The Art of Derek Dohren

I'm feeling the pressure again and am trying to get through one week at a time. Always a good time to paint a self portrait.

Sorry to have kept you.

So spring came and went, in a matter of a few short weeks, and we appear to have careered head first into summer. Temperatures hit the low 30s at the end of April, fell back a little for a week or two and have now decided that's where they'd like to be until further notice, that probably being in July when they decide they'd quite like to hit the 40s.

Fiestas abound. La Zubia had it's annual patron saint festival last week, in honour of San Juan Nepomuceno. It ran from May 14th to the 17th and was notable for the large helping of free paella I got handed last Sunday afternoon while I was picking my way through the massed throng of revellers. It was a splendid dish, containing as it did all sorts of dead animal (of land and sea, vertebrate and invertebtate) many of which where of an inderterminate identity. I spilled some on my shirt and made a point of getting it washed pronto.

Corpus Christi kicks off from May 31st to June 6th and La Zubia has another couple of fiestas in June, namely San Antonio and San Pedro.

These are nice events and the whole village/town seems to get together to celebrate but I hope the epicentre of the festivities is not where the last one was - a few hundred yards from my door. The noise, day and night, was relentless.

The painting's taking a back seat again as other matters come to the fore. I have an increase in TEFL work, and am dealing with a subsequent increase in travel time and lesson planning. Bizarrely I find myself scheduled to teach on six days a week for the next five weeks (Saturday being my day off). It's actually one lesson a day, except Monday which will be two, and the total amount of hours isn't great but of course each day is impacted and broken up.

Some of the lessons are late morning, some late afternoon, some early evening and I'll need to get my head around the new routines quickly. For instance a round trip to one of the neighbouring villages for a one and a half hour lesson can still eat four to five hours of my day if I don't swap buses efficiently. I need to work the timetables to my advantage but of course it's not always possible. At least I don't have to get from one village to another on the same morning or evening.

If I had enough cash I'd buy myself a scooter, but it's not an option right now.

Of course, this work is important. The injection of cash will be a life saver for me. Even so, the frustrating part is that the workload arrives right at the time I was putting together a plan to run some art classes. I feel these classes can be a much more enjoyable, and yes lucrative way for me to make a living out here and I'm anxious to start the ball rolling before I lose my nerve.

Here are a couple of photos from the two art classes I ran last week.

The top picture shows the students on day one while the second picture shows the finished paintings from our trip out into Granada.

Anyway, for now I'll have to content myself with backgrounding all the logistics of how I'm going to run these courses. I can work on gathering more of the hardware I'll need, nail down a price structure, and think up how I'm going to lay out and then distribute my advertising flyers.

So it's all change again. It seems to be the way of things for me out here.

ESPN news

Police in a suburb of Granada were this morning investigating a bizarre incident that has left an octogenerian English gentleman dead. The man, a former ground floor resident in an apartment block in La Zubia, had earlier raced upstairs to his neighbour's apartment and barged his way in.

His surprised neighbours told police that he appeared to have lost his temper and was rambling incoherently. And they should know.

He dragged each of the family members personally, one by one, around to every item of furniture in the apartment, asked them IF. THEY. WERE. HAPPY. WITH. WHERE. EACH. INDIVIDUAL. ITEM. OF. FURNITURE. WAS. Then nailed each of the furniture items to the floor using 12 inch nails and his own fists.

"Hewasveryangryandwasshoutingandsteamwascomingoutofthetopofhishead" shouted all of the family at the same time to our news reporter.

They added. In unison. All at the same time. Shouting "HEWASNOTHAPPYABOUTSOMETHINGANWHENHEHADFINISHEDNAILINGEVERYTHIGTOTHEFLOORHETRIEDTOMAKEUSALLTALKTOHIMBUTJUSTONEOFUSATATIMEINREALLYQUIETVOICESITWASHORRIBLETHENHESTARTEDPOURINGALLOURTINYBITSOFMETALTHATWELIKETOPLAYWITHALLOVERTHEFLOORUNTILITWASALLUSEDUPITWASREALLYHORRIBLE."

The incident ended tragically when the man apparently rammed 6 HB pencils up his own nose, gnawed off his left arm, and with his right hand ripped off his own head before jumping off the balcony.

Police have noted the complaint but say the matter remains a 'domestic issue' and no further action will be taken.

** Note **

A lot of the above is not true yet. 

Some photographs taken from a recent trek into the Sierras to the small village of Cumbres Verdes.

The other day I was wandering down the Calle Pablo Picasso in La Zubia when I chanced upon a strange sight. The Coviran was open. Unusual during opening hours on an ordinary week day. The ridiculous supermarket is usually shut and, like one of those rare enormous exotic orchids they have in Kew Gardens that only bloom for just micro seconds once every 12 years (and emit horrible odours in the process), you have to be luckier than Lucky Luke McLuck, winner of the Luckiest Man in the World competition 1992 (even though he never even entered that year - so lucky was he) to find the thing open. I went in to have a look see. Having just gone up the hill to the SuperSol (always open, come rain, shine, holiday, fiesta, siesta, blah-di-blah) I was anxious to see if stuff was any cheaper in the Covvy.

Problem was I have no idea how much stuff costs in the SuperSol. I just put the usual 5 or 6 items in a basket and hand in a massive bank note, never look at my receipt, and frankly wouldn't stop shopping there anyway even if I found out I was being ripped off because I'm not one for changing routines that have become 'safe'.

I've always wanted to shop at the Covvy. They sponsor Granada FC so I'd feel I was doing my bit for the * Blancorojos by shelling out some of my diminishing cash reserves but the powers that be don't make it easy for anyone to actually get in. I did see it open once, not long after I arrived in La Zubia and I went in and and bought some stuff. I thought nothing of it. I never realised at the time it had only opened because of a rare (and largely unheralded outside of the astronomical world) alignment of the heavenly bodies, that had seen Orion's Belt shoot right into Uranus resulting in a rising full moon. So unremarkable did it all seem at the time I took it as de-rigeour when the fruit and veg girl heaped scorn on my custom and gave me a bag of unsalted cashew nuts instead the half a pound of grapes I'd carefully pointed at. Fair enough, I thought, but it occurs to me now that should the Covvy only open to a rarified timetable the staff probably don't get much practice.

Tomorrow, I'll go the SuperSol. They know me in there and now ensure they have ludicrous amounts of change in the till at all times. I checked Old Moore's Almanack and the Covvy's not due to open again til 9:17 on Friday October 7th 2019 when a particularly auspicious conjoinment of Saturn's rings, the Paps of Jordan and Simon Cowell's teeth comes into being. They'll be having a sale though so best get there early. Be quick about it too because they'll close again at 9:23.

* It might be Rojoblancos. I can't be bothered looking it up.

Disclaimer: Some of this is made up stuff.

I was spaced out for three days last week with cranial abnormalities. I had acute something, which had been caused by a tiny scrap of anchovy residue - no more than 3.7 pico-nano millimetres in surface area, being lodged behind a pre-molar. This trapped but gorgeous fragment of ocean life had initiated an osmotic process by which my brain suffered a severe 'hydro-infusionamo tsunami-poco' (Spanish term) rendering me incoherent, and to all intents and purposes, dead for a few days.

In laymen's terms, the steady and unstemmed leaching of industrial quantities of salt from the anchovy fragment nearly caused my head to explode. I was one of the lucky ones.

The docs (gotta love them) advised me that to avoid future repetition I should brush my teeth better.

I celebrated my release yesterday with a couple of culoperros in El Rincon. I made sure I chewed them properly and  swallowed cleanly. It would be more than a tad embarrassing to be incapacitated for the same reasons again next week.

Of course, this is all tosh, though some people still believe the stuff I write is true.

Anyway.

As a further treat I watched my DVD copy of the Shawshank Redemption last night. The moment when Andy emerges from the 500 metre pipe of poo remains cinematic gold, surpassed only by the ending, when Red walks along the beach at Zihuatanejo (I Wikipedia'd it - you can never make the name out can you?).

I've taken on board some lessons from the film to help me deal with the strains of life in my apartment.

When my noise loving neighbours upstairs go into a chair dragging fest I will imagine them as no more an irritant than when Bogs (in Shawshank) tries ineptly to give me one behind the laundry room. An episode of metallic droppings from above will be akin to a month in 'the hole', survivable by one's ability to replay the memory of beautiful music in one's head throughout, thus rendering the period an actual interlude of welcome pleasure. Listening to 'them' rabbit on about whatever it is they rabbit on about will be no more than a severe beating at the hands of prison screw Byron Hadley, a man who will ultimately get his comeuppance (and will cry like a little girl when getting it).

The best bit will be when I come to leave and Warden Norton puts a gun in his mouth and a bullet through his napper. That'll dovetail nicely with me setting a fecking bomb off in the kitchen as I walk out the door of this place for the last time.

My Spanish is still very weak and will remain so for some time but I was perusing the local newspaper rag this evening when I chanced upon the personals column. Not something you want to be seen reading when you're in a public space I suppose but given the fact I didn't know what anyone who happens to be looking over my shoulder might be saying or thinking I didn't much care.

There's a female student, somewhere local, staying in an apartment and looking for free secks (I have to mispell owing to the officious nature of firewalls in certain company premises). Maybe something's gone west in translation but I'm finding it hard to interpret  'busco se_x_o gratis'  any other way. Sounds like a game girl then.

It's an odd country.

I've noticed, and indeed commented on, a refreshing lack of political correctness and state nannying around these parts. It's great. But I can't help thinking something's not right. There's no apparent watershed when it comes to news items. It's not unusual to see se_x stories (sorry again) plastered all over the early morning telly coverage, nor is it a shock to see scenes of horrible violence interspersed with light hearted stories of oddball characters or cats stuck up trees on the early evening news magazine shows.

You can flick through the terrestrial tv channels and jump between soft porn ( very soft) and kiddies cartoons. Many would say 'so what?' and I've no real comment to make other than, well, it just seems a bit odd.

There's a catholic culture here that seems to permeate society -  but it's purely cultural and not in the least bit religious. They're very conservative on the one hand yet they seem so lax and liberal in many other ways. They have their festivals and processions but none if it seems to be about what these things were originally about. It kind of looks to me like how morris dancing in England must look to foreigners or how quaint the behaviour of druids at Stonehenge looks (ok I know there are probably loads of druids who are deadly serious about their activities)  but even so.

For those north of the border I suppose it's akin to the differences between catholic and protestant communities and how, even now, some people would still have you believe it's about the finer points of Christian religious doctrine when we all know it's merely a lazy, tired old cultural hangover from olden days that seems worth perpetuating somehow. 

It's as if a particular face is shown, and has to be shown, to the rest of the world while the country just gets on with being - well, itself I supopose.

This is Spain. I don't really think they care whether you get it or not. And that's the bit I like. They don't really care what people like me think. I'll keep trying to understand though I may steer clear of the personal ads for the time being.

Noise from the upstairs apartment continues unabated. Their inventiveness never wanes though it has to be said the old staples remain at the heart of things. The 'dropping millions and millions of tiny pieces of metal on the floor' game is still the most popular. By comparison the mindless 'dragging of chairs from A to B' remains clearly second rate entertainment and stays confined to the hours of 2am to 4am.

In fairness to them though, they're not averse to new ideas. Astonishing new games have appeared this last few days. Currently popular is the 'bouncing something hard and bouncy off the floor' game, and most intriguingly is a new game they only started a few days ago. I call it the 'scraping mud off the bottom of a frying pan with a blunt pencil' game. Obviously, they try and play it as noisily as they can but they only seem able to keep it up for a few hours at a time. Clearly it's not an easy game, not like the 'hammering' game or the relentless thump thump thump game they enjoy so much, particularly during siesta.

Erm, in other news: I watched Wigan v Liverpool tonight. Somebody shoot me now. Is this what it's come to?

I met a chap yesterday in Granada at one of my friends' house who, after half an hour or so of chat, thought I was Scottish.

We are due for below zero temperatures on Wednesday night.

I'll be getting a cat. My friend Chris's cat had four kittens yesterday and one of them has my name on it. I'm calling him Ramon. If he turns out to be a girl it'll have to be Ramona.

As everyone knows, your average one and a half inch anchovy contains more salt than is present in the whole of the Dead Sea. Eat more than six of the blighters in a single calendar month and you're likely to die horrifically from osmosis before your stomach can be pumped.

A more splendid footstuff then could not present itself to the tapas bar owner here in Andalucia. That 'free' tapas is handed out in this part of the world is a given, but clearly, bar owners have to make a living. The truth of it is a little extra is bunged onto the price of your booze and though it feels like that plate of delicious grub you get handed is free - well, you know in your own heart there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Which is rather where the anchovy comes in. It ain't no coincidence that many of the splendid tapas dishes that find their way to the gormless foreigner's table contain a dead one of these magnificent creatures. Eat one of those suckers and within 10 minutes you've a thirst on you that'd see the whole of the Dead Sea drunk dry. Order another drink, and what do you get? another plate of anchovy based tucker.

Comprende?

I don't blame the locals for doing it. And I love anchovies as much as the next punter, but if there's one thing we all know, an anchovy and beer based hangover is something to be avoided at all costs.

It's bad enough when the hangover is down purely to anchovies, but when beer's involved it somehow seems a tad worse. So it's with a certain regret I type these lines. I've had a quantity of beer and achovy vignettes this evening. I'm a bit scared to go to bed to be honest. I've lowered the Andalucian water table before retiring to the onion bag in a vain attempt to ward off severe salt poisoning but I fear it's too little too late. I feel I've already osmosed part of my upper digestive tract.

I've even attempted to compensate for the salt overload by downing a quantity of chocolate - but that's like going to watch Hamilton Accies because you know that tomorrow you have to go and watch Rangers. It's pointless and ineffective. You'd be better off just going to watch Motherwell and be done with it.

Here's the still life that got eaten.

It's not quite finished yet - there's still a surviving apple in the fruit bowl.

Anyway, just back in from another epic night out tramping the villages of Andalucia. Another missed bus, another 3 mile hike home through the foul weather. Still, one has to laugh.

I did catch 20 minutes or so of the France v Spain encounter. Not that I was ever any great lover of them but how sad is it now to see France? They are a bunch of crap has-beens.

A few quickies:

I got my NIE sorted last week and maybe forgot to let you know. It was only slightly painful and I got the distinct impression I was fast tracked a bit because as one of the clerks in the office said conspiratorially to me "you're one of us" (I assume he meant white European - oh dear).

Today's weather forecast cheerfully states Granada has a '100% chance of rain". I like the way they don't sit on the fence.

I set up a fantastic still life scene yesterday in the apartment. It was made up of a couple of apples, a pineapple, a hunk of bread, with some cheese and olives, and a bottle of beer. It looked so good I ate it before I had a chance to paint it. Happily I did take some photos beforehand and have produced something worthwhile. I will post up the painting when it's complete.

Last night I walked 6 miles to the wrong village, then another self correcting 3 miles to the right place to go and teach someone at short notice. Thankfully I had left in time to allow for such a situation. I missed the last bus home and had to walk back - 3 more miles. In short, I left the apartment at 18:40 and got home at 23:30, nearly 5 hours of which all but an hour and a half had been spent on foot. Still, I got 14 Euros so no pain, no gain.

I was pretty wasted by the time I got in. The best part of the day was hitting the sack though I foolishly finished off the remainder of the pineapple (from the earlier still life) before I retired and then immediately wished I hadn't.

Anyway, I have to practice my Beatles songs for tonight so farewell for now...

Oh, and I can confirm it's just started raining.

I live in the northernmost end of La Zubia - the bit nearest to Granada. The thing is, La Zubia sits on the slopes of the Sierras and north is at the bottom of the hill. This always seems counter intuitive to me. North should be 'up' and south 'down'. I had the same problem in Lanark. The South Vennel is at the top of the High Street and the North Vennel at the bottom. It's just not right and I never got my head round it.

It seems the good burghers of La Zubia agree with me. They have a few cast iron streetmaps welded onto lamposts dotted around the town and they all depict north at the bottom of the map and south at the top, as if to confirm that uphill and downhill are more relevant than north and south. It seems to make sense to sensible people though I admit to being thrown the first time I encountered one of these maps and thought I had got my own geographical bearings of exactly where I live all wrong.

Anyway.

Disillusioned with being permanently starving while the shops here always seem to be shut I went for a walk this evening. I turned left out of the flat, left again, right, then left, and then just decided to keep going up and up and up and up. South if you will. Within 15 minutes I emerged from the far end of town and into the 'Cumbres Verdes', our very own foothill mountain range. One of the peaks here (Trevenque) reaches a respectable 2,000 metres - a fair height - and within half an hour I had a magnificent vista of the Granada plain laid out below me. All I had done was go due south and 'up' (it still seems wrong) from leaving the flat. Impressively simple.

However, due to knackerdness (I'd already walked for two hours in Granada earlier in the day), impending darkness, and vague hopes that the shops might be open back in La Zubia, I turned back with much of these mountains still to be discovered. Forty minutes later I was back in town. The shops were still shut and I was forced back into a bar and the oppressive cerveza/tapas treadmill. It might sound great to you to but a) I can't afford to be going to the pub every night, and b) my body's not designed for heavy sustained periods of drinking.

But it was a great discovery, that I've got walkable mountains a walkable distance from my flat. Next time I hike up there I'll take the camera and let you see the sights. It's nice but seems to kind of lack something in terms of drama. I don't know what it is. The countryside here just seems... scruffy. That's the only word I can think of.

It's still not as good as Scotland.

Or the Lake District for that matter.

Or, let's be honest, Lanark Braes.

Here's a map I found. I reckon I reached between the number 2 and number 3 of the bottom scale. Height is in metres of course.

Efforts to get myself a NIE number (Numero de Identidad de Extranjero) are progressing, though progressing only in the same way that continental drift is. The NIE is the obligatory identity card cum national insurance registration all of us EU immigrants have to have. I'm told I need to carry it with me at all times (my passport too) and should I get stopped in the street by a pair of bored policemen initiating a routine check failure to have one or other of these items about my person may result in several hours down at the nick. It happens apparently.

As my plans here include the notion of trying to flog some paintings on street corners I figure getting myself fixed up with all the right documentation is probably prudent. At least then, as they confiscate my stuff I can wave my ID card at them before I get the time honoured kicking for good measure.

Of course this being Spain it's already taken me two trips into town to get as far as I have - which is merely to get myself a copy of the correct form. Not bad going I'd say considering on the first trip I made to the police comisaria office I got told I was in the wrong place (naturally) and I'd need to go and visit the nearest British Embassy. They thought there was possibly one in Sevilla, but failing that 'there's definitely one in Madrid'. Ok, well thanks for that. Helpful, not.

I found an official who was willing to listen to what I actually wanted and she informed me that though the comisaria used to be the correct place to visit for getting this sort of thing done it no longer was. I was indeed in the wrong place. More promisingly though the place I needed to go visit was conveniently at the other end of town. She gave me an address but no map or helpful tips on how to get there. I went home and left it for the next day as I was already too depressed to continue on. Anectdotal evidence from those who had gone through this procedure already told of 5 or 6 hour long waits, over several days, in sweaty offices and I wasn't in the mood.

Name: Dohren, Derek

Nationality: British

Distinguishing features: irritated, bemused, befuddled, top of head missing.

So, next day, in probably the most violent and sustained period of rain here to date, I walked 2 miles across the city looking for the right place, a place I was fully expecting to turn out to actually be another wrong place.

I eventually found it, some sort of local government office, went in through the security body scanner, and was confronted by a waiting throng of about 50 people, all of them clearly of various nationalities. I informed Mr. Security what I was requiring and he asked me where I was from. 'Liverpool, England' I said and handed him my passport. He gave me a form, which I subsequently learned was the official NIE application form. I was then given a ticket with a number on, told to sit down, and then informed that when my ticket number appeared on the big screen on the wall (he pointed at the big screen on the wall to emphasise this point) I should proceed through those doors there (he pointed again at those doors there) and go and sit at that desk there, the one with 'number 11' above it (he lengthened his arm to full capacity to indicate desk number 11).

I sat down and prepared myself for a wasted day. Bizzarely, I'd only been sat for 3 seconds when my number popped up on the screen. Clearly it was a trap and I looked around to see if anyone else moved. No one did so I got up and went in through the doors to go and sit at desk number 11 like I'd been told. Obviously it can't have been my turn already but I thought I'd plead ignorance - my number was up on the board after all.

No one was behind the desk 'serving' but several people were being seen to at other desks. One of the female Vogons at one of the desks, a hatchet faced harridan clearly having a bad day, shouted something over to me. I deduced from the tone (though I couldn't understand a word she said) that she was asking 'oi, what the feck do you think you're playing at?' I ignored her. Within a few more seconds another fembot appeared and sat down at my desk. I showed her the NIE form and she laughed. 'No, no, no' she said, shaking her head. I didn't have the will or the vocabulary to argue with her and waited to see what city she was going to send me to next. Obviously the downturn in events was my own fault for being lucky enough to be seen to so quickly.

As it happened though it wasn't so bad. She got out a calendar instead and told me to come back on February 23rd, at 10 o'clock. It was a 2010 calendar too. There was nothing else to be said on the matter and that was that. I felt quietly pleased that steady, if unspectacular progress, is relentlessly being made. My tectonic plate may well be another half centimetre nearer to colliding with the Spanish NIE shelf by next Tuesday. Who knows?

I'll keep you posted on how that goes then. I'm assuming I fill out the form before I return though doubtless the office will be closed all day of the 23rd owing to some saint's day or other.

La Zubia has a character who gets on the number 174 bus and talks to everyone and to no one in particular. It also has another man who wees in the bushes in the small park in the town centre, while kids are running round playing. At least, I think he's weeing.

In fact, come to think of it, I hope he's weeing.

La Zubia has cafes that don't serve food and others that appear to shut at lunchtime. I can't work out the local siesta rituals, either the exact times and who does and who doesn't take part in it.

It seems to rain a lot, except for last Friday when it snowed a lot. All the buildings in La Zubia are designed to drop massive gobbits of collected rain water on your head.

It has a barber who deliberately misunderstands what you ask for and cuts off all your hair. But he's cheap.

It has an enormous amount of dog poo on the pavement.

La Zubia has three language schools, one of which appears to operate with no staff.

A longaniza is a long thin pork sausage. I saw a news item tonight about them.

I like it here but sometimes I pine for Lanark.

Updates:

I've cut my thumb with some scissors;

I kicked a bucket of water all over the floor;

I bought three large mugs in a tourist shop but was ironically unable to find a shop that sold tea-towels;

I got my door knocked on by Jehovah's Witnesses;

I've slung a washing line across my living room using four shoelaces ties together;

I bought a printer/photocopier/scanner;

I'm using my Seville bobble hat as a tea cosy for a jug I'm using as a teapot (sorry Al);

I bought salt for the first time in my life;

The woman in the upstairs apartment likes tap dancing;

I've still not eaten that pineapple I bought;

It hasn't snowed since Friday;

In the bars of La Zubia, not only is the tapas free, they give you a menu and ask you what you'd like;

In La Zubia they even close the gates of the park during siesta time;

My washing machine is eccentric;

In Spanish the word 'bordillo' means 'kerb' in English English but 'curb' in American English. Go figure that one.

They have a Humphrey Bogart season on in Granada. There is an advert doing the rounds with Humph, as Rick in Casablanca, with the Alhambra behind him and the slogan - "We'll always have Granada".

Well here's my first effort from my new home. What else could I paint other than the Alhambra? I had no references to hand so merely used an image on the cover of a streetmap as a vague reference to shapes and so on. I pretty much abstracted the rest but wanted to see if I could produce a quick yet acceptable smallish image (A4) good enough to sell to tourists. The result is ok and the spontanaiety is there but I'll hopefully get better. It will be good for my painting to produce smaller and quicker images.

Well I finally moved into the new place late last night. By the time I'd handed over the requisite two months worth of rental cash, signed the contract and decided upon which room I was sleeping in it was already way past midnight. The apartment seemed freezing despite the alleged efforts of the wall hanging air conditioner thingie and a rather lame electric heater which was sat, Andalucian style, under a coffee table which in turn had a heavy velvet cloth draped over it and reached down to the floor (the idea is you sit around the table and pull up the velvet cloth over your knees, thus exposing your legs to the warmth under the table). It sort of works but screams fire hazard to me, or at least, badly burned legs hazard.

Anyway I turned in and suffered a night of unbroken misery. I was going to sleep in the second room and leave the master bedroom alone but at the last minute decided to switch. That was when I discovered the master bed to have unwashed bedding. No thanks.

So I camped down in the smaller room with the single bed. When I woke, confused and in pitch darkness, I was frozen to the core. I got up, switched on another electric heater I'd found and tried to bed down again. Still frozen. So I got up and put a third layer of clothing on. I was then just about warm enough to get some kip but far from comfortably.

I left the apartment this morning with a big shopping list. I had absolutely no food in and lacked most basic consumables. I got as far as the cafe on the corner (about 20 yards) and decided to detour in and have breakfast - as many others seemed to be doing. So that was pleasant enough. The telly in the cafe showed scenes of snowbound Bilbao and temperatures in some Madrid area mountain range of -7. A small item of news then followed showing some CCTV footage of a group of youths kicking another one senseless in some Spanish town somewhere during the eary hours of some night (presumably recent). It felt more like home by the minute.

I then found an excellent Chinese store where I was able to buy some light bulbs, an iron, a kettle and a spanner. I needed the spanner to take two of the legs off the table with the velvet cloth. I needed to take the legs off the table with the velvet cloth so I could move it into another room. I've decided to move the table with the velvet cloth into the room I'm going to use as an art studio. I'm moving the table (without the velvet cloth) into the room I've decided to use as an art studio so I can use it to paint on and to rest my stuff on. I have removed the velvet cloth as it's nasty and fairly useless but now I'll need to buy something cheap and nasty to throw over table so I don't get paint on it.

Well then, blah blah, I made two trips to the Chinese shop, none to the food shops and within the hour was in the Wallace with Chris who'd shown up with some lame excuse but had freely admitted he wanted a hamburguesa.

When we came out of the Wallace it was snowing and it was freezing. All the shops were shut because it was siesta time so I decided to walk to the mini shopping mall (it's pretty rubbish) about a mile or so out of town. I knew they had a Vodafone shop there and .... Is this boring?

I'm bored typing it.

When I came out of the mall the snow had reached blizzard proportions.

Cars with snow on them.

I got back to the flat looking like a snowman. I dumped my food bags and checked on the washing. The machine had finished so I opened the door and was greeted, rather disappointingly I felt, by a massive tidal wave of water that gushed all over the kitchen floor, a drowned sock left hanging limply over the lip of the opened hatch.

So that's a malfunctioning washing machine and dodgy electrics already discovered (the electrics all tripped out this morning - reason unknown).

All in all an odd day. There are many things I'm not happy about with my apartment but I suspect many of them are down to simple unfamiliarity with things. The cushions will have to go and if the weather doesn't pick up serious consideration will have to be given to purchasing one of those industrial gas burners that shoot massive flames out the back.