swall

Right now. I am in the universe. I am on the earth, too. I am in Europe, I am in Spain, and I am in Basque country. I am in Bilbao. I am in a fourth-floor apartment. I am in the living room, on the couch. I am watching a music channel on the television. It’s dance hour. I am… not exactly enjoying it. This song is good, though:

HIT ME ON MY BEEPER, BEEPER, BEEPER, BEEPER.

LADADA YOU’RE OUTTA LINE,

COS YOU PAGE ME ALL THE TIME!

It’s super 90’s. I mean, pagers, come onnnnnn! Tomorrow I go home. So I’m writing

This NOW, while I’m still here. Makes sense, eh? A while ago I went for a jaunt to get some 70% chocolate ice cream. There’s a festival on all week, and the streets are teeming with people, So, I battled my way through hoards of people to finally reach my destination: the front of the queue in the best-stocked ice cream shop I have ever seen. LITERALLY about ninety different flavours. Lots I wouldn’t touch, however. Gorgonzola ice cream, anyone? Tuna and olives? FOIE GRAS???

RUSSELL BRAND IS ON THE TONIGHT SHOW RIGHT NOW!

Yes, so I stuck to my chocolate FLAVA. And a dollop of pistachio ice cream on top, which melted instantly in the 25 degree heat of the night. Walking home I had green melty goo dripping down the cone, my hand, my arm, and onto my beige Zara cotton cardigan with blocky stripes of muted green, red and blue; my dark blue skinny jeans, and the navy moccasins I bought earlier today. My annoyedness subsided when I got to the chocolate underneath though. MMMHHMMM.

I’m babysitting my brother and sister right now. When lil’ bruvva was just about asleep, BANG! The sound of gunshots filled the air. LOUD gunshots. Like from a rifle maybe? I know nothing about guns, but it doesn’t really make much difference. All you need to know is that it was loud, and echoed against all across the city. Bruvva gripped my hand and looked at me questioningly. “Fireworks”, I told him. So, since he was awake, we sat at the window and looked out at the sky explode into every colour of the rainbow. By the end he was asleep.

Then… I turned on the laptop and the tv. And that brings us (back to doh-doh-doh-doh, Doh, a deer, a female..) up til NOW!!

Funny things that happened during my sejour:

· I saw a little girl eating a chocolate sandwich. No, not nutella. ACTUAL chocolate! Imagine getting a bar of whatever… dairy milk? And putting it into a bit of baguette. Sounds strangely delicious…

· Two men got fined for going into the sea when there was a red flag. Also, when I was at one particular beach, where there was a red flag the lifeguards used a megaphone to tell the beach that there was a “BANDERA ROJA, PROHIBIDAR BAŇO!”

· PIPAS! They are sunflower seeds, but with the shells still on. Everywhere you go you see where people have been eating pipas, because there will be a scattering of them on the ground, as it’s totally okay to just spit out the shells. In some upmarket bars they are banned. Crazzzaayy, eh?

· The way they drink cider is very strange. If one orders a SIDRA in a bar, you will get a litre bottle. Either the bar man will come pour it for you or (if you’re brave enough not to be laughed at) you can try yourself. You see, this cider isn’t carbonated, and so to get air into it and to make it bubbly, one pours it from a height. So outside every bar you will see people with a bottle of cider of their head, pouring it into their glass they hold below the waist. It splashes everywhere, and you only get half of it in the glass, but it’s so cheap that it really doesn’t matter.

If the barman is pouring it for you, he’ll come over every once in a while and pour a small amount. This is how you are meant to drink it, in a GULPO, all at once. This means it doesn’t have the chance to go flat.

What a strange place, hmm.