Ola Barcelona!

The Brat and I are on part 2 of our summer sojourn. And I am blogging from a dump of a net cafe in sunny Barcelona. It could all have been so different, as our route getting here was somewhat problematic.

Having returned from Norfolk on Monday, I was still in quite a laidback mood thinking I had three days to sort myself before travelling to Barca. On Tuesday evening a random thought occurred to me, I had booked our accomodation for four nights, but if we were leaving on Wednesday, then that would only be three. It was a classic Goldilocs ´I fucked up´ moment. But what´s travelling without a little pre-flight drama!

I checked the booking confirmation and lo and behold, it revealed our flight was indeed the following morning and we needed to haul ass quicktime to get it together.

Thanks to a withdrawal from the Bank of the Bobo Dread - my funds were still sitting in my savings account - we were able to actually leave the country with some money...or else we might have ended up as the main attraction on Las Ramblas as the busking duo from London singing and bodypoppin for our 20 euro supper.

We flew Ryanair which thankfully was not as bad as I anticipated, just the fact that it was a 6am flight meant no sleep all night as we had to get a coach to Stansted which was full of similarly sleep-deprived people.

We arrived in Barcelona to rain. Not an auspicious start, but of course it didn´t last. A bit of guide book reading revealed our cheap digs near the centre are situated in the local red light district. And I thought it was bohemian.

This being Spain though, it´s not too seedy, and you just see a few ladies of the night dotted about. To be honest they wear more clothes than you see on girls going out for the night in London. Although the he/she´s look a bit more conspicous. Clarke said they wore too much make-up which gave them away!

This being one of Europe´s cultural capital´s we looked at our itinerary and decided our first stop would be....FC Barcelona for the stadium tour. Well it is really Clarke´s holiday and that´s what she wanted to do. I was pretty bored after 15 minutes. It´s like a football Disneyland, you get taken for a ride, posing for expensive photos with the trophy (which I had to buy) and deposited straight into the Barcelona store (two Barca footballs I had to buy). I was hoping that Ronaldinho would appear, but of course he didn´t although his mug was everywhere.

We´ve eaten a lot of tapas (don´t worry philistines they have Mickey Ds and KFC here too) and drunk lots of coffee. Even though I´m not a great fan of the Spanish (monkey noises during international football games....) Barcelona is a really great city.

White people scare me

I love the countryside. I think it's the fond memories I have of school trips to Beaconsfield, a big rambling house in the country, where we would stay for the weekend, enjoying long rambling muddy walks and awful dinners. We would sleep in dorms and spend most the night trying to sneak into the boys dorm. Ok that was me, and I would usually end up sharing a room with the female teacher after getting catch.

My friends think I am a bit of a white girl because I like going to the pub with my work and uni friends, and will stay all night rather than the two hour 'show ya face' period that they usually do. I usually end up with the world's worst hangover as I try and fail to keep up with the drinking and end up drinking all types of foolishness (apart from Sambuca which not even my drunk self will sup).

Last week we had a quiz night, with a free bar tab. Five hours of free drinks later I managed to get home via nightbus. The next day I had to take a cab to work as I was still so pissed I couldn't face the tube. I had my head in my hands, as I sat in front of my monitor trying to string a sentence together that I could not form. The Nurofen I ingested to take away the spinning head and dicky stomach decided it didn't want to play nicely with the alcohol still lining my gut, and I had to make a dash to the bog (toilet). Felt somewhat better after that.

Drinking and journalism go hand in hand - definitely hard to be teetotal in this game. And helps if you like one.

But as much as I love London, sometimes you need to get the fuck out of dodge. My daughter's on school holidays, and unless I'm home she has no business being on the streets of south London. A 16-year was shot and killed about ten minutes walks from my house. Things are not getting any better.

My deskmate 'EG'has kindly invited me to Norfolk for a few days to stay at her parents cottage. Now as 'white' as my friends say I am, I am only trying to go outside London with either white folk, or a group of black folk, cos I'm sorry, but white people in large numbers scare me. Its kinda the opposite of white people - who tend to be scared by small groups of black people, or just one. I feel more safe going abroad than going outside London, unless its Manchester - which is cool.

We're going to a nice village, where we'll spend some time by the seaside, visit some country pubs and go for long walks. Or if it rains, we'll just stay in and drink!
One of the things I like about going to the seaside is eating freshly cooked fish 'n' chips. Don't forget the mushy peas.

What can I say, I'm a UK Black!