Let's watch the Power of the Dog he said. So that we could have an opinion at least he wised. About thirty minutes in I wondered if it was me. 'Is it me or do you feel like you are waiting for a train?' He said he wasn't sure where it was going to be honest. The film or my train. About ten minutes later I started to have weird feelings. Psychopathic even. A strange mix of wanting to kill but anchored by the only sane part, urging me to keep going for the sake of humanity. Watch it so that they don't have to kind of thing. Without giving too much away, at one point a woman starts to play Strauss's Radetzky Waltz on the piano. I say play but she stop starts as she is a bit rusty. I start to identify with one of the male characters who looks like he could kill someone and remarks that her playing sets the teeth on edge. I start mimicking the waltz. Vocally, we don't have a piano. Stop start. Start stop. Mr van de Ven gives me a worried look mainly because telepathically we both know that this is what I will do from now on to wind him up if needs be. If you don't know the waltz it is the kind of music that makes you feel like going out and conquering the world. After listening to my version you will need therapy. We reach the end, not of our relationship but are relieved and happy to talk about how it all made sense but was quite painful getting there. The end of the film, not us. I read a review today which said that it requires several viewings to understand the characters better. Again, I mean the film, not me and him. Don't say you were not warned. 

The other day a class of teenage girls were reading an article on food and the word 'average' came up. ''What's this word 'average'?'' one of them asks me and to save time I translated it into Spanish. There was a sea of blank looks as one by one they all told me this word doesn't exist. I looked it up in the dictionary thinking that I'd got it wrong but they still weren't convinced. Then I realised. There is no average in Spain. There is no average man, woman, child, situation, day and so on. Everything is one extreme or the other. Almost always the opposite amount or degree beyond what is normal or reasonable. Nothing is ever a dull moment. I tried to give examples of 'average' and this kicked off a discussion that anyone new to the scene would think was a riot what with the whole class shouting to be heard. This can be very draining to an outsider or invigorating if you join in and try to drown out everyone else's opinion with your own. Whatever it is, it is life affirming and nothing average about it. In the end I drew an imaginary line and chose intelligence as the word we would use to get an understanding of it all. I started to say that above the line was highly intelligent, genius etc but was stopped short by one girl who interrupted and said 'oh I get it, and below that line is what most people are, 'stupid!'  ( Thank God for punctuation!)