shop, and enjoying it -- I loved recommending books and authors to people, enjoyed literally running off up the stairs to find something, and lived for the occasions when someone would ask me for the poetry section. But the money was bad, there weren't enough hours, and it being only a seasonal job I hadn't learned how the novelty would wear off. Furthermore, there was nowhere to "go" with it.

When they called me one day and offered me a permanent job -- incidentally, the day of my aunt's funeral -- I turned them down. Mostly because the hours were bad. But part of me must have hoped for more. So I got that "new job" in fairly rapid order -- I went to see a recruiter, told her to find me a job, any job, went to an interview the following morning and started work right away. I was taken on for a 6 month contract, and was still working there 10 months later. I went four countless interviews for something better, and in the end didn't go any further than the other side of the office -- swapping a dull job in Purchasing for a more creative and interesting one in Marketing & PR.

I think we can safely say I beat that goal into submission.

I tried to learn Spanish, but motivation was lacking and I ended up with a Latin American Spanish course. I write this one off as a half, since I am able to order food and drink in Spanish, say "I speak/understand Spanish" very well, or a little, and the usual greetings and farewells. Needless to say I also went to Spain. The girl and I are regular customers here of the local tapas restaurant, and I long to take her to Spain.

And as mentioned at the start, I did move out of home. It took a new job, a tax rebate and a wonderful girl to help me do it -- but we did it together.

Where do we go from here? 2009 is a year of adventure. Anyone that's been here before or spoken to me for more than a couple of minutes should remember I am going to be hiking the Inca trail in Peru in June, raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support. A couple of years back, I talked to a friend about doing it and doing it for charity -- but they said why bother, just raise the money and go on your own steam. I am glad that I decided to do it for charity after all -- but that's probably because I'm an attention-seeker. I am being healthily sponsored by my company, and have in turn been generating the publicity for them. But the Inca Trail isn't a goal -- it's happening, even if I have to be carried on the back of a llama, stinking of piss. That's either the llama, or me.

But what is a goal is to get fit for it. Properly fit. The fitter I can be for it, the more fun it will be -- completing it just isn't enough for me. If I can look great in a t-shirt while I do it, even better. I've rejoined the gym, and as of time of writing I am still in pain from my personal training session yesterday. My next is Friday morning, and I fear I am going to become one of those crazy people who hits the gym before going to work in the morning.

Speaking the language would be helpful, so I may also have to get that Latin American Spanish course again -- although apparently if you speak Castilian Spanish they understand it just fine, but think you sound all posh like a news-reader.

There is also adventures to be had in Australia, since the girl returns home to apply for a new visa this year -- and I will be joining her out there for fun times, before the two of us return, shivering, to England. Again, something I already plan to do can hardly be a goal, can it? But saving the £700+ for the airfare should be. I also plan to try and wheedle my way into an upgrade, but we shall see how that works out.

I've only been in this job since October, so it's too soon to be considering getting another -- although I am only contracted until October of this year, so I might not have a choice in it.

A year without any incidences of self harm would be good, as I can't remember a year since I was in my mid-teens or younger that there hasn't been an incident or two, though in more recent years it has got a lot better -- to be able to start 2010 saying I didn't deliberately, physically hurt myself the previous year would be good, although a little sad. Perhaps a goal should be to treat myself better? No doubt having rigorous exercise regimes and goals like Peru will certainly help, not to mention the love and support of the people around me.

And in closing, ladies and jellyspoons, my goal in 09 is to be more creative. Last year saw me take up painting -- if only for the one picture. But to conceive of and create a dramatic picture on a canvas, and then to have it exhibited as part of an art show, was a real achievement -- but my creativity is seriously lacking this year. I haven't done open mike poetry in years, let alone written anything new, and that epic zombie apocalypse masterpiece isn't going to write itself. But generally, I need to be more... Actually, no -- that's it, I just need to be more.
I want to live my life, not survive my existence.

I've had a rough night and I hate the fucking Eagles

With somewhere like rome, it's hard to know where to begin -- so I will try and relate it in some kind of chronlogical order.

Our holiday began when we arrive at the airport, an hour before check-in was supposed to open. The holiday gods smiled benevolently on us, and we were able to check in right away and ditch our bags. My rucksack with all its loose straps and buckles had to go to oversized baggage, but we were unfazed. Security was no problem, even with my steel toe-capped boots, I just x-rayed them with everything else, and we were on our way.

By this time, we were starting to get hungry, so we found a restaurant and decided to treat it as our own private depature lounge -- taking up residence there, and staying for hours, making everything drag out as long as possible. While seated, the girl noticed it begin to snow outside -- but I managed to convince her that her suggestion of it might be dust and not snow was a good one, so as not to see her upset at missing it.

We boarded at a reasonable time, the flight took off without delay, and almost before you know it, the plane was landing again.

The other end was again without drama, through customs we went -- the girl having a much shorter queue for a change, coming from outside the EU -- and our bags turned up almost right away. We had booked a transfer from the airport to the B&B where we were staying, and had to watch out for a man holding a sign with my name on it. Except he was nowhere to be seen.

He eventually arrived about 8pm -- half an hour after we landed -- and I can't decide if he was just lazy, relaxed and roman about time, if he had expected us to be late and got caught out, or if he was deliberately late on purpose so that we would have to pay 50 euro instead of 40. Either way, he was friendly and helpful and we were on our way though the dark, Italian night.

As is so often the case with these drivers, his taste in music was pretty dodgy at times -- and we were reminded of The Big Lebowski when the driver started playing the Eagles. I wanted to ask him to change the channel, tell him I'd had a rough night and I hated the fucking Eagles. He probably wondered what we were laughing about in the back seat.

Traffic in Rome is probably just as you've heard -- road markings are less of an instruction and more of a gesture, but we arrived in one piece at the B&B and were shown to our room. All rooms were themed, and ours seemed to have a very far east feel to it -- especially with the Hindu wall hanging. I celebrated being in a new place by almost immediately breaking something -- I was a little over-zealous, picking up my rucksack from the floor, and attempting to swing it onto one shoulder, hit the full-length mirror hanging on the wall.

I didn't just crack it, though, I knocked the mirror crashing to the floor where it shattered into a thousand pieces of barious sizes. Luckily our transfer hadn't left yet -- we got the impression perhaps his other half owned the place, since he gave us a business card and said we could call any time -- and he was totally unfazed by it. He saw the funny side as he swept up the shards of glass, reassuing us not to worry and even saying it was "good". We never established if he literally meant it was a good thing I had broken the mirror, of if he just meant "it's all good" as in "don't worry, it's fine". To this day, I have never been asked to pay anything for it -- so consider myself very lucky indeed.

So, yadda yadda, accommodation was clean and comfortable, with breakfast included and in a not-too-dodgy part of town. An area that seemed to consist of Chinese clothes shops, that is clothes shops run by -- at a guess -- Chinese immigrants, which had barely any stock, and never any customers. The girl insists they were merely fronts for dodgy dealings. We had heard not to stay near the station from various sources, and when you got near the station you saw a world of difference to where we were staying. We were still a good 15 minute walk from the Colliseum, but it was worth it, plus there was a supermarket up the road we frequented with broken Italian phrases.

Next post: day one; the rain, the Roman forum
(sorry about infrequent updates, I can only udpate here if I visit my parents)

Sevilla (part two)

extracts taken from my moleskine journal, a work entitled "stay out of circulation 'til the dogs get tired"

Friday, March 21
Good Friday, Seville's Semana Santa
Woke this morning to the sounds of drums and trumpets and very Spanish music. Still so tired from last night, I wondered if this was normal behaviour for Spain. I eventually got up around 11ish and took a shower -- I came back to the room to find a parade was filling the streets below; this more than made up for being stranded in the city last night, watching the parade circling endlessly.

--

A day started with tapas and "un grande cerveza" can't be all bad. We found a bar tender who spoke perfect English and who was amused by the few snatched Spanish phrases I knew. I take great pleasure in saying "muchas gracias señor" and "buenas dias". We wandered the city streets, drinking in the smell of orange blossoms, finding hidden patios and fountains.

And so our first day in Seville was started abruptly with a parade -- and I'm glad it was, standing in the mid-morning sun on the balcony and watching the crowds of people in the street. When eventually it was all quiet again, Dune headed out to see the sights in daylight and started with a short trip on a boat down the Guadalquivir river.

We sat in the sun near the city's Alcázar, listening to a man playing simple Spanish guitar, and made plans to return on Saturday to see the cathedral and the Alcázar.

Sevilla (part one)

extracts taken from my moleskine journal, a work entitled "stay out of circulation 'til the dogs get tired"

Thursday, March 20
Triana Backpacker´s Hostel, Seville
Already I am excited to be here -- just so thrilled to be in a different country. Outside in the street, I can hear groups of people all talking and laughing in a language I don´t know -- it feels refreshing to be in a place so unlike home.

The flight over passed almost without noticing. We left the howling wind and rain of England behind, and less than three hours later we touhced down in Spain. I must have slept for some or all of the flight, I remember nothing more than about 30 minutes of it. Who needs to teleport when you have travel narcolepsy? Our bags came quickly.

On the drive to the hostel, the taxi driver spoke very little and listened to electronica -- while we gazed out at the architecture and palm trees, interspersed with familiar billboards. In between pointing out elaborate feats of architecture, or someone dressed in the traditional Nazareno costume, Dune and I would nudge each other to point out Vodafone or Starbucks.

Even though it was already late when we arrived, we were hungry and eager to see some of the parades of the Santa Semana -- which apparently didn't even begin until 12.30 that night. Fearless explorers as we were, Dune and I struck out into the city to first find tapas. Food quickly was a priority so we weren't in the mood for taking our time -- that's why when we stopped at a bar and Dune thought it looked a bit dingy, I suggested we went inside and had a look anyway.

As it turned out, the bar was less dingy than it was local. We stood at the bar itself, ordered a couple of drinks in broken Spanish, and with great difficulty that involved a few English words, a few Spanish, much pointing and much repeating of "no intiendo" we agreed with the bar tender for some tapas. As we stood at the bar talking and laughing and feeling alive in this foreign country, we helped ourselves to bread from a basket on the bar. After munching our way through several breadsticks, the bar tender noticed, and with a deliberate gesture produced for us our own basket. It was only then we realised the bread we had been eating belonged to the man stood next to us, who luckily had his back turned and hadn't noticed the bread thieves that we were.

Dune's meal was a traditional dish of what seemed to be potato and peppers, with a fried egg on top. Mine took a little longer to produce, but appeared to be a grilled chicken breast seasoned with balsamic vinegar and potatas fritas. Once we finished we thanked the bar tender very warmly -- "Mi Español es un poco" Dune told him, "Inglés? Nada." said the bar tender. And so we headed out into the night -- trying to remember from the cab ride the way to the city.

After an indeterminate length of time, wandering down dark and empty streets we felt we had definitely gone wrong somewhere -- and Dune being the hands-on person she is (rather than the "if I keep walking maybe I will magically find my way" person I am), stopped a Spanish couple to ask them for directions. Their English was almost non-existent, but they wanted to help so they eagerly called out to a young woman named Sarah to come back. Sarah turned out to be an east Texas journalism major, spending a semester studying in Seville -- she was lovely and obliging, and didn't just point the way, but took us with her into the city. Once we had parted company with the lovely Sarah, I told Dune I betted she was a blogger. Dune disagreed, she didn't seem the type -- but I insist then (as I do now) a journalism major studying in a European city so far from home could hardly fail to want to write and be recognised. I said I would google her and see what I could find, but I have so far come up short. I think this is inconclusive -- I don't think googling key points about my life would find my blog, either.

The city was almost electric with anticipation for the night's festivities -- and in key spots vast rows of wooden seating was set out for spectators. Unfortunately, these vast rows of wooden seating were also reserved for ticket holders -- not only did we not have a ticket, we had no idea where one might get such an elusive prize.

Our cunning plan of just standing in a spot with a good view seemed to be working well for the first couple of hours -- but the time of the parade got closer and more people shared our idea, and eventually the local policia moved us all on. Anywhere good to see from was either seated, cordoned off with barriers, or already staked out -- but we were not to be put off. We had not travelled this far and waited this long to be so easily put off. Didn't they know who we were?!

We did eventually find a spot suitable to view the parades from -- and we weren't disappointed. Solemn, ghostly figures in pointed hoods and costumes slowly marched along the streets, silently carrying their candles. They would be followed by others in a different colour costumes, carrying crosses and flags, and still more figures with candles. Eventually you would see a glow coming from round the corner, and without fanfare an elaborate float would appear, carried invisibly from underneath, depicting Jesus, crucified on a cross, or the virgin Mary.

What we didn't realise at first -- and not for several hours -- was that these Nazarenos and Penitentes actually seemed to be circiling the city. A couple of times the floats just looked very familiar, until Dune hit upon the idea that the reason why didn't seem to be able to escape them, despite our best efforts to at this point, no matter where we went was that they had no end. It was just going to go on and on and on... After much effort we finally found our way past the processions, out of the city and across the Triana bridge back to our own bohemian corner of Seville, falling into bed about 4am. Even now, I think I am going to wake up from nightmares of these figures carrying candles in never-ending processions I am unable to escape.

It was truly amazing, and I don't fully appreciate how different these European cultures are until an opportunity to really experience them. But this was only the first night, so there is more to come from "stay out of circulation 'til the dogs get tired".