A synopsis.

Hey there people!
I guess I will start with some information about what I have been up to over the last few years..
Other posts here will be about specific events. Hopefully this little history will bring some of you up to date on my movements.

After university I went travelling, working as an English teacher and volunteering in a variety of different places. I visited China (where I got punched in the balls by a small boy), Egypt (where I got an English teaching certificate), Honduras (where I made lots of friends), Guatemala (where I tried to learn Spanish from a fundamental Christian), Nicaragua (where I became a real traveller), Mexico (allegedly) and El Salvador (where I saw an armadillo on the beach). I also continued to work, on and off, in the UK as a carer to obtain several much needed pound coins.
Central America was a fantastic experience. I really got to know myself well, and dealt with a lot of issues, demons and other baggage in a fairly mature way.
Not always, but mostly!

After this experience I spent a month and a half in London. I continued to study Spanish and got turned down from several pokey jobs.

Then my good friend Adam of Broo got in touch. He suggested a jaunt to Barcelona. We jaunted, oh how we jaunted. So jaunty was our jaunt that I managed to play ignorant to the whole Catalan culture and decided to head back and try and live there.
Let's face it Barcelona is wicked, and I was overcome by it's wickedness and wanted more. It's an amazingly diverse and liberal city with interesting happenings and stimulation on every corner. Knowing Catalan will seriously improve your time there if you try to settle. I know the word for carrot, and sadly little more.

In Barcelona I met a lovely Polish lass in line at the police station and then, typically, made a fool out of myself in front of her on a bench. One thing led to another and now we've been together for three whole years, heaven's above!

Searching for some sort of responsibility and satiating my love of corrugated cardboard I went to get a small brown box from a family in the outskirts of the city. Inside was a dormant small brown blob of a puppy. When I got her back to my modest flat she promptly did a poo on my pillow and we've been thick as thieves ever since (those who know me best will know this is the quickest way to my heart!).

Something else important happened to me in Barcelona, something selfish. I started to make and skate long skateboards. I'm pretty passionate about it, no bloody good, but stoked as a Basque barbecue before and after a days skating in the mountains. Yeaah!
(This blog will be orientated towards my fun 'n' free time, so hopefully I can use this space to share my passion for playing in the road).

After working a bit as a teacher in Barcelona and hitch-hiking with said dog and lovely lady to various destinations (putting our relationship on the line and collecting an inordinate amount of discarded cutlery from the road side), my Dad helped me buy a car. I am eternally grateful. It is not as characteristic as Bonnie the Beetle was (so named because of Bonnie the old fat, smelly, slow and faithful Golden Retriever with whom she shared so many traits, but whom she never equalled), but it is impressively economic, practical and reliable. Go pimp your Kangoo if you want to compete.
And so, with our own set of wheels Maria and I were a much more mobile and and a much less stinky couple.

We spent a summer living with Matthew, my brother, in Sheffield. It was an interesting time and in my work I got to see some children walk for the first time. Pretty cool. Maria had a collection of jobs and together we manned a Rotherham United pie stall for their home games.

Next we headed off to Krakow. Maria had been avoiding writing her thesis and time was drawing in. I taught a wide range of people English and on the leisure side of things I was fortunate to meet Dawid and Piotrek from www.antidote-krk.com.


Poland is a very wild and wonderful place. Every trip to the countryside was an emotive adventure into nature. Maria is very proud of her homeland and having lived there for a year it is easy to see why. Poland is in my opinion akin to Scotland, perhaps mostly so in the power of the landscape and the freedom of the countryside .

I picked up a few words, nothing too impressive, but enough to chat with and entertain the Polish dudes that occupy the park just in front of our present dwelling. The truth is most of my Polish references dogs and ham sandwiches (as long as being able to identify most parts of a skateboard), so pretty much I've got all the important stuff covered.

My next move was to Valencia in Spain. Why? Why not? I speak the language (more or less), I enjoy the climate, I wanted to keep the Spanish dream alive and I wanted to get a more grounded job.

I headed of with my trusty compañera and left my other trusted compañera to defend her thesis in the face of the great mighty Jagellonian intelect. Something she did with great skill, earning her a degree - with bells on. Well done Moo.

Our road trip took in the Alps (where I was a spectator at the Legendary Izoard Downhill Race, and then fortunate enough to play about on the hairpins after the event), the Pyrenees, the (extra special) Costa Blanca and then finally Valencia where I lived my first weeks in the van - through the 42 degree heat wave they were experiencing! It was like being constantly followed by someone pointing a hairdryer at you.

Now we are settled here, living in a lovely little attic, looking down on people! Life in Spain has been yet another trial, I have had six or seven different jobs now, honestly I've lost count.

It did not exactly happen as we had planned!!
However, things have worked out for the best though and now we have a plan. We are on the cusp if you will.
Will you?
You wont?
Well I will!

Cheers!
G xx

p.s. Photos later when I can work out how to get them in the right places.

First the worst.

Hey!

Time to get going with all this crazy computer shenanigans.

Here you will find some words, photos and general schnizz about me, my ideas, and my life.
I'm looking forward to giving this a go.
Please feel free to get in touch, comment, or send me messages burnt on toast by carrier pigeon - whatever takes your fancy.

If I say something that get's your goose, let me know. I do not try to be offensive, nor consider myself to be nasty, but sometimes I make mistakes, don't we all? I hope that anything considered offensive will be water off a duck's back (err, I only wrote that to get a third bird reference in this section).

My highly underrated hilarious blend of humour, satire, irony and silliness is often not very well received over the world wide web. It's a special brew for the connoisseur, or actually I might just be boring. You decide.

Please bare in mind that I am as open, sensitive and human as the next person on the internet!

So enough of this kerfuffle.
I will write again when I am not sitting here with an empty stomach.

Peace everyone/anyone?
g