My-my-my Beautiful Neighbourhood.

Right now, I love where I'm living. Not this flat, specifically: it's become fairly clear that while it's nice, there are reasons why the rent's cheap. As friendly as our landlord is, I don't hold out much hope that he'll fix the back door any time soon (if you go out and close it, you're trapped in the central well of a ten-story building - fine if you're Spiderman, but no good for me), or the washing machine that doesn't drain properly, or the microwave with lightning inside. No, the thing I really love is the area around the flat, just out of the centre. I'll set the scene a little.

Huelva's a small city, built on a wide river estuary on the South coast of Spain, half an hour's drive from the border with Portugal. It's big enough that my explorations didn't lead me to a sea view until a couple of weeks ago, but small enough that I always knew I could wander to the water and back in an idle hour. It's big enough to have a football team (Recreativo) in the top Spanish league, but small enough for me to compare them to Wigan. It's neither Barcelona nor Bumfuck, Andalucía, is what I'm saying.

Our flat is a ten-minute walk from the centre, which is itself oddly-shaped: there's a big cartesian block of shops, banks, clubs and other metropolitan staples surrounding my school, but sticking out north-east and uphill from there is a busy avenue of bars and restaurants called Pablo Rada. A few nights after I arrived, we sampled some excellent tapas and then went next door to a Moroccan-style bar, trendy but friendly, where I practised my faltering Spanish and enjoyed a little shisha. Our flat lies South of this pan-handle avenue, on the first floor of a tall apartment building just opposite the "Barro Ingles" - a half-mile square of vine-covered bungalows, apparently built ages ago for English mine-workers abroad (or something).

Instead of looking English, though, the Barro Ingles, and the whole surrounding area I'm living in, looks a lot like Los Angeles - or at least, how L.A. looks on the telly. Obviously, if you consider the name "Los Angeles", and the city's history (thanks Wikipedia, I never knew L.A. was once in Mexico), this might not be altogether surprising. Still, the resemblance is uncanny: I feel like I'm living in South Central, only without the stabbings (touch wood). In fact, if you've ever played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (one of the best videogames ever made), please load up your save file and have a look around Los Santos, the L.A.-inspired area of the gameworld. If I remember correctly, one of the safe-houses you can buy is in a block of terracotta villas, somewhere near the hospital. Those streets are almost identical to the Barro Ingles, right down to the sloping roofs and the compact front gardens. It's a bit unnerving to go out to the balcony for a cigarette, take in the view, and subconsciously think: I've shot a rival gang member in there, just as he was jumping over that fence.

It's a daft conceit, but let me have my fun, eh?