June 2006
FUNERALS
Hello;
Well, yes, I am having a rollercoaster of time here. I am going from a fantastic time surfing to living the life of a small community and suffering and enjoying everything that comes with it. It is not easy. So like from time to time in life I have a funeral. It was the father of a friend of mine. Not a very close friend but in Spain we go to the funeral of people that we just met once. We love funeral or perhaps we fear dead too much that by going to many funerals before we died when the fatidic day will arrive many people will come to our funeral and the jump the world of the dead we will not make it so lonely. As you can see it is not very important the quality of the friends but the quantity of friends. We are very sallow country.
Also when you go to a funeral you have to leave your car at the door of the church. I wander why? The deceased will not be reading the list of people that came to his funeral any time soon. Perhaps it is more for the family so they know how long is the list of people that will died and they would have to go to their funeral. The ball will start to roll and before you died you have gone to lots of funerals and the relatives of those people will be coming to your funeral.
So if you do not have any friends and that time is coming you should start to go to as many funerals as possible and leave your card there. The families of the dead will read it and then the day you died you will have the church pack.
Funerals make me aware that the time I am going to have to attend one special one is everyday closer. My parents are getting older and I too. As it is looking now, I went to the doctor recently and my health is good, they will go before me and I dread that moment. I am going to cry a lot and I am going to suffer a lot. I really do not fell is unfair or life is terrible, life is dead and you died because you live so it is difficult to say what is first the egg or the chicken. And the most perverse thing about all this subject is that I fell curious the closer you are to dead the more you enjoys life. And this is not an old Confucius say.
Have fun.STHEPHAN IN VIENNA
Hello;
My adventure in Vienna has started with the man itself coming to pick me up from the station where the train from the airport leaves you. It does say it is the centre of the city. There he is like if he is still in Las Vegas.
He takes me to his house that is not really his house because it is Elke. Elke is the mother of his kid and his wife for the last two years and some more time. When I arrive to station I already know that Elke is in Italy with Paulina and Theo spending time by the sea. These are their holydays. Meanwhile Stephan has been in Germany seeing his family and living closer one of the things for which he fells real passion, Football and the world cup.
As I step on the platform he tells me the plan of the day, we are going to see football and then more football and afterward we will talk football with everybody that we meet.
They live in a great flat in the third district. While I am here I am going to stay at their place. They are very generous and I am happy staying with them. The flat has two rooms, huge bathroom that I love and I very nice living room and then a very nice dinning room.
I install myself in the kid bad while they are away and whenever they will be back we will see what we do.
I sleep in the top floor of a bank bed. I like it, it makes me fell young.
I collapse in the afternoon I had to wake up at four o'clock in the morning and I have to have a siesta. When I wake up the first thing I see is the shirt of the German football team that has been ironed. And next to it a shirt of the Spanish national team, Stephan tells me that because we are going to see the match to a special place where all the supporters meet everybody has to wear the shirt of their team. Today Germany plays against Italy and he is German and he supports my team. On the contrary I have never wear the shirt of the national team of Spain. In my village there is a big nationalist conflict and if I will go out with that shirt I will probably will not make it back home. So, thou I fell tempted I do not do it and I go alone as a normal tourist.
We leave the house and as we walk to the place Stephan tells me things about where we are and to where we are going mixed with insults to the Germans that we see in out way to the place to see the match that have decided not to support openly their team by wearing the shirt. Well, he insults everybody for what ever reason, he makes me laugh but also it makes me a little bit weary of what will happen at the place where we will be watching the match if he suddenly decided to insult all the Austrians that support Italy or all the Austrians that support Germany not being their own country.
As I see German loose the match I realise that Stephan is going to be insulting people during all the time I will be here so I am going to have a very fun time.
Have fun.
BILLY WILDER
Hello;
Recently, I do not know exactly when it has been the one hundred anniversary of Billy Wilder birth. Not for that reason I have been reading his biography. The one I have been reading is the one written by someone called Ed Sikov. I have read other biographies that Ed has written and thou it is interesting sometimes gets a little bit boring.
Billy did never write his life or allowed any body to write about it. In the book you get a very clears picture of how strong this guy was in a world that was against him. He was a Jew from Cracovia that emigrated first to Vienna, then Berlin, then Paris and finally Los Angeles.
He was always ready to see the funny side of things. I like that of a man and of a woman. The fact that people wants to see the funny side of things makes like much easier and light and of course funnier.
For me he wrote and he did some of the funniest and best movies of the history of the world. His movies the older they get the better they look. While I was reading this book I realised that he had done some movies that I saw and I did not know who the director was and also I remembered others that I knew they were Billy Wilder and I had enjoyed a lot.
I love specially the one called “Sunset Boulevard” with Gloria Swanson and William and William Holden. She was thinking of somebody else for the part until he found her the same thing with Holden in the beginning it was going to be Montgomery Cliff and then he decided to go on holidays to the mountains. So he had to get somebody else and he found William. Later become one of his best friends until one day he called him and he did not answer the phone. Billy and his wife Audrey suppose to go to William's house in Palms Spring but nobody was there so they stayed in the loft in Wilshire Avenue.
On Monday morning Billy received the phone call, Holden had died on Friday when he fell drunk of vodka and hit his head against the marble coffee table of his living room. He lost all his blood and was not found until three days later by the cleaner. A really cinematographic dead for a great actor.
Billy Wilder died much later but he had an amazing life, which I really want for myself as soon as possible.
Have fun.
SPAIN IS OUT
Hello;
Well, this is the end for Spain, and it is just the end of the world cup but there are going to be more world cup thou if you like the world cup you have to live the championship as if it is the last one in the history of the world.
What I mean to say is that as soon as the team from your nation has left the world cup you really have to love football to carry on following the world cup. There are may countries in the world and not all of them participate in the competition and the funny thing is that if they will joining in probably they will be force to leave even earlier that Spain has gone.
But lets talk about Spain because they have not done a very good world cup. They have history of very bad performances in the competition and this year the general comment was that things were not going to be different but then in the first match they played very well and in the very enthusiastic brain of the Spanish aficionados everybody thought that the world cup would be coming to Spain this year. Spanish people have the tendency to leave in an imaginary world this bring good things and bad things in the same proportion so me myself would not like it any other way.
The second match was also very good and the team won the match and all the imagination of the people stopped being imagination to become a reality. Not very good for people that are used to live as losers to become winners and that suddenly their dreams become true.
They tend to make crazy statements and the third game was there and Spain played not well but won. The first signs of alarm started to make a very big noise but once again thought it was the hang over from celebrating the wining of the last weeks. We all drink a lot when we are happy as much as when we are very sad.
So, yes once again we won the right to play with the big boys, the ones that do not dream but win matches and world cup and the first match everything became clear. We are not good enough but a dream for what it is it is always good to have, and also the litres of Rioja.
Have fun.
SWITZELAND IS GOING HOME
Hello;
Well, I am sorry, but they never really left home. Zurich is not far away from where they have been playing therefore it has not being a big trip to go there and it is not going to be a big trip to go back. And to all my Swiss friends I am really sorry. For the last two weeks I have been thinking in all of them and in the fact that the Swiss team, the football team, has made it to the sixteen finals of the world cup. It is true that this time it was close to home and that is a plus when it comes to the effort to make it to the finals, they are not very happy when they have to go far so I think that is the reason why they probably have not make it to more finals of more world cups.
But let me go back to my friends in Switzerland. I can imagine Roger and his friends in Niederweningan watching the matches on the big TVs and drinking beers non-stop. They will be all sitting in long benches arm with arm grabbing their beers suffering for their national team. When things will be not going very well they will grab the beer with all the strength of their finger and that is a lot until the problems go passed, then they will lift their beers and will take a big gulp of the beer and will say things like “gopfatamy nomall, that ball went really close”.
They will not stand to leave the bench unless they run out of beers and then usually one person go and bring beers for everybody else. When the match will finish they will celebrate by sitting in the long benches and drinking beer and eating from the wonderful barbecues they have in their farms. They will talk a little bit about what will happen in the future but not too much, the main conversation will be about what just have happened.
That is how I see it. I do not have fun like that, first because if I drink as much beer as them I will get really drunk and second because I can not stay sited in a not very comfortable bench for so long.
I love my Swiss friends and I had some of the best times every in their country and I am really sad their team did not make.
Have fun.
SHOW DOCTOR
Hello;
Coming, sit down. So, what brings you here?
Well, I do not know where to start…
Do you have you social security card?
Yes,
Thank you.
My lights are…
Sit on top of this bed and please open your shirt. Thank you. Breath
Very good, breath again, thanks, now lay down, thank you
You see it is some time ago that my lights are not to my standard, the sound goes funny and I think I need to upgrade my whole technical body because people do not see me properly.
Please, bottom your shirt and sit in the chair.
So, doctor, do you think I will survive?
Of course, do not worry; nobody dies from having the lights and some production problems. You may not make it to the West End but…now that you have taken the most difficult step everything is going to be all right.
Thanks. I already fell so much better.
First you are going to take two pills per day of GPH. This is a very good product and it will help to balance everything and then in a week or so my nurse will call you and will give you an appointment with a specialist.
Ok, now I also wanted to ask you about another thing.
Yes?
The specialist?
Yes?
The specialist… I am scare. Will he be gentle? I have not being with a specialist for a very long time and …well, I have heard that they are ruthless and I am very sensitive. My ego suffers and …well, I worked with Cirque du Soleil and also I am a very famous company that everybody says is very funny. I just had a very big success at the Brighton Theatre Royal and everybody loves me and I … I do not know if I could take it…
Don't worry, everything is going to be all right and he will make you fell better and you will be at the state where you belong.
I hate suffering you see
As I said everything will be fine
Thanks show Doctor
God bye
God bye
Have fun.
BLOGING AROUND
Hello;
Stephan is in Vienna I cannot tell what is he doing but I am sure that he is not doing too much. Stephan has this thing that for him the smallest things are always lots to do. So he could be doing just the washing of a plate but it takes something like an hour because he is going to take enough time in thinking where to put the plate, he will read the instructions of the wash up liquid, he will try to find the right temperature of the water, he will investigate which one is the right side of the sponge to scrap what he is washing and then he will go for it.
Petra is in London working as a waitress. Her friend Tianne has a café, a very nice café and she works there every Saturday I believe. During the week she is doing Spymonkey business and her own career and also trying to find a house to buy. Also she is selling workshops for me and her to teach in September October and November. Well, I think she has thought in me too, at least she asked me for my CV. Petra is ready for the big time, hungry as a female lion trying to feed their babies, this time the babies are her and her and her but that is what we like about her.
Toby just arrived from holydays in France. His mum has a very nice place in the south of France. Yes, that is right, Mr. Murdston family owns a state in the Cote d' Azur.
Now he is back in Brighton where he is enjoying his new status as a celebrity. He holds meetings at Carluccios where he and his pears talk about the artistic health of Brighton. His family enjoys the sun in this Hawaiian looking city of the south of England and get ready to live in their house for longer. Of course, Toby does all the work that Spymonkey needs to carry on surviving now that Kathy has left and our new … Lisa comes on board. He is still stress out but in a more grandiose way.
Cal is doing “Bubonic Plague, The Movie”. He is up in the North, he has been there already for a week or two while I write this and it seems that the work is going to take quite long to finish. It is his first movie as a director and I have faith that is going to be brilliant and funny. Last time I talk to him he was speaking like a movie director “ the days have been exactly as we wanted and we have been able to shoot a lot, hope fully everything will carry on like this. I have lots of hours to edit the whole movie but you know me in a couple of weeks I will be done” Good old Cal.
And me, I am writing blogs and going to the gym. I hate the idea to go back to work but I hate the idea of not being doing anything. I hate Petra and Toby for being in control of the company and I am going to suffer when I see them because they would look at me like British people look at foreigners “you do not know nothing”. I choose to live here in a foreign land so now I pay the price.
Have fun.
4 O'CLOCK A.M.
Hello;
In this time of the year it never goes completely dark. I know it is not true but almost true and in fact in London it goes dark for five or six hours, if I remember well it goes dark from 10:30 in the morning and when I woke up this morning the sun wasn't up yet but there was enough light outside so we did not need to use the artificial light.
I have looked through the blinds of the house to see the minicab so he did not have to ring the bell of the house. Suddenly the phone rung, well, my mobile phone, it was the guy from the minicab that had arrived already. Now it is different, the minicabs do things they did not use to do before specially all the things about giving phone calls…before it would have been very expensive but now all the phone companies are giving flat rates so they do not care about making one more call.
I got the train, the cab arrived on time, and I arrived to the airport with enough time to have a café. The worst thing was to past costumes. There were lots of people waiting to go through and they were doing very thorough search. Also I saw lots of policeman and I thought it was because perhaps there was new terrorist threat but then once I was in the cue a policewoman approached me asked for my passport. I got my passport out and I saw it to her, she said “oh you are from Spain” well, she said “you do not have a British passport” It made me laughed because it is the classic British I am the master of the world thing to say. The most important thing is not who or what I am the most important thing is that I am British and you are not. Well, you can call me paranoid but I have living in England now for too many years and that is the way they behave.
Well, the reason why they were doing those searches was so no hooligans will have the chance to leave the country to the world cup. You see now they have created a bunch of monsters and they fell really ashamed of letting them go and visit other countries. I will be really embarrassed. It was on the best times to be a foreigner. If you were a foreigner no problems if you were an Englishman with a football t-shirt you were in deep shit. Je, je, je, je, je,
Have fun.
GPH
Hello;
At Matteos Café in Tottenham Street, w1 we met. Petra, Toby and me went to have a meeting with our new management company GPH.
First we had to meet ourselves after two or three weeks away from each other's and there were some things to talk about.
Toby was the first one to be there and then it was I. I had been having a coffee a hundred metros away and when the time came I went over there. We had a small chat and then we went to the offices.
They are on the second floor of a small building of that street. It is a building in a corner so you can see all the things that happen in both streets. I do not think that is important but it came into my mind and I say lets write it.
There are seven people working there. We met five and we had a meeting with two of them. In our previous meeting things did not go as good as we would have like it so this one was to straight things up and I think that we really did. We talked for five hours and it was dense and good and I had a good time and I think Petra and Toby did too.
It is difficult because we do not think the same about many things and that creates some problems. We play with them but in my case they make me think about many things, my future, is it the same one as my friends? Am I going to be able to live from this that we do? Are we dreaming in similar things? Probably all these things are not important just now but I do think about them.
I have to say I like them all a lot. We talked about everything and we talked quite frankly, at least I did.
I fear that we may disappear there, between the big books and big profile companies and shows that live at GPH. But if they do well their job we will go where we want to go. I do not want to be unfair with them saying what I just said but I think that when it come to us they are going to have to make their job even better that normal because we are a strange company and we have to carry on being a strange company and many more things that they will tell us to be.
Have fun.
DRIVING
Hello,
Nobody should drink and drive because that is when accidents happen. But we went to visit my friend to his house in Villaverde and over there is very difficult not to drink anything. They have all kind of good things to drink so I drunk things, first a very nice wine from rioja called Luis Alegre and then another one not so good while eating a fabulous cheese from the mountains of Villaverde.
Then we had lunch at a local restaurant and then we went for a nice shot of liqueur at Jon's house. I was a little bit drunk and I decided to take a little bit of cocaine. Cocaine is always very good for when you are drunk because it makes you fell well for while. Of course when the effects of the drug disappeared you suffer double. That is what happened to me once I finished driving back home. But that belongs to another story that is really boring and that I am not going to tell you now.
The time to leave arrived and I took the car. My colleges in the car were really nervous because they had seen me drinking and they had also seen me taking the drugs. I was driving slow and very concentrated but still more the fear of the others than my own were making the journey for them very unsettled. Then one lorry in front of us was going very slow and I wanted to take over. I looked further in the road and I did not see a care coming I looked at the line in the road and saw that there was a discontinue line that allows you to over take. I signed and I changed gear and then pressing the accelerator I started to over take the lorry. My friends were shaking in the back and I could fell how scare they were, their asses were getting really tied.
The car was responding very well and the car was getting speed. My main was clear and getting hold of the staring wheel I could see how the care was over taking the lorry thou I was going very close to it. I straighten the car and I pressed the accelerator enough so the car ended up in front of the lorry. I look through the mirror and saw the faces of my friend's breathings once again.
I am sure you all know exactly what is next if I tell you that one of the two sitting in the back of the car was my lovely wife. She told me off during the next two days and I am sure I am going to carry on paying for a while.
I drove home and I went to the airport by train and bus. When you do not drive nothing seems dangerous thou for me it is always the opposite if I drive I do not fell secure.
Have fun.
RIOJA
Hello,
That red liquid that you drink is called Rioja all over the world. It does taste fruity and has the twangy flavour of the wood and the earth flows through your mouth but it is not dry is wet, wet earth. You drink it and the good one would not give you a small twingy in the back of the tongue and you would enjoy much more any food that you take with.
Rioja is a kind of wine in the world, but it is called like that because the place where that wine comes from. The most typical grape from La Rioja is called Tempranillo. There are some more, not too many, but the most common one is the one I mention above.
The reason why I write about this is because after many years I have gone back to La Rioja today. My friend Paul Millican is here visiting us and I said to him that we will go to visit it and we will drink wine.
My father has driven the car so we could drink with no problem. I think he had a fun day. We did not drink too much after all but it was really nice that he came. By ourselves we probably would have got lost. We travelled there very early in the morning and the first thing we did was to walk through the small town of La Guardia. That little town has three hundred and twenty vineyards/bodegas and there are not more than 1000 people living there. All the bodegas are underneath the village. It is very impressive. You can try to have a glass of wine from each one of the vineyards and you will get really drunk. I would not mind to do that but then we will need to spend there at least a month.
We visited a very small bodega called The Fabulista. I am not going to go into where the name come from because it is a little bit boring and they say it many times in the visit that we did. The bodega made something like 2000 to 5000 bottles per year and that is enough for them. The lady asked us if we wanted to have the visit in English and we said no, we said I will translate for my friend and then two more English people said if I could translate for them too and I said yes. SO after a couple of minutes we started the visit and to my surprise and to the surprise of the English in the group she decided to the talk in Spanish and English one after the other. She was great; she had some problems but who would have not? I could fell how she had learned both speeches and she would say first the Spanish one and then the English to the point that in the middle of the tour she will start to repeat something that she has said before and then she realised what was happening and she did not do the same mistake. Do you understand what I mean?
Anyway, visit la Rioja because you are going to have a very good time.
Have fun.
FRIENDS
Hello;
I have so many friends I want to come to visit my house in Spain. Most of them cannot come because they live in other countries and the tickets to come here are expensive.
Cal and Matt are the ones of all my friends that more times have come to visit me. Petra, Toby, Neil, Paul Willeman, Lucy, Stephan, Elka, Paul Hunter, Sarah Jane, and many more friends from Seville and Madrid.
The friends who come here are not better friends than the ones that come but when they are here I can treat them well and I fell really happy and proud that they are here.
Between you and me they make me look very important in my village.
When they arrive I usually go a pick them from the airport. I use my father's car or my mother's in law car. I take everybody to my house in Romo and then we go for a nice appetitive at the Puerto Viejo. It is the old fisherman village and it has very nice bars to drink wine and to drink fantastic glasses of red wine.
Then we go for lunch and if the weather is good we will go for a nice bath in the sea. The problem? It is that the weather in this part of Spain it is not guaranty like in the south. Here it can rain even in the middle of August if you do not believe me ask Stephan and Elke. When they came here first in the summer it was grey and rained for two weeks.
The next day the plan is to go to the Guggenheim Museum. The visit may not happen next day necessarily but it will happen.
It is much better to come here in the summer than in the winter mainly because there are many more things to do than in winter.
My friend Paul Millican is coming today. He has been here before so I had to invent another little trip and I came out with a visit to La Rioja. I have never done it before so it is a little bit of gamble. It will be fine. Now I am going to the airport to pick him up in my mother's in law car and I will take him for a drink as soon as we come back from the airport. Lets see how it goes.
Have fun.
SUNDAY
Hello;
Do you realise how the days are longer now? I do not mean longer that twenty-four hours, I mean the daylight goes for much longer. Everything will change on the 23 rd June at the night of Saint Juan. Everybody will be dancing around the fire and like in the really old times they will dance around it when the fire will become a little bit smaller they will jump over so the rest of the year will bring a very good harvest.
In a more mundane sense this extra day light make possible to be on the streets longer and to have the faces of the people much happier. The light makes people happy. They walk around more secure because they can see all the time what is ahead of them. I like it because it is much lighter and funnier. Lately I am older and I like the daylight more than the night. When I was younger I liked the night, I wanted to be outside and go to bed the latest possible that thing, being late made me more mature and cooler. I had my share of partying and so but then one day I decided to wake up early and I enjoyed. That was the beginning of the end. I saw all that light all over and I told to myself this is what I like. I could see further, I could go on the street and the horizon was the limit while at night I could never see further than fifty metros and most of the time I was not sober.
Since then I do not mind to wake up early thou I have to sleep at least eight hours a night and that is very important to fell well. I like to do sports and take care of myself. It may be because I am getting older and the night looks a little bit like death. So while I have time to live I want to have the felling of living around me for as long as possible and that is why I am at my happiest while April, May and June after that the days died and I do not want to day.
Have fun.
ALONE
Hello;
We are alone in the universe, we are alone in the planet we are alone in our country we are alone in our city we are alone in our village we are alone in our neighbourhood we are alone in our house we are alone in our marriage we are alone.
We are alone because we are the only one that is like us we are alone because all the things we like are not liked by anybody else we are alone because the live we have is exclusive to us we are alone because what we want and when we want it is just for us and to us we are alone because we will hate to be exactly like a bunch of you because if there will be out there more than one person exactly with my same face and my same personality I will have to kill him so I could be who I am.
We are alone and that is fine. We look to ourselves so from there we can see the universe and make it work and make sense of what surrounded us.
And… yes, who cares? As long as you have enough time to go and open a bottle of wine everything has many possibilities to be all right.
If you have time to open a bottle of wine slowly, getting the corkscrew and introducing it slowly to the neck of the bottle, slowly like making love to a young person. Then you pull up the cork slowly, too until it pops. Then listen the econ of the pop in the glass and in the empty part of the neck of the bottle, pooop, poooop, poooooop, let it resonate also in your stomach and in your soul. Listening to the wine dropping in your wine glass will make you fell alive. Yes, I could say pouring but no, is dropping all those milliar of drops wanting to breath in the freshness of a nice glass. The wine will invigorate your soul and if it will lift your spirit during some imaginary seconds. The combination of flavours in your mouth will take you to that place where you have never been alone and where you could never be alone. And things will go around and around until the end of time and until I will have to write something else in a table in the middle of narrow street.
Have fun.
MY BOOK
Hello;
There are two different books around me at the moment. One of them I will talk to you in a while and that means that I have planned to write a blog just a bout him in the near future. It is the biography of the old master Billy Wilder. Then I have another one from a woman writer, I do not say that in a misogynist way, not at all I say that because I know that is a woman that live in England but it is not English but as I write I do not have the book close to me so I can not check her name. The book is called “the Historian”. It goes about a woman that writes about the letters of her father. She writes about it because when she was young she promised him that she would tell his story. So all the action happens when she is a young girl in Holland and the travels that she does after the disappearance of her father. It is a best seller and I am sure many of you might read it so I am not going to say anything else in case I spoil it for you.
The book deals with vampires. They are in search of someone that had things to do with Dracula. I do not really like the subject very much but because I started I think I want to finish it now. It is taken me a long time to read it and to get on with it. The reason is probably because it is my gym book and I have not gone to the gym very much lately.
I think it is quite well written but it is one of those best sellers that you do know very early on that they are going to try to give you things so you do not stop reading and also when you finish you will tell your friends that they should read it too. Well, it is not my case, I am enjoying it but I am not very enthusiastic about it. All the things are very predictable and it bores me so I have decided to go for another book. There are many books I want to read so I try to follow impulses when I choose my next one. Most of the time the best thing is if someone that I like tells me this is a good book read it. I usually trust the reviews bit lately there have been fat too many times when I had bought a book from a review and then I did not like it so …Another thing way is when someone mention a book in a column in the news paper then it is almost sure I am going to be happy with the book. Still I think the taste of many of the writers that I like it is not my taste. And that is a hard thing to accept because I love the way the write so I should like what they read but one thing does not go necessarily with the other.
Anyway read books and have lots of fun choosing the next one is part of the best thing of reading a book
Have fun.
PHONECALL
Hello;
Good morning¡¡
Yes, oh¡¡ hi, how are you? Well, yes we are going to stay here the whole summer and then we will go to Edinburgh. Yes. Yes. We are very happy here but yes, we will love to go somewhere but we have to save money, yes (silence) see you later, soon. Nice to talk to you, bye, bye
And then you hung the phone back and you have that horrible felling that the conversation did not go as good as you would have liked it. Well, you did not want to talk just now. You were busy with something more exciting and …it isn't that you do not like that person. It is not about him/her it is about you. Perhaps you did not make it clear that you did not wanted to carry on talking just now. Next time you should use something like, I am busy now, no it is not the TV I am working with friends.
There are phone calls like many other things in life that should never have been made. Phones that should have never been picked up or conversations that should have never happened but they do happen because we cannot know how is on the other side of the line or simply we cannot have control of what is ahead of us in the future.
Some people simply do not answer as long as they fell like it or even if someone has passed them the phone they are ready to say no, no I do not want to talk to her/him now. Or like a friend of mine, he never answer the phone, you leave a message in the answer machine and then he will call you when he has time, and I would like to add when he fells like it.
I am not sure if that is the best thing to do. Practically speaking you can have troubles because many time in this twenty one century that we live inn time is gold and if you are not there then there will be somebody else ready to pick what it was for you on the first place. Also I do not think is incredibly friendly, you do want yourself to answer you and because they answer when you call them they are your friends.
Everything gets mixed up in this life that we live but I think I am going to carry on answering my phone because I want to have this problems so I can carry on telling my friends, you, the things that happen to me sometimes that make me fell funny.
Have fun.
MY NIECE
Hello
My nice is called Leyre. She is eight years old. She is from Barcelona and is the daughter of my brother. She is blonde and she is very happy all the time. Today I have to take care of her because now she is having some time with my parents and they have a dinner so I am going to be her protector.
Leyre was born a little bit premature. One day her parents felt that she was not looking very good and that she should be taking to the hospital. They took her there and they told them that there was a problem. Leyre was not normal and she was never going to be normal. I mean by normal like you and me, Leyre was going to be behind the normal development of human beings. So for you to understand now she is eight years old but she is less than two.
My felling for her are very clear, I love her to dead. She is not my daughter so I think it is quite easy to say that but I fell for my brother and his ex-partner that take care of her everyday of their life and they would have to keep doing that until they died and then someone would have to take care of Leyre after they are gone.
But she is a joy of life because she likes life a lot and she is very clever. She knows what she likes all the time and she know what she does not like. We cannot say that form all of us because I know many normal people that do not know what they like and Leyre knows. And she wants you around all the time, and she gives you love and she does not make any fuzz of her problems and she is a great girl.
I run out of words because now I would have to talk about myself and the problems that her situation create me but if her situation does not create any problems to her and she has many problems what right do I have to talk about my limitations when it comes to accept her the way she is? I am a cunt.
Have fun
NOJA
Hello;
No places with a beach or by the seaside should be like Noja. You do not know what Noja is but there are many places like this in all the coasts of all the countries of the world. Noja is a small place by the sea in the north part of Spain.
This town used to be a small fisherman place with no harbour but with two amazing beaches that would take you to a town of farmers that would have their backs to the sea because they were farming and taking care of their cows and vegetables and trying to survive with that. I will say more than survive because all the farmers from that part of the country are quite rich.
Anyway one day a very sharp politician had the idea to make a block of flats so more tourists could use the great beaches and also those tourist will bring more money to the town. That work and that politician became the mayor of the town and decided to get rich. Him and all his friend bought all the land and build and build until there was not more places to build and until there were not more place to fit people inn. The whole place became a big mall and big city by the sea full houses and with no personality.
There was a time when in Noja you could find solitude and tranquillity now from June to September the whole place if packed like any mayor commercial street from any big town of the world.
I remember one place, on bar that would open just from eight o'clock in the evening to two in the morning from Wednesday to Sunday. We would go there all the time because it played the best music for us and every time we were there we had the felling of staying in a treasure, in place that no body else knows and no body would ever find.
Last time I was there they have built a supermarket for tourist. It opens from Friday to Sunday afternoon during the winter and then seven days a week twenty-four hours a day during the rest of the year.
What have we done? Are we going to destroy all the places that we like? Lets be careful, we do not need to all go there at the same time, we all can go but perhaps is better to go in little groups. I am sure there is a place like Noja that you know where you live.
Have fun,
STOP THAT
Hello;
How can someone live far away from everything? How can you have everything you like in the same place? Where is that place is something like that really exist? I am here in one of my favourite place in the world, Romo. I lived here for the first twenty years of my life and then I left and the first thing I discovered was that there are many other places where you can be happy.
Then you want to find that place where you can get the sum of all those places that you need to be super happy. And you try many because you become a hunter, a hunter of the right place to live. And the quest is not easy because the world thou it is very small is full of wonderful place where you can be happy for a while.
As soon as you discover that the quest is going to take a little bit of time you make the first list of priorities. Of all the things that you love which ones are the ones that you could not live without. That moment is probably one of the first moments of maturity. You do say things that were vital and time have killed them. Things like it has to have an amazing atmosphere and be really cool, theses kind of things you get rid off really soon.
There are other things that will stay with you forever and they are imprescindibles, you have to have them and they are different for everybody. That decision is hard one because once you choose there is many people that are going to have to stay behind, people that you really love.
At the moment I am in a place where I think I am going to have to revisit my list of priorities because it fell really impossible that the place I want exist in the world or I am ever going to make enough money to have everything I want close enough to me so I could enjoy it. I have not given up, I promise. I keep fighting and perhaps I have lost one battle and I still have to carry on fighting the war until I get everything I want.
I know what I want and the problems are at the beginning of the list so I do not know. Where the fuck is that place that I have not being yet and is waiting for me to arrive so I could make it my home?
Have fun.
SPORT AS A DRAMATIC ART
Hello;
I read this up here in a paper. Someone called Daniel Innerarity wrote the whole thing. I thought that is very clever but not just that is also very right and I wanted to share it with you.
He like Aristotle and Schiller ask the question what is the motive why we enjoy the contemplation of something tragic? Forgive me, I am translating from Spanish and I am not very good with the English language so, it gets complicated.
The reason why we like sports so much is because we know the drama that has an imminent ending and it always is going to be different. The end will come very soon and it is impossible to know what will it be. Also all the sporting events are organised for you to have unpredictable rewards as spectator and participant that cannot be prepared. (For example goals)
“The spectator witness how a simple looking action (for example to pass the ball from one to another using your foot) became a very complex sum of passes that it is impossible had been rehearses before hand. Because no one of the participants; actor and spectators knows how many times those rewards will happen during the event. The curiosity, the desire for the uncertain is something that spectator and actors share. Both want to experience that moment when in front of their own eyes something unpredictable happen. So the sport is for that reason a organisation that is regulated to become a performance of unpredictability.”
Of course I do not thing what I have translated does make any sense but let me explain; I think he says that everything that happens in the game is uncontrollable, the sum to technique and inspiration creates that a group of people manage to create unique moments in front of an audience. The spectators and the actors know the rules but they can not know how this time is going to end or what the high lights of the performance are going to happen. Both share the desire to find out and set them to live that experience for ninety minutes.
He says many more things in the article that one day in the future I will tell you but I will mention the end where he says that we go to see sport to escape from reality, the old said of the sport keep the masses busy, well, he does not think so what we look for in the sport when we watch sport is life at its purest state. And that is what I look for when I go to see theatre I do not want to see life I want to see the purest state of life the uncertainty of the next ninety minutes while they play.
Have fun.
IKE TURNER
Hello;
The 2006 Getxo Blues Festival has started. For many years it used to happen in Romo (my beautiful and little neighbourhood) but for the last three or four years since the council started to build a parking lot in the square where the concerts used to take place the festival has been moved the Old Port. There in a very nice spot by the sea for three nights artists from different countries will play the blues.
In pass editions of the festival we have had amazing artists playing here, Koko Tylor, Jhonny Copeland, Little Richard, Tools Tillemans etc and this year is Ike Turner.
In my local bar everybody was talking about him these last days as the “wife beater”.
They have presented him here as the inventor of the Blues Rock. I love Blues Rock. So I have gone with my sister, Miren and some more friends. My sister lives in Madagascar and she is here for a small holydays. So I little bit of first world culture is going to make her good.
The band dressed in a very elegant code started before, as it is customary. They played a couple of tracks and then the big guy came inn. I have to say I was expecting him to came inn in a more expectacular manner like James Brown but I suppose that if you have played in all those big places all over the world to come and play in my village it does not deserve too much of an effort. He did make an effort with the suit, a yellow suit with purple trips on the sides of the jacket. He did not sing much and I asked myself why and I realised that he must be at least seventy something by now so he is tired.
He had this Tina Turner looking lade with big cellulites all over her legs and arms that was as amazing singer as the old Tina and she did most of the singing.
Over all very tight, they were not generous at all. But who the fuck do we think we are? This is not the Madison Square Garden so why bother? Good enough I have seen him playing and I have to say he was really charming a full of gorgeous details.
We walked home, smoking hashish and marihuana and drinking bears and talking about the time when women were less than men and men could not understand. And still we do not understand and we keep trying “ I have a baby that lives by the river, I can't live without my baby, I love my baby to death and I will die with out my baby”
Have fun.
YAMUNA
Hello;
I do not know how many of you read these lines that I am not very good updating but sometimes I think that I should give a little bit of space in here for good causes.
Yamuna is a non-governmental organisation based in Madagascar. They take care of women who have been forced to give children for adoption because they could not feed them with the resources that they had. So they take these women into their house in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar and they spend eighteen months there learning how to be independent. I know, it sounds very ambitious, I am thirty-seven and I have not managed to do that yet. But, for them is less soul independent more than being able of not need a man to pay the bills or their food. So while they are there they learn a profession that when they will leave the house if the African man is not around they can manage by themselves.
Also they try to teach them that they do not really need the all-famous African man, that they are exactly as important as their men for their family and success in their life. I do not have anything against the African man, on the contrary but I hate the macho societies that exist in Africa and many other places in the world.
They go to leave in the house and they bring their kids with them so you can imagine the party and the chaos that the whole thing generate plus all the burocratic problems that you have in a third world country. Also the place is run by girl and all the African men are not really willing to respect the while woman. I fell great admiration for the people that do those kinds of jobs. I have never had the courage to do something like that but I would love to try once.
I know the person who runs this place I am talking about, she is called Nerea Basauri. She is my sister and she is great. She has been here for the last three weeks because she was really tired and she needed a break from all that palaver. Now she is ready to go back and wish her the best and I wanted to express my admiration. If you want to help is not very expensive so go into www.yamuna.com and make a donation or become a member. They also help people that want to adopt children from that country.
Have fun.BERTOLD BRECHT
Hello;
The German play writer wrote lots of plays, first in Germany and then in USA while he was in exile. Many of them must be quite boring because he was a very committed person, politically speaking I mean, so in many of then he dedicated the whole story to show the world what he thought and how everybody who did not think like him was wrong.
I like his stories. For me many of them always have a fantastic incident, a wonderful story of human experience and it is always simple.
Antonio Gil Martinez is an actor from Spain that has worked with many prestigious companies all over the world. I met him many years ago in Regents Park playing baseball. He is from Seville and he is a wonderful actor. He is playing at the Spanish National Theatre on of Brecht's favourites “the Good woman of Sessuan”. When he got the job I spoke to him and he told me that things in the theatre in Spain were changing and that even at the National Theatre of Spain now there were trying to do physical theatre and that I should send my CV.
I have to say I got excited because it is my dream to work in Spain. So I bought I bus ticket and I went to see the play in Madrid and at the same time I use my time in the capital to see other friends and leave my CV.
Madrid was really great, sunny and warm and full of life as usual. I met many friends I had not seen for many years, like Patricia Ortega Cano, and also new friends. And then the last night I was there before going back to Bilbao I went to see Antonio's play.
I love to see friends in plays. I like them always very much because they are my friends and I always enjoy seeing my friends. I do not think I have many friends who are not very good actors.
The play was good, I loved the story. The actors of the company were in general quite good and it was quite funny to see Antonio playing in a different way than when he plays with Complicite but he was good I thought. What I did not like it was the fact that there was not an ensemble work, that all the actors did not play together and that there was a lack of commitment with the work. I could see many miss opportunities to upgrade the show to make it a wonderful show.
Then after the show I spoke with Antonio and I told him what I thought. He knew and he told me even more things that I had not seen.
Theatre in Spain is not very good, I think. There are very good professionals and there are good theatres but I think everybody does very boring work. There is always just one level and it does not look like things are going to change. That is the reason why I work in England.
Have fun.
PARENTS
Hello;
My parents are sixty-three this year. They both have the same age. Well, I think my father is a little bit older but they are the same age. But I do not want to talk about my parents I want to talk about parents.
They have done so much for me and I think they do a lot for their children, all of them. My friends who have children tell me that when it comes to children you do not understand anything until you have one and I believe them. The problem is that parents, or some parents once they discover that think that this apply for everything else and they become assholes. But the first thing I believe and I try to respect adjust for that my admiration grows a little bit for all the people that have children. I see what they do for them and then I ask myself if I could be as generous or as dedicated for somebody as they are for they children and I do not think so and this is one of the reasons why I think what I think and also one of the reasons why I think I would like to have children myself; to become as good human being as all the parents seem to be.
My parents still are very generous and I fight with them specially with my mum so she stops being my mum a little bit but she can not stop telling me things like “do not pick your noose” “do you know you have a stain in the shirt?” or “you have put on weight” and I hate it. I hate it a lot because she is right, because I have not grown enough to realise it by myself.
I get on very well with parents now and I think it is because I thought about all those things and I respect very much what they do, the ones who do it because there are many kind of parents and here I am talking about the reasonable good ones.
Then I have thought about their dead. Lately I look at my friends and me and I see that our parents are going to die very soon. It is the time in our lives when they died and it is the time of their lives when they leave us. It makes me really sad to think about it and to try to prevent how am I going to fell. And because it is impossible to know it makes me even sadder.
Have fun.
GOING BACK TO LONDON
Hello;
It is always like this when you expect the least to go back to work very soon because you are on holydays it is never really holydays. I have arrived here to Romo, my small little town by the sea two weeks ago, not two weeks really and now I am starting to get into the whole thing here I received an e-mail from London that we have a meeting on the 22 nd and it is very important I am there.
So I go to easy jet the really not so cheap airline and I buy myself a ticket. I am flying to London and return for 114 euros. It is not too bad but taken on account that I have to buy a ticket for the Stansted train and the amount of euros it would be the same as if I have flown to Heathrow with Iberia the not at all cheap airline.
I have to go and I want to go. I want to be involve as much as I can in the things that happen to Spymonkey and I am sure my colleges will find this last sentence quite comical but that is the way a fell.
The first days when I arrived here it took me a little bit of time to get used to the fact that I was not going to work for quite a while. Something in my head, in my brain was a little bit worried about what to do and how to get work so did not allow myself to relax and I was doing things all the time to try to keep the rhythm of the tour. Now, after almost two weeks I got the rhythm of this place and things are starting to happen, things that I am interested inn. And I have to go and that is going to break my rhythm here and then I will need two more weeks to get into rhythm and then I will have to go to Edinburgh and then I will be here again for a long period of time so … I am never going to be able to work here in Spain because I never here enough time, and that is the nature of the beast. I am an actor that works in a middle successful theatre company and spends most of his time all around the place. If I want to keep that this is how is going to be, all over the place most of the time and no work when you are in Spain. It's fine for me… for now.
Have fun.
WI-FI
Hello;
I have a three-mega connection Internet. I can connect myself to the Internet from any place in my house and I am able to receive and send e-mail the whole time. I have done this as soon as I arrived from Australia. Well, I order the service to the local telephone company and three weeks later the supplied the service. That was the fine part of it because Miren and me were in Brighton doing the festival and nobody was here to open the house for their technicians to do anything. But that is not the problem, the problem is that here in my country we suffer the abuse of the bask telephone operator. They are the only one really, there is also the Spanish one but it is more expensive and most of us have already the line from the Basc server in our houses. So if we will not use them we will have to pay double to make the installation and then the service of high speed Internet will be cheaper but we will have to pay the rent of the telephone line in which the internet service happens.
So the guy finally came to the installation and because I knew they are not familiar with the Macintosh computers I called them before hand to let them know. When the guy arrived nobody had told them anything and he had to leave to get the right material. Then, the guy was really nice and quite helpful he started to tune my machine and after a little bit of time touching my computer like a sick animal he confessed that he did not know anything about these kind of computers. I laughed, not really loud, one of those laughs of disbelieve and fun at the same time. But he was not joking, he explained to me that he was told to come here, that he was not the normal technician that this was his first time and giving me a free area he left.
I called the girl from EUSKALTEL; they have a cycling team in the tour of France, and explain my situation. The lovely girl told me that she did not have to help if she did not want to, because EUSKALTEL do not work with Macintosh they just use Microsoft and if you have Linux the free operating system they do not even answer the phone.
So after a nice and polite conversation we said goodbye. I tried to calm her conscience by telling her that I was sure a friend of mine would be able to help me.
But then I thought that if they had recorded our conversation the big chief of the company would be very proud of their workers, never to give anything for free to costumers.
Have fun.
LIES
Hello;
It does makes you fell very happy when you are in the middle of the street and the sun is shining. When the weather is very good, the temperature is 25 degrees. People walk on the streets and smiles and the children play in the squares and there is the noise of happiness going around.
The lottery has made me a very rich man and I am planning to use that money in the best possible way. I had taken lots of decisions because there are many people that are going to fell left out but I am not perfect but very lucky. Well, I am perfect and the rest of the people have to learn how to leave with the jealousy.
I have bought this huge house in Hampstead Heath. Three floors with four-place garage and two million pounds all over with a garden in the same lot. Should I build a pool? I do not like pools very much just now but I will do it for my friends.
I built this big bodega in the basement because I like to drink wine and that is a very important thing.
My biggest regret is not to have place to have my sailing boat. I got this big sailing boat and is parked in the Caribbean sea in front of Cuba. I like that part of the world and thou there are not many wave you can find very nice swells in a very short journey. You just have to go for some miles east south and as soon as you are close to Venezuela the waves appear and you are ready to surf non-stop.
And then I have not stopped travelling around the world. Yes, all my time off I had being going around all the continents meeting people and getting to know new places. My lovely wife tells me that she is bored now of going from one place to surf to another one but I can help it I like surfing so that is what I like to do when I am not working. And that is another thing now I do not need to work for money so things are much easier and fun.
Well, sorry, I am lying is very early afternoon and I have drunk too much wine. Forget about everything I said I thing I went a little bit over the top. !!!Do not fucking said anything against my dreams¡¡¡
Have fun
EXTRA WORK
Hello;
I am very happy. I have been watching theatre the whole week end and like a really young kid in Hamlin's (perhaps you do not know about Hamlin's but it is a very posh shop in Regents Street that sells all kind of toys, play stations and anything that you can dream if you are a kid or not) I saw many theatre works and not many very good. There is something that happen to me when I see a theatre show I always think I can do it, well, that is not really precise, I fell a very strong desire of be there, of doing that same show, of experience what the people in the show are experiencing at that moment. I could not do it better but I will try.
I like doing theatre so much that it is very complicated for me to think of doing other things. For example, I try to imagine myself being a cook. I think they have the same kind of timetable. When ever everybody is going our and ready to have fun cooks go to work. And that is what happens mainly in weekends and bank holydays and you live to entertain people. And then I think of all those hours chopping vegetables, cleaning the kitchen, cutting you fingers, and standing up for very long hours and all those great things that cooks do but I will never be able to do for more than one month.
Another thing that sometimes I think about becoming is a worker, someone that can do things with their hands. I love the idea of building a wall or a table, sewing the oak and wood and then putting the whole thing together with nails and glue. I imagine the moment that I start to use what I have built and then the whole thought goes wrong, the table collapse and I realise why I do what I do and perhaps I can not do any other things as food as the one I do now. Then I do not imagine anything else. My dreams go back to something that could go hand by hand with what I like the most. Perhaps I could direct I said to myself or write or teach but no one of those very clever and good things excite me as much as acting. I know I could have lots of fun with the other things but….
So that is extra work and being out of where I usually get my extra work everything becomes very difficult. So I am going to become a welder. I am going to do a workshop and then I will get my title and then I will work in the ship industry and in the construction industry and I will be happy with my really scary industry.
I hope I am not dreaming again.
Have fun.
Hello;
It is a theatre festival on the streets, in the streets of the village next to the village where I live and I went there yesterday night. I do not like very much street theatre. Do not misunderstand me, there are very good things and I think that I am able to appreciate good things but still …. You have to work really hard, not just as performer but also as an audicence. You see if there is a moment in the show where you are not very engage with the show anything can take your attention from the main thing that is to see the show.
But still there are performers that think and like the street for playing the most. I am not one of them.
I saw many shows. I realised that when I am doing my show I do not like to see other shows. I cannot really work out why. When we went to the Melbourne comedy festival I could have seen all the shows and I did not go to many, actually I went just to three or four and yesterday in this place I saw five or six. It is true to say that they were short some of them and they were all on the street and the others I did not stay the whole time there, I saw a bit and when the people that was walking around was more interesting than the show then I was ready to go and see other thing.
It was nice to see people I have not seen for many years and talk to them. It has made me think. Everything change but everything change very slowly because we humans do not like changes and I know that this is a very hush thing to say but perhaps it is just a semantics problem, the choice of words. I saw my friend and I felt like when I was their friend and we will see each other's every day.
I saw a very nice show from a company called Zanguango. They were really sweet and not pretentious and very charming. I saw a show that friends of mine were working and I did some work with them at the beginning of the rehearsal period. The show is a great show, is called COMO COMO and goes about restaurants. It is very big and it is going to work very well very soon once they run it much more and they stop taking so much care of the show.
It was very nice to see them there. They all are very good performers and they would be having fun very soon.
Have fun
PLANE SITS
Hello;
Fucking shitty unfair world¡¡¡ yes¡¡¡ of course everything has to be different and everybody has different amounts of money and if you have more money than me you can travel in first class and probably for you this blog does not make any sense.
I was once sitting in a first class sit and it was fantastic. We sat there for a while and we drank white wine and we saw very nice concerts of fantastic musicians in a very big screen. I saw Van Morrison and I would have stayed forever there, on top of the mountains, over looking the Geneva Lake. We were not flying thou a very rich friend of the theatre company that we were working for lives there and he invited us to eat. He had first class sits in a room to watch movies.
So in a real plane I have seen business class and first class sits and I have flown only in economic class sits. And still I would love to point out that now we can differentiate another new class in the world of the plane sits, the cheap airline sits. They are the lowest of the lowest of the class and this is I think because the only way to know what is the space that belongs to your sit you have to put the arm holder down and then the square underneath, that is exactly what belongs to you. But there are always people with big bumps and they come into your space bump and that is very unpleasant.
I have travelled with all of them, with all of the cheap ones and still we will have to make another differentiation between all of them because cheap is not the same thing for an Spanish person or for a German person so the best one is Berlin Air. They have a good decoration and proper sits, cheap air sits but proper and when you fly with them you fell the bargain. You fell that you got a real bargain when you bought your ticket and that as Petra says makes you fell better and she is a real bargain hunter.
The economy class sits are old, yes, you could say that I was unlucky and my plane was very old but don't you think that when ever you fly planes always look a little bit run down? Not so much in the outside but in the inside the plane never looks new. Then you sit there and the sit in front very early on reminds you that there is someone sitting in front of you. The person in front tries to accommodate and when it moves his/her sit hit you in the face while you try to get the magazine. This is just the beginning.
Then another thing that really piss me off is the connection for the earphones, they never work properly. Yes, they always get broken. If it is not the plug of the earphones then it is the connection for the plug, or then the little keys that makes you change the channel and the one that makes the volume up and down always break. I do not know.
I fell safe when I fly but many times I fly upset so make things right because I am flying all the time and I like to fly happy, with no much space but happy.
Have fun.
