Well, everything went smoothly at the wedding. I woke up the following day and only felt embarrassed about two things, not bad for me.

If a cake is decorated with flowers you’d expect them to be made of sugar wouldn’t you? It wasn’t until I’d crunched it up that I realised it was plastic. Oh well, an easy enough mistake to make so I surreptitiously emptied my mouth into a Kleenex, hopefully nobody noticed. Later though there was an announcement, “the caterers are missing a blue plastic flower, can everybody please look for it because it has to go onto another cake tomorrow.” I pretended to look for it along with everybody else. Later still I was talking to the groom and he told me that the caterers were really upset about the missing flower because it was so expensive. I decided to own up. I had a quiet word with a stern looking woman and to my horror she announced “it’s OK everybody, the mystery of the flower has been solved. This man ate it.” Ugh.

Why is it that after a few drinks I think I can dance? As if that wasn’t enough, I (wrongly) think I dance really well. I’m not going to go into details, suffice to say had we been allowed more time I would have got her leg onto my shoulder.

I stumbled across a site today advertising a couple of water mills for rent. Below is an extract from the page.

In the South of Spain, in a lost valley between Ronda's mountains and Grazalema, next to Gibraltar, in a beautiful landscape   and crossing a  hanging    bridge  very long, we offer you two old completely restored Mills of Water, one of them (the Flower  that gives the name to the whole group) leaning in  the remains of a Roman bridge, both with the water happening  under theirs and front the rapids of a mountain river, sportsman paradise, fishermen, environmentalist and also for golf 's lovers.

(…)To enter it is indispensable to know the access key that you need to open the grate in an automatic way. This road allows to arrive in car until the same door of the mills, but IF you doesn't HAVE VERTIGO  we recommend other, using a clearing in the forest adapted for parkings that exist in the other bank and  crossing a  HANGING BRIDGE. It is not necessary to arrive to the town or the station. In the crossing, continue for Cortes of the Frontier, and less than a kilometer, passing a camping previously, and looking to the river,  you will see our entrance very signalled with a poster in a post and two mill wheels, and after the door -that only opens if you knows the key - and you will see the parkings.

We NOTICE YOU THAT IF YOU HAS VERTIGO TO THE HEIGHTS, you won't BE ABLE TO to PASS THE BRIDGE,   it is VERY HIGH AND VERY LONG (about 60 metres)  AND IT MOVES VERY MUNCH, it is similar to the of Indiana Jones, but in sure, -always that you doesn't make foolishness -.

KITCHEN’S SERVICE

(…)The property only offers lodging, but the ladies who do the cleaning to us are housewives of the place and like such magnificent cooks. Directly contact with them -tfno 952 …, and the international prefix,  Mrs. Paca, only in spanish- and say that kitching for all the group a big “paella” or some typical spanish meat to them and that soon leaves all clean one and gathered.

Time’s been a bit short lately so I haven’t been able to post or read as often as I’d have liked. Hopefully I’ll get some catch-up reading done today.

We’ve had loads of weather over the last couple of days, or to be meteorologically correct, more rain than you can shake a stick at. It’s desperately needed, we haven’t had any since May so you can almost hear the fields sighing. It’s great to see the first rain wash all the dust off the houses so we return to living in a “white village” again rather than a red one.

I had one of “those” phone calls the other day, the type where somebody says “hello, is that Andaloo? You don’t know me, but I need to ask you a few questions.” It turned out to be a florist in UK who is doing the flowers for Jenny’s wedding next week. In true Jenny style it was far too easy to have the flowers done locally, so to make life as difficult as possible they’re being done in UK and a wedding guest is bringing them over. This florist had been given my number because Jenny’s outfit is being held here and he wanted to know what colour it is.

Me: (thinking “WTF…”) Oh, it’s a sort of sludgy greeny brown.

Him: Can you be a tad more specific sir?

Me: (looking at outfit through squinting eyes) Mushrooms?

Him: Mushrooms?

Me: Well, somewhere between a mushroom and a camel.

Him: That’s hardly helping sir. Those shades are poles apart.

Me: (thinking “if you were here and I had a pole I know what I’d do with it you pompous little shit”) Gerbil? Sorry, I’m clearly not very good at this. Can I send you a photograph?

Problem solved…I hope.

Later I had a call from Jenny.

Her: Expect a call from a florist.

Me: I’ve had it. He sounded like he was called Tarquin.

Her: What?

Me: Doesn’t matter, it’s all sorted, but how do you feel about getting married while holding a gerbil?

I was getting dressed yesterday and through the open window I could hear the local kids walking to school. There was a tiny little voice which kept saying “one, two, three…one, two, three…one, two, three.” I looked out to see a boy so small his mother was carrying his school bag for him. Their conversation went like this;

Her: “You are so Clever! Miss Pilar will be very impressed, but can you remember what comes after three?”

Him: “Seventeen.”

Her: (Laughing) Not really. Try four. One, two, three, four.”

Him: “One, two, three, seventeen, four. That’s what Miss Pilar said.”

They both walked past laughing, and I carried on getting ready with a big smile on my face. I had to work through the siesta so came home early for a quick snack. I could hear the kids coming out of school and making the usual excited din, but slowly getting closer was one kid who definitely wasn’t happy. As the wailing got louder I recognised the same mother’s voice from the morning.

Her: “It doesn’t matter. Come on, you’ll feel better when you’ve had some lunch.”

Him: (Now sobbing) “I hate that Miss Pilar, she thinks she knows everything.”

Today’s a public holiday here, Day Of Spain. Why is it that on a normal working day I feel I could stay in bed all morning and there never seems to be enough hours in the day to get done what I want to do? But, this morning I was wide awake at the crack of dawn, actually a while before dawn so I at least got the below photo. I always think it’s a bit of a waste to use a public holiday to catch up on all the things waiting to be done, it should be time to be a lush. Hmm, what to do? I think we’ll go to the coast for breakfast and just see what happens from there. The Town Hall will be closed so we can’t get into too much trouble…can we?

Thanks to everybody who took the time to enter the story in a sentence competition, and for those who didn’t, you’ll be getting a visit in the wee small hours.  I just hope the words “bat” and “nightdress” fill you with dread! Nuff said.

In the name of fairness it was decided to have two categories, short and long sentences. We have two winners in the short sentence category. CONGRATULTIONS to the mysterious “The Jongleur” who is clearly a bit of a wordsmith on the quiet.

He wrote;  After which he took off all his clothes, except for his socks, and strutted back and forth across the road, shouting incomprehensibly until the police arrived.

And the other winner is Ms. Jellybean herself, “TorryGirl”.

She wrote; All night long in the sleazy, smoke-filled bar, the fat man handed out his number and only left at sunrise, devastatingly alone.

The winner of the long sentence is…….how exciting is this….Ms.”VodkaB”.

She wrote; Once a while ago, I knew a crow who wouldn't stop pecking and stealing various objects such as clothes pegs (our washing dropped to the floor) and other items which eventually got him into a lot of trouble with a woman down the lane who decided to clip his wings, but didn't succeed because he flapped furiously into her face, which in turn brought the cops running to the house to find out what the commotion was all about only to find that the woman had had her eyes pecked out by the crow and they (sadly) decided to shoot the crow down but before they could do so, it landed on one of the cops shoulder and dropped a key they had been searching for a long time which was a final clue to a mysterious murder that occurred very close by so that feathered fiend eventually became quite a town hero and everyone was content when he was given the prize of being a honorary member of the local zoo.

CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU ALL!!!

N.B. The judge’s decision is final. The prize is none returnable in part or full.

Whoever gets home first cooks dinner here in Palacio Andaloo. I got home late last night after a couple of days away, and dinner was under way. “It’s just something bland”, said Paul, and I remembered it was Friday. The caterers at Paul’s school often have “surprise” on the menu for Friday lunch. In other words they wing it with whatever ingredients they have left over from the week. Yesterday they served up fish wrapped in ham and cheese, with mashed potatoes and salads. My stomach turned at the thought of it. “Oh it gets worse. One of the salads was cucumber in yoghurt, but either they didn’t check the yoghurts or they went all out for the surprise factor…the yoghurt was banana flavour.”  Its always good to come home after time in the real world.

I seem to have lots going on at the moment. My brother and his wife have just moved to Spain so I’ve been helping them out. I’m going tomorrow for a couple of days to help them move into their new home. They’re like a couple of kids with new shoes, I like that. Some friends got married in the summer and recently got their photo’s back. They’re terrible. I went round to mop her up and see the photo’s for myself. She’s right, having spent a LOT of money you don’t expect to see badly taken photo’s with tops of heads missing. I’ve offered to take them away and play around with them in photoshop. I didn’t expect to be handed all two hundred though! Oh well, that should keep me out of trouble for a while.

Other friends are getting married in a few weeks, (Must be something in the water) and knowing how good we are at organising these things (snort) they’ve roped us in. Jenny popped round the other evening to give us a private viewing of “the outfit” and asked if she could leave it here seeing as she’s getting ready here on the day. Something which had never occurred to me before (for obvious reasons) is that women’s clothes don’t fit into men’s wardrobes. Our wardrobes have two rails, one above the other, for shirts and trousers and therefore the outfit wouldn’t hang in them. The only place it could go was behind the bedroom door. I know my cats, they’d love to climb up this new toy, so they’re banned from the bedroom for the next three weeks. They spent the whole of yesterday on patrol outside the bedroom.

As if having the whole household on outfit crisis alert wasn’t enough, Jenny’s given me another little job. She’s bought this thing, I don’t know if it has a name but it’s basically a bundle of unnecessary fluff, feathers and petals. Part of it is going to be pinned to the outfit so that that little thing the rest of us recognise as gravity doesn’t interfere with the way it hangs, and the rest will go into her hair. “So you’re asking me to spend a couple of days painstakingly taking this thing apart and then reassembling the bits into two things?” “Yup.” Oh well, it looks like I’m going to be kept out of trouble for the foreseeable future.

It was a warm spring day, Easter Monday 2002. We were gardening and decided to stop for a while and have a drink. We’d been talking a lot to friends who had become legal couples and were thinking about doing it ourselves, but wanted to know more. Seeing as Easter Monday isn’t a public holiday in Spain the Town Hall would be open, and seeing as we both had the day off we decided to go and ask some questions. Thinking we’d only be talking to somebody at the front desk we didn’t change, we did however take a file with copies of all our paperwork because it’s guaranteed you need it for everything here.

The Town Hall is huge, very Andaluz in design with a big central patio. The patio was packed with people shouting and waving their arms around, nobody was queuing so we pushed forward and finally got to the information desk. “Have you got any information on becoming a legal couple?” I shouted at the woman calmly smoking a cigarette.  “What?” “Have you got any information on becoming a legal couple?” I shouted louder. She stood up, and with ear splitting volume shouted into the middle distance “MARIA, THESE TWO MEN WANT TO GET MARRIED” The whole room fell silent and we looked on as they all turned as one, mouths open. From the far corner of the patio a voice shouted back “send them over here”. It was like the parting of the waves. The only sound to be heard was Gucci loafers on marble floor as they made way for us to cross the room.

“You’re in the wrong place” said Maria, “you need to go to this address”, and gave us a slip of paper with an address written on it. Off we went to find the address. The department we were looking for was “community services”, which we thought was a bit odd. We found it in a really dodgy part of town and thought there must have been some mistake. Outside the building were lots of Moroccan men in various states of consciousness. Paul was getting worried and I wasn’t helping matters because I was beginning to see the funny side of it. “This is a big mistake” he said, “come on, let’s go home”. “No, I’ve always wanted to see inside a drug rehabilitation centre!”

We rang the bell and the door opened automatically. A shutter opened and a woman’s eyes were visible. “I think we’ve been sent here by mistake, we’d like some information on becoming a legal couple”. The eyes lit up. “Really! Oh, erm, just a minute.” The shutter slammed closed and moments later a door was opened by a woman with the biggest smile I’d ever seen. “Follow me” she said as she unlocked another door. We were in a long corridor and the floor was littered with semi-conscious Moroccans. “Sorry about the mess” she said kicking bodies out of our way, “you see you are our first, er, ones.” By this point Paul was having apoplexies, but I was really starting to enjoy myself.

We sat in an office and waited. After a few minutes a very officious woman came in and said “I want copies of passports, residence permits and empadronamientos.” (I don’t know what that is in English.) As she was going through our papers I started to say “we’d like some information…..”, but she cut me off and asked “have you got any special requirements?” “Oh, well I don’t think so.” I looked at Paul and he was slowly shaking his head in that “I hope you know what you’re doing” way. “No, we don’t have any special requirements” I said. “Good, that makes it all straight forward. Please fill in this form.” I wrote both our names, address, date of birth and parent’s names. We both signed the bottom of the page.

“Congratulations” she said, “come back in a week and collect your certificate.” She left the room, I burst out laughing and Paul’s chin hit the floor. “Have we just done what I think we’ve just done?” – he managed to whisper. “Well” I said, ”either that or we’ve just signed up for a drug rehabilitation course.”

We went for a coffee to try and make sense of what had just happened. It was then we realised we were still in our gardening clothes, Paul’s shirt was missing buttons and I had muddy knees. Hey, when we do something we do it in style. There was only one thing left to do, organise a party.

OK, it’s now my turn to offload offer you the chance to win buckets full of t-bucks!

My challenge to you is to write a story in one sentence. The sentence can be as long or short as you please, but must be grammatically correct. Please send your entries by private message. The winner will be announced next weekend (Oct’ 9^th / 10^th). Good luck!

Who'd have thought, old Loops a prize winner!

First of all I'd like to thank my parents, without whom none of this would have been possible.....

...and of course I'd like to thank Nolan. (Bribing judges with promises of scorpions really does work.)

Gay marriage is something which has been scrutinised, applauded and ridiculed lately, but here’s my two centimos worth.

Today, gay marriage is made legal here in Spain. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will change ten items on the Civil Code in an attempt to give gay people equal rights. He says, “nobody living in this country should ever feel like a second class citizen.” Of course the Catholic Church is beside itself and condemned the decision, saying “…it’s like unleashing a virus on the country”. Well Mr. J.P. II, it seems the people of Spain don’t agree with you because 75% are in favour of the changes. Although gay marriage is legal in Germany, Netherlands and Sweden, Spain is the first country to give FULL recognition to gay couples. I for one feel that’s something to be proud of, especially in a country where divorce was legalised as recently as 1981.

My partner and I became a “legal couple” last year, and although this gave us many more legal rights (and a hoolie  of a party) we are still exempt from others unless we actually get married. So, just like straight people we now have a choice…it’s THAT simple.

Choice may not seem like a big deal to somebody who already has it, but for those who don’t it’s something to treasure.  Today is a great day in the world of Andaloo!