I went to Rosas the
hard way, up over another pass, which let me see the entirety of the bay I was
going down to. I wanted to find a supermarket and do a shop before getting
installed in a camp site which I did. I love Spanish supermarkets because a)
they are cheaper than say France b) they are always nearly empty and c) they
sell you plastic bags at 5 centimes each, whereas in France you just have to
bring your own.
I found one campsite
which was very expensive again so contined and found the one in my campsite
book. It was 73 Euros for the week plus 5 euros for 50 hours of internet so I
decided to book in for 7 days. The site was quite full and there were changes
everyday as people arrived and others left. It was a good site in that it had
everything one could need and was literally 2 minutes walk to the beach. It was
great to be settled for a while – I wanted to get on with my writing in
particular and also do a few domestic chores like laundry, changing my bedding
over to summer setting and just some general cleaning up.
It was the first time
for quite a while that I had internet round the clock and I got into using YouTube
to watch some standup I hadn’t seen before and a load of concerts. I love good
standup, standup that is making a point and yet is funny. I saw a couple of
Billy Connolly I hadn’t seen and a Ricky Gervais, a couple of Dylan Moran an
old Chris Rock plus a couple of new to me American guys whose names I can’t
remember. The great thing about YouTube is you can turn off what you’re
watching if you’re not pleased with it and go to something fresh. Concert wise,
I enjoyed Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, recent and old, Depeche Mode, Tears for
Fears, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, The Cure and The Rolling
Stones and turned off quickly The Sex Pistols comeback.
Reading-wise, I had a
new but old Peter May book, situated in Beijing. A brilliant story, well
constructed and researched and quite believable. Just finished it this
lunchtime – what next?
I enjoy cooking and
have become a bit Spanish, having my lunch around 2 and my evening meal around
9 but unlike them, my evening meal is usually the biggest. Lunch is always
something simple, often mainly leftovers, but the evening is usually some sort
of grilled meat with a load of stir-fried vegetables and often chick peas or
lentils instead of pasta, rice or potatoes. And when I do cook potatoes, I cook
some other vegetables with them like cabbage or leeks. With alcohol being so
cheap, I have a G and T before hand and half a bottle, occasionally more, of
Spanish Red wine with the meal. Artichokes are so cheap I often have one or two
as starters accompanied with the dried ham I got in the market when I was in Viloria. Cigarettes are so
cheap that I have made no progress on giving them up – my main motivation being
the cost.
I’ve had some stable
German neighbours who are as friendly as one can be when there is no common
language and the other side I’ve had English and French who were very friendly
too. Then I get to know others because of the pet factor: nearly everyone has a
cat or a dog, and as I have to traverse the whole camp when I take Eddy for
walks, we got to know them all. Out walking Eddy twice a day I get chatting
with people too, almost always because of Eddy who they admire and then want to
touch. And he is getting more tolerant of strangers touching him.
My toes have shown
great improvement since I’ve been here but I have been suffering from a lot of
pain in my left hip and just have to walk it off every day. Sometimes when I
get up the pain is so bad it makes me gasp so is a bit annoying.
The other slightly
annoying thing is that when going through my bank account to look at how the
exchange rate has been improving, I noticed some transactions I knew nothing
about. I had a chat on the internet with my bank about this and they said the
main way they stop such regular fraudulent events is by cancelling the debit
card and sending out a new one. This is fine but could leave me without a card
for a couple of weeks which would make life difficult. I’m still trying to find
a solution to this one, particularly because they can only send out new cards
to my given address which means they would go to Sam’s but he is off for a
couple of weeks holiday in the Isle of Skye in about a week’s time.
I’ve been finding
myself awake at night a lot and I think this is because of my bad hip.
But, everything else
beside, I’ve been enjoying myself here and am in no real rush to leave. My week
is up on Thursday though and I shall leave I think although I may hang around
till Friday when my pension appears in my bank account so I can do a pretty big
shop before heading into France and the next stage. Also, because of the
potential card problem, I may head back to Najac – 5 hours from here says
Google, hence a two day trip for me, before going back to my plan of following
the Med in France from west to east.
It is strange being in
a place where four fifths of all the buildings are unoccupied yet he poorer
Spanish and the immigrant Moroccans live still in comparative squalor.
The weather here can
change very quickly. This morning Eddy and I went for our longest ever walk
here. We left with total blue sky and bright sunshine but by the time we got
back the sky was covered with clouds and a cold wind was blowing. Eddy is out
dead at my feet, the walk this morning did him in.
It’s April Fool’s Day
and I think this is probably the first year ever when I haven’t tried to make
an April Fool out somebody; just can’t be bothered.
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