Some Other Stuff Happened

So what about the rest of the week? To be honest, it felt rather like the gap year I never had, crammed into three days: I lay on my bed listening to the minarets, waiting for the immodium to kick in and watching a solitary cockroach scuttle up my wall, and I thought: wow - this is all rather exciting. Aside from Bethlehem, we went everywhere - Masada, the Dead Sea, Nazareth, Caeserea, Tiberius...

Geographically, Israel is the most amazing country I've ever visited. Roughly the size of that universal unit of measurement that is the Wales, Israel neverthless manages to cram into itself just about every type of scenery possible. Head towards the North, and you could be forgoven for thinking you've stumbled into North Yorkshire, with huge, rough moor-like hills liberally covered with sheep for as far as you can see. Head west a little way and you're on the Med, and could easily mistake your surroundings for Sicily, or the Greek islands. Turn around and head south, and you could be in the middle of the Grand Canyon; mosey into Jericho, and you're in the middle of a desert. you simply don't get this in the South East - frankly a hillock constitutes news in South Camden.

So when we weren't hopping around being Pilgrims we were hopping around being tourists, and the first obvious stop was the Dead Sea. At -418 metres below sea level, the Dead Sea boasts, amongst its more famous accolades, the Lowest Bar in the World, where you can buy coca cola, Budweiser and other products imported from the USA. Admittedly this fades into insignificance alongside the Sea itself, famously full of salt to the extent that nothing can live in it, and shrinking at an alarming rate each year to such an extent that within 100 years it will probably have gone altogether. It's claimed that its waters, 8.6 times saltier than the ocean, apparently, and mud have healing properties, a fact that makes a lot of money for their gift shops where bottles of the stuff are sold by the thousand. I don't know about that, all I know is the water flippin' hurts on mouth ulcers. There is nevertheless something rather exhilirating at being able to fall backwards and then bob up and down with absolutely no effort, and I like the Dead Sea.

Next stop Masada, about which I had strangely mixed feelings. On the one hand I felt a sort of spine-tingling exhilaration gaping out of the bus window at the vast and awesome scenery, complete with the occasional camel; on the other three of us, me included, spent much of the trip retching into Tesco bags, which did mar the mood slightly. Probably fortunately for me and everyone else on the bus I eventually emptied my stomach in the toilets at Masada and happily moseyed up to Herod's fort to some of the most stunning views I've ever seen. Masada must have been the most impressive of palaces, though it's famous mainly for the mass suicide of all of its 960 citizens while under siege my Romans, which frankly strikes me as a bit over the top, not to say daft.

Another seriously odd place is Jericho. For a start we're told that, if we're asked at the checkpoint later on if we've been there, we have to say no. This is something to do with the Intifada. Jericho is in many places a depressing place. Once rich in tourism not only due to its historical and Biblical fame, but also because it was home to Israel's only casino (gambling is banned in the State of Israel, but the Palestinian Authority's control of Jericho resulted in a nice loophole which meant that visitors and their cash came from afar for several years). Since the Intifada, though, tourism has unsurprisingly dropped massively. The casino has gone; the houses look tired and the whole town is in need of a bit of a face-life - it's a bit like Blackpool out of season, only uprooted and plonked in the middle of a desert. We do however visit a fabulous foodstore and leave with arms full of succulent Jericho oranges, dates (which are of less interest to those of us still on the immodium) and Turkish Delight to die for. Jericho also affords us one of the more interesting photo opportunities of the trip, in the shape of PLO-founded Al Quds Open University, its titled daubed in chalk above what looks like one of the body piercing salons in Camden Town, flanked with posters of Che Guevara and Yasser Arafat.

Tearing through the Jordan Valley, gazing into a whole other country on one side of us, Morrissey aptly singing "I will see you in far off places" on my iPod, I am, for a moment, utterly content. We pass by nomads, the children playing outside makeshift, ramshackle, corrugated iron dwellings, camels teathered outside and, anachronistically, satellite dishes on the roof. Maybe they can't cope without the cricket (which incidentally was going rather well this morning... less so now...)

Primal Typing Therapy

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HEUIYR5NCYDNCPUZNYA8O;WYCBZY;DCHA;HCBO'VECFUOBLUICYTXOY;RGIBYR!


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[and breathe]

In general I agree that one should never meet one idols - invariably they turn out to be dickheads. This isn't always the case - I met Ian McShane once and he was very sweet (and very short); I also met Dean Windass, whose goal against Yeovil had won me some cash, and despite the fact the mighty City had just won all thanks to him and here was a young woman offering to buy him a drink with her windfall, he still glared and grunted then stomped off. I wouldn't necessarily rate either as an "idol", but, well, it's all good practice.

Then a few weeks ago, purely by chance, I met Alan Bennett! I can't even begin to to sum up in normal language how amazing this is. I have a sort of vague hierarchy of people I admire, which is a somewhat eclectic mix featuring the likes of Michael Palin, Desmond Tutu and Morrissey. But Alan Bennett would probably be right at the top.

I've loved Alan Bennett since I was a very small child. Being a good Northerner and the daughter of one good Northerner (and one good Southerner with very well honed literary tastes) one of the things I remember as a very small child is listening to Alan Bennett reading the Winnie the Pooh stories in that perfect and unique voice of his. Thus begun a sort of addiction.


Anyhow, having devoured everything of his I could the older I got, I eventually wrote to him a few years ago after my grandmother died. This sounds perhaps a little odd, but I'd just read "Untold Stories" and a lot of the things he wrote about his mum and her dementia rang true, so I wrote to say thank you, and to share a little piece of quintessentially Northern humour (when we drew up to meet the hearse on the day of the funeral my dad somewhat bizarrely asked the undertaker "How's business?" and he replied "Oh great! We've had two new ones come in last night!" Then we buried by granny.) It never occurred to me he'd write back, but he did - a little postcard thanking me for the letter, and including a brief anecdote about Thora Hird. Apparently he does this, and I think that's lovely. Anyway, I was coming home from work unusually early - about 4.30 - and was on the tube - also unusual. I was plugged into my iPod and happily dousing myself in a spot of Morrissey when I glanced down the carriage and most probably physically jumped in my seat when I saw him sitting a few seats away. I agonised very brielfy about leaping up and saying hello, because he was engrossed in the Guardian (I was relieved to see he reads the Guardian) and didn't give the air of someone who wanted to be disturbed. Rightly or wrongly, I decided I couldn't pass up on the opportunity to say hello, so I sidled up to him and apologetically said that he'd written to me a few years ago and that I wanted to say thank you.

"What did you write to me about?"

I told him and he smiled politely - I suspect he didn't remember. So I elaborated, told him my grandma was from Bradford, and that his stories rang nostaglic bells with our family.

"Are you from Bradford?"

Sort of, I said, but I'd moved. I wasn't really from anywhere...

He sympathised, and we talked a little bit about accents, because both our accents were considerably more Northern by this part of the conversation than they had been at the beginning. We don't fit anywhere - Southerners think we're Northern, and Northerners think we're Dead Posh.

I got off at Goodge Street, which wasn't my stop but I didn't want to disturb him any longer, but I hope the conversation didn't irritate him. He came across as a truly lovely, quiet and self-effacing sort of person who liked anonymity, but I hope, in this instance, being recognised was a pleasure and not a trial, and that he understood how appreciated and admired as he is by an awful lot of people, it's just I happened to be the person with few enough inhibitions to toddle up and say so.

If It's Wednesday It Must Be Jerusalem

I've never been on an organised tour holiday before, and I have to say I'd think twice before going again. First of all, we have a schedule, and woe betide anyone who messes with it. Now I'm all for having a brief idea of what you want to see, and, as a result, an outline of when you intend to see it, but when this starts to interfere with the experience you start to wonder if it's all worthwhile. Take the Holy Sepulchre, for example. We are marched into this grand building, given a brief talk about what it is, then, as we gaze in awe at our surroundings and try to digest that fact that here we are, in the middle of Jerusalem, in possibly our holiest site, our guide interrupts ou reverie with a shout of "Fifteen minutes back on bus, chop chop, shake a leg." We then have mere seconds to decide which bit we want to look at most, which is normally determined by the length of the queue, i.e. if there is one (and there usually is) we need to rule that out. Queues normally form in front of objects of veneration. Our guide tells us that the stone at the entrance is the stone that Jesus's body was laid on after death, except that it probably isn't. We can't get to the stone to make up our own minds, because it's covered with weeping Polish women. Later on in the week we visit another site which seems far more likely to be the place where Jesus was actually crucified, and where the weathering of the rocks carved out what is unmistakedly a skull in the cliff face.

So here's a typical day in the life of a Pilgrim on an organised trip:

- Get an alarm call at 5am, even though breakfast isn't until six and you need all of 15 minutes to get ready

- Have breakfast in the hotel. This consists of 15 minutes repeatedly putting the toast through the toaster (I found 8 revolutions gave you something approaching toast) and 5 minutes eating it.

- Put in your drugs order with Fr Angus, who has morphed into Dr Angus and is doing a roaring trade in immodium in particular. This is probably because we were told not to drink the water before being told "And here's some lovely salad for dinner. Would you like ice in your drink?"

- Clamber onto the bus and ignore the arguments over seats. The bus is a bit like a year 7 classroom, in that wherever you found yourself sitting yesterday, this shall be your seat for evermore. Tough luck if you're sitting next to someone who eats their own snot, or, in our case, in front of the happiest man on the planet, who even once referred to himself a "Happy Colin", and who rises at 4.30am daily to sing praises to the Lord before breakfast. Throughout the day, Happy Colin treats us to outbursts of joyous wisdom, including "This is the day that the Lord has made!" to "Blessed is the day when Jesus conquered Satan."

- Arrive at agreed destination and are promptly shown the "Coffee-Out" (the somewhat imaginative euphemism our guide uses for the toilet. Apparently he'll burn if he says "toilet".) If we're lucky there's also a Coffee-In to help us recover from our early start.

- Finally assemble outside whatever it is we're meant to be looking at. Obligatory group photo follows while the guide looks at his fake rolex and tuts. Thus gathered we are given a brief talk as to what it is we're supposed to be looking at, which usually goes something like this "Welcome to the Pater Noster. This is where Jesus is said to have taught his disciples the Our Father. Except he probably didn't. We don't know. Anyway, here's a nice church built on top of it by an Italian bloke in the 1920s, only you can't go in because there are some Poles sobbing on the doorstep. Enjoy! Ten minutes, back on bus, chop chop, shake a leg."

- Get mobbed on the way back to the bus by peddlars that could have stepped straight out of a pantomime trying to flog all manner of jewellery, postcards, wooden shepherds, water - you name it. We are forbidden from buying from these people: "They cheat you. I take you to nice place where you do lots of shopping."

- Arrive at "nice place" to do lots of shopping. This nice place is run by a Palestinian chap called George who claims we are receiving a 50% discount. Baskets are thrust into our hands as we walk through the doors, and free shot glasses of mind-blowingly strong coffee is liberally handed out as we pile ourselves high with olice wood nativity sets, "I Love Jerusalem" plastic snowglobes (oh yes - with pink glitter in place of snow!) and bottles of holy water and oil ("for annointing only") on which there is a three-for-two offer. As we leave we see our guide getting his cut, in the shape of handfuls of American dollar bills.
- Return to the bus, and it's onwards to the next place on the list, where, invariably, there's another church built by an Italian, a garden tended by Franciscan monks and a couvenir shop run by Johnny, "the greatest woodcarver not only in Bethlehem, but in the whole world." In Cana we are told categorically that this was not the same Cana where water was turned into wine - that Cana was destroyed was destroyed centuries ago by an earthquake. But you can still buy wine by the gallon in its many gift shops. We sampled some of their pomegranate wine - I'm afraid I cannot recommend it.

Anyway, chop chop, shake a leg, we pilgrims are becoming tourists for a day.

O Little Town of Bethlehem

I've never really been anywhere exotic. I've been to some odd places - I've been to Arkansas, which in some ways takes "odd" to a whole new level, and I once spent 3 days in Salzburg talking about lesbianism - but I've never been anywhere that's felt truly "foreign". So it was with a certain amount of excitement that I awoke at 5am to find that I'd been stirred from sleep not by students urinating against my window, which is normally the case, but by the sound of several minarets seemingly competing with each other for the faithful. I'd woken up in Bethlehem, and it doesn't get any more spine-tingling than that.

Bethlehem was so alien to me in many ways as to make Arkansas look vaguely normal. A city of massive contradictions, it isn't the Little Town still-lying under starry skies that you imagine from the hymns and charity cards. This image is even less appropriate these days, when the city is encircled by a huge, ugly concrete wall which the powers that be laughingly call, with a grasp of PR that would impress even Peter Mandelson, the "Peace Wall". This peace wall means that those residents who've even managed to get permits to allow them to leave need to queue for several hours daily at the checkpoints just to be allowed to go to work, so they can earn money to pay taxes, most of which the city never sees. Under the guise of peace, the army is stopping Palestinians from even accessing and thus being able to harvest the olive groves - one of Bethlehem's main sources of income given the products (oil, wood etc) that come from them. Much like the Berlin wall, the wall is gradually being daubed by all sorts of grafitti, from an original Banksy to the undecorated yet dryly witty "Can we have our ball back, please?"

At the same time, though, the wall afforded me one of my more poignant moments of the trip (the somewhat less than poignant I'll come to later.) We had kept silent - a whole bus of us - as we approached the checkpoint out of the city and into Jerusalem, a sort of act of prayerful solidarity with the Palestinians, for whom the queuing is the easy bit. Absorbed in a sort of easy "goody versus baddy" analysis of the whole situation I gazed out of the window, not looking at anything particular. A young soldier with a huge gun hung across his chest, who looked younger than most of my students, gazed back at me. He smiled. I smiled back. As we pulled away and through the gates, he waved. I waved back. A tiny gesture to relieve the monotony of his day, but a little human glimmer of hope in a deeply depressing situation. Of course, they have conscription here, and the kid must have been 18 or 19, and this whole state of affairs is not his fault.

Downtown Bethlehem isn't exactly kicking. A trip venturing out one evening found us heckled twice by shopkeepers who leapt from their front rooms-cum-storefronts as we moseyed past at nine in the evening. The first, who seemed to run some sort of corner shop from an easy chair, shouted after us "You English? You want beer?" We declined and walked a little further up the street, only to be heckled by another store owner who stood in the door of his souvenir shop brandishing an olive wood nativity scene and calling excitedly "You Irish? You want Virgin Mary?"

Our trip into the centre of town encountered little excitement, except an ominous chain cafe that on closer inspection turned out to be called "Stars and Bucks" (the West Bank is happily free from Americanisation, though possibly for the wrong reasons) and a huge Christmas shop that seemed to be open all night and sold the sort of articles you'd buy with a sense of irony even in the mid-70s. Disturbing and garish singing plastic Santas adorned the shop front, strobe lighting attacked the road in front, and a Disneyfied voice loudly rang out with the Twelve Days of Christmas. It was therefore with a certain amount of relief that we stumbled upon Afteem, just off Manger Square, a gloriuos family-run restaurant with no menu, where they bring you what happens to be going down that day. In our case this was real hummus, falafel, salad and lamb kofte to die for, washed down with genuine Palestinian beer (which against all expectation I'd highly recommend, despite the fact it's advertised by a bloke who looks like Borat) Afteem restored my faith in what had appeared during the day to be a sad, down-on-its-luck tourist trap which my inner-Marxist had been brooding on throughout the trip. It was friendly, cheerful, the food was awesome. Oh, and they have their own Facebook group. It seemed like one of many glimmers of optimism in a surprisingly optimistic city, one of the others being the Bethlehem Arab Society of Rehabiltation - an astounding organisation relying largely on outside aid but serving the local community, specialising in rehabilitation and training for disabled members of a society that often shuns them. The centre carries out operations, provides treatment, consultations, support, rehabilitation, training and work opportunities, day centres, nurseries, outreach and crisis internvention. In short, it's a shining miracle in what we shouldn't forget is this most holy of cities.

And so, onwards, through the checkpoint. We're leaving Bethlehem behind - counting our blessings that we're able to leave at all.

Those were the days, my friend/We thought they'd never end

As I haven't been serious in... well, I'm never serious on this blog, it defeats the mere object of my existence, but anyway, there's a time and a place, and this, as the Michael Jackson song somewhat ostentatiously puts it, is it.

Yesterday, someone I knew a long time ago, at school, died. Last year, days after I'd got engaged, and while I was wrapped up in my own little bubble of self-satisfaction, someone else I knew from school, from the same group of friends, also died. I felt on both occasions somewhat unworthy of feeling any sort of grief - guilty for not having kept in touch other than through the odd Facebook message and occasional running into each other at a mutual friend's party; a fear of being swept into a drama of something in which I had no part to play except perhaps a fleeting cameo. Then I found a photograph from ten years ago, and I cried my eyes out.

So here's the cameo. What this has made me realise is how the ripples of someone's life can have such a huge impact on so many people. Yesterday loads upon loads of people who knew Will posted comments on his Facebook page, ranging from heartbreaking to the frankly ridiculous. All of those people knew him; a normal, nice bloke, he'd made an impact on every single one.

I realised when I looked at that picture - which I'll come to in a minute - that in an odd and not wholly melodramatic way I owe my existence to those two guys. This isn't for some deeply symbolic reason; I never dated either (though I may have wanted to, but that's another story), and neither of them talked me down off a bridge or pushed me out of the way of an oncoming car. Nothing like that. It's just that they were there.

I fell into my sixth form days battered and bruised and brimming with teenage angst that would make Morrissey blush. I'd left a small island, much of my family, my lack of real friends (bar one or two) and a miserable few years at an all-girls secondary school I hated, and arrived on this huge, shining campus with its own golf course populated by malevolent, designer-clad youths who screamed with laughter at any hint of a Northern accent, or if you hadn't heard of Armani, who innocuously asked you the price of your ball dress knowing full well it came off the peg in Marks while theirs was - ahem - Prada. It was a mix of those who were very, very good at things - the Sports and Arts scholars, the Chinese academics, the National Youth Orchestra Violinists - those who had been told they were very, very good at things, and those who didn't need to be good at anything, because Daddy was paying and would pay until he died and passed on the inheritance. And in the midst of this 3 lovely normal guys and one loveable intellectual, all a full year above me, scooped me up andindulged me for a whole year. This was the best year of my life.

I realise now how much I owe to all of them, not least because one of them is now one of my closest friends. These beautiful blokes' blokes danced with me at the school ball; they came to my concerts. Guys who hung out together on epic treks (they did the Ten Tors challenge and talked of joining the army - and did) listened to me babble on about saving the world, socialism, and my "band" (Lapsang - 'nuff said), and gently took the piss out of my vegetarianism, misguided attempts at Marxism, and the undercover relationship everyone was convinced I was having with the budding author in our group. While the School's elite and the resident tormenters bore down on you from the Rep Step and skulked around the quad, we occupied our very own table... in the library. We talked about The Now Show, and we plotted against the new headmaster, a chap who made us laugh so much it hurt when he condemned his students for "unseemly displays of affection" and told us he didn't like to think of our new outfits as a uniform, rather "a dress code with compulsory elements". We were the Resistance, our own brand of revolutionaries. Only we really knew what was going on. I have it on record. Dom, in my leaver's book, wrote "I hope you survive another year of Mr P and all the other cronies plotting against the school. Good luck in your crusades about whatever the next peaceful demonstration is about. Anyway, have fun."

And I did have fun. I had so much fun. This was truly the best year of my life. For the first time I can remember, I felt challenged, wanted, cajoled, supported - I felt happy. When they left I was able to stand a little taller, feel a bit more confident. I got on with stuff, though stuff was never that good again.

And I found the picture. On their last day of school before A level study leave, with me, their token girl and protegee looking on in giggles, a giant pink bedsheet appeared hung from a window high up in the theatre, and on it massive letters for all to see, some reference, I presume, to our Head/Dictator, as we saw it: "Cheer up, the worst is yet to come. From the class of '99".

Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.

There were five of us. Now, disparate and floundering, there are three. Will and Dom - I now realise how much I owe to you both. I love you and I miss you. Thank you.

In what I concur is a somewhat unexpected and unlikely state of affairs I've visited no less than 3 royal palaces this year. I must just quickly dispell the myth that I've suddenly become some sort of ardent royalist - in fact I inadvertantly corrected the Queen around this time last year when she got UCL and King's mixed up (she didn't look too miffed, just mildly confused, as she moved on to talk to someone a little less revolutionary.) I just realised it's something I'd never done which was on our doorstep, and was cajoled by some visiting relatives.

First off was Windsor Castle. This attracts, I discovered, a particular brand of visitor: foreign, earnest, and educated, at least to the extent that they know that the queen doesn't generally live in Buckingham Palace; the kind of tourist who doesn't pronounce said palace with a sounded "h", who knows that Windsor is outside of London, and have enough about them to venture there. And Windsor Castle is probably the most inviting of the three that I've visited. A genuine place of residence - if a somewhat elaborate one - with a bit of a buzz to it. People live here; stuff happens; even if you think that stuff is a bit outdated and ultimately obselete. It also employs one of the most elaborate queuing systems I've ever encountered, living up to and inded surpassing our national stereotype as if to reassure the tourists who have made such an effort to get here. Edward politely ushers you into the first queue, and Elizabeth politely yet firmly takes your postcode so that you can include gift aid with your purchase (British visitors are few and far between and Liz was on a mission) before shooing you gently into the next queue, where your bags are scanned airport-style just in case you have plans to blow up her Maj, at which point you join a final queue where your ticket is torn and you are sent upon your way. The tours, should you wish to join one, are conducted as though by some eminent historian of the 1970s. Not for Windsor Castle this modern nonsense of dressing up in period costume and cracking jokes about Henry VIII's wives. This isn't the Tower, you know, and they do things properly here. Reminding me rather of a public school, frequent signs tell me not to go on the grass, and somewhat pointless chains stop me from going less than 4 feet from what are people's front doors (it strikes me that if your front door leads directly into the grounds of a tourist attraction you should expect people to come and peer in at you - that's like saying if you should have the right to live in Soho without people pissing on your doorstep at 3am.) As a matter of comparison, their shop is considerably more tasteful (or, at any rate, less tasteless) than the others, and their ice cream not inconsiderably cheaper.

And now we come to Buckingham Palace. I have a bit of a bugbear about Buckingham Palace because it turned both me and more recently one of my mates down for work at its much-lauded "State Rooms Opening", presumably proving the fact that its sifters have been trained to spot a republican at 50 paces. Buckingham Palace is rather different to Windsor. First of all, you can feel the resentment in the air that you're even there at all. Shelling out your £9.50 you're aware that you should be feeling a sense of great priviledge at being let in. With the forced smiles honed by years of the right sort of upbringing, Hermione and George, who can't be any older than nineteen, show you benevolently into the first room. Adidas-clad families shuffle gratefully through, ready to gawp at how the other half live. I find this all just a tad uncomfortable. The only thing that makes me feel a little better is that the other half evidently live in a world of camp opulence that would make Elton John blush. A sort of cross between a 1970s hotel and Liberace's living room, Buckingham Palace is stuffed full of chandaliers and gold-encrusted wall decoration, huge scarlet curtains complete with Brothel-inspired golden tassels, and countless unidentifiable items made from silver. It also has quite possibly the tackiest giftshop I have ever seen. Housed in what is basically an ornate portakabin, which you know is designed to be whipped away the minute the last wretched commoner crosses the threshold back into the real worls come September, it's complete with the sort of tatt that I fear is being sold without the slightest hint of irony. Plastic fridge magnets in the shape of Buckingham Palace (a snip at £5.99 each), garish plastic crowns, innumerable teatowels and of course an array of Duchy Original products (Charlie's been struggling in the likes of Waitrose since the crunch.) In the excitement of it all a four-year-old we've brought with us (he's a relative, I've not kidnapped him from somewhere) almost nicks a fake crown. Part of me thinks it would have been a triumph if he's succeeded, but they'd probably have detained him somehow under the terrorism act and treated him to a spot of waterboarding, so I'm glad Hermione's Army missed it. On the way out we almost have an ice cream (also Duchy, apparently, made with real vanilla pods!) but it's another £5 and frankly I'd prefer Mr Whippy any day.

And finally, Sandringham. I don't warm to Sandringham when I'm told that the current royal family kept it for the shooting and Balmoral for the hunting, when the rest of the world are considering if they should pick the property with the parking space instead of the one near the bus stop. It does, in its favour, have beautiful grounds - fabulous woodland that goes on for miles. It also has a series of somewhat unpreposessing huts at its entrance that put me in mind of Center Parks, complete with a huge and incongruous wooden squirrel that looks like it ought to be in a US theme park. The gift shop is a little more upmarket the Buckingham Palace - here you can buy a stuffed corgi ("Oh! Margaret! It's £10! That's practically free!" as we heard one delighted customer exclaim) and garishly pink, Sandringham-branded coconut ice. Made in Harrogate.

Again Sandringham attracts its own unique brands of visitors - this time in the shape of women who look a bit like Penelope Keith, all wear green jackets and are flanked by bounding golden retievers and the like. F and I, who are dressed like normal people and don't answer one another with the phrase "Oh, ra-ther!" before barking orders at our accompanying hounds. As we leave a coach deposits a group of women of a certain age all carrying walking poles (though while they would need these in Norfolk, which Noel Coward rightly observed is very flat, is beyond me.) We leave, with some chocolate and, of course, sone coconut ice, Who could resist?

House Hunting

I've always had my suspicions about estate agents. One recent example, for instance, is the fact that several of the rather lovely houses currently being advertised on what would otherwise be sparse listings have actually been sold and moved into long ago but remain on the websites to give some sort of false indication that the estate agent in question actually has something to sell. I've blogged previously about their advertising ploys ("Close to Greenwich" being code for "Deptford", "Open Plan Studio" being "Bedsit" - you get the picture) and once again I have the joy of experiencing it first hand as we search, loved-up newly-weds that we are, for a place to call home that doesn't involve 3am fire alarms and sewage incursions.

So we chose Isleworth.

I don't know if you've ever been to Isleworth, or if you did then quite possibly you didn't notice. I did Elby a great disservice when I described it as "somewhere you drive through on the way to somewhere else and think, it's a nice little place, but you wouldn't want to live there." Granted Elby is fictional, but it's made more of an impact on me that Isleworth, which, unimpressively, actually exists.

This rather explains how we came about choosing it. It's not that we're actively looking for somewhere with as much flair and excitement as (*in-joke alert*) England's number 3 batsman, it's just that we can't afford to flirt with its altogether more interesting neighbours. What's amusing about Isleworth is that even the Estate Agents don't bother to keep up the bullshit for very long.

"It's a lovely quiet area," she lies, shouting above the roar of an enormous jumbo jet that is so low in the sky that if people waved at us out of its windows we might actually wave back. Our chosen road is not just in the flight path - one spot of unexpected turbulence and we could end up with our roof taken off.

"Apart from the fact you're in the flight path," I point out, unncessarily.

We change the subject.

"What's the area like?"

"It's great!" she enthuses. "I've lived here all my life. You have Twickenham down there, Richmond just over there, and trains into central London every fifteen minutes".

So Isleworth's biggest selling point is that it's quite near to other places which are not Isleworth.

"What about the immediate area?"

She looks as though she was hoping I wouldn't ask that.

"Well..." she pauses, clearly, thinking on her feet, then brightly says "Over there is Hounslow bus garage."

Well that's good.

"Are there any supermarkets? I mean, even a little Tesco or a Sainsbury's or something?"

"There's a Morrisons in Brentford."

A clincher if ever there was one.

"Ooh!" she brightens. "There's a Spar on London Road!"

It gets better!

"Any other shops?"

"Not really. "She thinks, then says "I work in Domino's Pizza on Saturday."

I don't know if this is an attempt to answer the question or change the subject.

What she hasn't mentioned is the sewage works to the south. Things didn't get so dire that she felt she had to play this up as some sort of modernist water feature.

The house is beautiful - a 3-bedroom terraced cottage with a huge open-plan lounge/dining room - the sort of house that would fetch a million or so in Pimlico when you have a few more selling points than a suburban bus depot and escape routes to racier climes. We can just about afford it. But, to my shame, I don't think I can quite come to terms with being one of those smugly-married home-owning types that, when friends invite you to those sorts of dos smugly married home-owning types go to the best you can do to keep up appearances as they wax lyrical about their local famers' market, Montossori nursery and art house cinema is "We've got our own brach of Spar. And did you know there was a Morrisons in Brentford?"

Music To Top Yourself By

I am apparently, at the rather-too-old age of 27, embracing my inner Emo. (I could never be a goth as I couldn't be arsed with all the make-up.) Anyway, while I sat patiently waiting for a student to arrive and my computer to do something it was meant to have done several minutes ago I started compiling the following. Think of it as a sort of "Now That's What I Call Miserable Gits" or, as I've called it, "Music to Top Yourself By". I'd like to point out below are some of my favourite tracks of all time, but you have to admit they'd be fitting ditties to have playing on repeat in the background when they find your decaying body.

1. Climbing to the Moon - Eels (My favourite track)
2. Alone, Jealous and Stoned - The Secret Machines
3. Try Not To Breathe - REM
4. I Am Stretched On Your Grave - Kate Rusby (there are lots of versions but this is by far the best)
5. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths (my second favourite track)
6. Fallen - Sarah McLachlan
7. Asleep - The Smiths (yeah, Moz and co are quite good for this sort of thing)
8. The Drugs Don't Work - The Verve
9. Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen (again there are lots of versions, but if you want melancholy you can't beat this one.)
10. Unloveable - The Smiths
11. Where the Wild Roses Grow - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds with Kylie Minogue
12. Days - Kirsty McColl (better than the Kinks version for this purpose)

and finally, so such list would be complete without...
13. Creep - Radiohead

13 seemed an appropriate number to stop, though I realise I'm Joy Division-less...

Apparently CD sales are tumbling - maybe they should be looking to me for ideas? Or not...

I'm now off to play myself at Tennis on the Wii, as I'm home alone. Can you think of a more tragic scenario than that?

Barcelona - such a beautiful horizon

Barcelona was proud of its Olympics - and rightly so. They're the first I properly remember, and not just for the Freddie Mercury track which rather irritatingly sticks in your head once you've heard it a few times. These were the games where Sally Gunnell flew to victory in the 200m hurdles only to be faced with a Sports reporter's banal question "Are you glad you've won?" (er, no, actually, my favourite metal's actually bronze so I was hoping for third.) They were also the games that rejuvenated its crumbling, crime-prone waterfront (according to our guidebook, anyway), and, by extension, its battered spirit, and put Barcelona firmly on the map.

I like Barcelona a lot. I like it all the more because, since its first free elections in 1976, it's always had a socialist government. For Barcelona is, for some reason to my surprise, a very socialist city. Its infrastructure is faultless - it costs a mere E1.75 for a single journey on the Metro (against London's £4) and a huge digital display counts down the time until the next train second by second, and when it appears on the platform as the display triumphantly counts 5 - 4 - 3 -2 -1 it is sparklingly clean. The city seems to work well for the people who live there - the streets are kept clean and well provided with street lights, post boxes and bins (though we fear we may have posted our postcards into a bin by accident.) In contrast, though there is an awful lot on offer for tourists, a large proportion of it seemed to be out of order when we were there. We tried to go up in a cable car, but were told we couldn't because the lift was broken; determined to get a view of some sort we opted to climb the monument (a huge statue of Columbus) instead, but were told we couldn't, because the lift was broken. Worryingly, on asking if we could climb the stairs, we were told there weren't any, which made me hope that the lift didn't break while people were actually at the top.

Feeling a little desperate, and being pissed on by rain of an intensity that makes the North West look like the Sahara, we got the Metro and Funicular (which incidentally is integrated into the normal public transport network - I LOVE this city!) to the top of Montjuic to have a nosey round the Olympic Stadium, which is accessible to the public and, like a lot of things in Barcelona, entirely free, in the hope that you will buy a luminous pink plastic Sagrada Familia in its compulsory gift shop on your way out. (Paul - you'd better appreciate that one - possibly the best yet at a mere E1.90 and surely worth every penny!)

But by far the most enjoyable and intriguing tourist attraction in Barcelona is one that didn't seem to feature in any guide books, and into which we stumbled to escape the persistent downpour. The Olympics Museum in Barcelona is basically a collection of all the pieces of random memorabilia that didn't make it to the official Olympics Museum in Lausanne, proudly displayed alongside detailed descriptions written entirely by Marxists. Next to pairs of trainers signed by the likes of Linford Christie huge boards triumphantly declare that the re-introduction of the Olympics in 1892 was a result of the "Workers' Struggle" - now that the Workers (always written with a capital W) were enjoying better diets, living conditions and something approaching leisure time, sport was no longer "the preserve of the ruling classes". To further illustrate this a few exhibits along there was, inexplicably, a picture of Leeds United and underneath the explanation "football started out as a game played exclusively by the ruling classes, but has since become the sport most intrinsically linked with the Workers." There follows a not insubstantial detour into the history of Barca, Barcelona's revered Catalan side. Nowhere does it even attempt to claim that this bears any relevence to the Olympics, but that doesn't seem to matter. In another part of the museum, one of the best-kept displays is one entitled "The History of Catalan Sport", which features extensive information and photographic acompaniment on the delights of Petanque, which I don't recall ever having featured in the Olympics.

Among the many displays are some interesting exhibits including the sets of medals from each Games (I didn't realise each games had its own unique medal designs, and I would agree with the creators of the museum that the Catalan - not Spanish - designed medals of '92 are among the most impressive) and a seemingly random collection of Olympic torches, including (though the display doesn't mention it) the 2008 torch which was almost wrestled out of Connie Huq's hands.

A little way down the hill from the museum is the Fundacio Joan Miro - a gallery dedicated to an artist who honed the art of ripping the piss long before Tracy Emin got up one morning and decided she couldn't be arsed to tidy her bedroom. Most of the exhibits on the ground floor apparently symbolise Womanhood, that is to say, they all include shapes that look a bit like vaginas and those that don't are basically large phalluses. On the first floor there are some very beautiful pictures that would definitely not make it through to the Turner Prize, a whole room of paintings that look like to bored doodlings of someone who is supposed to be taking the minutes for the Points Based System Working Group and the ultimate piece, about which the person on the pre-recorded guided tour is a little too enthusiastic: three big white canvasses each bearing.... a wobbly line. Apparently it took Miro many years and much heartache to get the wobly lines just right (see how they don't touch the edge of the canvas? That's dead significant, is that. Nobody's quite sure why it's significant, but definitely is significant.) Slightly unconvincingly, the voice on my headset (which is so precious to the Foundation that I had to leave my passport at the desk before I could have one) stresses ot me that the art in front of me is not simply the wobbly lines, but the fact that Miro "contemplated" them for many years after their conception.

Contemplated my arse.

One of the main problems I have when going abroad, unadventurous English person that I am, is the food - both identifying it and daring to it eat, as well as figuring out how to actually order it. Our Hotel - the rather nice Catalonia Corsega, which is on the southern edges of the villagey Gracia district comfortingly far away from the tourist traps of the Ramblas yet a mere 10-minute walk from the gloriously wonderful Casa Mila (La Pedrera) - takes guests' suggestions and criticisms very seriously, and as a consequence offer an "English Breakfast", because British people were disappointed at being expected to eat what the Catalans eat while in Catalonia. The result is as though someone English has described an English breakfast in detail to a bemused Catalan chef who has never actually seen one, but has tried to faithfully reproduce what he has been told about. What he reproduced was fat-dripping Serrano-style ham burnt to a cinder, "sausages" which looked like the rubbery mini-frankfurters you get out of a tin, also burnt to a cinder, some very watery-looking scrambled egg and a valiant attempt to recreate baked beans in a country where you can't simply by them in a tin. It remains untouched, and we feast on an array of meats, cheese and chocolate-filled pastries and lots and lots of gritty, strong coffee.

There are elements of genuine local cuisine though that are just a step too far. It seems to me that all "local delicacies" consist of bits of animal intestine you would never otherwise dream of eating, and I sometimes suspect it is a ruse of guidebook-writers to cajole people from Wolverhampton into eating a sheep's stomach lining or (in the case of Catalonia) marinaded pigs trotters. Deliberately choosing restaurants that didn't have faded 80s-esque photographs of the delights on offer, we did run the risk of inadvertantly landing ourselves with a duck's colon or horse's bladder, but fortunately the ended up with huge pieces of steak cooked to perfection, cheese croquettes to die for, and lots and lots of pastry-based items involving lashings of dark chocolate.

But the highlight of the trip for my mother? We sat next to Delia Smith on the train, and listened to a frankly disappointing conversation she had with her husband regarding the layout of their couchette. On my return my mother had one question: not what was the best part of Barcelona? Or, did you visit the Sagrada Familia? No, "What did Delia Smith have to eat?"

Veal, since you ask.