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Went to Spain for a few weeks just now; will write about that maybe later. In the meantime: a list...

All the things I own

•   Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop
•   Kent classical guitar
•   Squier/Marlin Strat copy
•   Some old computer speakers (to get rid of)
•   A sleeping bag (trade for smaller)
•   Three pairs of jeans
•   Three pairs of shorts
•   A load of socks, either black - or blackish - or white, for sport
•   Fifteen shirts
•   Two jumpers
•   Two jackets
•   A straw 'cowboy' hat
•   Three pairs of Umbro 5V5's
•   A pair of black shoes
•   Four ties
•   Two pairs of football boots
•   Some hair clippers
•   Two tennis rackets, and four tennis balls
•   A badminton racket
•   One squash racket (broken)
•   Nokia mobile phone (with 1GB memory card)
•   Pentax digital camera (shoots underwater)
•   Some boardgames (Risk, chess, Scrabble, Downfall)
•   Two books (Scrabble dictionary and one I'm in)
•   About 75 burned DVDs
•   London A-Z
•   Two backpacks
•   Set of devil sticks (homemade)
•   Some broken spectacles
•   Degree and birth certificates
•   A magazine I was in
•   Some headphones
•   A USB keyboard
•   A yellow Adidas football
•   Two towels
•   A duvet and four pillows, with covers
•   A bed and mattress (loaned to a friend/ex)
•   That's about it

But also...

• A folder full of love letters
• Three cuddly toys
• A video cassette of Goran Ivanisevic winning Wimbledon
• A tea strainer
• Three tubes of toothpaste, and three toothbrushes
• A passport (expires in three months)
• A heavy wool Moroccan Djellaba
• An orange and cream belt
• A broken MP4 player
• Some cotton buds
• An Oyster Card
• A battery recharger (and batteries)
• A Sanyo television (though not for long)
• A clothes horse (ditto)
• A £400 diamond/sapphire ring
• And that really is about it

Things I don't own

• CDs
• A bicycle or car
• A pair of smart trousers
• Contact lenses (even though I need them to see most things)
• A guitar amplifier
• A national insurance card (lost about twelve years ago)
• A warm coat
• Literature
• Photographs or pictures

Things I'd like to own but don't

• An old racing bike
• A fat convertible (if I didn't have to pay for it)
• A house (ditto)

Tuesday July 1^st

And on that subject…a list of things I have owned in the past, but no longer do:

• Two Mazda MX-5s
• A 1962 Fender Stratocaster
• Several 60’s Jaguars and Jazzmasters
• A Sony Playstation
• An Amstrad CPC464
• Over 150 Jimi Hendrix records and 200 bootleg cassettes
• Another sixty or so guitars
• Alan Hansen’s signature (as well as John Wark’s)
• A piece of The Chrysler Building (ok, I nicked it)
• A 1972 Ford LTD
• A flick-knife
• The Paris Hilton and Imogen ‘off Big Brother’ sextapes
• A ‘BrainTeaser’ mug

Plus! Some things I forgot I own:

• Some sex toys
• Half a dozen Roman coins
• A wok
• A screwdriver, some wrenches and a spanner
• Boggle and Connect 4

Spain

So, June 12^th-25^th, I was in Spain – and was it a marvellous time? Indeed it was. And was it the best holiday ever? You betcha!

I started off in Valladolid, hometown of my roommates Carmen and Diego, and nearest airport to those legendary scenes from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, courtesy of my £1.21 (all in!) ryanair flight from Stansted. A spot of hitching from the airport, a bus and a train and another bus later, and I was in the tiny little tourist picturesque town of Covvarubbias and ready for a walk. Well, cut a long story short, I did a fifteen mile hike, checked out a ruined monastery, saw some haunted barrels, got hot and thirsty, eventually found Sad Hill Cemetery – awesome! – and then slept in a shed in Santo Domingo los Silos under a random duvet cover I’d brought from England – as you do! – while dogs tried to eat me. Next day I went tooling around in the desert some more; next day I went to Segovia – what an aqueduct! – and then stayed with a really nice guy in Madrid who picked me up hitching; and then I was off on the train to meet Perlilly in Alicante for a holiday proper – beach, sun, no mad stuff, etc – and I guess that’s where it really began.

We’d got these tentative plans to meet by a bus stop near the train station somewhere around 10/10.30; pretty lax, I suppose. Well, on enquiry, the bus she was on from the airport didn’t actually go there, and so off I was hunting the late night streets in Alicante thinking, oh, this is a good start, and, oh, I hope she’s not pissed. Up and down Spanish streets I go, sweating now, and as midnight comes and no sign it’s back to the train station to get my head down and just see if she materialises, and if worst comes to worst I’ll just have to email in the morning and hope she does the same. But – lo! – she’s there at the train station – been there five minutes – and happy as a sandboy and I guess seeing as we found each other quite easily in the end that was a bit of a non-story but there you go. Hotel, food, bed, sex, dark Spanish shutters and before you know it it’s midday and on to the old traveller’s favourite of backpacks through hot streets and eyes out for something appealing just wondering where you’re going and…

We found the most delightful Pension (that’s Spanish for ‘cheap hotel’) and – boom – we were in for two nights, no messing about. Pension San Nicolas – on Calle San Nicolas – get the room in the middle, sin baño, forty rupees, bueno balcony, really quiet and lovely and clean and smashing people to boot; marvellous. And then it was on to the beach, buy a volleyball, slapping on the sunscreen – got to be careful – and marvellous that was too. Two days of that, dinners and croissants and a little wander to the market here and there, and then, wondering what comes next, I spy with my little eye a brochure beginning with “Scooter Hire” and in it pops in my little head while sleeping that third night and in the morning, while nervous, we say, why not? And before we know it we’re wobbling around in the traffic, silly egg-like helmets on our heads, plans for a nudey beach a few k south and who knows what? Beach sucks, though – must be wrong place – so we ask an elderly nudey couple if there’s a better spot and they give us all the info and chat for a bit and then off we go for a picnic in the shade of some sweet smelling pines. Well, just as we’re packing up elderly nudey couple swing by and ask us where we’re bound, and I crack a joke about not being able to get Perlilly to camp out in the trees and after a few minutes they say, hey, you seem like a nice couple, and we’re just on our own up in our villa in the mountains, why don’t you come for dinner and stay the night? And me and Perlilly, equally thinking, funny, that’s kinda just what we were wanting to happen go, Yes!

So we stopped off at the nice nudey beach, got our kit off, swam in the sun and laid in the sea, and laughed at the funny nudey guys and their hands of hips standing there, doing God knows what but kind of saying, hey, look at me! I’m a nudey! And then via a little burn up Alicante’s castle for photo opportunities we hit the road to Busot and – boom! – suddenly we’re at this mad nice villa with swimming pool and outdoor pool table and four bedrooms and a fully stocked actual bar – and Chic’s got the dinner on and drinks are being pressed on us – I concede, and have a shandy; yum – and, wow, this is pretty amazing. Later on we go to karaoke and the locals seem to think we’re some sort of superstars, and Chic and Barbara are lovely, and isn’t it marvellous where the day can take you?

And the next day he was like: do you want to stay another night? And so it goes – four nights we stayed, and there we are getting fed and watered – I don’t mind admitting, I got a little tipsy (first time in 9½ years) – and they were such nice and lovely people, taking us around, showing us some caves and a trip to mighty beautiful Guadalest – a view to die for! – and wouldn’t take a penny from us till we insisted that we buy them dinner – four course meal, half a bottle of wine each, fantastic restaurant; only fifteen rupees a head – and even then they said, no; oh, you shouldn’t have; oh, that’s very generous of you. I swear, by the end of it we were like family and it was sad to say goodbye. But say goodbye we must. Must we? We must.

So back to Alicante, back to fiesta San Juan/Hogueraras/who knows (who cares) and – what the hell! – let’s get a bottle of wine to swill in the streets and whoop it up mad style at every single thing that comes past in this whole mad parade and just be mad. And whoop we did! Even the old granddads just changing places, and the ushers, and the randoms, got whistles and cheers and arms waving madly, and despite a few dirty looks from a guy in a checked shirt and his daughter – who obviously took their fiesta very seriously – the locals were loving us, and warmed to us, and when the break in the parade came and out we dashed to madly dance in front of the hundreds, clapping away were our newfound friends and loving us when we went back with pats and smiles and those that spoke English saying how fantastic we were (but sadly no pictures; at least none that I know of). And then when it was over catching up and dancing around the clarinet player in front of the VIP stand and Brazilian drummers and sweaty, barefoot dancing and crowds and crowds and into the night – but we were spent and conscious of our day – our last day – due to be had in Europe’s biggest water theme park up the coast in Benidorm – Benidorm! – wobbling off to bed and, ugh, this room is spinning a bit but, sure, good times were had by all; ah, the memories…

Aqualandia. Mad. Insane. Dangerous. Shouldn’t be allowed. The blue one! The yellow one! (The blue one’s worse). The insanity of it: oh my God, I’m in freefall; I’m in space; this can’t be right. Fears. And overcoming. Water. Lovely. The Rapidos: better than it looks. A grand day out! And then off to the world’s finest bus station – yes, in Benidorm – and a picnic, and the ride to Valencia, and a plan to sleep in the airport for an early morning flight – but no public transport, and not enough rupees for a taxi, so after unsuccessful busking – yes, I had my devil sticks with me – and now 2 in the am and narks approaching the female half of our party, a group of hostellers and an auction for possessions; sunscreen sold, shoes offered; the rest donated: a cab ride there, a sleep, a breakfast; and back on the plane for a mad hysterical greasy spoon fry up in some £2.59 pub in Liverpool loving it and laughing and finally the horrible bus home to collapse in bed and, I swear, I never want to take the National Express again and – boy, did I write that fast and – well, it really was a marvellous time. I got some tan; I made some friends; I swam in a pool at midnight in a villa in the mountains; I rode a scooter and looked at the craters in the moon. The sky was blue everyday. It was hot, and lovely, and the Spanish sure know how to live, it seems (back in England, the usual English thing of arriving back here: everybody looks so haggard and tired and rough, oh Lord). Yes, Spain; awesome. A lovely time. Yes.

And feelings? Feelings of this: initial stress – initial not wanting to go, thinking it daft, not wanting to make the effort, all that way, for what? And then – the unwinding, the cessation of the struggle, the opening up again, the slowing down of time. The liking it. The walk in the desert: the openness and the space that comes; the way ideas are flowing – ideas for writing, for my book – as they haven’t done in ages; the sudden realisation that all I’m doing is walking – in beauty and peace and magnificence – and a smile has come on my face – a now I’m laughing. And now, my God, I’m enjoying myself, doing nothing – just moving my legs – and thinking nothing – just feeling good. I feel better than I have in ages. I’m doing exactly what I want to – as I always did – and I wonder why I ever stopped. More precisely, I wonder why the hell I’m working a job that makes me miserable; to what hellacious duty I’m blindly and unthinkingly subscribing? I’m out there again as I was in my youth, my path, my impulses and desires and ideas, and I’m feeling good. Well-being. Inner-peace. Loving it.

More feelings, in the city – my God, cities suck – or, at least, they’re not for me. I could sit there all day in the desert, needing nothing to excite me, just content – but such boredom and restlessness in a city – I mean, what are they except bricks and buildings and noise? Even in Segovia, with its magnificent and frankly unbelievable 2000 year-old Roman aqueduct I’m done within an hour – and then all a city is – especially to a backpacker (and my pack was tiny) is a hot and tiresome trek into finding somewhere that doesn’t suck. The desert for example. A beach. A lake. No, the cities aren’t for me; if I never visit another one, I’ll be more than happy – unless it’s to go see someone I know. But to see them for what they are? Beats me why anyone would want to. And yet still, I do. A reminder to stop.

And what more? Que mas? Holidays – unless it’s the solo desert trek for inspiration and peace and beauty – are probably best done in the company of others. I thought that in India; I realised – I made it real – here. In so many ways I’m done with going out there alone; I’ve done all that, there’s nothing there for me now. And although I did enjoy my hitching and my Spanish…yeah, I’ve just done it before. But what joy to share those times with your nearest and dearest! And what joy to spend practically every minute of every day in the company of another and have it be almost nothing but fun! What joy indeed!

And sadness at saying goodbye to Spain. And admiration for the pace with which they still live their lives, and the sense of community, and family values, and things that England is so obviously lacking – the weather, for instance. Oh yes, I could have stayed out there in those blue skies and sunshine, and only one of those villas had needed a pool boy, or a sweeping man, or something menial that would have given me bed and shelter, and a place to plug in and type away from all these trials of jobs and England busy life and, boy oh boy, I really got to do something about that; I haven’t been back to work yet and the way I feel, I wonder if I ever will (I will). But, yes, Spain was marvellous, and I feel that it’s given me something back, and I loved it, and the people, and the food – but mostly the vibe – and, if you want to see one or two pics from it then, here they are.

Cheers!

Rory