Joe Plus España

The Little Things.

2009-07-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

So I decided to stay here in Spain this July, on a mission to isolate a little, get healthy, enjoy the sun and write my book. The sun's beautiful, the health is up-and-down (I'm running again, but all too infrequently) and the book is... well, I'm having trouble, but it's a good challenge. If I can get a first draft by the end of the year, I'll call it a success.

The isolation's a bit of a downer though, and I've succumbed to cabin fever a little. Very much looking forward to some good times in Sheffield next month. Still, though, there are those little things here that keep me happy. Like a pint glass full of ice, then two-thirds orange juice and one-third water. Gotta keep my fluids up in this heat and god-damn it's the most refreshing way. I'd drink this all day if I didn't mind acid poisoning and death by fruit sugar.

There's also the simple joy of stumbling upon a little game like Within A Deep Forest.

It's a real beauty, this one. The mechanic's a doddle: you're a ball. That's pretty much it. You bounce your way around a beautifully-designed landscape full of pretty vistas and little critters, finding new materials to transform into, so you can bounce higher or break wooden barriers to open up new, surprising, gorgeous-looking levels. The level of challenge is just right, and as I type I'm itching to give it another playthrough. In fact, off I go. Off to jounce about with my yoga ball as the gentle, sparkling soundtrack burbles happily away. Back into a Deep Forest.

Just play it, please.

Ballet? Vale...

2009-07-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

Last night was a first for me. I was invited by my good friends Charlie and Alicia to go and see a show: I was expecting a play, but it turned out our entertainment for the night was to be ballet. Yes, ballet. This is not a normal Saturday night for me. It was, however, remarkable in many ways.

Firstly, it took place here:

This is the Patio de Armas in the Castillo de Niebla, in a village about half an hour from Huelva. The big square nearest the camera in that picture was set up with maybe a thousand seats, all facing towards a basic but impressively large stage. Whatever you may think of ballet, taking in a show after sunset in a place like that is quite an experience.

The show itself was called Samsara, and here is a promo. Interspersed with projections of pretentious and/or profound quotes from the Dalai Lama and friends, there were maybe a dozen dances of five to fifteen minutes. I thought the costume design and music were both really good throughout, but there were three parts to it that really stayed in the memory, for good and bad reasons.

Beginning.

We opened with the cast of ballerinas (and ballerinos?) dressed in white gis, slowly performing Tai-chi movements while a video montage of the sins of the world (9/11, mass graves, army manouevres) spooled behind them and a melodic buddhist chant droned and modulated. Pretentious, yes, but I have to admit I was spellbound. There was real grace in the movement and the music was truly beautiful, always shifting, never settling, but sticking to a handful of notes. This is the point where I sat back and resolved to give the show a shot. Ballet? No problem.

Burkas.

You'll see some of this if you watch the video. The longest section of the show opened with the female dancers shrouded in Burkas, and it started with a small spotlight on their hooded faces gently shifting from foreground to background - it was unsettling and quite arresting. However, things took a turn for the slightly uncomfortable as from the throng emerged one dancer without the burka, clearly meant to symbolise a "free" woman. She leapt and bounded but was caught by the others, who through the medium of dance attacked her and dragged her down. They did some elaborate motions, meaphorically striking her and trapping her, and compared to the actual proper dancing it looked tacky and am-dram. Next emerged two men in white shirts, who danced together and clearly represented a gay couple - it wasn't erotic or gratuitous, in fact it was stoic and emotional. Again, the burkas (now joined by black-clad alpha males) came for them, and did some more of the stupid hitting dances. And that was about it. That was the "Muslim" bit of the show's tour of Asian dance. Now, I like art to make a political statement, but in this case the statement was "Muslims don't like liberated women or homosexuals". Thanks for that, folks. Care to venture anything further? I'm sure the intentions were good, but all I took away from the set-piece was a feeling of clunky Islamophobia. A great shame.

Bird.

One moment, though, absolutely blew me away. It was a solo dance by one of the men, and I found myself pretty bored, so just listened to the nice music and waited for the next part. Then, right at the end of his dance, he did something amazing. With the orange light projected behind him fading slowly, he stood centre stage, facing out, and leapt into the air, giving a mighty flap of his arms. Again, a leap, and a flap. And I realised that we were watching a mighty bird fly into the desert sunset. The snap of his arms and the carefully-judged parabola of the jump created the exact geometry of that shot we've all seen in nature documentaries. It was utterly uncanny, and brilliantly achieved. Well done that dancing man.

So I quite enjoyed the ballet. And then I went home and ate a steak and punched a wall, just to feel good and secure in my masculinity.

Back. No, Really

2009-07-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

So, as happens to all ambitious and pretentious blogs, I let this one slide. Bad call, as I really enjoyed writing the updates, trying to squeeze some textual goodness out of my experiences.

One reason I didn't start up again is that I joined twitter. They call it "microblogging", and that's true: it's smaller and easier than actually putting thoughts together over a paragraph. It's well-designed, fun, and rather addictive. God help me if I ever get an iPhone.

Now, as I sit here on my sofa, having tried to sleep but been beaten back by my occasional insomnia demons, I feel it's the right time to start the blog proper again. This is largely because I'm trying to write a book at the moment, and failing miserably. I've got a plot, characters, events, and even an exciting ending, but I can't discipline myself to knuckle down and put the words on the page. The marvellous Richard Herring has for a long time been blogging daily to help with the writing process for his books and live shows, so I suppose there's no harm in imitating the process. Over the summer, I'll try to discipline myself and report on how the book's going. And, of course, I'll write lists of my favourite things and tell you why they're brilliant, for what is a blog but a projection of opinions onto others. It's not like I'm covering an election.

Much love, and follow me on twitter!

Not Dead!

2009-04-09T16:03:00.001-07:00

But my laptop was. Now I have a new one! Apologies for lack of updates - if there's anyone left to apologies to, of course. Hopefully some updates about Cadiz, Cordoba, Catholics and Laurie Lee soon. Love yous.

Telly Is Back.

2009-01-23T12:10:00.000-08:00

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Where would I be without the internet? I've posted before about the sheer badness of Spanish telly, and it's gone past the point where I can watch it with a sort of snooty ironic detachment (except for Pasapalabra, but that's another story). Thank god, then, for TV via the internet, and for the big unctuous spurt of joy that the new year is bringing.

First up,the new Battlestar Galactica is back for the last time. I love this show, mainly because it's so utterly perverse and obverse and not-what-should-be. Surely huge-budget long-form American Sci-Fi should be packed full of young, beautiful heroes running around in spaceships, always beating the aliens, then making with the witty puns as they all drink space-beer and fall in love? Y'know, like Buffy or something?
Instead, it's spent the course of its four seasons getting dark, bleak, and genuinely unsettling. Last week's premiere was 45 minutes of depression and disillusionment for pretty much every single character. This show, which started with a holocaust, gave us another one in flashback. There was a suicide. Two old men, one drunk, both suicidal, talked about foxes drowning out at sea. Even the extras were in despair, fighting in the corridors of the Galactica. The soundtrack droned and wailed. It was fucking brilliant.

On a much lighter note, we're now blessed with QI again. I've been getting the extended Saturday-night versions from UKNova, letting my brain sink into a soothing sponge-like state as Stephen Fry reels off popular misconceptions in gaps between Sean Lock's (peerless) dick jokes. I know a lot of people can't stand Fry, and even more are vehement enemies of Alan Davies (fair, maybe, as he only really ever does one thing, but he's smart enough to do it on a show where it works) but I love it. The BBC took a tired format, gave it a twist, and just let it run. Not comedy gold, maybe, but at the very least comedy yttrium.

Finally, the most utterly-stupid-but-somehow-fantastic show on the planet, Lost, returned this week. I'm posting this before watching the two-part season opener, because I want to be enthusiastic about telly today, and Lost is so hit-and-miss that it could well be total shit-on-a-stick. Still, it's got a definite end date now, so we'll get these fabled "answers" sooner or later. It's like the barmiest choose-your-own-adventure book ever ("To turn the magic donkey wheel and make the island disappear, turn to page 56), and I don't have total faith that it'll end satisfactorily, but at least the writers have to try, and it'll be fun to watch them. Right?

Between these, Okami on the Wii and the rest of my Doctor Who DVDs, I am covered for audiovisual treats this term. I'll need it, too, because it's going to be a bitch.

Updating soon: This man, €180,000 and a baguette sandwich. Stay well, amigos.

Back To School.

2009-01-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

So I'm on this Young Learners course now. It's paid for by my generous and excellent bosses, and it's all friendly and well-run, but I'm a bit daunted at the prospect of teaching 22 hours and doing loads of "homework" too. It'll be useful as fuck, and probably a lot of fun with my fellow teachers, but I'm still a bit freaked out at this term's workload. Sometimes I just want to shout "Help! I'm new! I can't do 20 things at once yet! Leave me alone!". And the rest of the time I'm sort of on top of it, so we'll see how it goes.

There is one excellent thing about the course, though, and that's its website. It's just really nicely organised, and has everything there, and encourages discussion, and the design is kind of tactile, and really nice and intuitive. It's a lovely website, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to be able to use for the teen classes. A blog, a wiki, an interactive homework record site: these are the reasons I wish I learned computer science. It'll get easier to develop these things, I'm sure, and (at the risk of sounding like a Sci-Fi fan) I wouldn't want to be teaching in the 21st century without them. Takes a bit of work, is all.

The Cash Machine.

2009-01-14T15:12:00.000-08:00

---
SCENE 1/1

INTERIOR, cash-machine lobby of Spanish Bank [closed for evening].

[Joe queues up for big yellow multi-purpose bank machine. Man in front finishes transaction and exits. Joe approaches]

BANK MACHINE: [in heavy Andaluz accent] Momentito, por favor.

JOE: [confused]

[BANK MACHINE flashes red lights and makes internal whirring noises as Joe looks around for a tecnichian or any visible sign of a bank employee. There is none. There is only a bank machine.]

BANK MACHINE: [stops whirring] Bueno.

JOE: [confused] Er... gracias?
-----

I may be losing my mind. Thank god it's nearly Friday.

Uninspired & Comix.

2009-01-12T15:12:00.000-08:00

Current Moods: happy, oblivious, nauseous

I had a marvellous weekend but I felt a bit uninspired in my classes today, like I need to readjust a bit. Back-to-school blues. I'm probably just being spoilt 'cause Chrismas was so nice.

Anyway, I've been reading some lovely webcomics this week (rare things). I enjoy pictures for sad children because it's gentle and insane

And I just read through Daisy Owl, which is sort of Achewood lite but sometimes nicely low-key

so, y'know, enjoy them if you think you would. That's all for now folks, no bad jokes or bullshit philosophy tonight. Coming this week: a surprisingly exciting story about a bank machine.

I Didn't Like Monday.

2009-01-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

So as I said before, my trip home was all hell and tiredness and sweaty bus stations and boring airports. (I've since tempered my bad mood with San Miguel and Doctor Who, in honour of the Eleventh Doctor: good luck, pal). Well, not all my Mondays are so bad.

I used to fucking love Garfield. I think it's because I always had a cat, but never a sarcastic one who constantly took the piss out of me. Anyway, Garfield Minus Garfield tells the story of Jon, the eternal loser, without even the comfort of his dickhead cat. It's heart-breaking, and hilarious. And if you've already seen it, then go vote for it.

Also, Tori Amos dislikes Mondays better than Geldof ever did.

Home from Home.

2009-01-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

So after 23 hours in transit, including a night in a Portugese youth hostel where I lay awake wondering if it's illegal to stab a man to death for snoring, I am back in my flat in Huelva, and it's lovely. After such a nice Christmas (and I do hope yours was too), I figured I'd be instantly homesick as soon as I touched down, but the familiar sights and sounds of my adopted town are keeping my spirits up. Soon I'll be blogging some more things of (I hope) interest, but for now I'll leave you with this questionably-translated slogan from a property development advert in Faro airport:

"YOUR HOME, SURROUNDED BY GOLF"

It might just be me, but that sounds more like a threat than anything.

It Ain't Over Yet

2008-12-27T06:59:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! Don't complain that it's late, there's no way it's over yet. I'm still playing with my new toys, and we're still looking up the TV in the big festive Radio Times. Also, I'm not working, which helps to keep seasonal spirits up: this time last year, I was trapped in a depressing call centre at "LoanAssured" (now liquidated), trying to convince people to re-borrow all the money they'd just spent on food and presents. I am a sinner, and do not expect to be forgiven.

So it's Saturday, I've just reminded myself. Like everyone I lose track of the days of the week around this time of year. It's confusing, because only some of the days have names: the Radio Times goes Monday, Tuesday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Saturday, Sunday, and I feel like I've missed half a week, even though I obviously haven't. It just puts my mind out of joint a bit. Maybe around this time of year, we should just do away with the days of the week altogether and give all the days special names. My 2009 winter calendar is going to look like this:

20th December
21st December
Have I Done All My Shopping Day
Not Allowed To Eat Anything In The Fridge Day
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
Boxing Day
Re-Boxing & Taking Back Day
I Should Really Be Doing Something Eve
I Should Really Be Doing Something Day
Fuck It Let's Just Watch Lord Of The Rings Day
New Year's Eve
New Year's Day
International Day Of Awesomeness
International Boxing Day Of Awesomeness
4th January
5th January

Anyway, because Christmas isn't over, I'm not late with the last of

JOE'S TOP FIVE CHRISTMAS SONGS OF ALL TIME (in no particular order)

#5. Chris Rea - Driving Home For Christmas

I'd hoped to upload this entry a week ago, from the airport on my way home, to give a bit more meaning to the song and seem more like a hip young "travel-blogger", but apparently Portugese airport Wi-Fi isn't free. Can you even imagine? It's like the stone age. Anyway, this is the best easy-listening song ever. I worked in Debenhams one Christmas, and this was the only thing on the constantly repeating album they played that didn't make my ears physically itch. I love it.

Distortion; Your Child Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad.

2008-12-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

JOE'S TOP FIVE CHRISTMAS SONGS OF ALL TIME (in no particular order)

#4. The Magnetic Fields - Mr. Mistletoe

OK - technically, this is not one of my top five Xmas songs of all time. It's nice enough, but it doesn't do much, and it's a bit mopey even by my standards. It's only really in this list so I can bang on about Distortion, the album it's taken from, which I've been a bit obsessed with recently.

Download it - or better yet, buy it.

It's a concept album, and the gimmick's in the title: every instrument played on every song on this album is wreathed in wheezing, delerious distortion. It sounds stupid, but it works, and it gives a sort of woozy coherence to what might otherwise be quite an eclectic little set. Stephen Merritt's lyrics are as good as ever: "Sober, life is a penance / shit-faced, it is a blessing" kicks off the acapella intro of the riotously depressing "Too Drunk To Dream". Other highlights are gay voodoo sex ballad "Zombie Boy", which is just fucking disgusting; "Old Fools", which creaks and groans (like old bones) under the weight of its own prettiness; and "Courtesans", a closing track that could make a stone cry. It shimmers, this album. I like it a lot.

Anyway, I've got Parents Evenings (first time ever) for the next two days. Should be interesting. Have to dress up a bit, give a good impression (I've washed my nice shirts and jumpers, and I'm even tempted to give my shoes a polish. I feel worryingly grown-up). It's conducted in Spanish, which is a bit worrying; most of my practical Spanish so far has been used to buy things, so it'll be fun to see how I adapt to telling parents their kid is great/boring/evil. Words to brush up on: "work", "attitude", "difficulties", "effort", "progress", "mopey little arse-face". This last hurdle to get over, and it's the work do on Friday. Odds of seeing the bosses drunk: 2/1 on, from what I've heard. Fun!

1 week.

2008-12-14T16:42:00.001-08:00

Carpets. A bath. A garden. Toast. The Pub. Pints. People. Match Of The Day. Eccy Road. The Park. Snow? Presents!

Little bit homesick.

Christmas Cheer.

2008-12-09T15:29:00.000-08:00

JOE'S TOP FIVE CHRISTMAS SONGS OF ALL TIME (in no particular order)

#3. Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You

No fucking arguments.

Another Christmas song.

2008-12-05T12:11:00.000-08:00

Hello folks! Not much going on over here other than a much-needed long weekend: religious holiday on Monday. Thank God (literally) for the Immaculate Conception, eh? So then, here's another installment of

JOE'S TOP FIVE CHRISTMAS SONGS OF ALL TIME (in no particular order)

#2. Mud - Lonely This Christmas

OK, let me justify myself. Yes, it's incredibly cheesy. Yes, the singer is doing an Elvis impression. Yes, the video is terrible and yes, there is even a spoken-word passage in the middle eight. So far so godawful, but it's all forgivable, because it's got a fucking killer hook. I honestly think the chorus of Lonely This Christmas is one of the best bits of pop music of its decade. Amongst all the fluff and insincerity of the rest of the song, it stands out as really simple and genuinely sad.

I do love Christmas, but at the same time it brings up some sad memories for me. No howling depression, but a few regrets, a few lonely wishes. But it's Christmas, so I can smile, and go to parties, and do all those daft family traditions that we all do, and have a good fuckin' time. This song does the same thing: putting on a happy face, just like we all do sometimes.

Also, that big bombastic slowdown before the second chorus is a belter, a real guilty pleasure. All together now: "IT ... 'LL ... BE ... ... LONELY, THIS CHRISTMAS..."

The Crystal Medical; Christmas Songs!

2008-12-02T16:13:00.000-08:00

I had a medical today. I'd been losing sleep over it for the past few nights, because I hate medical exams. As a worrier and pessimist, I always imagine the doctor will make a few cursory examinations, then say "You are one unhealthy fucker and you are never allowed to eat red meat or drink beer again. Also: DIABETES."

Thankfully that didn't happen today: I don't have the results but there was no frowning or consternation. I also think I heard the word "bueno" after my blood pressure test, which would be an improvement, and mean that walking four miles a day and being on my feet during work is doing some good. So all is well-ish, touch wood.

The medical itself was almost fun, with a variety of little challlenges and tests, sort of like a low-budget Crystal Maze. First up, I had to put some liquid into a tube - y'know, just like those games they used to have in the Aztec Zone with the waterfalls! Then they put me in a little chamber with headphones on and I had to press the button at the right time - oh no, what if I do it wrong and get locked in? Finally, I had to take my shirt off and had large pegs and strange 1970s-looking electrodes attached to me, and it was just like... actually, that bit was just weird. In Richard O'Brien terms, it was more Rocky Horror than Crystal Maze.

Never mind though, it's December! Fuck Yeah, I Love December. It's when I let myself start feeling Christmassy, and Fuck Yeah, I Love Christmas. So here's a special treat for this month: you can have some nice music, while can do what all bloggers really just want to do all the time and make a list of my favourite things. Here begins:

JOE'S TOP FIVE CHRISTMAS SONGS OF ALL TIME (in no particular order)

#1. The Fall - (We Wish You) A Protein Christmas

Download

When I was (for a short but excellent while) in a band, Owen suggested we do a cover of Protein Protection by The Fall. I knew fuck all about The Fall at the time, but I heard the song, liked it, and had some fun covering it - it's a propulsive, bassy gut-churner of a song with a stony, roaring chorus riff. It's the song that got me into the genius of The Fall, got me buying the albums and downloading the rarities and eventually stumbling on the song I'm talking about.

(We Wish You) A Protein Christmas is a seasonal re-jigging of Protein Protection and was released on an obscure-ish Fall EP. Why anyone would bother recording a Christmas version of a good but hardly notable album track is an open question, but it's not my place to question the mind of Mark E Smith. The killer riff I used to play in the band is still there, but it's now covered in sarcastic, half-arsed choir voices. The great thing about the new version is MES's typically warped idea of what should constitute a Christmas lyric, mostly sung from the POV of a resurrected Jesus: ("How I wish I had never gone away ... menus for hampers / why did I come back? / I came back to Earth, the only thing good to say / is all the politicans are on holiday"). The rest is reassuringly nuts, as the scariest "Ho-ho-ho" ever gives way to a quick burst of the original lyrics, as if MES only just remembered in time what song he was meant to be singing. If your Christmas Day usually involves angst, alcoholism, antagonism and anxiety (not uncommon, let's be honest), then this is your soundtrack.

Resi Cuatro.

2008-11-28T12:27:00.000-08:00

About three years ago, the wonderful videogames show Consolevania* released a special episode to commemorate the release of Resident Evil 4. Now I love Consolevania, but I've never loved Resi, so I wasn't really that bothered by the special theme, and some of the jokes went over my head. It's a survival horror series, and I'm a big pissy wet blanket when it comes to horror, so I've never seen any reason to bother with the games. In fact, I played a bit of Resi 1 at my mate's house, and we just laughed at the shitty dialogue and terrible controls. Still, the review of the new game was so fantastic that I went out and bought it, played it a bit, then left it on the shelf, like a fucking fool. This year, I tried again, finished the game, and now I'm fucking hooked. It's brilliant, for many reasons all said much better in Rab's review. There is, though, one thing I've been really enjoying this week, and I'll tell you what it is - just wait a minute while I start turning the crank on a big, clunky analogy.

Sometimes, if I've really enjoyed it, I'll play a game through twice. Usually, the second play-through is almost as fun and a bit less difficult. Resi 4 takes this concept and gives it a turbo-charge. Fuck being less fun, it says, let's make it a fucking riot. See, over the course of the normal game, you have to carefully save money for better weapons, a bigger weapon case, firepower upgrades, and the like. When you finish the game and play again, you start with absolutely everything you earned the first time through. Just like that, the odds are now stacked in your favour. The enemies that seemed so resilient and scary the first time round now drop dead with one shot. Your treasure pennies can now be spent upgrading your guns to absurd power levels. The bosses who gave you all that trouble first time around succumb easily, and you can run through the game at a brisk pace, enjoying all the grand set-pieces with a fraction of the nervous tension.

And now here's that big, clunky analogy I promised: I wonder if my second year teaching will be like that second playthrough? If I do alright, and if they'll have me back, I can see myself staying at the school here for another year. I'd be starting again, but I'd have already seen the plot of the teaching year, even if I choose to play through it a little differently. I'd have a stocked arsenal of lesson plans that I can upgrade. All the bosses I fought the first time (observations, exams, parents' evenings) might succumb a little more easily. Instead of being scared by the hordes of enemies I had to face each week, I'd go into things with a little more firepower and a lot more confidence. And maybe the ever-present nerves and apprehension from the first year might give way to something approaching fun.

Of course, I should be careful with this analogy, because I'm essentially likening my students to parasite-infected monsters, and teaching them to mowing them down with a variety of high-grade weapons. It's a wanky comparison, not a literal one. That said, some of the fuckin' teenagers...

*Consolevania is a bit special: it's full of humour and love and bile and it deserves its own blog post full of praise one day. If you like videogames enough to have an opinion about them, you've got no excuse not to watch CV. It's free, for fuck's sake! If you've never seen it before, I recommend watching from Season 2 onwards, when it got good. You can download now, for free, at:
http://mirror.pixelated-ape.org/consolevania/season_2/
http://mirror.pixelated-ape.org/consolevania/season_3/
and visit
http://www.consolevania.com/
where Season 4 is in full swing, once you're up to speed.

Spanish Bureaucracy.

2008-11-21T04:53:00.000-08:00

Apart from being a really good title for a Guns'N'Roses B-sides album, Spanish bureaucracy is a really odd phenomenon. Let me explain. Just take a moment to consider your own idea of a typical Spaniard. Whether this is from the stereotype (in which case, try not to fixate on the sombrero) or your own experience of meeting Spanish people, you'll probably agree that they're tanned, relaxed, friendly, and enjoy cold beers, tapas, and long evenings. This is, I can report, true (bar the sombreros). Shop assistants and strangers in bars have forgiven my cack-handed grasp of their language, and smiled all the way through friendly half-conversations that would never even have begun in England. The attitude is relaxed. Even when our landlord managed to lock us in the enclosed back yard of our flat, and had to climb through a window to let us back in because the door-handle was broken, he shrugged it off with a broad grin: why worry, these things happen.

This is why it's so baffling that trying to do anything remotely official in Spain is so bloody difficult. In my life I've never had to sign triple-copies of as many forms as I did when I arrived. I always thought that things being signed and approved in triplicate was just a joke that Douglas Adams made about the farcically officious Vogons in the Hitch-Hiker's Guide books. Maybe Vogón is an Andalucian village where he tried to apply for rental car insurance.

Confusingly, though, it seems to be possible to bypass this endless red tape through having "friends in high places" (there's a specific noun in Spanish for this, but my mind's all tied up learning the past tenses at the moment). An example: setting up bank accounts. Before I arrived, I naively expected I'd just need a fixed address, a little revision of the "money" section of my phrasebook, and maybe a work reference. The proper process, however, apparently entails an hour of queueing to present passports, work contracts and photos, in order to obtain some sort of tax number and an appointment to finalise things, in February. Fortunately, one of our incredibly helpful and wonderful managers at the language school had a friend at the bank who was willing to set up some accounts for us through some back-door route.

It may just be me, but I find this whole idea hilarious. Surely the stringent rules of a tightly-run bureaucracy are pointless if you can skip past them by knowing someone who knows someone, and all that. It's a bit like a king ordering his army to build a huge, impregnable castle, then letting his generals have their friends over, as long as he signs them in and tells them not to touch the gunpowder. Well, a little bit like that. Sort of.

As I've said, the manner of most Spanish people I've met is totally at odds with this anal, exacting attitude. I like to imagine a cabal of senior government bureaucrats, desperately trying to put a regimented, pedantic system into place, only to be constantly foiled by the fact that everybody hates and ignores them.

Web-Questing, Across The Universe

2008-11-19T11:13:00.000-08:00

I'm feelin' good, folks, I'm ever so well. Firstly, thanks for your comments: I do read this thing so I've been replying, and I'll do my best to keep up with you all in this very Web 2.0 way (or are blogs old hat now? Should I be twittr-mobbing from an iPhone, or something?). Also, I just had a lesson with my Intermediate teens - the absolute Nightmare Class when I started - that absolutely flew. I don't know how much language they got from it (which is always the main aim), but in terms of their attitude and the effort they put in, it was like they'd broken through a wall. Less painful than that, obviously.

I can't really take credit for planning it, because it was a "Webquest": an IT-based lesson that we'd been through in a seminar and Jeanette had prepared for us. Fifteen minutes of online research and they were brilliant for the rest of the time, and gave me two great little presentations of holidays they'd devised. I think just being near the wi-fi'd laptops for a while got them all charged up. I've been having ideas about how I can get the Wii into a lesson as a genuine language tool, because they'd love it (half the students have one). Making Miis for the little ones to revise "I've got blue eyes", etc? The wordy bits of Twilight Princess for reading practice with the adolescents? Maybe I'll get some plans down and we'll see about the fun end-of-year lessons. Bit too soon to start rocking the boat that much, I think.

Aah, and an early finish tonight: off home for a chicken sarnie, a beer, and some time on a mind-boggling text adventure (or, to be pretentious, work of Interactive Fiction) I downloaded. I've been trying to write one again recently, but thought it might be an idea to see how the professionals do it. And by "professionals", I mean "people who write text adventures but don't seem to gain money or fame at all". It's not a genre that gets you into Heat magazine.

Spanish Television.

2008-11-14T04:26:00.001-08:00

I'm not saying Spanish TV is shoddy, but the other day I switched on our only music channel (a subsidiary of VH1), only to see a Spanish version of the Windows Vista error window that says "VLC Media Player has encountered a problem and needs to close". It was still there two hours later, right in the middle of the screen.
This is a pretty clear example of the sheer lack of quality control over the TV in this country. Spanish TV is shite. This isn't because of my poor Spanish either, this is shite in any language. The first thing you notice is the saturation of game shows. These are either ripped off from UK and American formats and made slightly more gaudy, or are incomprehensible Spanish inventions. Today, let's look at:

Cifras Y Letras, A.K.A. Countdown

How is it possible to get Countdown wrong? Surely any adaptation of the format must work by the same simple rules, even in the absence of the dream team: the late, great Richard Whitely, the recently departed Carol Vorderman, and the lovely lexical locatrix Susie Dent in Dictionary Corner, who I'm a little bit in love with.

It turns out that it's easy to get it wrong. The host is clearly as uncool as Whiteley, and there's a maths lady, but Susie now has a grey ponytail, and is a man. Bad vibes. The scoring system is complicated and sort of unfair. They choose the "consonantes" and "vocals" alternately, turning the letters game into some kind of subtle but pointless battle. The number rounds are pre-determined, so they don't even get to choose "one from the top, and any other five". Jesus! This format was sold to Spanish television after its success in the UK, right? Which idiot said "we love the idea, and it works just fine as it is, but we'd like to screw it up a bit for the Spanish audience. Also, we'll change the iconic music for miserable Midi jazz."

Also, half of the contestants are rubbish. I don't like to boast, but sometimes I get longer Spanish words than they do, and with my poor grasp of the language, that's surely not a good sign. Maybe I should go on: "won Countdown in second language" would look pretty good on my CV.

¡Viva Recre!

2008-11-14T04:16:00.000-08:00

The other weekend, I had one of those lovely Sundays that you always hope for during a shitty Wednesday. I woke up with a solid but not unbearable hangover from the excellent night before. Food and tea made me human, and I walked slowly into town to meet my teacher buddies at the post office, and from there towards the stadium that plays host to Recreativo de Huelva, the oldest football club in Spain, currently fighting hard to stay in the top division of La Liga.

The road to the stadium is utterly wonderful. Being busy, and lazy, I hadn't actually gone and seen the water of the estuary that Huelva stands on until that moment. It's a striking sight, industrial and beautiful, with a huge disused wooden pier stretching in a gentle arc into the middle of the river. When it crosses the road, you can look back under its straight path back into the centre, at the engineered symmetry. I remember saying at least twice how relaxed I felt.

We got tickets for the match: Valencia, my adopted Spanish team and league leaders, were visiting. We grabbed one-euro cans of beer and made sportsman's bets on half-time and full-time scores, and everyone else gave the locals little credit: 2-0 or 4-0 to Valencia, sort of thing. I stuck my neck out and said Recre would get a point, 0-0 at half-time and 1-1 by the end. Then we headed to the day's other destination, the Fiesta de Gastronomico, just under the shadow of the East stand.

We'd been to a Fiesta de Tapas a couple of weeks before. It's a funny thing to have a festival dedicated to tapas, considering there's no unifying principle behind tapa dishes other than that they're food on a small plate. Nevertheless, it had been pretty excellent, with cheap beer and a family atmosphere. The Gastronomico was much the same, except a bit up-market, in that you could buy jars and bottles and wheels of things. We spent €5 on good cheese, and washed it down with beer (cheap as ever - some things don't change). We had free samples of wine, poured in a showboating, over-the-shoulder way by a sort of alcohol matador, from a strange cup-on-rod mechanism: Chris had the stones to ask for a go at the pouring method, and commendably managed not to cover himself in wine while trying it.

Fed and watered, we went and saw the football, from high in an open stand on the South side with a fine view of the pitch. I had the same buzz waiting for the game to start that I get in Hillsborough watching Wednesday, but also none of the excited, paranoid claustrophobia: it was all much more relaxed. We were basking in the sun, with the peaks of the city visible over the opposite stand. There were Valencia fans behind us, but no trouble. A row of people wore silly paper hats and got us to take their picture. A man smoked good-smelling hash in front of us and munched on seeds. The first half kicked off, and Valencia C.F. didn't look all that: Recre were proper sticking it to them.

Obviously I couldn't understand all the chants that rolled around the stadium (mainly from the North Stand: it's always the North Stand), but I could dig the clapping. If there's one thing the Spanish can do, it's clap a good rhythm (clap near a Spanish baby in the womb and its little hands move on the ultrasound, sort of thing). Once in a while, this CLAP-clap-clap-CLAP-clap-clap would spread round the stadium, a thousand-strong waltz, musical, smarter than the blunt oys and aahs of English chants, which by the way I'm not slagging off; I think Recre could do with a bit of Over Land And Sea (and Barca!).

Half-time rolled around, and it had been a scrap with no goals, as I'd predicted. The interval had no daft games, no sponsored kids trying to score from halfway, just a break from the football. And then we were off again, and suddenly, wonderfully, we were one up. The set-up made me crazy, the Recre forwards passing sideways in the box while I crowed "FUCKING HIT IT", not caring about sounding conspicuously English. It went in, though, and all was right with the world, and once the celebrations died down, that peculiarly deep tension-of-being-ahead-when-you're-not-supposed-to (I bet the Germans have a word for it) set in. It lasted all of fifteen minutes. Valencia bundled in a scrappy shit goal, finished by David Villa: you could complain about the quality, but at this point he already had 10 goals from 9 games, and it takes a pretty immovable object to deal with that sort of unstoppable force.

That, in the end, was it. A good result for Recre, and a deserved ovation for the players. My prediction of 0-0, 1-1 was bang on, and I think I'm gonna start playing the Quiniela - Spanish pools. I've got a feel for it. All fuzzy from lunchtime beers, I walked the half-hour home slowly, and didn't do any lesson planning. A good thing too, I reckon: the next week was insane, with an 8am cover and my stress-filled observation lesson, but I got through it. It seems better, so far, to push crazily through the week, one lesson after the next, always on short-term alert, and then have two days of genuine cooling-down. We'll see if this works, or if I blow a gasket by late November.

My-my-my Beautiful Neighbourhood.

2008-11-07T05:14:00.000-08:00

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?

Hello World.

2008-11-07T04:56:00.000-08:00

It's a good time to be alive right now, isn't it? It's like there's something in the air. After months of uncertain anticipation, it's finally happened; hope has arrived. One man, with the backing of millions, has written his name in the annals of history, and now holds the power to change the world. Yes: I've started a blog.

Oh, and some American dude won a vote. He seems pretty cool.

Anyway, here's the lowdown: In September I moved to Huelva, a small city on the South coast of Spain, to teach English in a language school for the next nine months. I started writing potential blog updates in the front room of my flat, listening to conversations from the popular local bar on the floor below, and scratching the fuck out of endless mosquito bites on my left shoulder (always the left: what's wrong with my right arm? Has it gone off?). It's taken longer than I'd hoped to get online, though, and right now I'm using the wi-fi (pronounced "whiffy" over here, to my childish amusement) in the public library. Never mind, this blog's officially on the go now, and I'll try to drop in the early updates I've saved once in a while alongside new entries.

I'll do my best to give a bit of insight on life here in Spain, without being pretentious ("one man's attempts to swim in a strange stream and cross cultural boundaries", and all that) or boring ("I had some nice tapas last night", etc.). I'll also be talking some bollocks about the books I've read, the games I've played, the TV I've been watching, but you can always skip those bits if you want.

Either way, I'll be really, genuinely happy if you take the odd few minutes a week to read it. In fact, as I'm a teacher, you can have a shiny gold star if you bookmark this blog. And if you're all computer-clever and subscribe to it (there's a little RSS thing on the left there), you can have two gold stars, and you get to go first when we play hangman at the end of the lesson.