España

MAINLY CANCELED DUE TO BLUSTERY CONDITIONS

Hello, or should I say Hola? No I should probably say Hello as I am now no longer in Spain. On reflection I mainly spoke 'Over-accentuated English with a Latino twang' rather than any actual Spanish when I was in the land of the Raging Bull anyway, so there's no point littering this post with my Del Boy-esque grasp of a foreign tongue.

Besides, the football hooligans and holiday reps have worked hard on establishing the English reputation abroad as a race of ignorant, uncultured apes who are wholly unwilling to embrace foreign language or custom, so who am I to ruin all of their hard work with a few scattered token por favors.

Anyway, I could write about the FIB (Benicassim Festival) to which myself and a merry band of friends went, but like my Blur entry, I don't want this to turn into some ten-a-penny music critique telling everybody what they already know; Oasis fans are mainly on parole, White Lies do not have enough songs to perform a 90 minute set and Paul Weller is scared of the wind.

Fairplay to the Modfather though, it was frightfully gusty on the Friday night, which saw the festival organisers break out into a cold sweat - ironically something the peasant camping collective would have paid good money for as the scorching rays of sunlight breathed fire into their tents at 8am without fail.

Realising there was not enough Euros in the kitty to pay the life insurance claims if the hurricane caused a scaffolding pole to skewer Kings of Leon, they wisely pulled the plug and sent the camping massiv back to their tents without any headliners. Only when they got to where they left their tents, they weren't there. So they had to sleep in a sports hall. I even felt a pang of pity as I was whisked off by 4x4 to our nearby apartment. That's a lie, I was an unbearable smug tosser.

I conclude with a short summary of things I learned, or had confirmed, by my trip to Spain. Read, digest and enjoy.

• The more amusing the menu translation, the less delicious the meal. For example, there were few delights to behold in 'Delights of Pig'. Essentially a plate of barely-cooked pig throat and ear morsels.
  

• The Spanish severely lack entrepreneurial nous. Hundreds of people in our apartment village needed ferrying 5 minutes up the coast (and would have paid good Euro for the privilege) yet we were left to squeeze into an illegal taxi run by an overweight, but lovely, homosexual man called Timo. He made the repeat trip so many times his KIA actually broke by the end of the festival. True story. Official taxis, where were you?

• Spain is windy. I know I made light of the gusts which put the stoppers on Friday night's line up, but it was awfully strong wind and it is a miracle no one was hurt. A miracle, and a shame in the case of Oasis.

• There's a dirty street urchin in Barcelona with Paula's handbag. Filthy thieving bastard.
  

• I won't be going back to Benicassim next year. Sorry Spaniards, I know you'll miss me.
  

The Britpop uniform

Pierre ventures cautiously into fashion blogging:

Well aren't I a sporadic little toerag. Firing off two blogs in 24 hours last week like some kind of badly wired mortar, and then not coming back for a good week. What a prick.

Since we last spoke (I like to feel this is direct conversation between me and you, no one else reads it) I went to Hyde Park. Oh and Blur were there too.

Yes I, like many, got to see the Britpop scallys rifle through their timelessly excellent back-catalogue in front of a sun-baked, half-cut cast of thousands. It was emotional and brilliant, but if you've picked up any form of newspaper over the last few days you will have already read a review so I won't attempt to bore you with my oh-so-hazy version of events.

We defy gravity on a daily basis flying tonnes of metal through the air, technology can tell us what is happening so far away that it happened so long ago our brains can't comprehend it, we've developed devices which scare hoodlum youths away from cornershops by probably permanently deafening them, but for some reason when a few thousand people congregate in a field no one's mobile phone works. Orange took delight in telling me I had no network coverage. In an open space in the middle of London. What an endorsement for their claims to have some scandalously high percentage of the UK's landmass blanketed in their signal. 99% of the UK reception coverage, unless you're in an open space in the capital of the country. Then you'll have to go back to waving in the direction you hope your friend is in.

It's ok though, cause when I did get through I managed to tell my friend I was wearing cut-off Levis and a black Fred Perry polo shirt. Turns out a few other people were too. He found me an hour later. Through no help from those descriptions.

Oh and I punched a guy in the mouth.