HEY FATTY BUM BUM

We got back some time last week and decided we should acclimatise ourselves by going up to one of the villages in the mountains and it was an excellent idea. No sooner had we arrived and we were being informed of the fiestas in the next village. We've been to them before but in February which is to celebrate San Blas. This one is similar but I am not sure which saint it is associated with but the idea is the same. You turn up at 1.30 in the afternoon nursing a hangover from the night before and do a 'ronda', following a band and entering all the village houses and being greeted with delicious grub and wine from a porron. It's difficult at times to keep up with The Spanish and their high jinks but I managed to pace myself and found myself still tucking into delicacies after most had gone home to sleep it all off. We settled into a wonderful chat with the proprietor of one of the restaurants, Rakel and friends Elena, Henderson and of course various dogs from the village and drank Pacharan till eight that evening and then went on for dinner. It was hard to picture ourselves a week before flying around The New Forest in a rented Vauxhall.


Some lasting memories of Britain seem so surreal now. Programmes where Daily Mail readers ring their hands at the idea of breast feeding in public. It's a programme hosted by people with names like Nick Ferrari and Gloria Hummingbird and other porn stars gone to seed. A comment from Eastenders was overheard from a woman whose husband had killed most of his family for her daughter to take care while on holiday in Spain as 'those Spanish can be a slippery bunch'. Other nightmarish souvenirs seem to be in the shape of shops that sell floral prints which on their own might be deemed quite pretty but together in one room made me feel ill. But, my main concern is how big people are getting. What can they be eating I ask myself every time. This is coming from someone who threatened to drink their weight in vermouth if The Labour Party had won the last election. All 55 kilos of it. I worry I am fat like most people I suppose who like their grub and notice that the fat around their tummy should have an eye kept on it. I am not talking a bit fat or a bit tubby though, people just seem enormous and in such enormous numbers. It becomes an obsession with me. I witnessed people tucking into great portions of food in pubs and then wolf down buckets of ice-cream, skips full of chips, and round off with pints of beer. Outstanding.

Another thing was The BBC's obsession with representing Muslims at every opportunity. Other groups must be so pissed off. Every time we switched on the radio in the car we had rented there was another story about Muslims and most of them boring and unjustified but occasionally speaking volumes. Muslims could become my other obsession as I witnessed three women in burkas being peddled along Oxford Street in a rickshaw. Later that day I saw a young Muslim girl from the top deck of a number 12 bus giving her friend a mouthful. I lip read the words 'where the *uck have you been?' as she took a drag on a fag. She looked as though she was carrying a can of Tennants Extra but as the bus sped off I couldn't be sure. Every other person looked mental as London will always attract those that don't fit in elsewhere and all manner of oddballs and queer hawks took turns in freaking me out and reminding me why I will never live there again.