Another barnet blog

So that’s it - the Spanish course is over.  For this last week we’ve had a couple of new starters in our class.  It’s a mother and daughter combo from Switzerland.  The daughter studied Spanish at school so is very good but her mum is absolutely rubbish bless her. She has got a rather marvelous mullet haircut though so wins exta brownie points for that.  She looks a bit like Chris Waddle circa 88.

Her husband is a bit of a legend too - he used to be a giant slalom skier for Switzerland back in the day.  I suppose that’s the skiing equivelent of playing football for Brazil.  You want to see the bloke’s legs man - they’re huge - like a couple of tree trunks.  They make mine look like a pair of twiglets or summat.  And my legs aren’t shabby either.  In fact a physiotherapist once commented on the nice definition of my calves.  It was in the line of work you understand - not in a pub or sleazy nightclub or anything.  Like a mechanic admiring a nice car. He liked my calves in a purely platonic way. I accepted the compliment and we moved on. 

Anyway I digress.  So we’re off for a few drinks with everyone at the school tonight and tomorrow we head up to Granada to check out the Alhambra and for me to try and talk a couple of stoner DJ’s from the Afrodesia club into coming over to the White Isle in the summer to spin a few at Los Fab.  We’re taking the Jameater & the Wag along for the ride too so it promises to be good fun.  Then we’ve got a monster drive on Sunday up to Denia where we catch the ferry to Ibiza. 

It’ll be about then when it starts to get serious. 

Un abrazo!!
Mr B

 

Baldilocks and the three hairs…

So this is our last week in Almeria.  I honestly don’t know where the time has gone.  We’ve been so engrossed in learning how to speak ‘el lingo’ that it only seems like yesterday when we landed.

The course has been brilliant though - the amount of Spanish we have picked up is unbelievable.  I’m nearly fluent while Mrs B can count up to five and has mastered asking for a coffee in our local caff.  Good work!

Mrs B is in the doghouse actually.  I asked her to shave my head yesterday and she forgot to put the plastic thing on the clippers.  So I’m currently sporting a grade zero ‘Jarhead’ style buzzcut.  My head looks like a huge scotum.  Well it always looks like a huge scrotum, but now it’s like the scrotum of a homosexual who gets his knackers waxed regularly. 

The wind has gone too and the weather is gorgeous. In fact Mrs B has greased herself up and is currently basting her milky torso on The Jameater’s patio. The sun is reflecting off her body so much peole must be thinking she’s putting on a laser show or summat.  Seriously you can see it in space…

So only four more days before we head off to Ibiza.  We’ve got a 300 mile drive up to Denia though and I’m hoping our new shitmobile car can manage it.  I still can’t believe how expensive second-hand cars are over here.  Seriously I reckon you could barely give our Citroen Saxo away in the UK.  If it does get us there though I’ll treat it to a few pints of oil and some lovely fluffy dice for the rear-view mirror.  It’ll definitely deserve it.

Here’s a picture of our new car ‘The Beast Mk III’. 

 

 

 

 

Photos of Almeria

That feckin wind.

You can see Aguadulce in the distance. This is about half way on our daily bike ride back from school and the spot where Mr B thinks he might have sniffed a sickly spore.

Mr B’s nude sunbathing clears the beach at Roquetas.

The Jameater runs this monstrosity. It’s called the C6 and lays oil and gas pipelines under the sea. It’s in Almeria port at the moment and the local fishermen hate it. 

 

 

 

The Ring of Fire

There’s a strong wind that blows through Almeria at this time of year that the locals blame for any number of ills. Seriously any kind of illness (including the Big C, Parkinson’s Disease or a pimple on your backside) and it’s the wind’s fault.  Miss the bus, buy a losing lottery ticket or lose the receipt for something you need to take back to the shop?  Yeah you guessed it - that feckin’ wind…

Anyway as I was laughing at the locals and their arcane superstitions about natural phenemonen I was struck down with the worst stomach bug I’ve had since an unfortunate encounter with a Mexican hot-dog back in 91. 

Seeing as I had to be within six feet of a toilet for the weekend The Jameater, Wag and Mrs B went out while I watched an entire series of Rome.  The scenes of torture, degradation and suffering on the screen were then relived by my arse thrice hourly in the Jameater’s toilet. 

So back at college today and the bloke who owns the school is asking me where I thought I had caught the bug.  Did I say dodgy seafood or bad tapas?  Did I hell - in all honestly and with total seriousness I blamed that feckin wind for blowing some nasty spores into the air.  On hearing this Graham just laughed and said - “It’s only been a fortnight and you’re going native already.”  I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed by such a quick assimilation…

 

 

 

 

On the buses

It’s nice to know that wherever you go in the world bus drivers are all miserable gits. They are equally as rude, impatient and unhelpful in Almeria as they were in London.

Mr B and I have had a bit of bother getting to grips with the buses. Timetables are as rare as hen’s teeth and even then they only show the setting-off time, so you have to guess when the bus is going to turn up. So, after many a wasted hour sat with the local old folks - who seem to be the only people who catch the damn things - we’ve decided to get bikes.

My backside is absolutely killing me. Mr B is walking like John Wayne and it’s only the second day we’ve ridden to and from school. It’s SO windy at the moment we’ve had a few hairy moments involving a huge gust of wind and an equally huge lorry. Still biking down the beach everyday beats standing on the side of the road for hours like an idiot.

The other thing we’ve found out about Spanish transport is that second-hand cars cost a small fortune.  It’s totally unbelievable considering every car here has at least two dents and is covered in a thick layer of sand and dust. We’ve got our eye on a little green banger that costs over 1,000 euro. Even so, hopefully we’ll get it because if we don’t and I have to keep biking everyday I could end up being squashed by a bus. 

The Jameater & The Wag

So we’ve landed in Spain.  We’re staying in a place called Aguadulce (just around the coast from Almeria) while we do an intensive Spanish course for a month. 

Our mate, ‘The Jameater’, and his lovely girlfriend, ’The Wag’, are very kindly putting us up while we are here.  The Jameater has some cushy job installing a pipeline between Spain and Algeria for the next 12 months. Knowing him though he’ll get the maps mixed up and it’ll end up in Armenia instead or summat.

The Wag has a much harder time of it.  Basically she’s in charge of bossing The Jameater around and making sure he has a clean pair of undercrackers for work every morning.  Hey it sounds like an easy job but you haven’t seen the state of his undercrackers.  You could stage the world cross country championships in them I reckon.

We had our first Spanish lesson today. Mrs B is struggling with it.  The teacher was close to making a cone shaped hat with ‘El Numpto’ written on it at one point.

Good job I was superb.  The teacher even said that not only did I look like Antonio Banderas but I spoke his native tongue like him too.  Well that’s what I think she said - her accent was a bit hard to decipher.

What?