Boat tripping

As you can see, we had fun on Saturday night. It was a stag and hen do for three couples. We have all got so many weddings this year that we are now starting to double things up in order to free up the calendar!

We hired a private boat and sailed around the coast off Tarragona acting like fools for a few hours. There are many far more incriminating photos but I won't embarrass the girls by publishing those. But to give you a clue, we made the couples choose a photo from a porn mag and then reinvent the position for us (fully clothes of course - but still extremely embarrasing for them). It was hilarious.

The picture of Jose and two friends in similar stances is their interpretation of the Haka (the dance of the Kiwis). The singing came later. Whenever Jose is drunk in Tarragona he always makes everyone go to karaoke and he always makes his friends sing but then hogs the microphone himself. Its no surprise to any of us now - totally par for the course. This week the surprise was for a poor chap called Juan who kept getting up to do a number but kept getting his five minutes of fame gate crashed by our lot. Juan was one of those eyes closed, contorting face, christina aguilera types who fancied himself as a real singer and was taking this as seriously as was possible with four or five drunken fools jumping up behind him and grabbing the second microphone to give him an unwanted and unnecessary hand. Poor Juan.

I got away without singing this week. Often I am forced but I think Jose was too drunk to remember to try and embarras me and just carried on with enjoying himself.

After the karaoke we hit the dance floor in local club. Fede had taken off his girlfriend's underwear by this time (that he had been wearing over his own clothes, and at one point instead of his own clothes). You wouldn't imagine this of a politician and lecturer in law would you but I kid you not he is the balmyist thing I have ever seen. He is often prone to a spot of drunken ballet dancing (I must clarify that he has no previous experience or training). Lets see what he gets up to at the wedding this weekend. Watch out for him. He's the one in the photo with the maximum 4 people sign held over his privates. His girlfriend is the most serene, pretty, lady like girl of the group. Chalk and cheese.

Right I shall get back to packing my suitcase for my honeymoon and fretting over any last minute arrangments for the wedding. Yesterday we had no elecricity for the marquee and the wrong size tables .......but I have sorted it all out now. Lets see what today brings!

S xx

Catalan

Hola,

This photo was taken yesterday in Creixelle. As you can see, I've been working on my tan for he wedding. Still got a week or so to go to top it up before the big day, although my sister keeps telling me that I musn't turn up looking too brown or else I will look like I've been tangoed when I put my wedding dress on - due to the stark contrast. I suspect she just doesn't want to look pasty next to me in the photos. Well with a bus load of spaniards coming too I don't think I am the only one she should be worrying about!

I am pleased to say that I think something is begining to stick with regards to the catalan language. Saturday was the stag party for our friend Fede. With this as the excuse, all the boys went up to Pamplona to the San fermines festivals (Bulls running through streets etc), leaving wives and girlfriends behind. Fede's soon to be wife is called Txell and poor Txell claims that I am the only person in the world with whom she has to speak Spanish - and that at times she struggles to express herself. How does she think I feel!

Txell is from a tiny village somewhere that is very catalan and apparently no one ever speaks spanish there. So, she speaks catalan with all of her family, all of her friends, her boyfriend, at work etc etc. Of course she can speak spanish - and to an untrained ear you'd assume she was spanish and she was speaking fluidly. However, once you start to listen properly, she often has the odd catalan word in the middle of a sentence or a complete catalan sentence in the middle of a spanish conversation. At times she can't think of a word in spanish and so points to something or describes something or says it in catalan and often I know the spanish word before her (which I find quite amusing). Anyway, after spending all day on the beach with me, her spanish was slowing up and she started flipping into catalan and then correcting herself and going back to Spanish. So, I took the brave move of saying "Txell, just speak Catalan to me. I have to learn so lets start here and now." I had to reply in spanish because I can't speak catalan but I was confident that I would be able to recognise enough catalan that we could get somewhere with this. So, thats what we did, and I'm really pleased we did. I was really pleased with myself that, more or less, I understood her for about an hour's worth of conversation. Hooray! a stepping stone has been crossed.

There is no point in me signing up for a course in catalan, I have decided, because we are moving to Valencia. Valenciano is actually very very close to catalan......so I do intend to sign up to a course in valenciano. However, valenciano is not spoke n as widely as catalan is here. The need, therefore, will not be as great. But as it wil help my catalan, I think I will put it on my list of things to do.

Adeu

S xx

House

Call me what you want: babyish, greedy, impatient, spoilt.....I don't care. However, I have reached the point of being jealous of a two year old. Her name is Millie (Amelia May if you want to be formal) and she is the daughter of my friends Rob and Rachel and this is her house. Her own special house. Put together by her Father Rob in the garden of their new house (note the beer bottles on the table proving that Rob must have worked hard). So, Rob and Rachel have a house, and now Millie has her own house in the garden! I want a bloody house!

I have been living in a flat since 1996 and by the looks of things I have five more years of flat living to come. I know a lot of my readers are Londers and that you will therefore be thinking - "so what, doesn't everyone live in a flat?" But no, in the land of civilisation (Yorkshire) everyone has a house by the time they are about 19. I'm not exagerating. If you go to Uni you rent a house with your mates (which I did in Liverpool). If you stay at home with your parents then you still live in a house, if you rent or buy your own place - you rent or buy a house (usually a cute little cottage). If you are a thief, drug dealer or other such delinquent then chances are you get a council house. One way or another - you get a house.

So, by choosing to live in very large cities, such as London and Barcelona, I have done myself out of a house. It didn't bother me too much for a while - mainly because I bought a duplex/maisonette in London in order to pretend to myself that I did actually have a house, due to the stairs you see. However, I've had it now with flats. I can't take much more. Its become a point of principal now - I want a god damned house. I want a garden. I want a drive to put my car on. I want a garage to store loads of crap in whilst the car is on the drive. I want proper neighbours - who water your plants for you. I want my own front door. I don't want to have to listen to other people: walking above me, walking below me, shouting, playing crap music, watching rubbish tv loudly, banging hammers, banging on my door to tell me to turn my music down.......I could go on. I'm sure you know what I mean.

City people (like Londoners) and Spanish people (because they all live in flats) don't seem to get as annoyed by the problems of commual living, but it drives me mad. I feel like I am still in a university residence, or worse still, in a boarding school or a prison or something. I just have to admit it - I'm a country girl underneath all this showy city front and I want silence at night time and grass outside of my window (the turfed type that is!).

I have made my feelings clear to Jose - with regard to our planned move to Valencia- but for many reasons I won't bore you with, I am afraid I have let him have his way ......and we will be buying another city centre flat. At least though, I have his agreement that in five years time I can have a house. Lets hope I haven't been banged up for assaulting a neighbour before then.

So, little Miss Millie doesn't know what she's got there - her own private house at the age of two. Where as here's me, 31 years old, married in a matter of days and still no house. Victim of my own success people have told me. I suppose thats how I should look at it as it could have turned out that I had a house - but that it was a squat.

S xx