A Million Reasons for Wanting to Carry on Living

1. There's no real point trying to anticipate her needs. During the summer heatwave, I put ice blocks in her cat kennel until it was cool, removed them and then placed her inside it. She was not at all interested, preferring instead to stretch in the shade, annoyed. She doesn't understand someone thinking she might want something. What she understands is that she asks for something and she then gets it (or not).
2. She may not understand empathy but she has created a semi-complex communication system with us. If she wants to go through an internal door she paws at it. But if she wants to go outside she scratches the carpet. If she's miaowing, it means she wants someone to play mouse with her. She doesn't scratch for that and she doesn't miaow for outside. When she wants food she just sits by her bowl looking hopeful, she doesn't miaow, scratch, or paw.
3. She doesn't understand weather and will miaow annoyedly when it's too hot and when it's raining as if we are Gods who can control heat and humidity.



4. She doesn't like new things at all until she is used to them. She is not particularly curious about things, neither does she knock things off shelves or Xmas trees.
5. I don't think cats are capable of love but she does seem to like us. She hangs out where we are even after she has eaten. She will wait politely outside the bedroom at 6 a.m. Sometimes when she has just started eating, she will leave the food to circle around my leg and then go back to the food, as if she's saying thanks. When she first started coming in the house, she would hiss or scratch if she didn't want to be stroked. Now she either moves away or puts a paw on your stroking hand and bats it away if she's not up for strokes.
6. I see her as an adorable little baby, her self image is of a fearsome huntress.
7. The office chair is her holy grail sleeping place.



8. She is not interested in being reassured. When another cat in the garden unsettles her or thunder frightens her, I pick her up and cuddle her. But she's only reassured by the absence of the scary thing. The best time for picking her up is when she's asleep as she's so relaxed she'll tolerate most things.
9. She's Pavlov's cat. I usually get up about 6 a.m. to use the loo, which is about the same time she wants her breakfast. So any time I go to the toilet, even if it's 2 a.m. she'll still want breakfast then, even though it's more of a midnight snack at that hour.
10. She's not that fussed about going outside, unless she spies another cat in the garden, then it's all Fuck you, mofo as she goes out to reclaim her territory like a child wanting to play with an unwanted toy when another toddler shows an interest in it.

1. LIFE - Moral Fibre. The best band of Rockaway Beach, Bognor. Art rock noise, insouciant 'tude and a Cocker of a singer.
2. Self Esteem - Girl Crush. The second best band at Rockaway Beach. An indie version of All Saints or Eternal.
3. Black Country New Road - Sunglasses. Another Rockaway Beacher. I almost walked out of their set when I heard the avant garde sax player, but a few more listens convinced me that they were actually geniuses. "I'm more than adequate! Leave Kanye out of it!"
4. International Teachers of Pop - After Dark. The Human League on MDMA
5. Soak - Everybody Loves You. The sweetest ache.
6. Baba Ali - House. I thought this was LCD Soundsystem or Chk Chk Chk when I first heard it, which is no bad thing
7. Warmduscher - Disco Peanuts. A song from all the clubs that I didn't go to. Nothing to do with Covid or lockdown: I'm 47.
8. Pottery - Texas Drums. Angular guitars, shouting vox, insistent hook; what the hell more do you want?
9. Ramones - I Wanna Be Sedated. As lockdown hit, I kept singing this song as "I wanna be self isolated". Later on, it became "I wanna be vaccinated". So adaptable, the Ramones,
10. Bright Eyes - Persona Non Grata. i was a bit surprised by this as I thought Bright Eyes were a sub Radiohead white boys with guitars kind of indie rock outfit, but this is ace. I'm a sucker for a waltz and even more of a sucker for romantic misery. Bagpipes, less so.
11. Amerie - 1 Thing. The cheaper Beyonce, this nevertheless gets into your head and will.not.leave.
12. Ben Watt - Summer Ghosts. Eerie and melancholy, this song suited this summer to a tee. Anyone who's spent any time in Hull will recognise some of the lyrics.
13. Fontaines DC - A Hero's Death. Not as bouncy and jangly as last year's excellent Boys From The Better Land, this was on 6Music so often that I wondered if i'd been Stockholm Syndromed into liking it. I do like it though.
14. Bombay Bicycle Club - Eat Sleep Wake. I'd always filed BBC under "Landfill, Indie", but this a beautifully dreamy song that seemed to be written for or about lockdown, even though it was released last year.
15. Mattiel - Food For Thought. Rules 4 life.
16. The Rapture - Jealous Lovers. Guitars so sharp you could cut yourself.
17. Hen Ogledd - Trouble. Indiepop that sounds like it's straight outta Stockholm.
18. Katy J Pearson - Tonight. So sweet you could eat it with your cup of tea. Melodies a-go-go.
19. Theatre Royal - Tomorrow Now. A reincarnated Go Betweens. An anthem with heart.
20. Sufjan Stevens - Video Game. They're playing my song!

On spotify: (there are other songs on there, including an in memoriam section: Kraftwerk (Florian Schneider), Millie Small, Little Richard, Alex Taylor from the Motorcycle Boy.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4cWgYDJgCUhHjSOGN4SHyq?si=TMea3TchT4W8UnOEag1-hQ

Yesterday, the weather was muggy and misty and we went for a walk around the Royal Docks. I was lured in by a new Perky Blenders coffeeteria in Expressway - this is a new thing, which has basically rebranded all the little studios, workshops, Husk brewery, and lock ups as one entity under the A road. We intended to walk the entirety of the docks but after a while you get kicked off and end up trudging down an unpleasantly busy road with no footpath but once back on the water, past the old dockhouses, past the glass fronted Newham council building complete with palm tree filled atrium and "breakfast bar" for its working-from-home staff, the grounded airport across the dock, and the eerie isolation of University of East London and its Teletubby houses back to Cyprus DLR and whizz back to Stratford in 10 mins, it was splendid. All the PR and branding exercises in the world can't create buzzy out of desolate - which is exactly why I liked it, of course. Gimme a bit of urban bleakness and I'm very happy. The towers of Canary Wharf looked like Monet had fetched up in the 21st century to paint them.



Recently, people have been talking about leaving lockdown London, citing lack of space, lack of things to do (what's the point of the expense and crowdedness and dirt of London if the things that make it worth it aren't happening). There is much talk of more home working, more people working from a home outside of London, big companies no longer choosing to have offices in London etc. Myself, I was a bit irritated by living so far out, reliant on a working and safe pubic transport system to ferry me about. I thought that if we still lived in Stoke Newington we could walk or cycle into the city, see what Oxford Street or Trafalgar Sqaure look like devoid of people (apart from the others turning up to look at the same thing) but Forest Gate is too far away (it was really in Essex until the 1960s) for that kind of thing.

In fact, some already have left; this week two of my colleagues were working from Scotland and Devon. I unfortunately don't have any relatives in picturesque places; indeed, at the beginning of lockdown, when a surprising number of people turned out to have second homes ("just a shack really"), I thought about what would happen if i decamped to my parents house? It's located in a nice village, but what would I do exactly, except argue with my parents? Walk around the village clockwise, walk around the village anti-clockwise, descend quickly into madness. It's not as if you can even walk to the next village as it'd be along a busy A-road with no pavements. I'd much rather be here with our parks (Olympic to the west, Wanstead Flats to the east, the smaller local parks, Forest Lane and West Ham, to the north and south, respectively) and with our cafes that have become food shops (shout out to Tromso, Wild Goose Bakery, Arch Rivals and Tracks) all of which reacted to the pandemic with fleet feet and amazing adaptability. When the queues for the Co-op were going down the street, we could go to Tromso and pick up flour, eggs, bread, and (importantly) cake within a few socially distanced minutes. As well as the parks, we've tramped the streets and spotted things i've never seen before: a tiny green plaque on the side of a house near us marking the parish boundary between West Ham and Leyton, a sign on a council estate urging residents to shut the gate to stop cows getting in, another boundary stone, this time in Stratford, indicating that south of the high street is Rotherhithe parish.



I've also fallen for Wanstead Flats in a big way. Beforehand, I thought it was rather a windblown open air space that we'd walk through on our way back from the bluebell woods of Wanstead Park, but it has wooded bits, lakes, WW2 army huts, large stretches of grassland and wild flowers, and unlike the fashionable booze-parks of Hackney, there are rarely many people about.



Even in the Olympic Park, I've visited bits that iId never seen before, for example, the hockey pitch, now a sort of amphitheatre for people to lounge in. Just down from that is the start of Hackney marshes and we used that route to cycle to Hackney rather than the towpath of the Lea navigation/Hackney cut. During the hot weather, teens in bikinis carrying inflatables risked Weil's disease to go splashing about in the river.



Other places:
We walked east of the City of London Cemetery, past the crematorium set up for the Covid dead, to the River Roding and passed nobody for about 1/2 an hour. Despite the constant buzz of the north circular, it was very peaceful.



Also along the Bow back waters to Cody Dock as much like the countryside as you can imagine, but with left over industrial bits:



And coming full circle, on the the first lockdown weekend of March, we decided to walk south, following the compass to see where we would end up  (answer: the Royal Docks).

Majorcans (or Mallorcans or Mallorquins) are in thrall to Barcelona. They drink Barcelonan beer, buy Barcelona chocolate, support FCB. This is possible because Majorca was in the Kingdom of Arrogan and Catalonia (now the autonomous region of Catalunya) and as such, the locals also speak Catalan, or rather they write Catalan - there are translations on official signage and pa amb olio (rather than pan y aceituna) in every cafe. Mallorcans are actually tri-lingual, everyone speaks English also although most of the Brits seem to have been shunted down the coast to Magaluf; Palma doesn't feel too touristy, there are only groups of OAP Germans, and they're reasonably unlikely to drink too many WKDs and show their pants in the street.



We do the old town: the nunnery, where I am too scared to ring the bell to purchase nun-made croissants or nun flavoured ice cream. Mind you the croissants are €4 each, the sisters are chancing their wimples a bit. Instead, I have a pumpkin jam brioche from the San Cristo bakery, which is...not to be repeated. There are a pleasing number of cafes in Palma: hipster, where a cafe con hielo costs a kidney-watering €4.50, to abuela bakeries to trad. Spanish places to those selling pork pies. Inside the nun's chapel, there is a tiny rose window and whenever god shines his light the sun shines, it creates a coloured halo effect around the baby Jesu's head.



Thus to the city walls, then the beautiful Arab baths with the light pouring in from the holes in its ceiling, and its attendant garden. Out of the Medina-esque old town to the wide boulevards of the seafront, with its tilting windmills, marina (yachteria), some art, the ex-city moat (now a green flowing river, here is so much more lush than Andalucia or Almeria), the palms of Palma, the wide avenue of Passieg de Born with its posh shops and restaurants where a risotto costs €33 (after seeing Zara and Massimo Dutti, Dave comments that we might as well be on High Street Ken).


*
We take the 1920s train to Soller on the north coast. It has Agatha Christie style light fittings, lots of polished mahogany. I try not to exhibit any stereotypes that will lead me to become a suspect when the train goes through a mountain tunnel and there is a scream and Colonel Carrington-Smythe is found with a dagger in his back. My legs are not art deco length however and it's a little cramped (but not as uncomfortable as a rush hour Thameslink train). We travel through a landscape of lemon and almond groves, gnarled olive trees, baby sheep and horses, dry stone walls, woodsmoke fires.



Soller has a beautiful church, stark against the mountains, a cluster of cafes and shops around the placa, and then peters out when you get more than 500m from the train station, as that's the real reason for people to visit. We look into the art gallery that's in the train station, awash with Miros and Picasso ceramics (imagine that at Liverpool St).



We take another vintage vehicle, a tram (I'm on the other side of the road when the tram comes in and have to run across to it, trying not to do a Gaudi in front of the tram) down to Port de Soller, rattling past people's backyards: prickly pears and plants in pewter pots, chickens, cats, bullrushes, an occasional pool, broken down barns, a donkey. Candles hanging from trees. Port de S is the seaside, the Riviera without the tourists or the old men trying to con widows out of their savings. There are, however, a couple of cats working a grift, miaowing next to tables until diners give them some scraps. I try a beautiful blue eyed boy with some carrot and it goes as well as you might expect.



We have gazpacho and tumbet (Mallorcan ratatouille and delicious) at a harbourside restaurant and walk to the lighthouse and around the beautiful curve of the bay. I suggest that we just ring up work and say we need to quarantine ourselves for another fortnight, then plan our new life (Dave: fixing OAP ex-pats Windows 1998 PCs and listening to them complaining that their married daughers never visit, and I will learn to drive the tram, although I suspect that's a job that gets handed down from father to son, and women and foreigners don't get a look in. Or we could just do a Reggie Perrin and leave our clothes on the beach, disappear.



Back in Palma, we notice that in the main square outside the station (Placa Espana) are McDonalds AND Burger King AND Taco Bell. The Spanish went to Mexico, invented Mexican food from the Aztecs, the Americans got hold of it and sold it back to Spain. Sort of like the Beatles, in reverse. Although talking of Spanish food, the Espanols, unlike the Italians, don't have ridiculous rules about the time of day when you can and can't have a cafe con leche. Majorcans even have el flat white (Ethiopia to Italy (via Turkey) to New Zealand to UK to Spain). There are also a lot of tattoo shops in Palma; i.e. no need to go all the way to Magaluf to get a cat's bottom tattooed around your belly button.

An aside: before we went to Gran Canaria and visited Casa Colon (a 15th century house, in which Chris C might have stayed on his way to not find America), I didn't understand why there were so many Calle or Carrer Colons in Spain, thought it was some translation of passage, but anyway, it's just the Spanish name for Columbus, although I didn't twig until now that colony and colonising and colonial must come from the same source word.

We eat at Cafe L'Antiquari, a small cafe-cum-bar, where we end up with veggie tapas and a free drink after the waiter forgets our order, which is a very nice thing to do for obvious tourists.

*
The weather has gone from Take Off Your Cardie And Get Some Vitamin D to overcast so we do some culture; first up is the cathedral which sits high up above the waterfront staring intimidatingly out to sea, guiding sailors back and repelling pirates. It was built on the site of a former grand mosque and it seems to be saying: Invade us at your peril, putas! Like castles in England, muses David. Or Leeds Town Hall (me).



Gaudi was here from 1901 to 1914, to lead pn the refurbishment of the cathedral, before falling out with the cathedral burghers and leaving it unfinished. Bit of a theme going on here, Gaudi! The cathedral originally took four centuries to build, which I guess puts Crossrail into perspective.

You can see his Gothic-meets-moderne influence on some other buildings here, designed by him or his acolytes. In the cathedral, he did at least finish the altar. Above is an array of lights that turn on and off at intervals, representing the crown of thorns. There are two gorgeous rose windows , the colours when God shines his light the sun shines through the windows dance on the columns - an analogue light show. There are 8 columns because Jesus rose on the eighth day (according to a video playing in the pews) - I'm not entirely sure that's true, Catholics! It's all very tastefully attractive, not the over the top Catholic church that gild the lily somewhat. We also see some relics (old bones) in the presbytery, inc. one from St Pantaleon, who invented trousers (sort of). Fortunately, there are no cartoon dogs around to steal the bones and bury them in the cloisters. There's also a goth chapel, designed by Miquel Barcelo, with black stained glass windows, and ivy and bat motifs climbing the walls. As well as Gaudi and Miro, there are numerous small art galleries here, a public modern gallery and street art on the walls, including painted-on cans attached to the walls of the old town, although this might be to guide people back down the windy Mediaeval streets, which nonetheless feel safe at night with LED gas-style lamps and not too many cars forcing their way down the cobbles. I try to take in a deep breath of car-free air but unfortunately the alleys smell of urine (cat and human).



We have a brunch break in Rapha cycling cafe, which is exactly like London's version(s), down to the posh handwash in the lavabos.

We also visit the Palau March, an ex-convent, built on the site of an Arabic salt factory, rebuilt in an art nouveau style in the '40s, part financed by the British who paid Senor March, who had Franco's ear, to persuade the Generalisimo to keep Espagne neutral during the war. Anyway, upstairs is a mock up of a Nobleman's villa, downstairs is a lovely courtyard with Hepworths, a Rodin and Moores, but most of the ground floor is taken up by 18th century Neapolitan biblical scenes along with a few Dalis. We pretty much have it to ourselves.



I think since our government part-paid for this place, we should've got in free, but it's next door at the Palau La Almudaina, the old Moorish castle turned royal palace, that we enter gratis with our European passports. Take that, blue passport Brexit idiots! Talking of idiots, the guidebook recommends an English language 2nd hand bookshop, which I thought worth a punt. As I go in, the chain smoking, London-born owner asks me if I'm looking for something, I say no, just browsing, at which point, he goes into a long sob story about how no-one buys books any more. He seems a nice old gent, so i try hard to find something amongst the Lee Childs and Marian Keyes probably donated by holiday makers for something I want. I find an Alan Warner book and take it to the counter and am charged €10 for a dog-eared paperback (with a coffee ring stain on the cover) since (I realise too late) there are no prices marked: it's whatever the owner thinks he can get out of you. So if you want to finance a baby boomer's retirement in the sun, go to Fine Books on Carrer d'En Morei.

In the evening, we visit Lorien, a craft beer place, which serves, amongst other things, Mallorcan stout, which is very nice, but seems sort of wrong: sunny bright countries should make light lagers, gloomy rain filled places like England & Ireland should do the dark beers. We eat at a nearby Korean place (in honour of Bong Joon-ho (also it's quite near to the bar)), next to a gas-fired heater shaped like a log fire table. The Mallorcans are like the Australians, determined to be outside at all hours.

*
Staying fairly central means that everything is a ten minute walk away, so somewhere that is, say, 25 mins now seems like an awful schlep, despite considering that a very reasonable distance back home. Nonetheless, we cycle out on heavy hire bikes to L'Arenal, a 15 km ride east up the coast, past the glittery, sparkling sea, sail-less windmills, a black cormorant on a rock in the sea, a monumental pyramid, past the end of the runway of Palma's airport, past the lovely beach of C'an Pere Antoni to the equally lovely seaside town of Portixol with its whitewashed headland hotel to the less lovely Gentilissimo, through to the decidedly unlovely C'an Pastilla (Burger King, McDonalds, another Burger King) resort to the down at heel S'Arenal where we find a place doing bog standard but pretty tasty tapas (patatas, padrons, tortilla) amongst the pizza-paella-pasta places. Pastilla is Germaniaburg, little Frankfurt, lots of cafes doing kaffee und kuchen and some Bierkellers. The English have Magaluf, the Germans have taken Pastilla; I guess Palma is the neutral zone.



In the evening, we meet Dave's university friends, whose holiday crosses over with ours tonight only at Bar Espana and have more delicious trompet, fried cheese, spinach croquetas and a sort of Spanish take on flatbread pizza, as well as a little too much wine. I get a bit confused coming out of the toilets and have to be guided back to our table by the owner.

Caroline Rose - More Of The Same. A song for the ennui of January. Everything is just more of the same thing.
Steve Miller Band - Fly Like An Eagle. Laverne played this on her morning show and I was shocked that this chill out Ibiza-y tune is actually by the same band who did the execrable Joker that kept Deee-lite off the top spot in 1990.
Little Dragon - Lover Chanting. I was charmed by this soft electropop and the female singer saying she wants to be my man.
Harry Nillson - Gotta Get Up. Pretty much the soundtrack to the wonderful Russian Doll that i was addicted to in the early part of the year.
Chemtrails - Killer or a Punchline. We walked across the Olympic Park to see Chemtrails do their indie and their pop to a 3/4 full warehouse in Hackney Wick on the first evening it was a very nice evening!
Molly Nilsson - Whisky Sour. Minimalist pop from this gloomstress.
Delta 5 - Mind your own business. Art rock from the 80s that sounds like it was released last year.
Pip Blom - Ruby. In 2019, we started an afternoon playing records in Forest Gate and one of our guest DJs, Jacqui, recommended this band, who are charming Dutch indiepoppers.
She Drew The Gun - Something for the Pain. Steve Lamacq had this pretty much on repeat, and with good reason, i'ts pop heaven.
Marika Hackman - Ophelia. Another 6Music fave.
Drab Majesty - Dot In The Sky. More indiepop.
Confidence Man - Boyfriend. Very confident Aussies do art-pop.
Take That - Rule The World. I heard this in the back of the one cab i take per year back from Walthamstow at midnight and as mist rose from the marshes, the chorus swelled and I felt all in love (not with Gary Barlow).
Metronomy - The Look. My fave band from All Points East. Party bands are best for festivals, rather than your favourite group.
Bikini Kill - White Boy. The triumphant return of Kathleen H and the girl-gang.
The Only Ones - Another Girl, Another Planet. We saw them play at local festival in Somers Town in the summer and it was probably one of my fave moments of the year when they launched into this.
Lizzo - Juice. Like everyone else, I loved her Glastonbury performance. I kinda prefer her when she's channelling the spirit of Aretha Franklin and doing flute-heavy soul, but this is a fabulous pure pop song.
Puple Mountain - All My Happiness is Gone. Every year now there's a dead musician and this year was no exception. "Friends are warmer than gold when you're old."
Fontaines DC - Boys in the better land. People love talking about Idles and their ultra fans, the AF Gang. I think we deserve better than Idles. We deserve Fontaintes DC with their sarcasm, jangly guitars and ranty talky bits.
Michael Kiwanuka - You aint the problem. Soully pop tackling self-imposed racism? Yes, pse.
Yola - Faraway look. Big, big torch song. Can imagine Shirley Bassey covering this.
Daniel Johnston - Speeding Motorcycle. Another death, too early.
Dry Cleaning - Sit Down Meal. A weird song that sounds like it is from a forgotten Liverpool band from the 80s that once supported The Teardrop Explodes then disappeared into obscurity and/or heroin.
Sports Team - Fishing. Being a fully paid up member of Gen X, it is amusing to hear the younger generation's moans about getting old. I particularly like how the singer of ST really, really doesn't want to go fishing.
Thom Yorke - Traffic. When I heard this on the radio, i was like: who did this?! Imagine my surprise when I found out.

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0lqND1kt9HwbUDPooeZCST?si=UyFJ440vRd2lcJuyotZFtg

In February 1994, I went to Prague and 25 years later I went again. In 1994, I travelled 18 hours by coach through Europe, waking up in Germany in the middle of the night in a snowstorm and no Deutschmarks to spend at the service station. 2019 we went by Easyjet, which was probably worse.
1994, a man asked us at the metro station if we were looking for somewhere to stay; fortunately he didn't turn out to be a white slaver and he took us to flat somewhere near Wensceslas square, which was basically one room between three with a bathroom attached; I think we paid £9 each per night. Whereas 2019's lodgings were a a sort of industrial chic hotel in the Nove Mesto.



1994, I don't think we saw any other tourists, 2019 was stag party central. All types of stag dos - 2 guy stag dos, t-shirt stag parties (The Terminator, The Stallion, Big Marco), electric scooter stag dos, craft beer stag dos, the pissing in a public square stag do, the "look lads I don't want a stripper, let's go to a museum" do. I only saw one hen party, but to be fair, Prague's rainy cobbles and four inch heels do not mix.



When I first visited, the vegetarian options were: potatoes. I remember we ate at a pizza place and a Chinese where we kept having to double check with the waitress that food stuff were meat-free. This time we dined at two very impressive vegetarian restaurants; one, Estrella, had the best mushroom pate I've ever tasted, more like a mushroom mousse.



In 1994, no-one spoke English and we got by with a mix of Russian and GCSE German. This time everyone spoke English automatically at us, and I realised that some of the people working in cafes, bars etc wouldn'thave been born on my first visit.
Last time, there were a couple of Czech department stores where I bought a) some Soviet sanitary towels and b) a bottle of water which turned out to be salty This time, you couldn't move for shopping experiences, whether it be tourist tat (cannabis lollypops), slightly posher tourist tat (Bohemian glass) or outposts of British companies - Tesco, Costa and M&S were all here, as well as the usual Subway, Starbucks, McD etc.



In the nineties, there was no street food, now there are 1000 kiosks selling Trdelník - a sort of churros type cake baked on a sort of spit and filled with ice cream. Most restaurants also offered "traditional" Czech deserts - applestrudel (Austrian), Black forest gateau (German) and Sachertorte (Austrian again).
In the nineties, we drank in brownish bars and you could have anything you wanted as long as it was Pilnser Urquell. In 2019, there are craft beer bars serving bluberry IPA, black lagers, and lemon thyme sours. We even had a beer in a candle lit cave in a monastery where they brewed their own "cloisters" ale.



In said '90s pub, a group of lairy lads tried to send some beer over to our table in order to chat up the three anglické ženy. This time we were seated next to a man who'd brought flowers for his date and leapt up to kiss her and take her coat when she arrived, holding hands with her throughout the meal. In most places we went to, tables were placed close together but it ddin't matter as Czechs create a nice, low background hum of chatter rather than the braying of London restaurants. (it made me feel more awful about the large groups of lads shouting STAG or BEER in the Old Town Square).



With my friends, i went to a nightclub in a former nuclear bunker til 4 in the morning (we waited in the tube station until the first train back to Stare Mesto), with David, I went to the Jewish quarter, saw the old synagogue (now a clothes shop) and the old-new synagogue where the myth of the golem began.



In 1994, we did two bits of culture - the Muzeum, which was full of stuffed animals. I mean full of them: if an animal exists, or had once existed, it had been caught, killed, stuffed and mounted. We also went to the art museum near the castle, which was just depictions of Jesus - paintings, sculpture, baby Jesu, adult Christ. This time, this museum was showing an Impressionist exhibition. Tastes have changed.

1994



2019

The world is ruined by tourists. Hard Rock Cafes, padlocks weighing down bridges, selfie-stick wankers, Segway wankers. Although of course one can't note this if one is not onself a tourist. Although a tourist wanker is not as bad as someone who calls themself a "traveller" and refuses to eat at any restaurant where the menu is translated.

Before we even get to the Coliseum, we've been offered selfie-sticks, open top bus tours, phone chargers, trinkets, leather bracelets, and assorted tat. Or rather Dave has been offered these things; sexism can be handy at times. The queues are massive, so we walk past the Temple of Venus, il Forum and the Arch Constantine, up Palatine Hill, where reliefs of the twelve stations of the Cross, which leads away from the madding crowd up to a quiet little church (San Boneventura). I'm a confirmed atheist but it is oddly touching in its simplicity.



On our way to look at Altare Della Patria (that big white building with statues of a chariot race on the top), it starts to piss it down so we take shelter inside, along with every other person in Rome, it seems. It's a monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, who unified Italy - along with some help from Garibaldi, who also invented the biscuit. The rain carries on for about four hours, necessitating trips to churches (God bless the Catholics for building so many), the Co-op, the Bocca Del Verite and its accompanying church, St Maria in Cosmedin, and the opposite Forum Boarium, (it's great that random bits of surviving Roman architecture are just there as you wander around) a restaurant that specialises in melted cheese (not fondue, just plates of melted cheese), a coffee shop (where I very much enjoy a thick, dark hot chocolate), and a Trastevere birraria, which plays Jonathan Richman and Rome vs Cagliari (3-0). The tourist-tat sellers change up their wares to ponchos and umbrellas (umbrelli?).



We have to pay three euros per day per person tourist tax, which I'd suggest that the Borough of Rome spends on tarmaccing over the cobbled slippy-to-walk-on pavements.

Finally, the sun comes out and we walk over the Isola, an island in the middle of the Tiber, now housing a hospital, to the Fonta Acqua Paola and thus up Via Garibaldi to the Gazza statue, which Dave is interested in for Nottingham Forest reasons, and I am happy to be up on a hill in the sunshine, with a bella vista and min. tourist activity. Past the Faro al Gianicolo and down to Bir and Fud, where we have Italian craft beer and the best aubergine parmigiana I've ever tasted, which makes up for the rude staff, one of whom literally walks away after Dave has placed his food order, without waiting for mine.

We meander back over the river, through Campo di Fiori, where there is a statue of Giordano Brun (aka Gordon Brown), one of the first astronomers, as well as open air restaurants, outside seats and gas heaters, then down a tiny alleyway into silence, round an apartment block, once the Teatro di Satire, which is a rare curved Roman road as it follows the curves of Hadrian's ex-villa. We stop at another random bit of archaeology: the Largo di Torre Argentina, which doubles up as a cat shelter, where one big bruiser with a busted eye is happy for strokies.



Nuns spotted = 4

*
Today is a ticky-off day. To the Trevi fountain, where girls posing like Anita E perch on the edge of the water, pouting for their instagrams and being whistled at (not in cat-call way but because they are eating ice-cream too close to the edge. I also witness an amusing tourist-local encounter wherein a middle aged, mid-west American tries to get a machine gun-toting teenage soldier to pose with him and a toy doggie. The soldier looks horrified. No, he says, No. Go on, says the American, I'm from the States. Fortunately, he does not add "we liberated you" or "without us, there'd be no Americanos"). Then past Keats and Shelley's house to the Spanish steps and then the Parthenon, which is beautiful inside, but full of terribly and noisy people. Down charming, plant-filled pedestrian backstreets (pedestrians do not have priority in Rome so much as nerves of steel. We went over the central square, Pizza Venezia, last night and it made crossing the A1 look pleasant. Not every ambulance siren we hear can be for a stroke or heart attack victims) for a chocolate and cherry cheese cake ice-cream (molto bene!) and thus to the Vatican, which is a relief when we finally cross its border as the tourist touts are proibito from entering. There's a line and the touts have no jurisdiction beyond it. There's also a line to get into St Peter's Basilica, so after taking in the atmosphere (catholic), looking at Pontifex Maximus's windows (but not the black smoke chimney), and admiring the Swiss guards with their puffball sleeve blouses ( Catholicism is as camp as Christmas), we go downr to the Prati district and bump into a vegeburger place for lunch.



As well as selfie-sticks, we have also not bought: Limoncello in a penis and testicles shaped bottle, coloured pasta, tiny or huge jars of Nutella (what would happen if Nutella went into receivership? the government would have to bail it out. Nothing else signifies national unity like choc-hazelnut spread) the handsome priests calendar (although I'm tempted, Padre Dicembre is caldo!) or the three popes (JP2, Nazi Pope and Jim Bowen Pope) fridge magnets. Dave suggests that tat shops should sell pens featuring a pic of a pope who loses his surplice if you turn it upside down. I would be quite tempted to buy the lift in our hotel, if such a thing were possible, with its three hand-operated doors and a slot for 10c to operate it, it's quite charming. In bars, sinks are not operated by sensors but by mechanical foot pedalling. One more high-tech thing we've seen is free acqua frizzante at newer water fountains.



We stop in the Piazza del Popolo, which has a fountain, a church, and tourist fatigue, and after a rest, go down to the Mauseleo Augusto. Which is huge, so Augie must have been a big lad. Or maybe he had all his stuff buried wirth him, his Marvel comic collection, scart leads, trainers, rawl plugs - you know how men horde things. Next door to this is the Ara Pacis, a (re)construction of a temple of peace from Claudius's reign. Inside, we learn that Caesar, Claudius and Nero were all related. As well as the temple itelf there are recreations of busts of the time, including one of Geraintus Thomasus (perhaps). I'm thinking of pivoting to Latin, but unfortunately nobody needs to know that Caicilius est in horto.



We go back into tourist centrale and have a caffe zabaglione at a gelatria. This is espresso with a chunk of semi-freddo floating on top and is delicioso.

There was no pizza in Rome until after the war, when the Neapolitan immigrants brought it with them. Now they're so mad fer it that the neighbourhood pizza place we go to is full after twenty minutes (mostly by a three table American tour group: it's my theory that American travel in packs because they've watched far too many films about yankees coming a-cropper in Europe) and sad couples stand at the doorway urging us with their eyes to finish our ortalano, pinot grigio and chocolate mousse cake. Afterwards, we go to a nearby hipster bar for blueberry juice and beer.

Nun count = 8

*
We have an hour or so to kill before we head to Termini, so visit the Santa Maria Magiore, one of the Vatican's four basilicas in Rome. It's golden and sumptuous and what I think Martin Luther didn't realise when he was proclaiming all over the place is that atheists brought up in the protestant tradition would in the future be somewhat impressed by bells, smells, gold and the sheer fanciness of Catholicism. Perhaps the god stuff is so OTT in Rome to make up for burning the Christians for a number of years. I witness another tourist-local tryst, a counterpoint to yesterday's encounter, whereby a tiny, pruney old lady, peering into a chapel where a service is being sung, totters on the steps and almost topples over before a German? Dutch? tourists grabs her, and the vecchia donna thanks her in Italian, double kissing her cheek.



Final nun count = 14

Arrecife is shut. It's closed when we arrive, 2 hours late*, at 9 p.m. on Saturday night, and it's shut all of Sunday. Thus the capital of Lanzarote looks like a fishing village during a siesta for much of the day. It's a beautiful morning though and, after a trad. desayuno of cafe con leche con croissants, we wander around the Charco (lagoon), past the whale skeleton and statues of people hitting each other with fish bladders, and to the beach front to the 'balls bridge' - a cobbled drawbridge, leading to the fort of San Gabriel (our apartment has a view of this, as well as the sea, the 16th century church and the Cabildo Insular, the ex-town hall, now a sort of cultural centre). We go into the fort and read about the history of Arrecife, although it is only in Spanish, so my understanding is a bit vague. I definitely got something about pirates (always fun) and the fact that the poor old Guanches were conquered by eighty Spaniards, back in the day/the 1400s. Maybe they were having a duvet day and were unprepared. Nowadays, it's conquered by Brits, Germans, Danes and the odd Polish person. There's a also a mummified man, for no particular reason - this seems to be the highlight of the fort-museum. Arrecife's old town seems to be in Teguise, which was the inland capital until the mid-1800s.



We walk a way out of town to find a shop that's open for supplies and them mosey on down towards the beach area where I buy a golfio ice cream, as it's a flavour I've never tasted before. Turns out to be a type of Canarian grain, so I've essentially purchased a semolina ice-cream, although Dave thinks it's cornet flavour. We go onto the beachfront, where I see Lanzarote's harem-panted hippie population (all three of them), Lanzarote's alt-metal scene (a man on a skateboard playing loud rawk), and later, when the sun goes down and we reach the city limits (a dog exercise park, presumably for the perro owners to practise for Cruftzarote), Lanzarote's hip-hop scene (four lads practising their rapping around a CD player). In the evening, we eat outdoors, overlooking the lights on the harbour, eating fried cheese and Canarian potatoes plus mojo, and drinking local beer.

*The baggage dudes at Stansted were "handing everything manually, as a test." if this was a pre-Brexit test, it went Not At All Well.



You can get anywhere on the bus as long as it's to the airport or another tourist resort. So we go to the big one, Puerta Del Carmen, or as it should really be called: Inglaterrita. The bus takes us to a long strip of bars, Irish pubs, beach shops, tat shops, Indian restaurants, Chinese restaurants, "Spanish" restaurants, railings covered in heart-shaped locks, cheap jewellery* shops, booze shops set up to look like duty-frees selling half bottles of off-brand brandy for €5.50, shops selling slogan t-shirts ("I don't need google, my mother-in-law tells me everything"), all of them playing Now That's What I Call The Eighties: Taylor Dane, Huey Lewis, Phil Collins, Stevie Winwood, Rick Springfield. The place is full of middle- and old aged British people, all showing off their sunburn, and is a Brexiter's wet dream: It's like England, but hot. Everyone speaks English and you can have your €2.50 English breakfast, complete with "British bacon" and "Branston beans", washed down with your pint of €2 Heineken. No-one's banned plastic straws and nothing costs more than it would've in 1981. It's the worst of all Europe: German language excursions, Carlsberg bars, English food. There is a glass bottomed boat tour, to make your rockin' world go 'round. I don't take any photos because I'm not a Martin Parr imitator. There is a Finnegan's Wake bar, where I presume you can get a side of modernism with your pint of English Guinness. We walk out of the town, around the harbour, past cat and cactus villages. In the clear water are big fish, little fish (but no cardboard boxes, litter is not an issue here). We find a sort of Italian with a veggie menu and have aubergine parmesana overlooking the mini-golf. In Arreceife, the local tax is included in the food prices, here it's added on, like in the US, presumably to lure the tourists into a false sense of parsimony.

*Mind you, I like the way that jewellery shops are called joyerias in Spanish. KonMarie that shit!

However, the good thing about Lanzarote being full of OAP Brits is that restaurants start their service at a reasonable time, so you haven't got your nose pressed against the window at 8.55 p.m. wanting your tea. Apart from Arrecife's vegan restaurant, which opens at 8 o'clock. So we go onto the waterfront and have cocktails (me: frozen slushie, him: posh rum 'n' soda) at a place ambitiously named Moet, along with some nibbles perhaps from a tourist's left behind Graze boz (salted corn, olives), which unfortunately bloats me up so much I can't eat any of the veggie burger when the vegan place finally opens for dinner.



After breaky-ing in a new bakery, which is also patronised by a reassuring cabal of old ladies (I notice that they do a Desayuno Abuela/Granny Breakfast - milky coffee and a biscuit), we hire bikes and set off east along the coast road. Yesterday, I complained that we had to walk a mile to get to the bus-stop; today I realise why that's a good thing - the buses use the ring road, meaning the front is pleasant to cycle through, along with fellow tourists on city bikes and the occasional lycra-d up Alberto Contador wannabe. We take the Paseo Maritimo, past a cute lighthouse, a shipwreck gently rusting in the harbour and the ruined rocks of a fort.



We pass flora of cactii, palms, aloes, prickly pears and rofe (the volcanic ash/gravel) and fauna of mopeds, cyclists, electric scooter riders, and mobility vehicles, then stop at Castillo de San Jose, the second fort, this one turned into an art gallery, rather than a museum. There is a Cesar Manrique painting, influenced by a novel by Malcolm Lowry, Under The Volcano, some sculpture, a painted piano, and much abstractia. Outside, there are Antony Gormley-esque horses "drinking" the sea-water (we later find out that this artist has done a whole underwater sculpture series that you have to learn to dive to see). Up on the roof is a view of the container port and misc. heavy industry. Further on, the road turns into a path and after a few wrong turns, and a failed attempt to walk down an A-road, we end up off-roading across the volcanic sand of an industrial estate, until we get to a cute village (Caletas) on the outskirts of our putative destination, Costa Teguise. What would it be like to live here, in a white-washed villa facing down the Atlantic? Would looking at the sea on a daily basis get tedious? Would you start searching out shipwrecks and mermaids to break the boredom? Watch surfers go under? Growing up in landlocked Doncaster and now living 40 miles and a long train ride from the seaside, it seems unimaginable.



We get to the bungalow-and-tapas outskirts of Costa T, which reminds me more of Goa than the fleshpots of Puerta Carmen, although as we get further in, the beach and inflatable shops start and I realise that this is the Masopolomas to Puerta's Playa El Ingles, the Southport to its Blackpool, the Hove to Puerta Carmen's Brighton. We find the main square, Pueblo Marinero, designed by local artist-cum-architect Cesar Manrique, but has now been taken over by the Bluebells Rangers bar, the Midlands Bar, a pizza place, a "jazz" cocktail bar and a fake Tex-Mex. Cesar, I am truly sorry that British people ruin everything. We once went around the world telling people that our way of life was brill and it was for the best that we take over their country for them, now we do the same, only with English breakfasts and sectarian pubs. Mind you, Cesar M volunteered to join Franco's army, so he can go whistle. We find an Italian off the main drag and fuel up on pasta for the ride back.

In the evening, we watch a Spanish telenova called El Cuerpo del Deseo, in which a lot of eye-rolling mujeres stand around crying whilst a man plays the piano. Turns out that he's a reincarnation of the thinnest woman's dead husband, who's come back in the body of another hombre, one who was about to become a dad with another blubbing lady. It's so brilliant, it's actually terrible, and I can see where Almovodar got all his ideas from.

Spend Wednesday, like Chris Rea, on the beach, until hunger drives us off for salad and lasagne. No photos from today, because the glare of my white bod would cause too much lens flare. With only one bathing costume between us*, we take it in turns to swim in the translucent water, watching shoals of minnow flitter past. This half mile of beach (Playa Reducto) is quiet, no loud music, drunk teens or people trying to sell you stuff. The only disturbance is a group of school-kids here to learn all about being a lifeguard. They listen politely, then clap at the end. The youth of today, hey! The lifeguard station has a guide to the UV rays, from green to purple. Today is only yellow, but still, I burn the back of my ankles.

We mosey on back into town and visit the Cabildo Insular, which is showing a display about the carnival, which seems to be on a week before our own Protestant pancake day. Like many of the Pagan-y festivals, it was banned in the Victorian times and reinstituted in the 20th century (1963 in this case). It comprises getting dressed up as a beast or devil and hitting people over the head with a fish or pig bladder (depending on whether you're from Arrecife or Teguise) and in particular men hit women "to make them fertile". Riiiiiight. Having a lovely crepe with lemon and sugar seems like a better way of celebrating Christ's wandering off to the wilderness, in my opinion, but it finally explains why a man hit me over the head with a balloon during the Basque national festival in Bilbao in 2004. Didn't work though, chico!



We also go into the church, which is in a lovely cactus-filled square that only needs some domino-playing old men for Full Authenticity. The church isteself is cool and calm and not overly Catholic, by which i mean it doesn't have an OTT gold altar, a holy blood relic, or a dress up Madonna as we have seen in Seville, Bruges, and Teror (Gran Canaria), respectively. In fact, apart from the odd nun in a bakery, it feels pretty secular here and religion seems low in people's priorities, compared to sunning oneself, anyway.

*Dave's rash-vest worn as a mini-tankini. I looked at buying a bikini but they all had padded bras and skimpy bottoms. Sigh, I dunno, you spend your adolescence waiting for pubes 'n' boobs, then when they arrive, you don't want 'em after all.

For dinner, we go to another vegan place. We walk in, sit down and are asked somewhat suspiciously: "Do you want to eat?", an unpropitious start. The waitress then shows us "a small amount of daal" in the fridge, although in the end, we manage to order two nice salads and a "goulash", and Dave is happy because there's Lanzaroten craft beer in the fridge. Plenty of other people/tourists come in, so there is a definite demand for meat-free food - a junk food vegan place would probably clean up here. We go onto a deli/craft beer bar which opens up onto the charco and serves its beer in glasses straight from the freezer, but is also full of two English couples, on of whom is insisting that the other go to Jamaica to renew their vows for their 20th anniversary, "...or at least get her an eternity ring, otherwise how will she know that you love her?" I do hope that the hubby is going to be able to find a dozen red roses for Valentine's Day tomorrow, otherwise there's going to be tantrums before desayuno.

We walk around the silent lagoon, contemplating stealing a boat and running off to sea, but instead bump into our fave cat, El Negrito, who is always up for strokes. This is thee only cat we've seen in Arrecife, this is the Canary/Canis islands after all.



Having given up on the local transport, we take a coach trip into the volcanic region. We travel through a landscape of butterflies, daisies, buttercups, black volcanic fields, tiny whitewashed churches, squash growing in market gardens, dry stone markers around crops, russet-coloured mountain flowers, lichen growing on the sides of the brown and red and khaki volcanoes, horseshoe shaped walls around tiny wine vines growing in craters. We stop at a vineyard for a tasting. Unfortunately, the terroir has not worked and the wine is really quite bad. We drive on past rolling yellow mountains, like sand dunes, through a black lunar landscape with treacly rocks, and dust mists across the mountain range to El Golfo, with seventh wave type surf over one side and a calm green lagoon on the other.



Further on to Timanfaya national park, and to fire mountain, where the park rangers do the tourist tricks for us, dropping some bracken into the volcano and watching it set alight, doing the same with water to create a mini-geyser and cooking half a chicken over a deep set volcanic BBQ pit. No wonder the ancien Lanzarotens thought devils lived in the volcanoes. Lava falls like marmelade.



We also go on a camel ride. The camels are quite sweet and docile, I'm hoping because they were bred to be so, rather than because the camel-owners put bromide in their feed bags. The one behind us in the chain gang puts its snout on my shoulder and snuzzles with its muzzle. The ride itself is bumpy and makes me feel quite bit travel sick; I think that if I had lived in the Sahara and my tribe decided to take a caravan of camels across the desert, I'd volunteer to stay home and mind the tents. This region is not a desert, it has a rainy season, hence the flora, but the camels are the only animals here, we don't even see a lizard or a goat or a bird all day. The guide loves talking about magma, rofe and lava - I suspect he took a Geology degree, but couldn't geologise anywhere, so this is the next best thing. We drive past craters and stalagmites and views, most of which I can't look at due to vertigo and the sheer drop down the narrow, crash barrier-free mountain roads.



Stop at a buffet place for lunch (at 3 p.m., like monsters), next door to the stone and whitewash church of Our Lady of the Sorrows, which was built after the lava from the volcano stopped flowing into the village after the locals prayed to the Virgin Mary, promising a shrine to her if she could cease the volcanic eruptions, To be honest, I'd've thought that once ol' Maria got to heaven, she'd have been too busy making up for all the fun she didn't have on earth: boozing, carousing, man-ising. She was probably more focussed on getting rid of the pesky hymen than sorting out local geology.

Onto a Mirador (not the famous Mirador del Rio), where we stop for drinks, toilets and the gift shop, which is esactly the same as every other gift shop we've visited, although they are useful for applying the aloe vera testers onto my sundried skin, so I don't go all biltongy.

Final stop of the day is Jameos del Agua, caves set around a pool, which is full of tiny blue glowing lobsters like underwater fairy lights and a calm cafe designed by Cesar Manrique (him again), The drive back to Arrecife goes past his house and his roundabout sculpture-slash-windcharm. On the road into the town, a flock of white egrets rises up in unison and falls like the waves.

Over the top from Newham to Waltham Forest, the bin lids changing from orange to blue (like how Northern France looks just like Southern England, apart from the pylons and the car registration plates: foreignness in the mundane), the silver towers of Stratford. Docklands, and the City, the grey gardens behind the red-brown houses, a trampoline over-winters in a back yard. Canals meander unseen around estates, willows wail into the water, waiting for Spring, and in the city farm llamas eat their breakfast and don't look up at the passing train. The last of the leaves loiter on the pavement.



In summer, dog days; in winter, black dogs days.