August 2007
LUNCH
Hello;
Sorry, I do not have much time. I have to cook lunch for Miren in a second. She is going to be here in twenty minutes and she has been working the whole morning. It is not a joke.
You are not laughing?
Don't you think it is quite funny that I cannot really control my lovely wife and tell her what to do?
NO?
Well, that is fine. You do not live with her.
Yes, I have to do what she says because when I am here she is the one that pays the bills so it is just fair that I do the housewife work.
She leaves very early to work. I go to exercise, which for me is surfing. Then I do the shopping of the day, you know bread, newspaper and a little bit of food to do lunch. Then I go home do the bed clean the living room and clean up all the things from breakfast.
I am terrible doing the kitchen completely because you have to swipe the floor and then mope it. And then you have to get away the material that goes over the table and then put the mantelpiece that works as decoration. While I am doing that after lunch she will be siesteing.
So, I have to go. No, it is true I do not have many things to cook today because we are having left over from the week. There is a little bit of rice, there is some meat and some chick peas and soup so I am going to warm up everything and then serve it on the table and do a kind of mezze.
So now I go.
Have fun.THE END OF THE SUMMER
Hello,
For a week now I have noticed that the days are shorter. The sun goes in the west earlier than in the beginning of the summer.
Of course this mean that the end of the summer is here and that autumn is kicking forward to show its presence.
People wall around at that time and they carry a jumper with them. It is a very clear sign that things are changing. We in our little human brain fell that the weather may change, that we may fell a little bit of cold before the time to go home. Perhaps the sun is not going to be able to warm us as much as he was doing until yesterday.
Also the light of the sun is not so bright. We can fell that the big round yellow circle is not straight up there. Little by little has been moving towards one side and if before it was travel ling over us now seems to have gone to one side and give us its light and warm from the side. It is not the same. The heat of the sun is less warm and you need to add a jumper or something that will help you to compensate the lack of heat from the sun.
The mood change and people who were all the time on the streets go back home and hide. They do not want to be out and enjoy the light and warm of the sun. It is as if there was a letter from a distance relative telling that things soon will change. And the alarm for the well being of the family shoots off and everybody takes protection before anything happens.
Of course is dangerous because it means people never live happy and free. But then as soon as the cold and the rain arrive everybody comes back to the streets with a big smile as if saying “I told you so” or “ I knew that, my cousin told me in a letter”.
So now it is a very good time to do the things that you do in the middle of the summer but with nobody around. Every body is ready for the winter and the beach is empty and the bars are empty and if you want to go for a walk by the sea in the middle of the night you will be alone.
Have fun.COMEDY COMIC
Hello;
Well, I am having a little crisis. In a way we or I am always having little crisis. And that is that I do not know what is all about being funny or making people laugh.
In a way to make people laugh you do not have to be funny you have to play funny you have to make funny things in a way that people will find them funny.
There are things that are funny because they are intellectually funny and people laugh because they understand that you are trying to do something funny but the things that are really funny are the ones that people laugh and they do not know why they are laughing.
For example parody belongs to the first case and stupidity belongs to the second one.
I certainly fall on the second case most of the time but even then I fell that I am not funny and I get those kind of felling when I have not played for a while. I start to doubt about my ability to make an audience laugh. That ability has to be trained and work so you do not forget and when the time to go on the stage comes you are ready to use all those things that you have stored inside yourself.
So at the moment I do not even there to open my mouth in front of any one because I think they are going to know that I am not felling funny and they know I am a clown so everybody expects me to be doing clown things all the time.
Some times in my normal life I do clown things. I do not do them on purpose because usually clown things are very embarrass things but they happened. Now after many years I realise that they are clown things and I embrace them and when I think about them I laugh too. But If I try to do them again I flop like a king so … I do not know.
This is a difficult business and I think I am never going to be able to master it.
So I have this crisis because when we play people tell us that we are very funny and of course I like that but then I start to believe it and then the realisation that I am funny playing the material but then in real life is something different is something very difficult to swallow.
THE LAST DAY
Hello;
The festival is about to finish. Every year is different. I mean every year finish but the day that finish is different. It is always up to the day of the week. It has to be on Sunday. You may do the last performance on Saturday and then you have the Sunday to pack up and to start to go back home.
We have always played until the last moment or possibility because we have always been really poor and we could not miss the chance to make a little bit of money.
So this year the whole thing finish on the 25 th but I have thought about it today and that is why I am writing about it now.
It is probably the best day of the festival because …wail a second; I mean the Edinburgh festival… everybody gets posses by a strong felling of abandon. You see people walking around the venues with a smile and with a face that says loudly I have done it. I have been playing here for a month and I am still alive. I am very tired but satisfied because I had very good reviews very bad reviews and not so good and not so bad reviews and I cannot wait to go home.
So that night after your show you meet up with your best friends during the festival and you get drinks and laugh and laugh really laud and because you are laughing you do not go any where the whole night.
I have spent some of my best nights at the festival in this night and sitting in a table at the Pleasance. The group of people getting bigger a bigger and the laughs growing as much as the group was doing.
We have not been there this year but we will be back. Petra went there with Lisa to promote Spymonkey at the British council showcase. I am sure they have had a great time and not everybody say good-bye until next year.
Have fun.OUT AND ABOUT
Hello;
I am lying in the towel. The sun is shining. I can see the sea and the waves are small and here in the beach there is a fantastic atmosphere. Everybody is lying or reading or playing or flirting or simply walking up and down through the beach.
My hand is playing with two millions granules of sand and they are warm and fine. I pick two millions more and if surprise me how my hand grab at least four millions granules of sand and pour them slowly over my belly bottom creating a little mountain at the end of my stomach.
I am lying on my back and the mountain still allows me to see the sea. I grab another four or five millions granules of sand and I make the mountain grow. The mountain of granules of sand is really warm and it fells really good in my stomach.
I cannot explain why am I doing that. It is something instinctive. My hand has been playing in the san for quite a while and for not reason it has picked a couple of millions granules of sand and has poured over my belly bottom.
I fell like turning around and blow the whole ephemera mountain and get my back up to sky and make a big city of sand in front of my face. I wan to build a wall and houses and streets where the characters that live between the granules of sand could go out and about.
I decide to take another fist full of granules of sand and pour them over the top of the mountain. The millions granules of san run down the mountain in a big race to see who is the firs one to grab one of my hairs of my stomach.
I breathe deeply in amusement and the mountain shake as if in a big earthquake and the mountain starts to drop. Millions of granules of sand start to fall from my body to the world of sand and I finally decide to turn around and build the big metropolis. If I have been able to build a mountain now I will build the Gotham City of the granules of sand.
Have fun.WINE
Hello;
Yes, that is the word Wine and in more specific red wine. I like red wine. I like everything of the red wine. I like the colour. Sometimes is red like red like lips red. Another times it takes the colour of the plums of the red plums and some times it get the colour of the cherry too. I have seen red wine that was red like pink and they drank it as red.
I like it red. I like red like blood. Like blood that is having problems and does not look good. When I can see through the wine then it means I am going to be able to drink wine until I collapse.
There is other kind of wines if we differentiate by their colour thou that could be argue. There are white wines and there are green wines and there are rose wines and there are good ones in every single colour.
My favourite wine is the red one and I can drink a little bit of the white wine but it has to be one of those that is young and it is not too dry. Then the others are very specific of parts of the world and I do not really have much time from them really.
We opened a bottle of white wine from here from the Bask Country. The wine is white as I have said and it is called Txakoli.
Txacoli is a kind of wine that gets done when the grape is green. There are two kinds of the same wine Hondarribi zuri and Hondarribi beltza. This last one is not very common. The fact that this wine is made when the grapes are still green is what gives the wine his more notorious characteristic of the acidity.
It is slightly sparkling and the degree of alcohol in the wine is very high, from 10 to 12.
It has to be drink very cold and if you have a little bit of fresh fish or seafood then you are there for a real treat.
In Cantabria there is a lot of Txakoli too but it is much better know in the Bask Country.
But as I said I prefer red wine and I do not have a favourite wine thou I remember the one we drunk when Miren an me got married Remalluri 2000 from Rioja so whenever there is an event and we have enough money we buy that wine.
Have fun.STOMP
Hello;
Well, we have got some tickets to see the famous show in Bilbao. Of course very kindly Glynish gave us some tickets to see the show that made her company famous. I am sure that is not her company but she has her own company who helps to sell the show that is not hers.
Anyway that is really of not importance but from here I wanted to say thanks very much to them.
And now the show, it is a good show. It is a good show but for me now it is a little bit dated. I was very happy to see it and I went to see it with my friends Bote and Iratxe. He is a little bit of musician so I thought they will enjoy and they did enjoyed very much.
My problem is that if you have seen many streets shows you are familiar with most of the material. For me the performers are very good but I would love to see their personality a little bit more. It shows that they are playing parts that were created by other performers and perhaps some of their material is not really theirs.
At the end we always thing that there are shows that cannot be replaced and if they are they have to be recreated. What do I mean by that? I mean that you have to start a little bit from the beginning and then re create the whole show so it will belong to the performers who perform the show.
Then the material is quite good. There are numbers or scenes that are really good and the interaction with the audience is really good but as I said before, and this is a question of taste the show it is not a little bit dated because it rely on audience participation and thou they were the ones or one of the people who started the trend now it has been going on for many years so my felling is that the audience knows more about it than the show.
Then the place, the theatre where it happens was not the right one for my taste. All those shows like Stomp where originally street shows and as we said it works when it is a steal and if we do not see that they are stealing then it does not work as good.
The theatre Euskalduna is a great theatre but I would have loved to see the show in another kind of space.
Have fun.OUT IN A PARTY
Hello;
We went out last night. Before the Festivals have finished we hit town once. Now I am writing the blog in bed. Yes, my lovely and myself are lying in bed trying to recuperate from the drinkis from last night. We drank quite a lot. You get into the voragine of beer and then you cannot step down. You drink the first one and then it is one after the other. We had something to eat after watching STOMP at the Euskalduna Theatre. I will tell you what I thought about the show in another blog.
We walked all the way to where the party was and stopped close by to grab some bocadillos. I should call them sandwiches because it is the same thing but here in Spain they are called bocadillos so from now one I am going to call them bocadillos.
They were really nice. We ate them outside of the Bar and then when more people that we were waiting for arrived we went for a nice dance to the centre of the party.
We choose to be by the Txosna of the GAY organisation of Bilbao. They music was the best and the atmosphere was incredible with everybody dancing like crazy. The funny thing is that everybody looked a little bit possessed as if everybody had taken a drug and they all are getting high at the same time. That was exactly what probably had happened.
But then here, in the Bask Country is complicated because everybody when they go to parties or go out always does a circle.
What do I mean? Ok, if a group of friends go out once they have their drinks they make a small circle and they all talk and have their drinks like that. The conversations and the rest of things are told to the middle of the circle so everybody can hear what everybody says.
After spending some time away from here every time I see this I always find it very weird. I think I have done that all my life and I do not have an explanation for it.
Around three o'clock we decided to leave. We waited but no one wanted to give us any of the drugs that they have taken so it was getting difficult to fell part of the party.
We had fun and now this is going to be a very lazy day but is not they all?
BULLS
Hello;
It is as if I am still there but I am not. I was there this afternoon.
Yes, I have had a nice and big meal and I had drunk a little bit too much. But I was so excited. I was in Sun and it was on the verge or raining. The authorities of the ring were in front of us and the bull was going to come out from the left of us.
They got all ready for the first one. The men in white costumes and red barrette and belt went behind the wall and opened the door from behind. That image already create the sense of fear and the sense that you are about to see a spectacle where life and dead meet.
The first bull hit the ring really fast. Wanting to kill and attack everything that he could see. The matadors where hiding behind the “burladeros” while moving their “Capotes” to show the bull who their enemies were.
The main matador went into the middle of the ring and started to call the bull. The silence in the ring grew thicker. The matador started to play the bull with his Capote and the audience started to cheer him timidly. I could hear timid Oles coming from the audience. Ole, and the matador will give the bull another pass. Ole again and the matador gave the bull a sequence of passes that ended with him giving his back to the bull that was picking his breath and looking confuse.
The bull recovered and charged towards the Matador that was walking with his back to the bull. A big scream from the audience alerted the matador and he skilfully avoided the charge that got another big Ole from the viewers.
The corrida was getting very exciting. My montecristo was puffing fantastically well and we had to open the umbrellas because the rain had decided to show. The bullfighter got off his shoes and put them on the side of the ring. In order to have more grip on the floor of the ring to fight the bull he had taken his shoes but also he had increased the dramatics of what we were watching and I was completely hypnotised.
I love bullfighting like something that I should not love because it is a very cruel thing to do but the amount of emotions that you have in the ring is not comparable to anything I have ever seen before.
Have fun.A LOS TOROS
Hello;
It is traditional or customary during the Bilbao Festival to go to see a Bullfight. We call them “corridas”.
Normally the whole family goes to the Corrida and then afterwards will go for a walk around the grounds of the festival and then after going to have something to eat all together would find a good place to watch the fireworks.
In Bilbao everybody is very traditional so there are never enough tickets for the bull fighting, there is not enough space to go for something to eat and then when you managed to find a good spot to watch the fireworks the masses sit around you.
So I am going with my mother in law and the husband of my sister in law to see a Bullfight at the bullring of Bilbao.
It is called “Vistalegre”. Raffly means happy view. And yes for all of you out there who are not familiar with bull fighting it sounds ironic “happy view to see how you kill a wonderful animal?”
It is a very old ring and it has the reputation around Spain of being a very tough one. All the matadors come here and they know they are going to have a very hard time in order to live the ring over the shoulders of the audience. This year one of the bullfighters left the ring like that. Everybody said that it was amazing. I did not see it I just saw pictures on the papers.
The line up of matadors is not great in our corrida. We wanted to go another day because the matadors were better but that was the only one left. We are going to see a very young matador called “El July” and a French guy and another unknown matador. “El July” has a very good reputation because he started to bullfight before he was allowed by law to do it.
I have bought a Montecristo cigar to smoke in the ring and I will be wearing smart clothes because that is also customary. Sadly it has been raining for the last three days and probably will be raining. I am taking the umbrella and the raincoat. I am so excited because I have not seen a bull fight since I was very young. I will tell you all about it tomorrow.
Have fun.SPYMONKEY
Hello;
Petra is in Edinburgh. She has gone to enjoy the festival and also because it is the last week of the festival she is doing lots of mingling and smoothing with all the representatives who have come to the British Council showcase. She is very good at it. She is really good. Once there was an incident in a festival where some of us were taken out of an invitation to a party because we were not going to be the best people to talk for Spymonkey. Funnily enough after that day we, all of us have always gone to all the events we were invited and perhaps Toby and Petra have been more at the face and head of the company.
The incident I was talking about was in Aspen at the HBO comedy festival. We were there doing Stiff our all show. It was amazing. I have to say I enjoyed that trip a lot. I remember I left London with snow all over. It was really cold because it was the winter. We flew all the way to Houston because we were going to do season there with Stiff and then we went all the way from Houston to Aspen.
In Houston the weather was 35 Cº. It was very humid and it was amazing and then as soon as we landed in Denver it was really cold and dry. We landed in Aspen with a plain full of millionaires and stars from Hollywood.
It was amazing how the rich love to be surrounded by the famous artists. It is like because I am rich I can have exciting people next to me to amuse me.
Everything was really great apart from the incident. We snowboard, we saw many shows and we had great parties and we met Pedro and Nora that until now they are still very good friend of us. We have been at their house in Maui and they have been here in our house in Bilbao.
After Aspen we went back to Houston and we played there for two weeks. We won an award there and we worked really hard. It was the first long gig we ever did as a company. I love the fact that we were in a sunny place but Houston is not an easy town and it got a little bit on us. We made good friends and we visited NASA. I would love to go back but this time to the Alley Theatre.
Have fun.MARK & LOIS
Hello;
Mark and Lois live in my town. I know them since I was really young and they were also young.
The first time I ever saw them they were walking to the school in the morning. Mark was walking holding the hand of her mum and he did not want to go to the school. When they passed in front of the house of Lois he saw her waiting at the door for her mum to come out. They looked at each other and Mark mad her mum to wait until he and his mum walked behind Lois and her mum all the way to the school.
From that day onwards that was how Mark and Lois went to the school.
Afterwards they become friends and then when they were thirteen they became more than friends and in high school they swore eternal love to each other's.
I did not see them for a while I was and I am younger and they had move to another school. When my time to go to High school arrived they were there. In the same way that there was the basketball team and the football team and there was the photography workshop and the amateur dramatics they looked the lover's team.
They were walking through the middle of the grounds of the school holding hands. Her head was resting in his shoulder and their faces had smiles that went from ear to ear.
At lunch they will feed each other's, at the end of school they would wait for each other, in the morning they will come in their motorbike. For all of us who witness them they were the perfect couple.
At the University they got engaged. They did not wan to wait until they have found a job or anything. They wanted to get married and start a family.
They married the summer they graduated and they were happy eve after.
Now Mark died two years ago in estrange circumstances. He appeared in the river. He had drowned. It seemed that he had fall in the water and a boat that passed by in that moment hit him in the head. He had drunk and taken some sleeping pills.
Now Lois has a new boyfriend. His name is John. They go together everywhere and they are planning to get married this year.
John is twenty years younger than Lois.
Have fun.ABOUT US,
Hello;
Well, I wander how much and how little of importance holds thing blog? In a way this is not even a blog per se, something where you write things that people can read and comment. If that is a blog this is definitely not a blog.
It started as one more offers from the Spymonkey web and also something that I could do. Yes, I needed to do something for the company because I was not doing anything and I was felling really guilty.
Also I wanted to write. I like writing and I thought this will give you enough discipline to be able to write everyday a little bit and perhaps one day gather all the writings and put them together so we can write a book about all this years.
So let's say that it has never been a blog it has been more a short of diary where I just write what ever I fell like.
I have many friends how follow the blog even more than I do. They read it everyday and they wait for the moment where I finally managed to fulfil my obligation of load one page per day.
That has been the hardest thing. To be discipline enough to write a little bit everyday and then load it on the Internet so it is ready for the next day readers. Some of the days I do not fell inspired or I do not fell like writing anything.
Then there is the problem of my English and not just that also the articulation of my ideas which has nothing to do with the fact that English is not first language in Spanish no one understand what I say so.
But I have to say here for all of you that I have had brilliant time writing this shit. I got emotional, I have laughed, I have amused myself and I have had shitty times and that is why it has been very inconsistent.
I want to apologise to all of you and I want to renew my woes here because it is the time to do it. From now on I will write everyday and I will write better and I will keep an eye in what I say and in how do I say it. I promise.
Have fun.
RAIN
Hello;
And then it started to rain. Yes, it started last night. We were still at the party in the middle of the village and when we walked back home we got wet. I was tired and could not hear the rain but in the morning the coldness of the drops of rain mixed with the heat of the sun stored in the fields created through condensation clouds of mist coming from the grass. It was really magic. I walked through the fields with my cup of coffee and I could fell the mist involving me and trying to take me to the place where it comes from but I did not let it.
Then as I was walking I felt a drop of water hitting my empty skull. I mean empty of hair. I looked up and I could not see any tree or a place where a drop after rolling for a while find the emptiness and start to roll until it falls.
When I looked up I could see the sky. It was grey. It was so grey that it was black. It looked as if it was going to fall on our heads and that would be the end.
When the rain started to fall I was still out and my cup was filling up as I was walking. I was also getting wet so I started to run. As I was running my cup was getting empty because I could not keep it straight.
I reached the house when the rain got in full blast. I could see through the window how an incredible thick curtain of water was covering the whole landscape. After some minutes of intense rain in slowed down. The rain picked a slow but intense pace that tells you that is going to be raining for a while.
We left the house in the afternoon. We had to go back and the Kraisses were going west to visit another region. They left raining, we left raining and it carried on raining …
Have fun.UDAIA
Hello;
We arrived just for the pintxos competition. No, not to participate, just as mere viewers and to try to taste as many as possible. Well, it is a very small town and everybody knows each other so it was really difficult to go through the pintxos testing pretending to be someone from the village when for of us were clearly foreigners.
After some glasses of wine we all went down to the side of the village were the river is. There the people of the village have set a big table football and they big championship was about to start.
I made a team with Eguski and Miren made a team with Ferran a Catalan guy that was building an ecological house for some people up in the mountains. We did not win but we had a very good time playing the championship.
Earlier, actually the day before knowing that fat too many people were coming to eat at Eguski's house I had bought two kg of mussels and two big pieces of tuna to cook in the oven
We all went up back to the house and we cooked the mussels and the two big pieces of tuna. The fish was really fresh and good. Eguski is a very good cook and it was fantastically great to be there in the middle of the mountains having lots of time to waste.
We did go for a nice walk in the country. By then we have drunk a little bit too much so the fresh air brought up nice humour and exciting conversations.
Everything was really green and the nice sun that had been with us during the morning had left thou and us it was not cold it was getting a dark and messages of rain were all over the place.
We went back to the house and some people did siesta.
I red my paper and got ready for the big Barbeque that was going to happen early in the evening. And then a DJ and then some games and things to amuse the villagers and then… probably will start to rain and the party will finish suddenly and just the very drunk will not notice that is raining and thou is summer it is not nice to get wet.
BILBAO FESTIVAL
Hello;
The river of Bilbao is full of Txosnas. They have not been built just yet. As we walk along the river we can see all the members of the societies that put the Txosnas during Bilbao Festivals are working really hard to have them ready for tomorrow that is the first day.
The Txosna is probably the most important element of the festivals of any Bask village. They are a kind of construction that works as a bar just during the time of the festivals. They are usually made with scaffolding bars. They have a counter and sometimes a kitchen where they do some cooking and the most sophisticated ones have two floors and things in the back.
The ones that we can see here getting built are very spectacular and some times real art pieces. They would be open for almost ten days and they will sell many drinks. They are more modest and smaller towns and they are built to sell beverages and sandwiches during the festivals so the society that the Txosna belongs too can finance his activities for the rest of the year.
Most of the organisations that have Txosna in the Bilbao festival are cultural, charities and folk organisations that do not get enough money from the governments so they can make extra cash and have a fantastic time.
By the river of Bilbao and at daylight they do not look very good. You can see the scaffolding and the budget for decoration are very small so everything looks really poor but if you come here one night of the festivals…the square would be packed with people, everybody dancing, drinking and having fun thanks to the Txosna and the people who take care of it.
We carried on walking but then we arrived to the you must know what Museum by now and suddenly the atmosphere pre festival disappeared and the sophisticated cosmopolitan hit us in the face. That is the biggest problem of any thing sophisticated; it does not have sense of humour so it is boring. And it is boring because it takes it too serious and here in Bilbao they take themselves too seriously. Thanks God I am from Romo that it is much better.
Have fun.FLIP FLOPS
Hello;
I do have six pairs of flip-flops. It is a summer shoe. You know the ones I am talking about. Those shoes that have the shape of sole with a little V at the top that is hook to the sole by a little neck of rubber or material. You place your foot on top of the shoe and you slide it forward inside the V things that is inverted and attached to the upper part of the sole.
The space between you fat toe and the next one takes the neck of rubber or material that keeps stuck the inverted V. When you have the neck between your toes you are in control of the flip-flop.
At firs to walk in flip-flop it is a little bit estrange. You fell as if you have to squeeze and push your toes against the sole because it could get loose in any second. It is a false felling. They will not go. The flip-flops will stay because they are designed to stick in your feet. Even if you run they stay.
Traditionally they are girl's shoes or natives from Hawaii but now a day every body wear them and specially this year in the whole world they are a really big fashion. The trendiest ones are the ones called Hawaiians. They are made in Brazil and every body has to have one in order to be a little bit trendy.
As I said up there I have six pair, a brown pair that I got in Las Vegas, a black one with Hawaiian flowers that I got in Spain, a Jamaican one I got in Bilbao that are the ones I am using all the time, a white and blue that I got in Las Vegas that are a little bit too small for my like it, a green one that I got in Germany and a pair of red ones that I got in Switzerland and I keep because sentimental value. I got them when we tour with Circus Knie in 1999 and they are ready to go to the bin.
I like them very much and in the summer I do not care if it rains. It is not could so I use the flip-flops all the time. When it rains it is a little bit dangerous because you could sleep I do not think they are made for rain.
My favourite thing with the flip flops apart that I do not have to tight any knots is that when you have sun tone and you take your flip flops the inverted V appear in your foot. That is really funny and I always liked it.
Have fun.
MORE BEACH
Hello;
Now we have had to take a very determined decision and exclude from our daily surfing anything that has to do with family and wives and things like that. Yes, we have had to put our family lives behind and embrace the surf with all it power.
The problem was that if you are having so much fun and your family is looking at you having such a fun they start to get envy. So they start to ask for attention and demand all kind of things that you usually give them all in one minute.
So from today onwards until Stephan and his family leave Spain the boys will be surfing in the morning.
The purpose of this is that we get our daily surfing session and then we go back to the flat and we get the daily routing of a family on holydays. I know it is not especially clever but at least is practical.
At first the idea was not very well receive. Are you sure you two are going to wake up at seven thirty and go surfing for an hour and a half? You have never ever woken up so early. I bet you anything that tomorrow you do not go. So with this kind of support and understanding this morning we went surfing. I cannot deny that it was difficult. It was really early and I could not even open my eyes. It helped that Miren goes to work at six thirty so I just had to wake up at the same time as her and leave to pick Stephan. It took him a little bit of time to come down and then each in their own car we went to the beach.
There were very little waves so we drove to another beach near by and we went in.
We met Carlos in the water. He was doing the same thing as us. He has a family so he goes surfing before everybody comes to join him at the beach. Because when they are there it is impossible to carry any serious surfing.
He left before us and we got a couple of more little waves so we could fell we got tired and then we went back home.
We have had our first day of serious surfing and many more will come. We were since them professional summer surfers were surf was not for fun but something to do to enlarge your spirit.
Have fun.COLD WATER
Hello;
The surf was huge. Stephan and his family and Miren and me went to the beach this morning. The day was very sunny and we decided as I said before that for as long they are here and the weather is good we will use the beaches around here.
The closest one and more convenient is la Salvaje. In Spanish it has the name of a dangerous whore. It means “the wild one”. I think it got the name because it is very unpredictable and many people have died in that beach.
It is also a nudist beach. Well, the beach has two parts one for people in the nude and the other with people in clothes. We always go to the in the clothes one and with Stephan and his family that is the side we went.
For people not familiar with the situation is quite spectacular to see that both sides are separated and people from both sides do the same thing, play bats, play football, run in the beach, surf and walking by the edge of the shore. And they all mixed by the shore, nude, and clothe and they walk as if… I do not know perhaps we should not make any differences.
Anyway the surf was quite big so the first day of Stephan and me going surfing was not going to be very profitable because the waves were very big and we are not great surfers. Also I was going to go in the water with my brand new surfboard and I was very happy and nervous at the same time.
I do like my board very much. Stephan had to set his board, put the fins and waxed so we all lied on the towels for a while enjoying the sun and doing lots of silly talking. I did go for a while with Pauline to play bats and when we came back Stephan was waiting and we went in.
It was so strong and powerful that by half an hour I had to leave the water completely bitted up. My body was suffering and my arms could not carry on doing any paddling. I sat on the towel and looked at Stephan trying to fight the waves and he did very well. Big white water came to him, he throw the board in the same direction and jumped on top o it a started to paddle with lots of power. The white water took him and pushed him forward and Stephan jumped up and rode the white water all the way to the beach with a great style.
Perhaps if he would have been born in Bilbao he may have become a surfer?
Have fun.AMOS OZ,
Hello;
Amos Oz is an Israeli writer that recently won the Cervantes Award for literature. And this is a very important award for writers in the Hispanic world.
I have never heard of him before or read anything of his but I have read and interview with him and he sound amazing. He is now and old man and he have had a really hard life. I do believe that possible all the Israelis of this world who are in that age also have had a difficult time during his life because their country is as old as they are. That means and he said that in the interview that he had fought in many wars.
They talk about many things but the thing that amazed me the most is that the interviewer told him about a man that went to set up a bomb in front of a bookshop in Pakistan and he saw that they were starting to sell the new Harry Potter book and the shop was full of you boys and girls. The terrorist suddenly went back and called the police so they could find the bomb and no one got killed.
The interviewer told him that the terrorist would be a fantastic character for a novel. And Amos Oz answer thanks for telling me that story. And he mean that he could use him or the story or the inspiration that comes from such an amazing character to write a book or a little piece in one of his novels.
I think Amos Oz has had an amazing life to write thousands o stories and books and he does not need stories like that but he still gets excited every time he hears a good new one. I do get very excited when I hear a good story or when I read a good book or when I see a fantastic movie. I miss the time when I wanted to tell very good stories in the theatre. Now I want to do just Spymonkey because in a estrange way it is so difficult to do good Spymonkey that I cannot spend time in anything else. Still we do tell fantastic stories with Spymonkey but we just do not want to tell them we want to the audience to see them and live them with us.
Have fun.THE KRAISSES
Hello;
Here they are. The Kraisses have arrived to the Basc Country. Pauline, Elke, Thelonious and Stephan. They are going to stay with us ten days.
Originally they were going to stay with Eguski but then Theo broke his leg and they had to delay their trip and she did not have space for them to stay so we offered them our house.
They have come to spend some time here and I cannot wait to go surfing with Stephan. Between you and me I would have liked much more if Stephan would have come by himself. Because then we would have had surfing holydays non-stop.
And in a way that is what we are planning to do. We are planning to do lots of surfing in the mornings and then do their touristy things once we have finished the very most important thing that is surfing.
They are staying in the house while we go to stay while they are here in my parent's house. It is the best. They will be happy by themselves here and then we will have the opportunity to stay by ourselves if we need to. Also Miren in working and she has to wake up really early in the morning and we do not want to disturb the Kraisses holydays.
We have thought of doing some of the classic touristy routes. The thing is that last time they were here the weather was really bad. They came also in August and it rain everyday apart from the first day. So because now the weather is quite nice we are going to try to go to the beach as much as we can for as long as we can and then when they weather change and it will change we will visit places. Also they want to go and stay in a hotel by themselves in Santander or Asturias.
It is difficult if you have kid with broken legs. He sits wherever we go with his leg completely strait and he stays there playing until he gets bored and then he demands attention. No body wants or likes to get bore.
Have fun.MY NEW BOARD
Hello;
This summer is going quite slowly. When you are not really working you fell that the time goes slowly and it is not really true, time goes always at the same speed.
But it is all about how do fell the time that is passing.
Miren is working and I am not working. She does her work during the morning and then when she comes back I have prepared the lunch and then we siesta together. I manage to get a little bit of surfing in the morning. She goes to work and I go surfing.
Thou I am having a very good time there is something inside me that is asking me to do something to keep productive and to making things.
So I am concentrating in creating a new show with my friends in Bilbao. It is not easy because there is not money and at our age we do not work anymore for no money and if something I have learned from working with Spymonkey all this years when you have your company you have to be ready to work for no money.
So as soon that angst grows inside me one of the things I do is to go to the streets to have a glass of wine. And as soon as I have had a glass I fell fine. Perhaps is that I am a drunk now and I did not know. And perhaps all that angst that I am felling is my addiction to alcohol. I have to check that.
I do not want to become an alcoholic artist who never made it because he drunk himself to death. I would not mind to die from alcohol poisoning when I am very successful like Dean Martin.
But if you ask me my roll model would be more Robert Mitchun and he smoking dope and the occasional drink with the troubles because no one has ever told him what and how to do things. That would be my hero.
This days I think about how would I die or how would I be when the time to die comes and I would like to be respectful and wise but as time goes by I have less hopes that I would ever achieve e that. Or perhaps when I will achieve that all my piers will be dead. I…I should not talk about dead in this jolly place where I tell you my chaotic thoughts.
Have fun.
FAMILY
Hello;
I received e-mail from Toby about the autumn tour. He asks about the technicians that we can use in the tour we have to do. We cannot use the new one Andy Purvis so we need to find someone else and we have to decide very soon because if not we are going to be in lots of troubles.
In a normal holydays circumstances I would have receive that e-mail with a little bit of pain. The idea of going back to work it always gives me a little bit of pain. This time I have experienced a small amount of pleasure that has really surprised me. Suddenly while reading the e-mail I thought, “well, well, this does not fell bad at all”. Nothing to do with Toby or Spymonkey it is more to do with the fact that I have to leave Bilbao and go back on the road and stop seeing my lovely wife and no doubt about it the fact that I am not going to be here, in Romo where I am always” half happy” it is making me fell happy. At the end of the day is a kind of middle thing where you are permanently half happy. A theme that I have disused with you in the pass in this same place.
When you residency is nowhere you learn to live with out being in any place and to have your mind in between many different places.
Many people say that life is a journey, a trip where we travel through things and at the end you died. I do not think that you arrive anywhere when you died but I believe the journey metaphor. So most of the people spend their live having that journey with an anchor in a place. From that place they live their journeys and then when they died they have arrived to that place.
But for people like me we spend our live having anchors in many places and the most difficult thing is that you are not going to be able to have an anchor anywhere because what you like to is to have many places that fell home or perhaps what we do not like is to have a place that we call home or perhaps to have many places that we call home.
And then family is everywhere because I spent more time with my Spymonkey family than with my own genetically family. And after so many years the way I related to my non genetically family is by all those mails that I received from time to time or better everyday there are some either from Toby or from Petra.
The differences between both are that Toby's one come full of information and it is just one while the ones from Petra come full of witty comments and always or at least in many moments she needs an extra one to complete the information. So you open your mail and there they are, one mail from Toby and four or five from Petra. It is good.
I wander what will it be what they think about the paten a follow in my mails.
Go to see Callate in Edinburgh and enjoy it.
Have fun.
ALL THE SAND OF THE BEACH
Hello;
I am creating a lovely poem. I am sure you are going to love it. It is very well written and it is full of truly great emotions.
All the sand of the beach
Does not fit in my fist
All the sand of the beach
Could cover what I feel
For you
For you
I fell lots of things
That run from my chin
To the end of my feet
And rub my heart
with a gentle stroke
that makes me hear frogs croak.
Have fun.
CLOUDS
Hello;
The sky is full of clouds today. They are mainly white clouds, which leave us all of us, hope that late in the afternoon the weather will be better and we could hit the beach. That is what you suppose to do when you are on holydays.
I carry on looking at the sky with the hope that this will happen sooner than later but the clouds if anything are getting darker and darker by the minute so now I fell that is going to rain very soon and that is shit.
Why does it have to rain in the middle of the summer? I ask. I do not ask any one in particular but after days of debauchery now what I need is lying on the beach and gets a good suntan.
Now there it is there is a nice blue spot in the middle of the sky. Yes, I can see the sun and it looks as if later on I could go to the beach.
After a week of festivals and ten days of holydays I fell that I have to start to do something apart from cloud spotting. And look the blue is spot instead of getting bigger and bigger is getting smaller and smaller and now I do not need my sunglasses anymore.
That cloud looks like big Michelin man trying to eat the rest of the clouds¡¡ there is a small cloud trying to escape from him because she has seen how he ate all her friends. The Michelin man is eating every single little cloud that he finds in his way to cover the whole summer blue sky.
But wait, there is another cloud coming, what is it? It is a big truck, yes it is a cloud in the shape of cloud and it is white so it looks as if that big white cloud in the shape of cloud is going to run over the cloud that looks like a Michelin man that keeps eating all the little small clouds. The big white cloud in the shape of truck has the destroyed the dark cloud in the shape of a Michelin man and now the sky is blue and it is sunny and I am going to the beach to holidaying a little bit because it is summer and I am on holydays.
Have fun.ROMO'S FESTIVAL IV
Hello;
Today is the day for the Paella. Well it is really the day for the tortilla but we do paella instead because with one Paella you can eat many if you do it very bid meanwhile with a tortilla you have to make many and it is a little bit more work.
The beautiful thing about it is that the people once again take the streets. Everybody goes out and grab a piece of street and set their fires in the pavement or in the road and bring their tables and chairs from their houses and the cookers and the pans and everything and many people transform their piece of street into their dining rooms. It is very funny.
The streets of the town become everybody's dining room and if the weather is good the party lasts for hours.
The weather did not really hold and by six o'clock it was raining and everybody have to leave their street dining rooms and find shelter in the bars.
We have cooked and ate the most wonderful Paella. We sat around the table twenty-two people and there were lots of left over
I like rice very much. I do not think Paella is my favourite dish ever but it is good enough to enjoy and then you are always welcome to have more than a plate. We drank a lot.
It felt as if these have been the most alcoholic festivals ever and we are going to pay the price of it in our bellies and also in our wallets. Funnily enough it has been beer the main drink of these festivals.
What is it with beer? The only thing I can think of is that you can drink more without getting completely pissed. That must be so everybody can stay out more time. If you drink wine after three or four glasses of wine you have to leave because you are really pissed.
After the raining the Festivals were coming to an end. The final fireworks and the awards for the Excellency to the participation on the festival were going to be given and that was my time to leave. In the pass I would have stayed until the very end because I had to go back to my parents but now I went to my house and I had another drink with my misses and I say good bye to festivals until the next year.
I have drunk too much, I have smoked too much and I have had far too many excesses and now I have to recuperate my physical thing to be well again. It is going to take me quite a bit of time.
Have fun.ROMO'S FESTIVAL III
Hello;
And here we are still, today I have a nice hung over and I am sure I am going to recuperate myself thou I do not fell completely confident that this is healthy or doing me any good. It is too much alcohol and I am suffering. In the pass I will use the alcohol called wine and over the years I thought of my self a conoceur but just because I like drinking it and now a day the wine that serve in the bars I go is always different so I get drunk really fast so I turn my back to the wine and I have gone for the beer. And yes I have gone for the cheap and bad beer that we have in Spain called San Miguel. All the bars have it and it allows me to drink for quite a long time without having to suffer the consequences of mixing different alcohols.
It is the great day of the festivals. There is a big reggae concert in the main square and there is the famous competition of fancy dresses and then in the middle of the night there is the famous race in paths and knickers. People from all over the region come to compete. The most important thing is that you have to give positive in the alcohol test in order to compete. There is not point to come and race while only drinking red bull or Gatorade.
So everybody is pissed and everybody suffers being half naked and running in the middle of the night with two or three beers too much.
I am planning to take it easy because if not I am not going to survive. Being honest with you what I really need today is to go for a nice dinner party and a good conversation while I drink a little bit of wine an talk to my friends but in here that is not possible because everybody love to be on the streets. The streets are where the party is and that is where everybody wants to be.
I change my bask costume for the peasant version. I had to put it in the washing machine my smart peasant one and I had to wear in the morning the one that is more peasant peasant.
So I hit the street for early glasses of white wine typical from this part of the world called TXAKOLI and now I am ready to siesta so I could carry on partying tonight.
Have fun.LAS VEGAS
Hello;
News from Las Vegas from my special correspondent Petra Massey.
“ Dearest Foreigners
Hope you are well and less ugly than usual. So I thought to send you some Vegas photos. As you can see below the lovely desert landscape that Toby and Heike so back breakingly planted has all but been ripped from its cactus roots and thus the house remains in its beige hell glory. It made me laugh out loud though
I of course banged rudely on my x house's door and demanded access. As you can see its become a car park but the party atmosphere lives on and was inundated with people kids and parties.
Steve's home is all but the same about from a bush missing and Aitor's looks a little worse for wear but it was always the poorer Hispanic area lest we make him not forget.
Then you will note an array of pissed and drug infused dancing friends at Champagne cafe in their normal licking nipple/cocks out state.
We had a fantastic flight to Grand Canyon with now bleached blonde pilot Anne Marie. Little Keira is all grown up and sweet as pie. I also had a whole day with Sebastian so got the low down on the whole story from both angles. My sympathies are of course with the lady and I bollocked Sebastian bit style
Hung out with fat fuck Angeles and her fat fuck family who are all incredible story tellers and had me begging for laughter mercy. The little one, Angelina is a very special kid and had me transfixed with her part fact part fiction monster stories. But I was a bit stoned and pissed
Saw the brilliant Bob who has a HUGE purple pink cancer lump on his face which was most distressing and he is so thin but it was very wonderful to see him. The cacer is not dangerous just looks hideous and he has to have plastic surgery poor love
In general the whole trip was a flurry of kisses hugs and parties.
Gula is as irritating as ever but you got to love her.
Joey may be leaving, as they have not accepted his demands to have 7 days off per month.
Roger Stricker gave me around $600 of MAC makeup. I was one happy Jew
We saw Vanessa 4 months pregnant play Joey. It was an abomination but not as bad as seeing LOVE
Had a lovely evening with Timmy catching up over a bottle of wine while the monsoon broke loose in his gardens and his two puppies kept sticking their wet noses up my dress and making contact with my labia which was quite a sensation
Had a day in the spa, many dates with Mr Murdston, meals at Cozymels, Hamada
Everyone still says how much they miss us. Eliot is not a junky yet but toots all day on his own. He seems happy enough
Jacabo is leaving but happy and party animal as ever. Laeticia had her baby.
Had luch with Olga. It was hard to see her. She really is very crippled when she walks but she is walking and without a stick. She is very very angry at the Cirque and with reason. She is also determined to get 100% but and I have absolute faith that she will. You can't meet anyone as tough as her
The clowns were awful and in the pom poms we had to turn away. It was an abortion
Anyway we pretty much saw everything and everyone we wanted to see and had the most amazing zing zing time. I throughly recommend you both go. What more could you want for a holiday? Loads of friends, meals, parties, swimming pool, your own car plus apartments, free flights to the Grand Canyon, spas, shows and a fucking good good time
Now I am home.....Ha ha ha!”
So my friends this is what is going on in Las Vegas and I send my love to all of them.
Have fun.
ROMO'S FESTIVAL II
Hello;
It is another very nice and sunny day for the festival of Romo. For me the high light of today is the frog competition.
No, there is nothing cruel with animals this time.
The Frog competition is with a frog made from iron. The frog is placed on top of an open draw and set as high as a barstool. As you probably have guessed by now it is a bar game.
So the players, one by one, set themselves fifteen feet apart from the frog with twelve iron coins that look like biscuits. The aim of the game is to through those chips and put them trough the mouth of the iron frog in the drawer.
If they go through the mouth they will go into a little box underneath the frog and it will be counted after every round. The one that puts more chips to the mouth is the winner.
Every player has three rounds and the best ones go into the semi finals and then the finals and the winner takes some big stakes and cases with bottles of wine.
It is a very old fashion game and people do not play it any more. This year the festivals have organised a competition and I really wanted to see it. I was not going to participate because I was not felling very important.
The competition went very well and I very good player won. We all could see that he had lots of experience doing what he was doing. We will put him a little bit on the side to throw the chips and he was amazing.
The most incredible incident of the whole thing was my friend that is almost blind. He does not see at all. Whenever you pass on the streets next to him you have to say hello for him to recognised you because he is blind. Well, my friend scores three chips just by the noise. It was very funny; he was the third in the whole competition.
The rest of the day it was a little bit more of the same drink, drink and drink and then when you thought you were going to be a little bit drunk back to the house to save energy for the next two days.
Have fun.ROMO'S FESTIVAL
Hello,
The Festival's of Romo have started today. As I write on the streets of my town all the citizens in fancy dresses celebrate the time of the year when is allow to be drunk in the middle of the streets.
I did not join the festivals in the morning but as soon as the evening arrived and with the sun shining I put on my bask clothes and I hit the streets. The mood was excellent. Everybody was waiting to hear the speech that a local celebrity will tell from the balcony of house in the middle of the town square.
After the speech there will be a big firework and the festivals will be officially open. The problem is always that there is so much anticipation about the festivals that by the time that starts most of the people is already drunk.
So when I hit the streets I got in the middle of a eggs fight that made that my nice a clean bask costume got dirty in a matter of seconds.
It really pissed me off. Lots of egg yolk coming down through my jacket and all my coolness and style died in less than a second. I wanted to kill the guys fighting but I thought I used to do the same thing when I was his age so I decided that instead of killing them I would go and play with the kids of my friends who were experiencing their own first festivals ever.
And then from there on wards we just got a little drunk and save energy for the next day. In this first night for the people that are new in the festivals it is important to remember that you should not over do it. You still have four days ahead of you and you do not want to miss up anything.
Have fun.
NEW GIG
Hello;
Yes I got a job while here in Bilbao. I am not going to have to do it until the middle of October but I have to start to work in it as soon as possible so Jon, Eguzki and me are rehearsing this week a couple of days and then we will work a little bit more the next week and then just a couple of days before the day of the gig on the 18 th October. I really should get my ticket now so the whole thing will be much cheaper.
We have to write a little number to unveil the new logo of a company who does air conditioning installations.
The big company is really boring and the worst thing is that we are not going to be able to do anything that will make them laugh. The president of the Bask Country will be there and he cannot laugh out laud when he is about to do a speech.
He does not have the best of sense of humours. I have to tell you that in the Bask Country we call the president “lendakari”.
So we have been preparing a number where a tube of air conditioning becomes alive and starts to move by its own accord and refuses to wear in his tube the old logo. The worker and the engineer y can not really make him understand that the tube has to do what he is told to do until the tube shows them that now he wants a new logo and unveil the new one.
We have offered ourselves to do an extra number in the beginning of the event because in that case we will get a little bit more acting time and also we would have the opportunity to introduce the characters. Not that any one of the members of the audience of the event will care for one second what we do but in the case that there is one person that is looking at the show. We can not do anything very exciting because all this people are not going to be there to laugh they are going to be there to do business and political relationships.
Anyway my favourite part is going to play with Jon and Egus once more. Always when we play together we have very good times so this time is also going to be great.
Have fun.
