Spot the Brit ... oh no ... it's a Yank!

We headed out to Valencia on Thursday, to see La Crema de la Fallas which is basically the last night of a 5 day fiesta. One thing I can say about my adopted country is this. The Spanish know how to party. And party they do, at any given opportunity.

But its not a leave the ‘oldens’ at home kind of party, it’s a lets get the whole family, young and old, and the neighbours and hell the whole city and take to the streets and have a proper party. Don’t worry about the logistics, as the police will just close down the city, and the shops will close. And the bars and restaurants will open late, and even if they don’t we will just throw up a 100 or 5 marques and serve drink and food from there.

And I am not lying when I say that this isn’t a once a year occasion, the Spanish use any excuse. Good on them I say.

Anyway I am wandering.

So off we go to the Fiesta, and its packed, I literally mean hundreds of thousands of people who taken to the city for the party. Being used to the Spanish way me and Drew stand around for a couple of hours before the main attraction at 1 in the morning, the burning of the statues, we have our drinks ready, we’re chatting to the people around us. As the time comes closer the crowd is bigger and we’re packed in like sardines, can hardly breathe without touching the person in front of us, but as is normal in Spain people are still laughing, still happy, none of the push to the front we’re going to cause a major catastrophe and get a couple of hundred people squashed to death ideas that can happen in the UK.

God, I remember thinking I am so glad that this is not a British crowd. The Spanish (like the rest of the world) have their own views on the Brits (what is about us that makes us leave our brains on the airport baggage carousel when we go abroad?) so we’re standing, nicely, waiting. Laughing, drinking, having fun.

And then I hear it, Spanish voices start to be raised in temper, people being knocked down, children crying from being pushed and shoved and over it all I hear the cursed language … English. Oh shit. Me and Drew look at each other and decide to carry on speaking in Spanish we want no part of this.

BUT … as the pushing comes closer and the arguing becomes more intense I breathe a sigh oh relief. No, its not the British this time (wow, everyone celebrate). It’s a group of American girls.
No intent with crossing half the world to see the fallas, they want to piss off a crowd of 100,000 people while then push to the front. With not an ounce of respect for children or the elderly in their way, they kick, push, pull their way to the front. And the excuse?

Well we’ve come all this way …you have to let us through.

It was like watching a rerun of Ibiza Uncovered, or one of those videos of Spring break ... but this is a Spanish traditional Fiesta guys, not a drunken orgie of college students!

Answers on postcard please, why is it that people who speak the English language also come with a good old wedge of ignorance.

Anyone up for learning Hindu?

Minus The Sisterhood!

Red eyes, mascara stained cheeks and snot all are part of uncontrollable sobbing. Which means, in turn, that they were all part of my look today.

When I first moved to Spain I got lucky, despite what people say about moving away and making the best friends you will ever have, its not always true – normally you make a lot of what I think of as party buddies, you team up through work, or in bars/clubs, you meet through another party buddy etc or you gang up with some holiday makers and share their crazy times. But in resort areas in the summer these people are constantly changing faces, one day your downing sambuca’s, dancing on tables and swapping life stories, next your just a random add on facebook friend, or a smiling drunk face in their holiday snaps.

But no, I truly got lucky. I (at different times) met 2 girls, who both lived here that I clicked with instantly, and in the midst of the craziness, of the changing faces, their presence was constant. The became my extended family and lived both the high’s and low’s with me.

Then I got unlucky, after 1 balmy year one of the girls had to return home, which then made 2. Then out of the blue the other girl lost her job about 3 months ago and also returned to the UK. Which then made 1.

At the time it seemed like a sign, I was scraping by on little money after leaving my job at the end of last summer and trying something from home and I was beginning to feel overwhelmed, I started to miss friendly faces and felt like I was stuck in a groundhog day.

So, I decided to take the plunge and try something different, I applied for a Visa to go further overseas, started to pack up my apartment and for the first time in about 6 months I felt positive, this was going to be a whole new chapter!

Then like a bloody hurricane a week before I left Drew came spinning into my life, turned it upside down and made me dizzy. Drew was meant to be a goodbye present to myself, like all good shoppers I like to treat myself. Instead in under a week he made me think I wanted to stay and see what happened. So I did. I’m still here.

But days like today, when the pressure of life gets too much and we argue and my mascara runs I wish so much that I still had my support network here.

Being in a strange country with no good friend nearby to take you out and feed you vodka while putting the world to rights (with men at the bottom obviously) can be one of the most depressing feelings of all.

PMT Come's Calling!

PMT’s calling me. Like a banshee about to released its gathering momentum for an all out screaming whirlwind adventure. I can feel it gathering power inside of me to break free.

Poor Drew.

Despite my adoration for him, this shits going to bite him hard this month, and lets face facts in full thro of PMT mania I am simply not going to give a shit. Along with my previously mentioned Man Manuel that should be given to us at birth, I am thinking that the NSH should supply us with punch bags when we start our periods.

I can see the benefit of it even if not everyone can. I’m only half kidding when I say that my fitted kitchen has had fixtures and fittings come loose when I decide that something (normally insignificant) is getting on my nerves. Even poor little kittens on the street look like something I want to ambush and not cuddle.

Maybe there should be a women only holiday every month, so for four days we get to stay indoors, PMT respite it could be called. In that time we would have meals on wheels deliver us dinner (ok sorry, chocolate and fizzy drinks) and movies to our preference on demand (for me I am thinking anything that’s got a few good punches thrown in it!) and our phones/all outside communication should be banned.

It’s the least the world could do for women … don’t you think?

Costa Blanca Dogs Need Loving Homes

I have found in my adopted country that a lot of things are different in both good and bad ways, and I always refused to become one of those people who moved somewhere and started bashing their culture or way of being.

But, in this post I am going to reflect on something negative that I have seen a lot since I moved to Spain. And that’s the way Animals get treated.

Now … I am not an vegan, non-leather wearing protestor. And I do think its cute to dress puppies up in little jumpers and buy them bling jewellery. Sorry but my desire to have a handbag dog is overwhelming even if my Dad has continuously told me that dogs are not a fashion accessory (sorry Dad, your still wearing oxblood boots … it would be like taking fashion advice from Compo in Last of the Summer Wine!).

But despite all that, I can’t help feeling that my handbag dog dream, no matter how unfair to some, is not at all cruel when I see the thousands of abandoned and neglected dogs here on the Costa Blanca.

I hope you have taken in the fact that I have never said how ‘The Spanish’ treat animals, because why a huge majority of it is down to the Spaniards (sorry guys, but a country that still celebrates bull-fighting/running has a lot to learn about animal rights) its also a lot of ex-pats as well.

The British, German, Scandinavians…wherever everyone is from, are as much to blame. Maybe not so much with the out and out neglect, but when you have dogs and abandon them at the first sign of trouble because your going back to your homelands/moving on, that to me is just the same. I know some situations are beyond control but this is not an every now and then thing, there are literally rescue centres (run on donations and through volunteers) on the Costa Blanca teeming with unwanted pets awaiting adoption.

But more than that, it’s the cruelty that really gets to me, seeing dumped, starved, abused dogs. Hearing whimpers from dustbins or horror stories in the papers and on the net.

Seriously guys, if any of you are living on the Costa and can re-home one of these dogs please do so, but remember kindness can also be a killer so if your not in a stable situation don’t make it worse by taking on an abused animal just to dump it again when the need to spread your wings calls.

Happy-Ever-After-Handbook!

Drew came into my life like a whirlwind, coffee drinking acquaintances to full on love-in-fest took just days, within 4 days I can honestly say I started to think that maybe, just maybe this is the man I had been waiting for my whole life. God, I exclaimed to my friends, shot me, this is not me.

And as much as I knew it wasn’t ‘me’ I still carried on right on falling, I guess lucky for me he caught me, caught me, entrapped me and held me hostage for sexual favours and crazy nights.

I don’t want to become on of those girls who talk about her boyfriend like she is part of the same genetic make up, but I am beginning to see the charm in this ‘us’ business, this partnership business. This having someone to think about other than myself business.

But I am also finding it difficult, I think I finally realised why writers end the novel when the girl finally gets her man, because its after she has snared him, after she has admitted to the world that love is now hers that the true challenges begin.

I mean, its not like he comes with user instructions is it? I can’t quickly reach into my handbag and pull out the handbook and say ‘right, ok, his in this weird mood so to fix it I have to push this button once and tighten that belt there and oh if I say something like this his internal voice reader is going to leap into action and replace his moodiness with happy vibes’

Nope, that won’t work, so instead I have to second guess and learn, and try (with gritted) teeth to understand just why he is like that even when I think there is no reason in the world for him to be so.

If anyone does have a handbook…I mean maybe some perfect man out there wrote you one when you first met? I’ll pay you nicely for the privilege of borrowing it for a few hours!

What’s that? Each model needs a different one?

God give me strength!

Introduction

I guess you need a bit of back up information here, though I doubt I can sum up the last 27 years in a paragraph. Ok lets try and do one better and sum it up in a sentence.

Party Girl. Bitch. Commitment Phone. Utterly Selfish. Sometimes (ok often) slag.

I can’t say men were a complete alien species to me, for I fumbled, fiddled and fucked my way through enough of them to simply think that they were put here as playthings. I know it sound harsh, hard -hearted maybe. But this concept of sharing and caring and being a part of ‘me and you’ was just something I didn’t understand.

Just as I never understood my girlfriends who couldn’t be single for longer than 5 minutes (how do you fall in love 5 times in so many years, is that love?) I could also never get my head around why anyone would want to fall in love and be part of this crazy world of relationships.

I mean, I am a lucky girl, I live in the sunshine in a crazy European country that I have made my home, I have been partying since I was 16 (world over.. thank you very much for those crazy summers) and have done exactly what I wanted, when I wanted.

I love living alone, I love being able to wear over size t-shirts and eating mismatched meals from my (normally empty) cupboards, I love being able to take off for crazy nights, weekends out at no notice, I like having the freedom to take my clothes off in public or chat up the barman of the nightclub without feeling I am going to have someone have a go at me about it.

I loved my life. Sure there have been lonely moments, but nothing a quick drink with my friends wouldn’t cure and its not like sex for the single female is all that hard to find.

So how come after all these years of being sweetly and happily selfish, did I, just 5 weeks ago let someone in my life who has only ready turned it sidewards … and is on the way to turning it right up side down?