Madrid Teacher

Each of the following photos means something to me this week. I cant set the date on the camera so they appear 1 year old but believe me they are not. i tried to read the booklet but it is real technobabble

Valencia - the beach (i soooo miss the beach)

Toledo photos three cultures inhabited this town side by side (what happened in last 700 years?)

Finally Toledo with a little bit of Alcala. Cervantes belongs to Alcala. I half expect to see a statue of either Quixote or cervantes in Jaen next time we go. (By the way that is not me on the photo next to Cervantes that is some poor German who got caught in the photo, truely he wouldn´t move.) I am a bit slimmer that that (only just).

Had a wonderful week. Visted Toledo, bought a cervantes fan in Toledo (must be loyal to Alcala), and the obligatory 20 post card set ( I have to rely on these because for some reason I never get round to getting my digital photos developed). Family have been over so stocked up on the English essentails and had a Internet free week, infact the screen looks a bit fuzzy now. Had a marcha english style which ended up at 10am sunday morning covered in Chocolate and thrown out of the chocletria or churriaria or what ever its called, but no benidorm style fighting, I think we could be called good ambassadors for the UK, we even circulated about 400 euros into the Spanish economy which is good news for me (I will hopefully recieve my pension here so lets bulge those tax receipts)

I have been eating salads for a week, only drank once and I have gained two kilograms. God knows what that is in lbs. I have forgotten. Although when shopping alone ( the latest cultural reference I could get a book out of this) I still say a kilogram for all fruit and vegetables because I still think in lbs. Who would have thought that measurement could be so much trouble.

Living abroad had many advantages, and living in Spain many more (obviously civil service, politicians and drivers not included in this brief appraisal of the pursuit of happiness), however not being near my English family is at times very very difficult, although I am lucky with my Spanish family. I have a family visit next week so our pre-visit conversations revolve around what I want bringing over from the UK. My usual list includes:

• OXOs ( I went wild last year and asked for Lamb OXOs)
• Private Eye magazine (makes me realise that Spanish politicos have their English Cousins - have you noticed that it is always the English MPs who are dodgy) A good blog for this is guido fawkes
• Spectator (for balance and Linda Ross´s restaurant reviews)
• A copy of the Daily Telegraph ( I need to know what to think for the next few weeks especially because it winds up one of my colleagues)
• A bottle of English Wine ( Three Choirs - so I can pretend that the UK can have good weather in which grapes can thrive and we are civilised enough to make wine plus its always good for presents) However in the morning you do pay the price.
• Sweet and Sour sauce mixes ( I know... but I still adore Uncle bens, and R and our Spanish friends always believe that I have made it my self)
• Curry sauce for my colleague I try to wind up ( this is my penance)
• Midget gems (these are ostensibly for R but I usually eat half)
• the latest Rebus episode (which my mum invariably forgets to tape)
• free DVDs from the newspapers ( a major tick on the plus side for Rupert Murdoch)

If the truth be known the best thing they bring is themselves ( but I do love my OXOs)

A link to my family tree website. It isn´t completed yet but adding a bit at a time. Be patient it will be completed soon but as I have found out doing this tree there are new additions all the time.

www.geocities.com/gloverfamilytree

Nothing much as happened today, at the moment listening to Robin Williams, note Robin not Robbie.

Saturday drove into Madrid to see The Wind that Shakes the Barley, booked the tickets online and then took two hours to find parking, then decided to drive back home for a Chinese takeaway, you know where you are with a Chinese takeaway, safe, secure and guarenteed to taste nice if drank in conjunction with wine, on sunday tried again, caught the wrong tube so we ended up arriving late, stressed and sweaty. When we arrived the intro music had started and our seats were in the middle of the back row (we are sooo romantic) (well every six months anyroad), Soon as I started to scramble over the people sat in the first few seats I needed the loo, so went out and visted the throne room, came back in got to my seat and realised phone had fallen on the floor, which I hadn´t switched off, so spent next two hours hoping no-one would call, because if it had gone off it would belt out some horrible europop and I would have to crawl on the floor searching for it. It didn´t so I didn´t.

However it was an excellent film, and I suppose my elephantine trumbling over filmgoers wasn´t so out the ordinary, on a recent visit to the cinema I sat between people smoking pot and a baby screaming. Well it was King Kong

Barajas airport won the RIBA award for making the greatest contribution to architecture in britian this year. Its great news for Madrid. Architecture in Spain from Roman to modern is enough to make anys mouth water if your into buildings. You only have to wander around Valencia to agree with this. Barajas is one of the mini city airports where one wrong turning can lead to another wrong turning but the new building is pretty impressive.

So now Britiain has given this award maybe my Spanish friends might be a bit more resonable on Gibraltar. Personally I dont care that much about Gibraltar but its a great argument starter.

The only misgiving I have is that the Airline that sounds like sleazy get (who still owe me two hundred euros by the way) will probably have a good press realease out of this as they are making it their second base in Europe.

As you can proably guess from the time of this message I haven´t done the marcha. Went into Madrid literally couldn´t find parking for two hours so drove back home. R is in foul moo and it is really their fault. I wanted to catch the bus but for su señoria this is way too common (this coming from someone who thinks its perfectly fine to trump while watching TV)

Today was wonderful, hardly any traffic (although I had to go to work when the rest of the population had an extra day off) It took me 6 minutes to leave AdH today a magnificent saving of 24 minutes. This gift from the Gods enabled me to have a coffee in a real cafe before the starting gun. It is moments like this when I am glad to be in Spain.

Zapatero had a soundbite today in Que, it was a vox box on leadership, he prattled on about democracy obviously not reflecting on the chaos that is the planning system here. A local council can sell land right up to the border of another council area for any purpose not taking into account what the other council wants to do, there are some exceptions but they dont seem to be put into practice. Although I like Zapatero, it must be asked how can people vote for a Mr Bean lookalike, but then again the previous primeminister looked like a waiter from Duty Free.

Forgot to write about two other bits of good news.

Firstly the new series of operacion triumfo is on (pop idol but in Spanish) and Pupillo is still in GH and looked rather Bondesque when he was trying to climb a wall today.

See the wine is starting to work

Having seen Sion Simons spoof of David Camerons blog today on youtube.com, I think it can be said without any doubt that the level of MP in Britain as reached rock bottom infact below the rock. This MP is an absolute lunatic. The links can be found here . watch it I actually don´t need to say more. When you think of the quality of politicians we used to have and reflect on the lack of quality we have now all I can say is something that sounds like kinell said very fast.

Spent a typical Spanish holiday afternon today, ate loads for lunch and shared a drink with friends. Its the first time I have drank in three weeks and was drunk after about two glasses.

My generous bosses are making myself and colleagues go into work tomorrow eventhough nearly 95% of the rest of the workforce in Spain is taking the puente. Is it me or have I earned the right to drink lots of wine today. The joys of working in Spain

Good news is that I have traced some of my family back to 1740, the surname was Bunce which is Anglo Saxon and means jolly. i wish my boss was a Bunce.

Today while visiting a medieval fair I saw a lady trying on a knights headwear which covered her face until her nose, was made of metal and transformed her appearence into that of Sir Lancelot, the seller said "how beautiful".

Driving to work today I think I discovered a plot by the local government. In Madrid I think it is a well known fact that when you have any of the three types of police or the mobility agents directing traffic it is a priori a means to increase traffic chaos. They just seem to make matters about ten times worse and in my participant observational research many of the drivers just ignore the mobility agents. These are people dressed in police uniform but without sidearms and they wave there arms around pretending that they are creating Assisian harmony Anyway back to the evil plot, they were all wearing face masks, this could be because of two things firstly they are all ugly or secondly the council wants to protect its workers but not its citizens. Lets liberate the mobility agents bring in road charging and let their faces be seen.

While getting my daily dose of UK news on the BBC website I found a great deputy leader for the Tories. He is also a Dave, but a Dave Clutterbuck. He said Noah wouldn´t let gay animals on the Ark (Clutterbucks views are about as old as the Ark) but I think maniacs like this add a certain j´ne se qua to politics. Even better was the Liberal response , that was to send him on a diversity course.

Before I start this I must make clear why I have to use the word disco instead of club, this is because club takes on a totally different meaning in Spain. I shall say no more except that if you go clubbing in spain be prepared to pay 100 euros for a drink and the afters mean that it usually something you light a cig up after or to put it another way a bit of hows your father.

Anyway I bought a foot spa with built in massager and bubbles. Its great it had engendered a whole new concept to watching cable TV, I can smoke and have my feet relaxed at the same time while watching TV. If this is not heaven then I don´t know what is. Do I prefer it to a disco. I am afraid the jury is out. Although the latest opinion poll is heavily moving towards foot fun.

The other bit of news is that I cannot possibly use my overseas vote for the tories. They support no frills airlines. Not only do these bastards ruin the environment, one of these scum bucket airlines owes me 200 euros. I shall not name it because the shits will probably sue me but it rhymes with sleazy get.