Business as Usual

Hola Blogers,

Well its business as usual for me this week - which involves a theme of generally pleasing myself. I am in cooking mode, as I was all last week too, as a trip to the farm was enjoyed the other weekend for the purpose of mushroom picking (more on this later).

Looking back through my now very sporadic blogs I can see that I last communicated back in early October, when I was being visited by Juanita Banana (Jo to those of you not familiar with her new name). Well she is now happily esconced in sunny San Francisco driving the male population crazy with her no stop dating action. It seems very much the done thing over there - to date and be dated for the sheer hell of it. These "dates" can involve anything from a coffee in the afternoon to a full on bender of a session - well it seems to be that way with Jo. Its fun listening to her tales anyway.

I went to Seville in mid October for Jose´s brother´s wedding. He lives up here in Tarragona with his wife but, as in most places, it is tradition to have the wedding in the home town of the girl. So, off we all went. Things always go wrong at weddings don´t they. Our list goes as follows- Javier, the groom, forget to bring his wedding suit, Jose and I missed the plane down there from BCN and then whoever was supposed to bring the wedding rings to the venue forgot to do so! Nothing that couldn´t be resolved though - luckily Javier was down in Seville a few days before the wedding and realised in time about the suit. This was resolved by a friend somehopw getting into Javier´s flat in tarragona and flying down with the suit the next day (he was comuing to the wedding anyway). Jose and I managed to get on a flight the next morning and didn´t miss anything of the wedding and Grandma and some other lucky person got to donate their wedding rings for the day to the happy couple.

The wedding ceremony involved some dude singing sevilianas and lots of flamenco style dancing by Jesse (the bride) and her entourage of friends. In the early hours and I´m talking 6am!) Jesse´s dad got up to the microphone to sing some flamenco songs too - complete with pretend guitar noises because no one had a guitar. Most amusing.

The weekend after the wedding was the weekend of my birthday. I am now the ripe old age of 31. I had a fantastic time on the saturday night because Jose and Susana (a good friend of ours here) organised a surprise party for me in Tarragona! I turned up to the restaurant with Jose and two friends (Heather and Sylvia), expecting to just meet one other friend .................but I was hit by a surprise turn out of 19 people complete with silly hats and presents and cards. It was amazing - they made me feel so special and part of the group here. Needless to say lots of drinking and dancing ensued and I finally got to bed at 8am after watching the sun come up over the ocean with Jose.

The Sunday of my birthday weekend (my actual birthday) I crawled out of bed at Jose´s parents house at about 2pm to be greeted by his whole family singing happy birthday as best they could in English (some coming out with things such as happy baby??). Jose´s Mum had cooked a big paella and baked me a cake and his Dad cracked open some champagne and once again I was showered with presents. Fantastic!

It was nice to see some of you in England the other week. I was annoyed that I couldn´t see everyone and annoyed that I came down with a temperature and a horrible cold as soon as I got off the plane and so didn´t really feel up to London in many ways. I think it was something telling me to stay in Spain. I´m staying alright - it needn´t worry. I was most impressed by the new improved Waitrose on Holloway Road and sadened by the fact that I can´t frequent it every day as in my previous life. Still, there´s always a trade off when facing life decisions!

Jose joined me in Yorkshire and we shivered and froze together and enjoyed home cooked soup. My Dad took us to a Barnsley football fixture and we ate fish and chips from the paper in the park before hand. He is obviously putting Jose through some sort of northern manlyness test.......which I think he is passing (his mother is from Pamplona - they run with bulls you know).

This weekend Jose and I celebrated our one year anniversary. Can you believe it??? We took ourselves off to Rome to stay in a fancy hotel, dress up, wine and dine ourselves, gawk at pretty fountains and do all the other things that lovers do.

Its now a running joke in Jose´s family that we miss planes (due to the Seville affair). Neither of us have ever missed a plane before in our lives - and I have certainly flown a lot so a good study has been carried out. Something is going on between us though because we nearly missed the one back from Rome. I think we are too busy staring at each other and being all dreamy to realise what time it is and shake a leg. Anyway, thanks to the kind heart of a certain Alitalia operator, our lateness managed to get us flying back in business class this time. Result! I am now torn between being super early to avoid problems or being one minute late to provoke favours such as experienced last night. Hmm.

Right, enough is enough. All that remains to say is Hello Mr Simon ..........I´m told you have been reading this site avidly over the last year. All the best to you, your lovely wife and little baby son. L´Haim!

Un beso a todos

S xxx







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