jo soc el Daniel. com et dius?

It has been an awfully long time hasn't it. I've got no good excuses. I've got excuses, but no good ones. Partly the delay has been in my inability to think up a good excuse.

In terms of the actual ins and outs of my time here, since I last filled you all in on my movements I've had a visit from my parents, a visit from Alex, I've started learning catalan, finally left the city two or three times to explore the surroundings, had an extremely wierd week trying to catch sky news in the irish bars to keep myself informed on the live8 gig, the olympic bid or the bombs depending on the day, and generally blustering around slightly unsure what the hell I'm doing but loving every minute of it.

The parental visit was to be the last in a long line of acts of witness: demonstrating my new, albeit temporary, life to people in london, in an attempt to make it real. In all honestly I was actually quite nervous. We'd just had a loss in the family, so I was already feeling a long way from home, and the combination of my parents dietry requirements (between the three of we were restricted to various fruits and spring water) differing ideas of a good time and preferences for mode of transport, I was imagining it was going to be a challenge.

Actually it was four of the most relaxing days I've had. Mum had been here a few times before with choirs, and they'd also escaped my terrible twos for a relaxing weekend some 27 years ago, so they weren't completely green to the pleasures of the city. We all decided to treat it like a holiday together (which I admit has been a while) and had a great time. I hadn't realised exactly how stir crazy I had become, so when they dragged me out to monserat (a monestry wrapped in a mountain that is the spiritual homeland of Cataluña) seeing the countryside was extraordinarily animating. We gawped at scenary together, ate like kings and swept through Barcelona much like the queen inspects the troupes - occasionally chatting to a soldier but generally just walking along and approving.

The issue of what the hell I'm doing out here never really surfaced. I was comfortable enough in my new surroundings for it to seem natural, and best of all, when talking to them on the phone afterwards they had a frame of reference in which to put my news. We found the fish restaurant they'd had a romantic dinner at 27 years previously, and it was not only still there (we came close to finding the actual table) but turned out to be the strange tardis like place we'd eaten at on Ros' last night here. It's nice to know things dont change much.

When they left I had a difficult few days of working late, to catch up on the time I'd taken off and then Alex, who'd decided to take a little break before his new job, came to stay for a week. He was arriving the evening of 7/7, so when my mother managed to be one of three people who got their phones working that morning, and woke me up to tell me they were ok, I then spent the whole day trying to ascertain if everyone was safe and if he'd have any hope of making it to the airport. I don't want to dwell on that day too much except to say that I felt very far from home and wierdly disposessed, disorientated to see images of such banalities as tube maps blasted on the international news. I can't imagine the trauma of actually being in london at the time.

Alex got here in one peice, and we then spent the weekend trying to get as bedraggled as possible. I've travelled with alex in south america, so we both knew what we were in for, and it was enjoyable to be able to introduce him to my friends and share conversations in spanish. He did very well and we whiled away the hours chatting about not very much to Maider and Jobi in a strangely deserted cuban bar in Gracia.

We seemed to spend an extraordinary amount of time on the pavement in the Raval, drinking luke warm cans of beer with my italian lot. They were all leaving one by one to go back home for the summer holidays so there were a couple of informal goodbye parties. Occaisionally alex had to sit through extended farewells and suffer watching me demonstrate poi spinning but other than that we had a wicked time. On the downside we realised fairly quickly that salsa nights here are a whole other kettle of fish. Much less the "hey you look like you'd dance with me" and much more standing in the corner completely baffled!

On the friday when I had to go to school, and during my siesta afterwards, he managed to tick off all the tourist sites I've seen in five months, plus a few extra, without even a proper map of the city. It's obviously something that just happens to people that stay somewhere for any length of time. Alesandro (italian) has been here for a year and has yet to see park güell. He intended to do a little car drive around the surroundings the week that followed, but Barcelona has tenticles, and he ended up leaving from the same city he arrived at.

Catalan was a decision that I'm not sure if I regret. It took the classes partly out of a desire to do something else with my time, partly out of curiosity and partly because I thought it might be quite a good way to meet spaniards. I never imagined how difficult it would be. The other people in the class (alas not a spaniard among them) have a couple of major advantages over me, in that their spanish is near perfect, and they have a good reason to study it (one has a boss who only speaks catalan). I find myself utterly tounge tied. I think my teacher believes I have learning dificulties. I'm not sure why it's so challengeing. Certainly it feels strange starting from scratch with a language, especially one that's so familliar and yet wrong.

You can understand it fairly well, it just sounds like a sort of mangled spanish, but speaking it is impossible, mainly becuase you don't know the exact manner in which to mangle it. The grammar is more complicated, and it loses the most enchanting aspect of spanish for someone like me in that it's not completely phoenetic. You're never entirely sure how to pronounce a word unless you know it, and inevitably I get it wrong. It's also very wierd in some slightly psychotic ways. The unit of time is the mig quart, roughly seven and a half minutes, and it is relative to the next hour, so 3:52 would be tres quarts y mig de cuatre (3 and a half quarter hours of 4). o is pronounced o or u depending entirely on whether you don't expect it to be. There are also some charming things, I'm not Daniel, I'm THE Daniel, which is very gratifying.

Anyway the teacher's cute so I'm not complaining.

I've been taking more photos, which is good, and I managed to persuade my mum to leave me some drawing pencils, which means I might actually finally learn to draw properly. If that is I find time between the guitar playing, language learning, percussion, photography, website building and friend making, none of which are happening to my satisfaction. The cycling is also beginning to slip, mainly because I can't cram for my friday exam while commuting to school on a bike on a bike(there's an invention waiting for an entreprenur.) The swimming however is definately here to stay, I can't quite live without it now, and I can manage up to thirty lengths as long as I sunbathe for a few hours afterwards.

Oh my god it's hot. I don't even want to think about how much hotter it's going to get, but I fully plan to come back to London for a bit in August to cool off. I'll keep you posted.

Anything else? I taught photography to someone in Spanish, confident that having learnt it off Tomas in a cafe in an afternoon I could return the compliment, up until the point I realised I had no idea what any of the important words were (diaframo? el exposuracion?). I finally found someone to play backgammon with, although Alex has gone home now so I may well have to just teach someone - you'd have thought a moorish invasion would have left it's mark but when I show the board to anyone they stare at me blankly. I've been to a couple of out of town beaches, and on my first ever double decker train, which is a lot less impressive on the inside. I had a jam, and we're going to try and form a band if we ever have any time. I got horrifically sunburnt twice and have now upgraded my factor of sun cream to factor "actually remembering to put some on and not acting like a local who doesn't need it". Oh and there's an irish Bar opened next door, so I've decided to swallow my pride and make friends with them. It's either that or go on a mass guiri killing spree in my dressing gown (you drinking at me? I don't see anyone else here!)

Oh and I read the Harry Potter, which disturbingly appeared on mass in the corte ingles bookshop shelf despite the fact they don't carry any other titles in English. they've just had to deal with the loss of the catalan language here, I've got a nasty feeling they'll soon have to deal with the loss of Spanish to.

It seems the guy who owns my room wants it back in September (his year away has been shortened) so I have to start thinking seriously about my plans. It's so hard to. I've been here three months, yet I feel I've only just scratched the surface, and though every day I spend here is another day further from my mortgaged, career centered 2.4 children future, I'm not ready to come back!

Decisions, decisions, decisions...

Fins ara, nens!

Danny