By Emma Graham-Harrison

Buñol, Spain - Tons of flying tomatoes streaked the streets of Buñol red and left 20 000 visitors wallowing in a pond of pulped fruit as the tiny Spanish town celebrated the world's largest food fight on Wednesday.

Locals boarded up windows and locked their doors as drunk but determined revellers donned goggles to prepare for the arrival of six trucks carrying 130 tons of the edible missiles that give the annual "Tomatina" festival its name.

The red frenzy began in 1944, when bored doctor Paco Garces Sanchez and some friends tried to throw tomatoes into the trumpet of a passing musician. The next year they pelted balloons launched for the town fiesta.

"The year after that we decided not to wait for balloons or anything, we all set out with our tomatoes... but the mayor got very angry and called the Civil Guard," Garces told Reuters.

The hour-long pelting session on Wednesday turned the town square into a mass of slimy bodies, with some paddling in a waist-high pool of frothy tomatoes.

"It's fantastic, the most fun I have ever had. I've been waiting for this day since January," pulp-smeared Irish tourist Clarissa Hills shouted as tomatoes whizzed past her head.

The festival was banned in 1948 after an unlucky government official arrived in the town 40km west of Valencia on Tomatina day and was greeted by a hail of tomatoes. Grieving residents held a symbolic funeral for their festival by burying a giant tomato.

"All Bunol came along, dressed in black. There was a procession with a band at the front playing funeral marches and a band at the back playing paso dobles (festival music)," Garces said.

The mayor eventually relented and agreed to reinstate the festival.

But not all Buñol is happy with a fiesta that costs the town nearly €50 000 and attracts a flood of heavy-drinking outsiders.

Garces said its growing popularity has ruined some of the fun. "Now you can't even throw a tomato, there is no room to aim because people are right on top of each other," he said.

Younger locals also worry about foreigners' techniques.

"People from outside don't know how to throw them; you have to squash them first so they don't hurt when they hit," said Irene Recueroaquila, 18, a student from Buñol.

And some tourists were overwhelmed by the mess.

"This is absolutely disgusting, I wish I had never come. I hate tomatoes," said 23-year-old Australian tiler Joel Gorth.

"I'm never eating a tomato again," said 26 year-old London lawyer Laura Janes, pulling seeds from her hair.

I spent yesterday in Ronda. It was a hot day, 42º, and I wanted to get some high contrast photo’s with deep shadows. I took masses of pics but didn’t like any of them when I uploaded them. Oh well, some you win, some you lose. This is the only one I liked and there’s not a shadow to be seen. Looking at this pic I can imagine somebody swaying home in the small hours, huge key held out, closing one eye to get the key into the lock…and missing.

Some friends visited for a couple of days, and having heard about the fantastic hostal we have here in the village they were keen to stay there (or maybe they’d heard about the lousy service at Palacio Andaloo, I don’t know). Anyway, I booked them in and the guy on the phone asked me what time they’d be arriving. I said “around mid-day.” A bit of background info is needed here before I go on…(take notes, I will be testing you later). In Spain (or at least here in Andalucia) morning ends at 2/2.30pm, and lunch (mid-day) is between then and 5.30pm when the afternoon starts. So “around mid-day” is a fixed expression to mean any time from say, 2pm and 6pm. (OK, you can put your pens down now.)

I dropped my friends off at the hostal at 5.30pm and went to park the car. When I joined them at the reception desk things were looking ugly. They’d given their room away to somebody else and were saying they didn’t have another room for them. Seeing as my friends don’t speak Spanish and the receptionist didn’t speak English I asked them all to tell me what had been said. It appeared the problem was that they hadn’t checked in on time. Anybody reading this who knows me will know that I hate confrontation and will go out of my way to avoid it. Yes, I AM that man who will eat a bad meal in a restaurant and when the waiter asks “is everything OK?” – will reply “oh yes, it’s lovely thank you.” But this was different. I drew myself up to my whole 5’6’’ (such a distinguished height dontcha think?) and asked the receptionist in my bestest formal Spanish what time mid-day was? He shrivelled. To cut a long story short; they got a suite, we all got an apology and they were treated very well during their stay. So the question is, was it a language/cultural thing or was it because I went all Uma (well as close to Uma as I’m likely to get)?

Interesting what you can achieve when you make people believe you’re confident.

Life in the land of Andaloo has been busy recently, but a good busy. We’ve been out exploring and found some fantastic places close to our new home. We finally got to visit the next village to ours, I know that sounds lame but until now life’s been full of work and we never quite managed to make the time to get there. It’s amazing. Imagine this; a castle sits on top of a high hill and within the castle walls is a small village. Chicken soup for the soul.

I’ve also been busy getting Palacio Andaloo ready for two special visitors. This time next week I’ll be at the airport meeting my two sisters. Little sister is (as I type) winging her way from Australia to UK to join forces with big sister before coming here. We meet every two years and this is the first time that it’s been in Spain. The floors are waxed, the freezer is full and the other Mr. Andaloo is under strict instruction not to say “oh no, not that old story yet again!”

I think we can safely say all is well in the land of Andaloo.

For the first time in my life I recently developed a belly, a big(ish) white belly. I decided to do something about it over the summer.

I now have a big brown belly.  :roll:

Something which Lynne posted reminded me of my first trip to USA.

I was travelling alone, in my early twenties and going to New York. After disembarking I joined a queue at immigration and waited. And waited. Eventually I got to the front of the queue, handed over my passport and visa and the woman behind the desk asked “moustache?” On my passport photo I had a moustache, but had since shaved it off. “When did you shave it off?” she asked. “I don’t know, maybe a couple of years ago” I replied. She looked into my eyes and snarled “go to the back of the queue and think about it”. A policeman was standing close listening to this so I turned to him, he just shrugged and moved me out of the queue. I queued again. An hour later I was at the desk again. “So” she said, “have you thought when the moustache came off?” “Yes” I lied, I shaved it off two years ago”. She stamped my papers and told me to sit by an office, “we’d like to ask you some questions” she said, and kept my passport. I waited for three hours, constantly asking officials what was happening, nobody could tell me. Eventually the woman who had held back my passport got up from her desk and was replaced by somebody else, it appeared her shift was finished. She came over to me, took my passport from her pocket and told me I could now go. I stopped a policeman and asked him where I go to complain about the way I’d been treated. His advice was “if I were you I’d get out of here while you still can.” As I turned to walk away he shouted “oh, and welcome to America, the greatest country in the world!”

Watching me watching you.

I said recently that I didn’t have a tele’, that’s not entirely true. I have got one, but it doesn’t have an antenna because, well because Spanish television is crap. I wanted to see the opening ceremony of the Olympic games, but didn’t trust any of the online sites offering coverage. That was when I remembered I had some wire in a box up on the roof. So, it was a bit “Heath Robinson” but it worked! Actually, the wire coiled across one room and into the next, hung from a wall light to the window and finished life in a window box full of spider plants. But it worked.

Wasn’t the ceremony fantastic! Well, what I saw between the ad’s was. For every fifteen minutes of coverage there were twenty minutes of adverts…which interestingly were all for cars. Anyway, I thought it was excellent. Watching the athletes enter the stadium was interesting. Some country's athletes looked stately and proud, others looked like they were having such a good time and the Spanish were ALL on their cell phones! We thought it was really funny and SO typical, but the Spanish commentator thought it was shameful. I admit, I thought it was a bit much when you saw Queen Sophia and The Infanta  Christina waving at the team and they all waved back while talking on their phones, but hey, it just goes to show that NOTHING comes between a Spaniard and their cell phone!

I was completely confident that the Greeks would come up with the goods and have everything finished in time for the start of the Olympics. Their approach might be different, but not only was I confident they’d get there I’m also sure it will be spectacularly successful. Seeing as I don’t have a television I’ll be relying on watching Olympic highlights online, I think the BBC are covering it. The one thing I’d like to watch live is the opening ceremony. I’ve watched events online with “Tiscali” before and have to say the quality was poor. Does anybody know of a site showing the opening ceremony live online?

Yesterday was the other Mr. Andaloo’s birthday and he wanted to stock up on some new books. After an early start we headed off to Fnac (a brilliant store, but sadly a four hour round drive) to re-stock our book shelves. Amongst others I managed to get a copy of The Da Vinci Code so as to keep up with S of P’s cultural clippings.

Some friends said that seeing as we were spending the morning choosing English books they’d do an English dinner for us. It was a lovely evening, but OMG I felt like I’d eaten a house brick after. I know English food isn’t exactly up there with Haute Cuisine but there are a few gems to be had. Honest. So, we ploughed through shepherd’s pie (complete with onion gravy), apple crumble with thick custard and birthday cake. *rubs belly and groans* It was JUST like being back at school!

It’s a standing joke that I’m dangerous with Money. I never know how much I have in my wallet, I couldn’t tell you how much a cup of coffee costs. I leave such details to others while I blindly stroll through life getting ripped off at every turn. I’m happy in the twilit financial ignorance that is my life, or was till this morning. We received a telephone bill. I heard the other (present) Mr. Andaloo say “wow that’s cheap, we obviously didn’t call many people over the last couple of months.” The bill was for €69. I started reading through it and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The calls came to a total of €9, the rest, a massive €60 was line rental and tax. I had NO idea!

Some friends have bought an apartment on the coast as an investment. It’s in a beautiful gated community with all the trimmings, and the idea is to rent it out for holidays. They decided to furnish it on the cheap and keep the rental low hoping that they’d get more bookings, and if anything was broken it could be replaced easily. I thought it more astute to furnish it with “better” things and charge more. (It should be said that money isn’t an issue.) My argument was that if people have paid more for their holiday and the accommodation is of a better standard they would be more likely to respect it. We agreed to disagree.

This morning we went trudging round looking at electrical appliances for the apartment. In one shop (a pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap type place) I heard an English voice and as always my ears did that radar thing. There was a man looking at cheap DVD players and he wanted to know if the instructions were in English. I said seeing as English was one of the languages used on the box chances were that it would be the same for the instructions. He chuntered something about not parting with his money till he was sure, and started slashing at the box with a key to try and open it. I offered to go and find an assistant, but he carried on. Sure enough there was the unmistakable sound of metal key scraping plastic. With absolutely NO embarrassment what-so-ever he just put the box down, picked up a new one and started slashing at it.

I wonder if he’d have done the same thing if he’d been in Bang & Olufsen?