Barcelona 2

So, to continue from yesterday, we arrived in Barcelona around 2pm, we did loads of sight seeing, we walked for miles, it was good for me though lol. We found the gay district, called Eixample, during the day though there wasn't much to see. Later in the afternoon we met two of Antonio's friends, they were both from Barcelona so they gave us better tour of the gay area. In fact the first 'landmark' that was pointed out to me was 'the best sauna in Barcelona', I didn't go though, no time! We then went to a lovely little bar, where I got a little pissed, and my Spanish seemed to get better ;) Antonio had arranged another meeting later on that evening with a man from El Salvador, but as he didn't want the other two to know about this, the El Salvadorian was converted into a shag that I had arranged to meet via Gaydar, how classy! We met the El Salvador boy, called Carlos, around 9. He seemed lovely and obviously was liking Antonio, I was pleased, it made me look nice and single hehe :) He also promised to take us clubbing on Saturday night, so I was doubly happy.

Barcelona

I got back from Barcelona last Monday, but I've been busy since, so this is the first chance I've had to put pictures up and write about it. I had a great time, seemed to have crammed a lot in, but still also managed to relax. The flight with Ryanair was very good, took off dead on time and arrived 30 mins ahead of schedule, and it only cost 18 quid too. I arrived at Girona airport and as I was early I had to wait about 20 mins for Antonio to collect me, it's a little tiny airport and it seems that Ryanair is the only airline to use it. There were loads of nice Mediterranean type men there to look at, so the tome went by quickly. Antonio arrived and we started driving to Manresa (60km away). The scenery on the way was amazing, huge mountains, and the sky was completly blue.

I took this picture with my phone in the car on the way. It's not very good but you can see how nice the sky looked. It was 20 degrees!

When we arrived at Antonio's house we headed straight of for Barcelona, we went by train, it took over an hour, but only cost 5 euro and I had a nice sleep so felt all refreshed by the time we arrived. Here's some of the touristy pics I took:

Right, that's it for now, I'm off to bed, it takes so long adding these pics to blogger :( Or maybe it's just me. Anyway see you soon...

Sofa

Today my new sofa arrived, it's lovely, but so much bigger than the last one I'm going to have to do a lot of moving things around, it's quite exciting though. So far I'm also having to keep the cats out, it's leather and I don't know what effect their claws will have on it...bless them. The sofa didn't arrive until 12, and I then spent an hour setting it up which meant I didn't get into work until nearly 2! Hence I am still here now, gone 6, trying to make up the time.

Tonight my friend Sid is coming to visit, I was gonna cook one of my healthy thai stir-fry thingys, but there's so much needs doing with the sofa and living room that I think I'm just gonna cook pasta and buy some sauce. Poor Sid, he thinks he's coming for a quiet evening but will end up humping bookcases..........................................

;)

I'm Back!

God, it has been ages since I wrote anything here, so here I am back again :) Christmas and New Year were good. I went to Manchester with Tim for New Year. We went up on the Friday. I decided to drive as it would be lots cheaper and also as we were off work we could leave nice and early and then drive up at a nice leasurely pace and arrive there not feeling tired. We stayed at the normal place and for the Friday night we went out in Liverpool, it was good but the weather was shite, it was pouring with rain and there were even a few claps of thunder! Very strange for winter.

On the Saturday we went shopping in Manchester, I spent far too much money on beauty products ;-) and clothes, I bought a bright pink stripy versace tshirt that cost almost 70quid!

We went to the pubs and then Essential on the Saturday and Sunday nights. It's a shame that we had bought our Essential New Year party tickets in advance and on the Sunday we found out there were better, slightly more sleezy, clubs. But as we didn't know Manchester that well didn't know about them. Oh well, will try those next time.

This last weekend was my friend Paul's birthday and him and Jon stayed at mine and we went out in Cambridge. I spent the whole night drinking gin, which I think was a mistake, I think either the gin or the tonic make me feel terrible the next day. So I've made a mental note never to get pissed on just gin again!

This Friday I'm off to Barcelona to visit my friend Antonio. The flight only cost £18. It'll cost me more to park my car at the airport. I'm quite excited about going especially as it will be good for my Spanish which I have been terrible at practising recently.

Right, it's tea time :) See you soon!

Autumn

This morning it is freezing cold, but outside it looks beautiful, lovely and blue and fresh. This weekend I have been quite busy. I worked at the Maltings on Saturday afternoon and evening, there was a wedding and then I did a bit of work behind the bar. On Sunday no work :) I wemt to London in the afternoon with time, we did a bit of shopping. I met Tim in Clone Zone, just as he was buying gay pornography (he's not that savvy with the internet hehe), he announced to the shop that he was just buying my Christmas present, at which point the man behind the counter pointed to a bollard sized dildo and said he was sure I'd prefer that, I was shocked, do I look like some kind of fetishy leather pig!?

Now I'm just getting ready for work, this week is gonna be quite easy I think, last week was manic, we did so much work, and the boss was away, which shows how good we are, in fact we're gonna tell him he should spend more time at home because last week absolutely everything we did worked perfectly.

Here's a picture from my bedroom window of a beautiful morning a few days ago, the sky was so blue, it was almost like being back in Gran Canaria.

My Nephew

Here's the first picture I took of my nephew William the week before last, it was just before he was 6 weeks old bless him.

It's Cold...

Well, I think autumn is just about here, today has been gloomy and wet. One of my experiments failed last night, so that added to the gloom this morning, we decided to treat ourselves to some cakes from Fitzbillies (sp?) which is a lovely little cake shop close to where I work. They did the trick and after that I was feeling more myself again.

This afternoon Kerry and I were looking at various volunteer experiments we can do around the university to get extra money, her for her wedding in June and me for more travels. We found one that pays £60 and you get a free picture of your brain at the end of it. All you have to do is lay in an MRI scanner for 90 mins, do some gambling and maybe have some blood taken at the same time, sounds an easy way to make money to me :)

Monica Naranjo

No Voy a Llorar






Sobreviviré

Tequila

Tonight I am going to dinner with some of the girls from work, they are going to do a Mexican theme. One of the girls is from Nevada and she knows all about tequila and margaritas, so it should be fun. It's also given me an excuse to stay late and work and try to get myself up-to-date with everything; I haven't though, I've spent the time looking at different cocktails it's possible to make with tequila...there are loads :)

Tomorrow I'm going to sit with my mother again at lunchtime, her neck problems have returned and I have found out that my dad has stopped her taking most of the medication the doctor prescribed here...oh well, such is life.

First picture of Francis

This is the first picture I took of Francis, he was so timid for the first couple of weeks.

 

My last ever picture of Cass.

Here is the very last picture of my cat Cass. It was taken by my then boyfriend on the the morning of the day he was killed by a car :( I can't believe it but it happened over 6 years ago!

 

Ode to the Cat

There was something wrong with the animals:
their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads.
Then they started coming together,
little by little fitting together to make a landscape,
developing birthmarks, grace, flight.
But the cat,
only the cat
turned out finished,
and proud:
born in a state of total completion,
it sticks to itself and knows exactly what it wants.

Men would like to be fish or fowl,
snakes would rather have wings,
and dogs are would-be lions.
Engineers want to be poets,
flies emulate swallows,
and poets try hard to act like flies.
But the cat wants nothing more than to be a cat,
and every cat is pure cat from its whiskers to its tail,
from sixth sense to squirming rat,
from nighttime to its golden eyes.

Nothing hangs together quite like a cat:
neither flowers nor the moon have such consistency.
It's a thing by itself,
like the sun or a topaz,
and the elastic curve of its back,
which is both subtle and confident,
is like the curve of a sailing ship's prow.
The cat's yellow eyes are the only slot for depositing the coins of night.

O little emperor without a realm,
conqueror without a homeland,
diminutive parlor tiger,
nuptial sultan of heavens roofed in erotic tiles:
when you pass in rough weatherand poise four nimble paws on the ground,
sniffing,
suspicious of all earthly things,
because everything feels filthy to the cat's immaculate paw,
you claim the touch of love in the air.

O freelance household beast,
arrogant vestige of night,
lazy, agile and strange,
O fathomless cat,
secret police of human chambers and badge of burnished velvet!
Surely there is nothing enigmatic in your manner,
maybe you aren't a mystery after all.
You're known to everyone, you belong to the least mysterious tenant.
Everyone may believe it,
believe they're master,
owner,
uncle or companion to a cat,
some cat's colleague,
disciple or friend.

But not me.
I'm not a believer.
I don't know a thing about cats.
I know everything else,
including life and its archipelago,
seas and unpredictable cities,
plant life,
the pistil and its scandals,
the pluses and minuses of math.
I know the earth's volcanic protrusions and the crocodile's unreal hide,
the fireman's unseen kindness and the priest's blue atavism.
But cats I can't figure out.
My mind slides on their indifference.
Their eyes hold ciphers of gold.

Pablo Neruda

Mother sitting

Today my Dad needed to go out and do some banking and other bits and pieces, Mum is still not very well at all and can't be left on her own, so I went round late morning to sit with her whilst he went out. I was a bit nervous before I arrived because I didn't know what state she would be in. When I got there she wasn't too bad, still very weak, but not as bad as the worse case scenarios that were going through my mind. She looked a bit panicky when Dad left, but once he'd gone she seemed ok. We had a nice little chat, but I made sure I didn't talk too much in case she got tired or something. My main worry is always that she's gonna start choking, but luckily this didn't happen. She had some orange juice beside her and every now and again she would ask me to give her some, which I did, with a spoon, it was very pitiful really but who says life's a bed of roses lol! My brother phoned me when I was there, he's now moved to Oxford and they have settled in well. Rachel was getting to know the new doctors and midwife as she's having the baby in 3 weeks! My brother informed me that the baby's head was now engaged lol! So I say to my niece/nephew if you're reading this in 18 years time ('cos this is an 18 rated blog sort of) this was your first mention in this blog lol!
My Dad got back around 2ish without any incidents and in fact I really enjoyed the time we had together, it's nice just being me and my Mum, when Dad's there he tends to do all the speaking for her.

At Diamonds

While I remember, here's another pic from Gran Can. This was taken at Diamonds bar. We used to go here every night and have a beer and also Tim used to chat up the very cute Welsh barman. Who incidently took the shirt from Tim's back!

 

New iPod

Well, the iPod arrived, but not until 4pm, so I had missed a whole day of work! As I was doing some bar work in the evening it meant that I could not even work late and get finished, no, instead I had to go into work today. I didn't really mind though as I still have my holiday energy lol! Toprove it I even went to the gym when I finished work. I got back home about 3ish and have just been lazing around at home since then, I even had a little nap this afternoon. I bought myself some phish food ice cream this afternoon, so I'm gonna have some of that now and watch a film :) See you next week xxxxx

Ya he vuelto!

I'm back! We had a fab time in Gran Canaria. I'm so glad that we had 2 weeks, now I'm back in the UK I feel full of energy and completely reinvigorated lol! I didn't take a huge number of pictures because basically we just did the same every day and went to the same places, sounds a bit boring I guess but I think it's good for you sometimes just to do nothing except relax and enjoy yourself. There were only 3 little niggles I had, the first was that when I arrived my mobile didn't work, this was beacuse I'd changed to a monthly contract with Virgin and they don't turn roaming on until you've been with them for 3 months. I wrote an email to them explaining that I'd been a pay-as-you-go customer prior to being on pay monthly, they turned the roaming on a while after this. It was stressful because I knew that my Mum was ill and so I panicked a bit that there was no way anyone back at home could contact me. The second thing was that I didn't take enough books with me, I only took one! Stupid boy I am. I finished that in 2 days. I borrowed some books from others but they weren't really my type of thing. The 3rd thing was that my iPod was broken! I had no music, it was a bummer! But anyway the holiday was good, we met some lovely people had loads of lovely conversation, loads of clubbing, loads of lovely food, loads of drink and most important loads of lovely Spanish boys lol!

Right now I'm sat at home waiting for my iPod to be returned, the UPS tracking says it's been out for delivery since 7.20am but still no sign here. It's a bummer 'cos I have quite a bit of stuff to do at work and I can't stay late tonight as I'm working at the pub in Quy. Hopefully it'll arrive soon.

Chico Latino ;)

 

The Dunes

 

Los Almendros

 

View from our Bungalow