An Englishman Abroad

Goodbye Blogger

2005-02-07T11:53:00.000Z

Just to let you know that I have now moved to www.vaughanology.com/matt so if you want to keep checking my various ramblings, rants and assorted witticisms, that is the place to go. I´ve been blogging on Blogger for about a year now and it´s been a crazy rollercoaster ride of emotion, discovery and.....other stuff. Or something like that. Anyway, it´s all over now, and this is the last entry I will make here. Try not to cry.

Rant #7: George W. Bush

2005-02-01T09:02:00.000Z

Oh baby. I´ve been looking forward to this one.

I shall attempt to steer clear of the stereotypical view of Bush (namely, that he is a clueless twit with virtually no knowledge of the English language who would probably have trouble organising a snowball fight in a blizzard, let alone organising the most powerful country in the world) because it is a bit unfair. Very funny, but a bit unfair. Instead I shall attempt to analyse the war in Iraq and his administration´s policy in the Middle East.
Marvin Gaye once sang that "war is not the answer". Well, he´s wrong. A lot of the time war is the only answer; the Nazis, for example, weren´t much into negotiations, and neither was Napoleon. Sometimes war is the only way to ensure peace in the world; that´s one of the many paradoxes (paradoces?) of the world. However, the war in Iraq was not a necessary one. This was true before the war and it is even more clear afterwards. The "intelligence" (surely ironically named) that formed the basis for this jaunt was as flawed as it has been in the past (bombing a paracetamol factory in Sudan was a high point, I think). It is quite clear that there were no weapons, that sanctions were working, and that the main reason for the war was false. Bush is attempting to convince people that there was evidence of intent on Hussein´s part to damage the USA. Well, duh. Furthermore, by attempting to justify the war retrospectively, Bush is guilty of an almost Orwellian level of deception: it reminds me of the bit in 1984 when Big Brother retrospectively changes the targets of the 5 year plans to show that they have been met. But this is really happening in the real world. That scares me.
Bringing democracy to the Middle East and winning the war on terror are worthy goals, but doing it by lobbing large quantities of rather nasty weaponry at countries is emphatically not the way to go. To win the war on terror (if it can be won at all) we need to educate people, to demonstrate that our intentions are honourable, to dispel the myth that America is "The Great Satan", and to bring a workable peace in Israel. None of these are easy, but they are made considerably harder by shooting Arab civilians, torturing them in Cuba and Iraq, and winning hearts and minds by chucking bombs at people. Doing this will only recruit more people to the fundamentalist cause.
In many ways the war in Iraq turned me into a liberal. For the first time that I can remember the extent of human suffering and the reality of modern warfare have been made abundantly clear to me, and my views on the necessity of warfare have been hardened. You can´t turn the Middle East, with its countless centuries of antiquity and ancient civilisations, into a suburb of Nowheresville, USA. There are some places in the world that aren´t suited to the McDonald´s, Starbuck´s and Burger King ethic of "civilisation". Bringing democracy to oppressed people cannot be achieved by blowing them up; I really can´t stress this enough. Bush, with his sabre rattling and his cultural imperialism, is doing more damage to the image of the West (at least as perceived by Arab eyes) than has probably been done for years. That makes me worried: four more years of this gormless pillock. Hmm.

Rant #6: Modern Art

2005-01-31T11:14:00.000Z

Feel free to accuse me of being old fashioned, but I think that art should either be aesthetically beautiful or should have some kind of subtext, some semi-hidden meaning, that has an important message. Furthermore, I think that art should require at least some basic level of skill on the part of the artist. All of the artists over the centuries have been skilled at either painting, drawing, sculpting, or some other branch of the visual arts. Sadly, skill is no longer an essential part of the process. To be a successful artist these days all you have to do is throw together something suitably puerile and attention-seeking (plastinated human bodies, unmade beds, pickled farm animals, etc etc), appear on TV in a semi-coherent, vodka-induced stupor, and say something suitably "profound" about the emotional reaction you hope to induce in your viewers. Well, pish and tosh to that. My first reaction to Emin, Hirst, Rothko et al is to say that any similarly retarded, skill-less moron could paint a canvas red and black and charge a fiver to view it. I mean, I could do that. Their response is always "Ah, but you didn´t, did you?" with a repulsively supercilious air, as if they were the first person to break new ground with this daring and groundbreaking insight into contemporary culture. Well, you can take that opinion and cram it where the pickled sharks won´t fit. Any muppet could put a bed in a room or write swear words in pink neon and call it art. In fact, a lot of muppets do do that. So how is it art? The only emotional response it gets out of me is a faint feeling of bemusement that people are stupid enough to give it the time of day.
I long for a return to the days when being an artist actually required someone to be able to paint or draw or sculpt well, when art was beautiful or important or had something to say, when paintings and sculptures excited human beings to rise about the humdrum, to excel themselves, to create works of beauty and importance. All this pathetic, childish trash is just embarrassing. So, Messrs Rothko, Warhol, Emin, Hirst, Chapman etc etc, a message (if you´re still alive; I´m sure a couple of them have stiffed it by now): if you have issues, go to a therapist. If you need money that badly, go to an employment agency. If you want to retain some kind of dignity, don´t make any more "art". Stop wasting our time. Thanks.

(Sorry for the delay with this one. I was in Galicia over the weekend and couldn´t find an internet café. The final rant will appear tomorrow (and I´ve been looking forward to it, believe me) after which I will be moving to www.vaughanology.com. Thanks for your time).

Rant #5: The Daily Mail

2005-01-26T10:45:00.000Z

Ooh, this is a nasty little rag. The English tabloids are famous the world over for being salacious, voyeuristic, seedy snotrags aimed directly at the working class; promising a diet of monosyllabic words, topless girls from Essex and more pictures than prose, they are the highest selling papers in Britain. The Daily Mail, however, is worse. This is mainly because of its repulsive pretentiousness: it seems convinced that its opinions and prose are of a considerably higher quality than that of its competitors (not true) and that its readers are intelligent commentators on contemporary affairs and culture (ditto). Somehow this disgusting delusion of grandeur makes it repulsive.
The Daily Mail is an unpleasant little bogsheet full of semi-racist articles about how asylum seekers are scrounging off the benefits system and poorly worded opinion articles from their in-house battery of nincompoops trying to convince their readers that Britain is somehow still great, that Britannia somehow still rules the waves, and that the only flies in this nationalist ointment are immigrants, political correctness, and Blair. It is taxi driver politics for the semi-educated: racist, extremist, and infused with some noxious notion of our country´s supposed brilliance. Frankly, it repulses me entirely, and represents one of the reasons why leaving England wasn´t entirely painless. I wouldn´t be surprised if it made bad toilet paper. In fact, that gives me an idea....

Rant #4: Nationalists

2005-01-25T09:05:00.000Z

There is a clear difference between patriotism and nationalism. Patriots love their country but are willing to admit that it has faults, whereas nationalists adore their country, ignore (or deny the existence of) its faults, and, crucially, assume that it is superior to every other country. The latter is the attitude I want to discuss.
It is scary when people are unwilling to admit that the country they are from has any faults at all. It is also incorrect. This world being what it is, no country is perfect and all have successes and failings which need to be examined with a view to rectifying them. Believing that your country is perfect and that all other ones are inherently flawed by comparison is a dangerous attitude to take, because it can easily lead to racism and imperialism. I am drawn, inevitably, to make two case studies here: firstly, imperial Britain, and secondly, contemporary America. The noxious imperialist attitude that exuded from our green isles at the zenith of the British Empire led to a lot of repulsive actions from soldiers and politicans which we are still feeling the effects of today; go to Delhi and find out about the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny, for example, or the creation of the Israeli state in the British Palestine. People still feel bad about these events today and they were caused by people thinking that as Britain was so eminently superior to all other countries, it followed that we had some kind of divine right to waltz around the world jumping on peoples´ faces. The parallels with contemporary USA are manifold and obvious. Nationalism is a terrifying force which, in the latter case, has led to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, the flouting en masse of basic human rights declarations, and the killing of untold thousands of civilians; as I write there is no evidence that the situation will improve any time soon.
I think it was Louis de Bernieres who said (via one of his characters in the excellent "Captain Corelli´s Mandolin") that as soon as people value intangible ideals above human lives things like Nazism and Fascism arrive and people like Hitler start making speeches. Parallels between the Nazis and George Bush are offensive and inaccurate and I don´t want to make them, but a diluted version of the nationalist ethos is what I think is responsible for much of the world´s problems at the moment, in the Middle East, in Zimbabwe, in Burma, and in more countries than I would care to name. Self-criticism is an essential part of politics and when people are unwilling to admit to their own failings you´re in trouble.

Rant #3: Extremist Animal Rights Protesters

2005-01-24T08:04:00.000Z

I should make a distinction here between people who think that testing cosmetics on animals is wrong - which I agree with, since cosmetics are essentially an unnecessary part of society - and people who think that testing medicines on animals is also wrong. Medicines that could save a human life sometimes need to be tested on animals to ensure that they work; this is an important part of the process. Yet some people think that this is wrong and that fluffy little bunnies should be allowed to run free in the open air while half of the population dies of preventable diseases. There is simply no way that the value of an animal´s life is even remotely comparable to the value of a human´s. Human beings can think, write, create art and philosophise, whereas animals simply hang around munching grass or other animals and look sweet. If one human life can be saved by killing a hundred bunnies, then they should be killed. Simple.
I´d like to meet some of these hardcore, tree hugging hippies. If one of their parents was dying of an illness that could be prevented by testing a medicine on a cat would they allow it to happen? Or would they allow their mother or father to slip into a painful death, knowing that they could have prevented it all along? And how about testing products on cockroaches? Would they be so opposed to that? Or do they only complain if people test products on animals that are cute and can be kept in a cage and fed carrots for the benefit of their children? Somehow I think the perceived attractiveness of the animal concerned is more of a factor than they would like to admit.
Attempting to prevent people from testing valuable medicinal products on animals is effectively saying that a puppy or a kitten is worth more than a human. Er, wrong. Sorry. And some of the tactics these fundamentalists are using are staggering: digging up the graves of deceased relatives of people who work in guinea pig farms? Issuing death threats? Alleging that their targets are paedophiles in an attempt to turn the local communities against them? Are those tactics justifiable in any way at all? Well, you know what I think....

Rant #2: Football Hooligans

2005-01-21T13:11:00.000Z

I´d really love to know why some people think that football is such a big deal. All that rubbish about football being much more important than life and death is just a complete load of tosh. Football consists of twenty two men (unless Robbie Savage or Craig Bellamy are playing, in which case it will soon become twenty one) kicking an inflated synthetic sphere around a field for an hour and a half and attempting to propel it into a net and one end of the pitch. That´s it. Yet some people treat this puerile form of entertainment as if it were more crucial than Third World debt, more important than the Middle East peace process, and more worthy of debate than US foreign policy. I have one word for these people: perspective.
Even worse are the people for whom a specific football team and their retinue of lagered-up fans serves as a substitute family group. People actually fight each other to determine which of their teams is the better, and sometimes people even get killed. The sight of football hooligans (usually, but not exclusively, British) smashing up the historic centre of some foreign town is utterly repulsive. Frankly, such is the damage done by these morons to the good(ish) name of Britain (not to mention the damage done to the faces of the local police force, the poor buggers) that it even tempts me to lobby for the return of capital punishment in specific cases. Supporting a football team to that degree is rather daft but probably understandable, but actually causing someone else physical pain in a pathetic attempt to give your meaningless, humdrum life some sort of shape and meaning is just unforgiveable. And I haven´t even started on the ludicrous salaries of the players yet. Grrr.....

Rant week

2005-01-20T09:46:00.000Z

Allow me to be perfectly honest here. Ranting is one of the things I am good at. In fact, for some reason I´m really good at it. This isn´t always a good thing, but it is almost always an entertaining one. This week, then, is now Rant Week. Every day I will write a rant about something that really hacks me off. I don´t mean things like getting up early in the morning or finding out that your shower gel has leaked over your toothbrush or realising that you left your jacket in the British Council office in Madrid an hour after leaving said location. These are annoying eventualities, to be sure, but small fry compared to the things I intend to rant about. Without further ado, then, I give you rant #1: "Against Euphemistic Marketing Language".

These days (in England at least) you can´t help but notice how far the shops are going out of their way to make you happy. Almost every single shop you walk into has adverts up inside shouting about how much they value their customers, how precious our business is to them, and how terribly offended they would be if we took our business elsewhere. Even banks have this sort of thing plastered all over their walls like some repulsive wallpaper from hell, claiming that their mortgage rates are the best in the world, that if they went any further out of their way to help us they would have to register as a charity, and that we would be completely idiotic to miss out on this opportunity to buy a car at 5.6% APR (total payable price 46,097 or something). This level of customer service is slightly embarrassing in itself, but what makes it worse is the rancid, chummy language they use to get it across. All that sickly sweet crap about wanting the best for their delightful, stylishly dressed customers and their families makes me want to vomit repeatedly all over their stylishly styled interiors. The simple fact of the matter is that companies exist to make money and they do this by selling their product to the consumer. By pretending that they are some kind of friendly, charitable uncle who is doing us a real favour by flogging us a sofa for only a couple of hundred quid they are guilty of deception. I don´t want a bank to pretend to be concerned for my financial, emotional and spritual wellbeing. I want them to keep my money in a safe place, let me access it whenever I want, and keep quiet. I don´t want to be thrust a Customer Feedback Form ("We Value your Opinions and Suggestions! No, Really!") when I buy a coffee somewhere. I want them to put some coffee in a cup, add some milk, charge me a reasonable price, and shut up. All this repulsive, chummy language is as fake and deliberately deceitful as Dale Winton´s tan, and possibly even more offensive. Simply put, the world doesn´t work because people are lovely and kind to each other and help each other out whenever they can. It probably should, but it doesn´t. So don´t pretend that it does. A coffee shop exists to supply me with coffee, for which they should be paid. That´s it. I don´t need ludicrous feedback forms, opinion surveys, offers of friendship, offers of marriage, or someone offering to hold my hand and tell me it´s okay. Okay? So shut up. Thanks.

Man, I feel so much better. This stuff is seriously therapeutic. Now I have to think of something to rant about tomorrow. Well, there´s a lot to choose from....

Some thoughts on the English langwidge

2005-01-17T11:48:00.000Z

Reading written English these days can be a painful experience. Not only are the majority of people ignorant of basic laws of punctuation - where to put commas, where to place apostrophes, when to use capital letters, and so on - but they also seem incapable of using English as it was supposed to be used. More specifically, they don´t seem to know what certain words actually mean. Take the word "tragic", for example. This word is used over and over again to describe things that really aren´t tragic at all: the death of a toddler in a paddling pool, for example, is sad, but not tragic. A suicide bombing in Tel Aviv is repulsive but not tragic. In fact there are only a few things that I can think of that actually deserve to be labelled as tragic: the tsunami is one, and the war in Iraq is another.
How about words like "awful" or "terrible"? They, too, have had their meanings more or less worn away by constant overusage in the tabloid press. "Awful" actually describes something that inspires awe - the tsunami, again, is a good example, as is God. "Hero" is another one. Even footballers in England are regularly described as heroes, despite being overpaid, hormone-fuelled adolescents who spend their week kicking an inflated synthetic bag around a field for a couple of hours and picking up a few thousand pounds a week for their efforts.
Languages are always organic and change over time; this is inevitable and not at all a bad thing. No-one walks around London saying "Prithee, fine sir, beckon yon serving wench that I might partake of a pint of finest ale" and a good thing it is too. But someone should surely intervene to prevent the English language (and a particularly fine language it is too) being poorly used by people who should know better. I don´t aspire to the ruthless Orwellian tactic of excising every single word that is remotely loose or slightly vague because there has to be a certain amount of slack in the way we speak and write or we would all end up speaking like scientists. Nevertheless, it has to be tightened up unless we all want to end up speaking like the Daily Mail. Let´s do our best to cut through the hideous mish-mash of poorly-chosen verbiage that we see all around us, eh? And I´ll give a prize to the person who can spot all the mistakes in this blog. How´s that for irony....

2005-01-16T15:06:00.000Z

Yesterday I went to El Escorial and met up with Jennifer (a Texan, but don´t hold that against her) to go round the monastery there, where the majority of Spanish monarchs are buried. It´s stunning, really; vastly more elegant and understated than the rancid gilt and mirror extravaganza that is the palace of Versailles, and the main church is incredible. Then we went for a hike into the surrounding mountains which was similarly delightful. Getting out of the city is a pleasure.
I am currently reading Said´s "Orientalism" which is dense and scholarly but utterly fascinating. It also contains the best analysis of the Iraq war I have ever read, and I would recommend it to anyone. Hopefully it will be a good starting point for my extended essay on Orientalism in French literature which I intend to write at the National Library here (assuming I can obtain a reader´s card, which isn´t easy) and also an interesting insight into relations between the Arabic world and the West, which will probably be somewhat important when I head out to Damascus. Which I will do. Oh yes. And a guy from college might come with me to do the course as well, which would probably put my parents´ minds at rest. Or, as Dad cheerily put it, "make you twice as large a target". Ooh, cynicism.

Rush Hour III

2005-01-13T08:07:00.000Z

I can´t believe how crowded the Metro was this morning. On my way to work I only have to change once, but both trains were absolutely crammed full. I got shoved out of the way by a man at least four times my (new) age and spent much of the second leg of the journey (from Avenida de América to Avenida de la Paz) with someone´s handbag shoved halfway up my buttcrack. Honestly, getting up at 7am to teach is bad enough without having the extra trauma of inconveniently-placed fashion accessories.
The January MSN diaries have been up for a while: www.msn.co.uk then click on "Money" on the left and then on "Students" at the top. You know the drill.
Thanks to the amount of time that I spend on buses and Metros I am zipping through the reading matter that I brought back with me. The first volume of Runciman´s "History of the Crusades" has been and gone, Maalouf´s "Crusades Through Arab Eyes" is similarly finished, and John Humphrey´s book on the English language won´t last much longer. There are still three or four books to go, but pretty soon I´ll need the next volumes of the history of the Crusades and then onto reading for Oxford. Eek.

Now we are twenty two

2005-01-12T10:46:00.000Z

Having a birthday away from home is a regular occurence for me, thanks to boarding school and the fact that the term usually starts before the 11th. It was still slightly odd to be celebrating my 22nd in Madrid though, so soon after returning from England. Highlights included getting a phone call from Mum and Dad, texts from everyone (sorry for not replying but it costs so much) and a phone call from Marianna in Seattle, who sang down the phone to me, then went to the airport to fly back to Madrid and forgot her passport. Oops. A flamenco bar and tapas were the chosen celebrations, and very enjoyable they were too. Special mention should go to April for baking and icing a chocolate cake for me on Monday. You are all legends.
I´m still in a bit of a spin, with the culture shock less severe than in September but still a factor. Hopefully it´ll be easier to get over it this time, especially when everyone has returned from holidays. I´m planning to go to Paris in March and home at the end of April for the 25th wedding celebrations, which is definitely an event worth celebrating. As I said to Kelly last night, in England it is worth getting excited about any marriage that lasts more than 5 years, so 25 is impressive. Not as impressive as 22, though. 22 is a good number.

And now back to school

2005-01-10T08:07:00.000Z

After a lovely Christmas break I am safely back in Madrid again, and how odd it is to be back. My life in Madrid and my life at home are two completely separate and different things, so switching between one and the other is not a particularly easy thing to do. The feelings of dépaysement will, I´m sure, soon slip away to be replaced by a joyous realisation that I´m spending another five months in a country where a beer costs a euro.
I need to make some New Year´s resolutions, and, more importantly, I need to keep them. This is where I need the assistance of my dear blog readers, as you can check up to make sure that I am keeping them. So in the next 12 months I intend to do the following:

1. Get some private language tuition here in Madrid to make more money.
2. Travel more in Spain; the first trip will probably be to Santiago de Compostela with Matt 3.
3. Read more of the books that Oxford want me to read. There are a lot of them, and most are boring. But hey, I signed up for this literature course malarkey so I need to see it through....
4. Go to the Middle East and not get shot / blown up / taken prisoner, etc. Not sure I have a lot of control over that one though.
5. Be nicer to Americans. No, scrub that. Be even nicer to Americans.
6. Write more. A LOT more.

That´s about all I can think of right now. You lot can all check up on me to ensure that I am seeing it all through.
It´s also my birthday tomorrow, which I am pretty uninterested about. But if any of my Madrid buddies reads this before then - presents to the usual address....

Goodbye Spain...

2004-12-22T13:18:00.000Z

Not for too long though. I´ll miss the blue skies and the midday sunshine, but going home for a break, to see the family, and to eat a whole lot of turkey will be lovely. I´m currently in school because there´s supposed to be a party for the teachers, but they´re all still in their end of term meeting so I´ll have to wait until they´re finished before tucking into the free food and drink.
That´s my first term over, then; three months yesterday, and how amazingly quickly the time has zipped past. I think I´m going to make some serious Ney Year´s resolutions this time: spend more time studying, get a job doing private language teaching, and travel more. And sleep more. I have decided that I don´t sleep nearly enough.
So it´s off to the airport at about 3pm, and away. Hopefully I´ll get there in time to get a decent seat on the plane; being crammed at the back next to noisy Spanish teenagers, in a seat with barely enough legroom for a vertically-challenged dwarf, is not a fun way to spend two hours. But at least it´s only two hours; most of the Yanks have a good ten hour flight and then a five hour drive or something stupid. But hey, they come from the most powerful country in the world, which probably makes up for it.

Christmas in Madrid

2004-12-20T11:44:00.000Z

One of the refreshing things about being in Madrid during the run-up to Christmas is that I miss out on the frenzied commercialism that stains Christmas in England. Some shops here have Christmas music playing and sell Christmassy things, but they´re in the minority. There are pretty lights everywhere, there´s a huge tree in the Puerta del Sol, there are projected light shows in the Plaza de Santa Ana and the Plaza Mayor, and the whole thing is almost completely devoid of all the irritating, noisy razzmatazz that pollutes English Christmas time. I´ve only found two shops that sell wrapping paper, for example, whereas in England practically every other shop is screaming for you to buy it from them.
Not much remains for me to do here, to be honest; most of the Yanks have flown the nest, so it´s a little quieter and less funny than usual. I have some more shopping to do, a lot of packing to do, a fair amount of wrapping, and then it´s back to the homeland for tea and biscuits. And, er, Christmas. And rain. And the whole family together in the house at one time for the first time in.....I don´t even know how long. Lovely. Now, let´s see if those wacky Norwegians have anything to say about that....

More contacts....

2004-12-18T13:35:00.000Z

Just in case anyone was unaware of what a strange and wonderful thing the Internet is, it seems I have made a couple of new friends who I have never met from a country I have never been to, who speak a language I have no knowledge of. Anyone who reads the comments section on my blog will know that a couple of completely random Norwegians got in touch after reading my blog apparently by accident. So, er, hello to them. Say hi to Father Christmas for me, yeah?
My last weekend in Madrid before Christmas is underway, and the crowds in and around the Puerta del Sol are truly something to behold. I love giving presents but I´m lousy at buying them, and Spain doesn´t have an awful lot to offer.
Went out to dinner last night with Kelly, April, the Colombian, and one of her English buddies from last year called Matt. The restaurant we went to serves roast chickens, cider, cheese, bread, and sausage, and not a lot more. And it is thoroughly excellent. Where else in the world could you sit at the bar, order a roast chicken and a litre of cider, chow the whole lot down, and get change from 10 euros? Nowhere I´ve been, that´s for sure.
Not much remains to be done here, to be honest. Most of the Yanks have returned back to the homeland, and I´ve done most of my shopping. One of them asked me if I wanted her to bring anything back from the States. I said "George Bush´s head on a plate". She didn´t laugh. Oops. Another promising friendship bites the dust....

Near the end

2004-12-16T09:43:00.000Z

I´m really, really tired. In fact, perhaps weary would be a better word to use. The combined stresses of getting up really early in the morning to cram myself into an overcrowded Metro carriage with Spaniards who don´t like to wash, the stress of speaking Spanish all the time, the stress of worrying about money, the stress of having to buy Christmas presents and not knowing what to get, and the stress of living a long way from home for a long period of time - all these things combine to produce King Stress, a nasty monster sort of thing that follows me more or less everywhere. And I´m not the only one: most of the teachers at school have had enough, a lot of the people from Mountainview are similarly fed up, and even the kids at school want to go home and sleep. And who can blame them? The end of my tether isn´t too far away, but I think it´s in the wrong direction, and I´ve already gone past it. Hmmmmph.
In short, I am looking forward to going home. I really want to do my Christmas shopping here so that I don´t have to hack round town on the 23rd, the day after I get back home. But shopping in Madrid isn´t that easy, unless you want to buy clothes or cured ham or hilarious blue wigs.
Okay, enough grumbling. Whenever I feel worn out I think about Primo Levi, odd as that may seem. Anyone who has read "If This Is A Man" or "The Truce" or his collected poems will know what I mean; that guy had something serious to complain about, and yet never really did. So I really have no right to be fed up. Perspective. It´s all about perspective. We all have to put things into it. Kind of like a carrier bag, only nicer.
And on that bombshell...

Roll up

2004-12-13T11:38:00.000Z

Last week was reasonably insane. Four different people came to visit, which was lovely. Seeing friends from Oxford is always wonderful because it enables me to stay in touch with the university world which otherwise feels a very long way away at the moment. So I did the tour guide thing and showed them around the Reina Sofía (which I enjoyed a lot more than last time) and the various bits of the city. On Sunday we had the Christmas church service and the drama, which all went swimmingly, I think; the English gags got a good few laughs from the (predominantly American) congregation, which is always nice. The lack of sleep is annoying though; for the past four days I have been out of bed before 8am, which in Spain (and over a weekend) is more or less unheard of.
To celebrate the end of this festive madness, Matt 3 (aka Prince William, aka Brian Nicholson´s godson) and I went to the Cirque du Soleil. I had heard of them before, of course, but didn´t really know what to expect. Well, the whole thing was utterly stunning from start to finish. The acrobatics and the skill of the various participants were almost unbelievable; it was embarrassing for me, with my rugby-induced disability, to see what the human body is capable of if you train enough. Some highlights: a Chinese acrobat "standing" on a pillar on one hand and twisting her body around until her toes were touching her forehead before hopping to the other hand; another Chinese acrobat somersaulting from a see-saw onto the shoulders of three more Chinese acrobats who were standing on each others´ shoulders; people running on top of giant spheres and doing backflips on them (while they were in motion), people doing somersaults and twists through a two-foot wide brass ring - I could go on. Every single thing was gobsmacking. The costumes were gobsmacking, the stunts were gobsmacking, even the music was gobsmacking. In fact, I left with my gob so thoroughly smacked that I felt as if I had had a run-in with a Basingstoke townie. It was incredible, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone.
I now have a mere eight days to do all my Christmas shopping and prepare for the end of term, which is marked in Spain, judging by the English department, by all the English teachers ganging together and singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" with undisguised glee. I haven´t laughed that much in a while. Ah, you had to be there.

What I think of Starbuck´s

2004-12-09T09:42:00.000Z

Walking down Gran Vía yesterday on my way to see Kelly and April I had a serious craving for something sugary. I´m not entirely sure why, but these things happen. Anyway, as it was a national holiday the city was really crowded, and the queues for cafés were massive. An unwillingness on my part to spend the best part of an hour queueing for a slice of cake drove me into Starbuck´s. Now, I´m not a fan of gigantic global corporations. Not for any ethical reasons, of course, but because they are inexorably erasing all the differences and variations that make the world so interesting and making every city in Europe more or less the same; for this reason Starbuck´s is not my favourite place in the world (although it´s still better than McDonald´s). Anyway, coffee I wanted, so in I went.
I was persuaded by the girl at the counter to order a "Toffee Nut Latté" and a cookie. Then I had to give my name so she knew who the coffee was for, even though I was the only person in the place. Briefly considered giving her my surname, then realised that when most Spaniards try to pronounce "Vaughan" they sound like they´re trying to cough up one of their lungs, so I said "Matt" instead. Then the coffee arrived.
At first I wasn´t convinced that there was actually any coffee in it; I was greeted by a fluffy mound of whipped cream with brown sprinkles on top. After eating my way through this gelatinous mass of fluffiness I eventually got to the coffee, which was lukewarm and unexciting. This made me drink it quickly, and soon it was gone.
The whole experience was somewhat underwhelming; the coffee itself was rather like what I imagine the offspring of a 99 Flake, a bag of brown sugar and a jar of Nescafé would look like, and it was expensive. I could have got four or five coffees at the school caféteria for the same price.
Naturally I won´t be darkening their door again. In fact I feel slightly guilty about funding, albeit in a miniscule way, their company´s march towards total global domination. But hey, don´t knock it until you´ve tried it. Now I have tried it. And knocked it. So now I shall be quiet.

Back to civilisation

2004-12-08T17:39:00.000Z

After a pleasant but chilly break in England, it's back to Madrid for a couple of weeks. I came perilously close to missing the flight actually, thanks to the breathtaking incompetence of the British train system; my train was late, then was delayed in transit, then was delayed at Redhill as the door-opening software broke down (their excuses are getting better and better), and finally arrived at Gatwick roughly three minutes before check-in closed, resulting in a rather undignified sprint through the airport to the EasyJet desk.
I am undoubtedly here now, though, and have a fairly hectic two weeks ahead of me, with Christmas shopping, teaching, friends visiting, Christmas drama and lots of other stuff. To be perfectly honest though, I just love being back here. Madrid is almost more real to me than Basingstoke at the moment. And a whole lot friendlier, too. Although the food is nowhere near as good. Man, I'm still dreaming of Sunday lunch....

Exile

2004-12-03T20:29:00.000Z

Going to Oxford and seeing all my friends again was truly lovely. Truly bizarre, but lovely. I haven't been there for six months so it was completely weird to be walking around college, seeing all the sights of Oxford, and knowing that when I go back for my final year most of my friends will have left. In fact, being in England again is weird. Apart from the freezing cold, the banal newspapers and the oddness of speaking English, the people seem less friendly than they are in Spain and the trains are completely lousy. I've only been away from the country for two months and I already feel like a foreigner when I come home.
Much as I might dislike Basingstoke though, it is truly, spectacularly lovely to be in my house again, sleeping in my own bed, and eating as much as possible. And the BBC is a delight.

Back home

2004-12-02T10:40:00.000Z

My word it is cold in this country. I walked half of the way home, due to the spectacular badness of the local bus system, and came reasonably close to contracting hypothermia. Having said that, I had been in the house for roughly thirty seconds before being offered my first cup of tea, which was thoroughly excellent. So maybe England isn't all bad.
I'm off to Oxford shortly to celebrate the end of term with my friends, and will return to Basingstoke tomorrow afternoon at some stage, when my elder brother will also be joining the fun. I'll be returning to Madrid on Monday afternoon for all of seven days of teaching between now and the Christmas break. Between now and then I will be mainly eating English food (thanks for the cooked breakfast Mum), sleeping in my own bed, marvelling at how idiotic the English press is, watching rugby, going to the cinema, and drinking actual beer. And freezing half to death, of course.

Correspondence

2004-11-30T09:11:00.001Z

A public thankyou is due to my dear grandmother, who kindly sent me a letter which arrived yesterday, and also Julia (a friend from Oxford) who sent me a postcard which arrived a couple of days before. Should anyone feel the urge to write something to me, do feel free: I have come to realise, in my old age, that letters are really much nicer to receive than emails, for obvious reasons. You all have my address, so there´s no excuse really....
I think I´ll spend my last day before I return to Blighty intelligently: getting my hair cut by a somewhat dubious Colombian, packing my rucksack (I´m trying to save time by not taking any hold luggage), and sleeping. That´s about as profitable a use of my time as I can think of right now. I really should start doing some studying when I get back, or when I get back to Oxford next October the transition from my year abroad to the routine of reading lists and essays is going to be somewhat abrupt. And we don´t want that.

Correspondence

2004-11-30T09:11:00.000Z

Meeting famous people

2004-11-29T13:12:00.000Z

Last night I went to watch Real Madrid play Levante, thanks to a friend of mine who is working for one of the team doctors and can get free tickets to every home game. They didn´t play very well but still managed to win 5-0, thanks to stunning goals from Figo, Ronaldo (2), Beckham, and one from Owen. All well and good. After the game we were able to get into the VIP lounge where the players relax after the game, and I met Roberto Carlos, Salgado and Helguera (the others had all left), and I also walked past Michael Owen outside. He said hi. They all seem like very pleasant people; I had a brief chat with Salgado and also with Roberto Carlos (in Spanish, of course) and they seemed confident for the rest of the season.
That´s about it, really. Just thought I would make all football fans reading this very jealous indeed. I´m in the process of writing my Christmas list as well, although it´s looking rather short at the moment: mainly books and CDs and various bits and bobs. I would have included "A photo of me with Roberto Carlos" but I´ve already got that. Ho hum.

****** Australians!

2004-11-27T22:48:00.000Z

The England vs Australia game today was brilliant. I haven´t been so excited watching sport in ages. The early setbacks, the stunning fightback in the second half, and, of course, the crushing disappointment of being beaten by the bloody Aussies. I hate it when we lose, but losing to the Aussies is worst of all. Grr!
So I´m going home in a few days, and I´m pretty excited about it. I´m looking forward to the following:

1. Seeing the family, emotional reunions, etc.
2. Seeing the friends and seeing Oxford for the first time in about seven months.
3. Watching BBC news for as long as I can. I might even get up in time for the breakfast news - actually no, that´s stupid.
4. Eating Sunday lunch at home. For those not in the know, my Mum is the best cook IN THE WORLD. I know everyone says that about their mothers, but mine actually is. No, really.
5. Breathing actual air, rather than the soup of hydrocarbons, cigarette smoke, repulsive body odour, industrial smog and dust that I constantly inhale in Madrid, and which is euphemistically referred to as "el aire libre" here.
6. Speaking English.

I will also miss the following:

1. Being able to walk down the street at 2am and not feel afraid of being beaten up.
2. Being greeted happily by complete strangers with a cheery "Hola!" wherever I go.
3. Asking people how they are and being told "Muy bien", rather than "Not too bad", which is what everyone says in England.
4. Paying less money for everything.
5. Being able to see blue sky every single day of the week.

It should be a good break. Almost enough to make me forget the heartbreak of being pipped by a bunch of golden-shirted, arrogant, brash, uncultured, poorly educated swine who are all descended from English criminals. Poor loser? Moi?

Films

2004-11-26T16:22:00.000Z

I went to the cinema twice this week, once to see Bridget Jones and once to see "Conociendo a Julia". The experience left me somewhat disappointed. The new Bridget Jones is dross, frankly; predictable, hackneyed, with just enough puerile jokes to keep its target demographic entertained, and a pathetic fight scene tacked on. "Conociendo a Julia", on the other hand, is excellent: amusing, interesting, with excellent performances from all of its actors, a great twist near the end, and the whole film is just hugely entertaining. And which of the two films will be more successful? The former. The latter will, no doubt, sink without trace.
So what's the point? Well, this: bad things are usually more popular than good things. John Grisham sells more books than Gustave Flaubert, McDonald's food is more popular than good food, Will Young sells more CDs than Mozart, football is a bigger sport than rugby and cricket put together. You could write one of the best books/films ever, full of invention and wit and all things good, and the gurning masses would rather watch some half-witted, predictable, cliched rubbish. In short, most people are idiots. Hope that's controversial enough to keep you all reading. You waited a week for a new post and you get an offensive, injust, sweeping generalisation. Well, if you want a balanced, objective analysis of contemporary life, you're in the wrong place. More of that next time...

2004-11-20T22:32:00.000Z

Ooh, two posts in one day. I'm also thinking seriously about applying for an Arabic course in Damascus next summer, which I am very excited about. Naturally I'll have to clear it with the parents first, but I'd really love to go. For some reason I have a serious craving to visit the Middle East. The Foreign Office advice says that the risk of terrorism is high, and advises me to get insurance before I go. Hmm. Then again, it says that the risk from terrorism is high in Spain as well, and I'm here now. So, er, there. Calculating the risks rationally is a wise thing to do, but living in fear is stupid. I mean, I could walk out of the flat and get nailed by a bus tomorrow. I hope that doesn't happen, or I'll look really stupid. And really, er, dead. Hmm.
Hilariously, the Foreign Office website also has travel advice for the British Antarctic Territory. Apparently the risk of terrorism is low. Unless al-Qaeda declare jihad on penguins or rather chilly scientists, I suppose. Ah, sometimes you just have to laugh.

Thanks. Giving. Combined.

2004-11-20T22:09:00.000Z

Being a turkey must be good for a while. I mean, you practically get force fed for most of the year. Then comes Thanksgiving, or Christmas, and thinks look a little less rosy. I think I ate the equivalent of roughly three or four of them tonight, as well as four helpings of pudding. But hey, I'm sure they all led long and fulfilling lives.
A mention should be made of the rugby today. Wales - unlucky guys, your day will come. Ireland - well, beating the Yanks isn't that hard. Scotland - face it, you're not that good. And England - I love you guys. For the first time in a year I am proud to support you. What an amazing display of grit and style. Almost as gritty and stylish as Naomi Campbell operating a grit-dispensing lorry in the winter. Er, or something.
I saw a car crash today as well. It wasn't that serious, but it was very noisy. Which made me think: you never know when you're going to die. You could be driving along happily one day and then - wham, you're human jam. The conclusion we should all draw from this is that we should spend as much time as possible of our lives....eating turkey and teasing Yanks. No, wait, that's not right....

New address

2004-11-17T13:22:00.000Z

Just a brief word to say that my new address in Madrid is as follows:

Matt Vaughan
Paseo de las Delicias 135, 1 D
28045 MADRID
España

With any luck mail sent to that address should reach me fine.
In other news, I walked past Victoria Beckham yesterday. I thought of taking a photo, but one look at the size and mood of her four bodyguards dissuaded me. I have no idea how people make suits to fit men that large and chunky. Perhaps they just throw a curtain over them and staple bits of it together to make it stay on. Then again, I wouldn´t say that to their faces. There´s not a lot I would say to their faces, to be honest, except "Sir", and "Please", and "stop hitting me so hard".

About time....

2004-11-16T09:25:00.000Z

The good news is that I have found a flat. The other good news is that there isn´t any bad news. It´s a surprisingly large flat near the Legazpi metro stop (connected with metro lines 3 and 6, Cercanías, and two nightbus routes, Madrid public-transport-fans) and is shared with two Spanish guys who work and are very pleasant indeed. Most importantly they don´t smoke. Finding a flat with non-smoking Spaniards is rather like praising US military tactics: very, very hard indeed. I move in later today, and am extremely happy about it. It is easily the largest flat I have seen in Madrid (apart from Javier Marías´ place, but that doesn´t count as he´s a millionaire) and one of the cheapest, and has nothing wrong with it at all.
In other good news my cold is gradually moving on to sunnier climes. I bravely turned up to school at 8.30am today and thereby earned the respect of the entire English department as I valiantly carried on with my teaching duties despite crippling illness. Well, I might have over-egged it a tad (with the tactical coughing outside the office of the headmistress) but they were still impressed. And I can see why: a Spaniard would have taken at least another week off. One of them even offered to take my second class today "to allow my throat to recuperate". I tried to change her mind but she was pretty insistent, so I reluctantly acquiesced. My already puny workload for today is therefore halved. Hoo-hah.
What else was I going to say - oh yes, that new Band Aid single. Well, my thoughts on propping up the entire African continent with handouts only to see them greedily gobbled up by incompetent and corrupt leaders are probably controversial. The whole icky, feel-good, "look at us, we´re helping people!" image that all those half-baked celebrities portrayed is more than a little nauseating. And to be honest, the West has been propping up the entire continent for thirty years with constant handouts, and it´s still a complete mess. Here´s a novel idea: why not write off their debt and leave them alone? They don´t want mobile phones and Starbuck´s coffee and Rice Krispies and all the other crap we shovel out to them, they want dignity. Still, no doubt the single will sell trillions and be the biggest record ever, and everyone will be smug and feel good about themselves, and for the next few months we can all conveniently forget the fact that the proceeds will probably be skimmed off by some corrupt officials in Darfur. But hey, we´ve done our part, haven´t we?
That started out as good news and turned into a rant. Sorry about that. But I am very happy right now. No, really.

I feel dizzy

2004-11-15T13:37:00.000Z

It´s an odd feeling: a combination of having a cold that is proving hard to shift, feeling tired, being in a foreign country, being stressed due to not having a flat, and feeling guilty about calling in sick again today. The last emotion is irrational, considering that I was feeling seriously lousy (and that the Spanish attitude towards time off is more lax even than mine) but still plays a part. Anyway, I feel distinctly odd. Time here is zipping past at a terrifying rate. I mean, I´m going to be at home in a little over two weeks. Where did all the months go?
Remembrance Day came and went as well. Naturally the Spaniards don´t "celebrate" it, since they´re usually not keen to join in wars, being sensible people. What irritates me slightly is that each year we pray that war might end and that in the coming year there would be less of it, and every year new ones start. I think people need to realise that humans, being, in the main part, complete idiots, have been fighting wars since they could first walk, and will continue to do so as long as they can. War is an inherent and unavoidable consequence of human idiocy, and will always happen. And as if you needed proof, the Americans were blasting Fallujah to hell and back at exactly the same time that people across England were reading out "we will remember them". They may not know how to win hearts and minds, but those crazy Marines certainly have a good sense of comic timing.

Out of the City

2004-11-14T16:15:00.000Z

I've been spending the last two days in the peaceful, scenic surroundings of El Escorial. This, for those not in the know - and I certainly hadn't heard about it before I got here - is a small town to the north west of Madrid which was used in the past as a summer retreat for the Spanish royalty. It's not hard to see why; it's impressively beautiful, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and has a gorgeous monastery/palace thing as well. I hadn't realised how dirty, noisy and polluted Madrid can be.
My cold has left behind the "I sound like a bunged-up moron" stage, has passed the "feels like my throat has been sandpapered for a week" stage and is making progress through the "feeling better, but still sound like a complete cretin" stage.
The hunt for a flat goes on, with a glum sense of deja vu. In fact, with a glum sense of having vu'd it all about seven thousand times deja. It had better get sorted out soon or I run the risk of going completely insane, rather than partially insane, as I am now.

Anatomy of a cold

2004-11-12T19:21:00.000Z

I really hate having a cold. I'd give a lot to be immune from colds for the rest of my life. As illnesses go they are pretty pathetic, but they have a unique ability to make you feel utterly miserable. My throat is so sore that my voice has dropped by about fifteen octaves, meaning that I sound roughly like Barry White after throat cancer. I even called in sick on Thursday (and I was genuinely feeling terrible, I can assure you) so I managed to get some small revenge against the teacher who has taken two sick days so far, safe in the knowledge that I'll be there to cover for her. Honestly.
Mention should probably be made of the passing of Yasser Arafat. Um, so there it is. I really can't be bothered to go into a deep analysis of the Middle East situation; all I'll say is that without compromise from both sides there won't be any progress. That should be obvious to anyone with a single brain cell, but one intelligent friend of mine still insists that Palestinians should all be sent back to Syria and Jordan and that Israel should be for the Jews only. Although this was the same person who claimed that the Israeli army has never committed human rights abuses in its history. Um, right.

Blackadder comes to an end

2004-11-10T17:11:00.000Z

Series 3 and 4 are less good than 2, I think, but only slightly. The last episode of series 4 is also utterly heart-rending, and the contrast between the riotous slapstick and the moving dénouement hits exactly the right tone. I mean, you can only joke about The Great War so much. And the prize for the best joke goes, as usual, to Blackadder, when he says: "We´ve fired over a million shells at the German lines, and what´s the result? One dachshund with a slight limp". You have to see it to understand. And if you´re one of my transatlantic readers and have no idea what I´m talking about, you really should find out. I haven´t laughed so much since...oh wait, I used that joke before.
Took some digital photos of the city today as well. It really is quite a lovely place to be, especially in the sunshine. I think the constraints of my blog are limiting my creativity, and I need a personal website. Then I could post photos, have a discussion forum, do links properly, etc. There are plenty of techno-savvy Yanks around here though, so maybe I should get one of them involved.

The Retiro in autumn

2004-11-08T11:48:00.000Z

Autumn in Madrid is an utterly glorious time to be alive, especially if you take a walk through the Retiro in the afternoon. If you manage to ignore the drug dealers and transvestite prostitutes - and this is harder than you might think, because they tend to be pretty pushy - it is stunning place. The trees fade to orange and brown like the yellowing pages of some ancient book, the boating lake gently ripples like, er, a ripply thing, kids skip along the paths or look for conkers or smoke things that they buy from the aforementioned drug dealers, and the warm autumn sun beams down, bathing the whole shebang in a limpid, liquid, amber warmth. It is a genuinely delightful place to be. I´m going to get some amazing photos of the place. Naturally it is the way of the world that nothing is perfect, and the hordes of drug dealers - all impoverished immigrants, of course - attest to this fact, but even their nasty brand of cut-price immorality can´t change the fact that the Retiro is one of the most beautiful places I have been to. And it´s free. This, gentle readers, is one of the greatest freebies of our time, beaten only by Christianity, the Prado on a Sunday morning, and bank robbery. All that money for free....okay, maybe not the last one.

Modern culture in a single paragraph

2004-11-04T10:26:00.000Z

Let´s be perfectly honest here: bin Laden, and the assorted crackpots that make up al-Qaeda, is more or less insane. Quite apart from the fact that he considers the murder of thousands of innocent civilians a worthy and admirable victory, he is hopelessly naive, historically mis-informed, and completely misled. Naive because he thinks he can take on the only global superpower and win, misinformed because he considers the re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate a priority (including the whole of Spain, even though the Moors never controlled all of it) and misled because he thinks that suicide bombers will go to heaven. But - and I´m aware that this is slightly controversial - in one respect he is closer to the truth: he is always discussing the disgusting moral morasse that is Western society. This is a generalisation, of course, but anyone who looks around English society today, with Big Brother, widespread crime, the dissolution of the family unit, the disgraceful scenes acted out in every town in the country on every weekend, the complete disappearance of concrete human values, the bitchy rat-race for money and status, and the emphasis placed on instant gratification, can´t help but wonder if, in some small way, he might have a point. Naturally I disagree with him over the best way to help people find some meaning in their lives - blowing them up tends not to work, I think - but he´s right in this small respect: Western culture is a bloody mess. Ooh, that was quite a rant. I feel better now I´ve got that off my chest. Normal service, with sarcastic comments on Spanish life, witty remarks about how funny people are, and some impressively convoluted use of the English language, will resume tomorrow. Bet you can´t wait....

2004-11-03T10:35:00.000Z

The new batch of MSN diaries are now up and running. I would put the link here but it´s so long that last time I did it it blocked out the rest of the page. So to read them (and vote them as first class, of course) go to www.msn.co.uk and then click on the "Money" button on the left hand side, then the "Students" button at the top of the next page. Excitingly, if I type my name into Google, the first result that comes up is the MSN diary. The first step on my path to literary stardom (or total, abject penury).
In other news, Kelly (he´s a guy, despite the name) and April (she´s not a month, despite the name) are back from Morocco. It will be good to see them again, and to go flat hunting. What fun.

Our transatlantic friends

2004-11-02T08:59:00.000Z

Most of the people who read my blog - well, the ones I know of, anyway - are English. This is because they are mainly family members. However, with my recent move to Madrid, the readership of my finest, most profound thoughts and musings has taken on something of an international flavour. It gives me great pleasure to welcome my American and Colombian friends to the site, and to wish them well in their reading. I am now glad to count several of our trans-Atlantic cousins as my friends, and have been touched by their hospitality and generosity towards me during my time here so far. And for those who don´t know how my humour works, it revolves mainly around the odd British concept of irony; the previous sentence was not an example of it. So to Kelly, April, Jennifer, Marianna, Brianna, Ana Maria, Matt 3, Nicole and all the others who I have temporarily (and embarrassingly) forgotten: hello, and thankyou.
Today I was embroiled in a discussion on the US elections. I told the lady I was talking to (a Chemistry teacher, I think) that it was my personal opinion that George Bush was a bone-headed cretin who probably couldn´t tie his own shoelaces without one of his aides lending him a hand, at which point she informed me that she was more or less his biggest fan. Erk. Don´t think I´ll be talking to her again. The atmosphere turned decidedly frosty. Having said that though, one American girl here is his second biggest fan, and she is a lovely person. So perhaps Bush fans aren´t all bad.

Some thoughts on Blackadder

2004-10-30T13:21:00.000+01:00

The British Council have a DVD library which contains all the Blackadder DVDs. As I am now equipped with a DVD function on my laptop I took them all out and have been working my way through them. It´s funny how the style changes: in the first series the comedy was slightly weak, and was ased mainly on Rowan Atkinson´s facial expressions. The second series is much, much funnier, is based on Rowan Atkinson´s hilarious put-downs and crisp, icy sarcasm, and is utter comedy genius. I haven´t got further than that, but when I watch the rest of them I´ll let you know how I get on. Suffice it to say that I haven´t laughed so much since the time that Dad shook up a bottle of Orangina and redecorated the dining room with an impromptu citrus-based dousing. Rowan Atkinson is an utter legend. He can say "Percy, just go forth into the streets" and reduce me to a gibbering, chuckling wreck. If you don´t get the joke, you´ll have to watch it. Oh, what hilarity.

2004-10-28T10:15:00.000+01:00

Typical. I leave England for Spain, hoping to spend a year getting an awesome tan, drinking sangria, and living it up in a glorious climate. And it´s been raining almost solidly for a week. And by raining, I mean seriously raining; the kind of rain that would even impress English people, for whom a daily dousing caused by torrential, Noah-esque precipitation is a part of life. It stopped raining on Tuesday, so Mum and Dad had one sunny day, but for the rest of the time it has been atrocious. And my shoes leak. This is not A Nice Thing.
Apparently Britain and Spain are re-opening negotiations on the sovereignty of Gibraltar, which has caused much mirth in the staff room and the various classrooms. I try to tell people that I really couldn´t care less if Britain loses another part of its "Empire" (currently comprising between six and ten minute scraps of rock scattered across the globe, each of which is populated by, on average, two old grannies and the odd tortoise) but they seem to think that it would be the greatest victory for Spain over Britain since...er....um.....okay, the first victory for Spain over Britain. Then I try to tell them that I don´t even like England very much, that most of the Spanish, French, American, Colombian, Venezuelan, Ecuadorian and Italian people that I have met are much more pleasant, but they disagree with this as well, oddly. I´m doing my very best to stop people visiting England but they all seem to be bursting with enthusiasm to visit that silly little island. Well, at least I tried.

An opiate for the masses

2004-10-24T13:33:00.000+01:00

I think it was Marx who said that, and I think he said it about religion. Well, I think he was wrong, but then again he was Russian, and had a beard, so perhaps that´s not surprising. Anyway, one thing that is an opiate for the masses is football. Last night I went to the Bernebeu with three friends to watch Real Madrid play Valencia. It was a stunning experience; the stadium is staggeringly immense, and was virtually full (over 76,000 spectators) and the whole spectacle was something to behold. And Owen scored a blinder, which was nice.
The experience confirmed my long-held suspicion that football is more or less a religion. This has doubtless been said before, but it is worth considering. Many of the aspects of religion - fellowship, weekly meetings, a huge group of people worshipping together (whether it´s God or Zidane) - are present and correct in a football match. It´s not that different from going to a cathedral, except it´s noisier and smokier and there isn´t a God involved. Which is a pretty big difference, if we´re honest. Anyway, it was an interesting experience, and much less threatening than the football games I have been to in England; I think I saw about 15 police the whole night, whereas I went to see Oxford Utd play Aston Villa in Oxford and there were hundreds of them, just to stop the two sets of fans from killing each other. The atmosphere was much more enjoyable here.
Anyway, enough random musings. Mum and Dad are coming out to see me tomorrow which should be really nice, although Mum hasn´t sent me an email for about a week now, which is slightly concerning. I´m looking for a new flat, which is a hassle, but should be possible. Hopefully. If I don´t sort it out soon I´ll be worried. Not as worried as I was when I read the paper today and read about the planned suicide bombing in Madrid which was nipped in the bud just in time. That´s quite scary. People I´ve never met want to kill me, and there´s not an awful lot I can do about it. I find that slightly disturbing.

Madrid traffic etiquette

2004-10-22T11:36:00.000+01:00

One of the many amusing things about Madrid is the attitude of drivers towards each other. If a car is temporarily blocked or slowed down or forced to stop by another car, he/she will inevitably beep at them to let them know how annoyed they are. But this is not an "English" style beep of the horn; instead, they lean on their horn for a minimum of ten seconds, make some unmistakeable hand gestures, and end up shaking their heads at the stupidity of the second party. Sometimes when cars are stuck in traffic and there is seemingly no possibility of moving any time soon, they will all lean on their horns until the person in front is able to move. The noise made by ten or more drivers holding down their car horns is undoubtedly impressive, but naturally makes not a blind bit of difference to the traffic; this fact seems to be of no concern to them. Perhaps contributing to a horrendous cacophony of sound makes them feel better, as if they are taking action towards ending the traffic jam. Really, Madrid traffic during the rush hour is something to behold; if you haven´t heard the noise generated by hundreds of impatient drivers, all equipped with deafening horns, you haven´t lived. Once I saw a driver attempting to leave his drive but finding his path blocked by a parked car. Instead of getting out and looking around to find out who it belonged to, as might be sensible, he sat there with his horn firmly depressed until the person at fault came to remedy the situation. This took about six minutes. Six minutes of hideous, deafening noise, and no-one seemed bothered in the slightest. Honestly, this city....

2004-10-19T20:57:00.000+01:00

I´m starting to work up a bit of a rapport with my students, I think. Their early "liveliness" at having a new teacher seems to have worn off and they seem more keen to work. I was walking round the school on my way out today and everyone was shouting "Hi Matthew!" and "Hi Michael Owen!" at me. The first is my name and the second my nickname, by the way. And one of the girls said "¡Ay, qué bonito!" as well. Look it up in a dictionary. It is also raining again, which is interesting. But I already used the Eliza Doolittle joke, so that´s a dead end.
One of the advantages of working 9 hours a week is that I have stacks of time to write. I have been doing this loads, with varying degrees of success. I am also working my way through the Bible from start to finish. In case anyone was wondering, Leviticus is weird, and the whole book is pretty long. I plan to hack through "Don Quijote" and "War and Peace" this year as well, the former in Spanish, the latter very much not in Russian. I´m not quite that hardcore....

Happy birthday, scar

2004-10-18T13:11:00.000+01:00

I just remembered that it was exactly one year and two days ago that I broke my knee. Doesn´t time fly? It´s not entirely accurate to say that it is my scar´s first birthday as it was "born" after my operation, which was on the 21st I think, or thereabouts. Anyway, I´m not bothered about the exact date. Perhaps I should make up a slogan for my knee to mark this auspicious anniversary: "Matt´s scar - scaring small children since 2003", or perhaps "Long, red and ugly - 365 days of constant low-level pain" or something like that. Happy birthday, little guy. Sniff.
I have now recovered from the weekend excesses, more or less. I don´t think I´ll be doing that very often; trying to protect English girls from the sleazy advances of greasy Dagoes until 6am is not fun, and it is very tiring. But then again they need an escort, or who knows what could happen to them? Man, it´s all so difficult. Apparently there is a club that opens (yes, opens) at 6am and shuts at 1.30pm. Yes, you read that right.
Enough waffling. I should get back to teaching, methinks. Matt Vaughan teaching: possibly the clearest example of "poacher turned gamekeeper" that I can think of.

Dirty stop-out that I am....

2004-10-17T15:35:00.000+01:00

So the Metro here stops running at 1.30am. This is annoying, as it is the best way to get around. If you´re out on the town, then, you either need to get home by then, or use the nightbus network, or walk. Or the other option is to stay out until 6am and then get on the Metro when it starts running again. This is what I did last night. It is fair to say that I am now staggeringly tired. We went to a club at 5am. Unbelievable. What is also unbelievable is how sleazy Spanish men are; all the girls we were with were getting ogled by every single bloke in the city, it seemed. Honestly, chivalry and gentlemanly conduct is a foreign concept here.
The weather here - sorry to go on about it - is stunning. It´s been cold all week, but today is a gloriously sunny, crisp, fresh autumn day.
That´s about all I can think of right now, as my brain is still trying to work out what´s going on. My first "proper" night out on the town could well be my last; I can´t cope with it...

2004-10-16T11:00:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I went to the Thyssen-Bornemizsa Museum. Apart from having the most stupid museum name I have yet encountered (it´s named after some German-Hungarian millionaires, apparently) it is also one of the most delightful museums I have ever been to. This is partly because it has one of the most wonderful displays of Impressionist art imaginable, full of Pisarro and Monet and Sisley and a whole lot more. After the disappointment of the Reina Sofia it was an entire joy. Typically enough it is the most expensive of the three museums, with a student ticket costing 4 euros. Which is annoying, as I definitely plan to go back at some point. This is a good example of what Jerome K Jerome calls "the cussedness of things in general", and of what people of lesser wit and intelligence crudely label "sod´s law".
Yesterday was also free furniture day. This occurs about every couple of months and people are encouraged to leave any furniture they don´t want on the pavement outside their flat; passers by are then free to help themselves, and the remainder is removed by the city council. An American friend needed a hand moving a bookcase back to his flat, so I duly obliged. An hour (and two extremely tired arms) later we walked it into his flat, up the stairs, put it down, and almost passed out from fatigue. But hey, he bought me a kebab and a pint to thank me. Could be worse, I suppose.
Saw a couple of films this week as well: "The Village" (or "El Bosque", as it´s called here), which was very interesting, and "Gangs of New York", which was overly long, unnecessarily violent, and really didn´t say anything particularly coherent or intelligent (or even intelligible) at all. It also "starred" Leonardo DiCaprio as well, who has a peculiar talent for irritating me in the extreme.
Oof, that was a long post. But I did have several day´s worth of news to catch up on. I´m going to see Real Madrid play Valencia in a week or so, which should be exciting. Bes wishes to all at home; don´t let the rain get you down....

Modern Art

2004-10-11T17:05:00.000+01:00

Today I went to the biggest Modern Art museum in the city, the Reina Sofía. And guess what? It was more or less a total waste of my time. Apart from being surrounded by gurning, cretinous Yank tourists who positively refuse to speak a SINGLE WORD OF SPANISH and stand right in front of the paintings yelling to each other "THIS IS SO, LIKE, TOTALLY, LIKE, INCREDIBLE! LIKE, Y´KNOW? I WAS LIKE, HELLO...." and so on, there is also the problem - and this is a big one when visiting modern art museums - that I don´t like modern art very much. I think there were two paintings in the whole place that I genuinely enjoyed: Picasso´s "Guernica" and Palencia´s "Vista de Toledo". The rest of them were a mixture of Surrealist art (pretentious and ugly), weird sculpture (pretentious and very ugly), and modern "masterpieces" by people like Mark "I´ll just chuck two colours on some canvas" Rothko, Salvador "the more random the better" Dalí, Roy "it´s like a cartoon! But adults take it seriously!" Lichenstein, and all the other idiots. The only lesson I took from the place was this: all it takes for complete rubbish to be taken seriously is for one or two "experts" to praise it, and voilá - it´s the latest art sensation. In my opinion - and let´s be honest here, I´m hardly an expert on the subject, but then again very few people are - art should either have a valid, interesting and explicit meaning or subtext, or it should be aesthetically pleasing. Or both. The number of works in the Reina Sofía that would fit into one of these categories can be counted on the fingers of one hand that has been through a combine harvester a couple of times. The whole experience has put me in a particularly savage mood. Which is annoying, but my writing is much funnier when I´m angry. It´s just as well there wasn´t anything by Tracey Emin in there. I went to one of her exhibitions in Oxford and it made me angry. Very, very angry.
On a lighter note, I´m going to Toledo tomorrow for a break from the city. Madrid really is ideally situated for day trips. I´ll let you know how I get on.

Eliza Doolittle was mistaken

2004-10-10T17:21:00.000+01:00

Following extensive research - and a severe precipitation-induced drenching yesterday - I can confirm that the rain in Spain seems to fall mainly on my head. It´s startling: almost overnight the temperature dropped by ten degrees and the wind picked up, and all of a sudden it´s not summer any more. Which is annoying, really.
Today I slept late and then tried to get into a couple of art museums, as they´re free on Sunday. The first one shut at 2.30 and the second was absolutely packed with tourists, so I gave up on that idea and met up with two of my friends here, Gemma and her comedy French boyfriend Bastien. They are thoroughly lovely, although they were teasing me mercilessly about a Geordie girl who (apparently) fancies me. Typical: come to Spain, looking for a Spanish girlfriend for extra language tuition and cooking, and meet people from the grim north of England.
I don´t have to teach until Wednesday, so I think I might go to Toledo on Tuesday. Apparently it´s stunning. Like the Geordie, but in a different way. I think.

Those that can´t....

2004-10-07T20:02:00.000+01:00

...get torn to pieces by a class of vicious schoolchildren. I suppose it´s my fault for not preparing the class well enough. An unpleasant experience, but valuable life lessons tend to come out of painful experiences, as anyone who has learnt not to stick knitting needles into electrical sockets will tell you.
My first MSN diary got 275 hits, which apparently is pretty good considering that it wasn´t publicised at all. So in a desperate attempt to get even more hits, please go to the MSN website, click on Money, then Students, then on me, read away, and give me a good rating. It´ll help me get into Bill Gate´s good books for when I next bump into him in the corridor.

Also bumped into my Spanish tutor the other day, which was unexpected. He invited me to his flat for dinner which was lovely, and it turns out that the flat belonged to Javier Marías, one of the most famous Spanish novelists ever, who is one of his friends. Unsurprisingly it is beautiful. Eric (my tutor) gave me a copy of one of Marías´ novels as well, which is dedicated to him on the first page. I don´t like everything about Oxford, but it certainly opens doors....

2004-10-07T09:53:00.000+01:00

The Spanish are a wonderful people. Some of the teachers have been telling me how they are renowned for laziness and avoiding work if at all possible, and amazingly they were ashamed of it. In my opinion laziness and the avoidance of work when possible are both laudable character traits and should be encouraged. Any country that has an institutionalised midday nap has got to be doing something right - that´s the way I look at it.
Another example of this praiseworthy attitude to time off is the puente (bridge). If a public holiday falls on a Thursday or a Tuesday the authorities decide, with a charming knowledge of human nature, that no-one would really want to go to school or work on the day between the holiday and the weekend, so they stick that day onto the festival as well. The upshot of this is that on five or six occasions this year I have idiotically long weekends. The first is this weekend: I finish teaching on Thursday, don´t have any classes on Friday, and won´t be required back at school until Wednesday afternoon. That´s an embarrassingly long weekend - so long, in fact, that I don´t really know what to do with it. At least I can plan in advance for the next one. Later on in the month (or next month, I can´t remember) there are two in a row, which means that I have two days of teaching in around two weeks. That, dear readers, is the kind of country I want to be part of.

Baptism of fire....

2004-10-05T08:58:00.000+01:00

At least that´s what the Mail headline would probably be if they were writing about my first class: typically over the top and inaccurate. Having my first class at 8.30am (after 45 minutes spent getting here) wasn´t the way I would have liked to start, but that´s life. My first class was pretty good actually; it could have been worse. In fact, it could have been a LOT worse. I spent the time getting the kids to introduce themselves and explained a little about where I was from and then examined some cultural differences between England and Spain. Apparently all English people are tall and blonde and like tea. Well, partly accurate. And afterwards two of the boys said that I look like Michael Owen, thereby bringing the number of people who have said that to me up to seven. And when you read what the Spanish papers are saying about Owen and his perceived lack of talent, that´s not a compliment. Although he is a dashing young lad, truth be told; maybe that´s where the comparison arises from....
I have another class in half an hour with another group of similar aged students, and I think I´ll do exactly the same thing. Saves time on lesson preparation anyway....

Back to school

2004-10-04T13:31:00.000+01:00

A mere four years after triumphantly leaving school having survived 13 years of odd teachers, rugby training in the freezing cold and early-morning runs, I seem to have found my way back there again. I haven´t started teaching yet - that´ll be tomorrow - but I was in today to get my timetable, meet the English teachers, etc. And they all seem friendly. Going into the classroom was slightly disconcerting: everyone was sitting around it smoking countless cigarettes, which makes me wonder about the effect the pupils here have on the sanity of the teachers. Anyway, I´m doing 9 lessons a week so far which is pretty casual. There is also a heavily subsidised cafeteria where I will be eating every day in an attempt to save money: a coffee and a huge baguette for 2 euros. Bargain.
On the weekend I went to an American youth church kind of thing - mainly run by Yanks, but you can´t have everything - and I´m going along to one of their community groups this evening, which should be interesting. Apart from that I need to open a Spanish bank account, get a combined Metro and bus pass (unlimited public transport in the entire city for 34 euros a month), and buy some sunglasses, as my eyes ache from being constantly blinded by the sun. And sometime soon I´m going to watch at match at the Bernabeu. Watch this space...

Everything slots into place

2004-09-30T18:58:00.000+01:00

I´m an optimistic person. I moan a lot about England, the Daily Mail, football hooligans and several other topics that delight me, but I like to think I´m pretty optimistic overall. After a week in Madrid, though, I was just about starting to think that I was fated never to find a flat. The ones I looked at were either too far out of town or too old or just too dirty, until I saw another advert in the paper, called up, went round to view it, and promptly fell in love. It´s in a lovely area of Madrid, on a nice quiet street, on the same Metro line as my school. I will be sharing with a Spanish student and the landlady, possibly the sweetest old lady I have met (apart from Granny, of course) and her dog, who is also improbably well behaved and friendly. It is large, spacious, clean, and has all the facilities I could need, except internet (which I can get free at the British Council anyway). I move in tomorrow.
And if that wasn´t good enough, I came out of the flat wondering what to do tonight, whereupon two English friends I met on the course texted me to invite me out for drinks tonight, which sounds fantastic. And if THAT wasn´t enough, the landlady also owns a bookshelf containing all the books by two of the authors I am studying at Oxford, and she says I can borrow as many as I like whenever I like. And if THAT wasn´t enough, the Spanish student in the flat and one in the flat above want me to teach them English, and will pay me for it.
As well as being reasonably optimistic, it has to be said that I am also a somewhat cynical person, if that´s not too much of an oxymoron. If someone had told me this morning that all my needs would be sorted out by the end of the day in the best way possible I would have laughed. But they have. I didn´t believe in coincidences before today and I believe in them even less now. To everyone who has been praying and thinking about me, thankyou. As the title suggests, everything has slotted into place, and I can´t remember the last time I was this happy. Now, if only I could stop crying....

Back in the habit

2004-09-22T17:48:00.000+01:00

After a rather lengthy summer break, Matt´s blog is back in action. And in a radical break from tradition, it´s coming direct from Madrid. Having arrived yesterday afternoon (after a rather delayed flight) we have been walking around the place, stopping every now and again to eat, drink, or sleep. And it´s great. Very hot, very sunny, very spacious and green and historic, and the people are very friendly. My Spanish is currently awful but should improve rapidly. Bought a phone today - the first time I´ve had one for ages, since my last one was nicked - and I feel suitably cool. Although I currently have just the one number on it, that of my Spanish headmistress. I am a cool kid.
People out here stay out ridiculously late - we went out to eat last night at 8.30pm, thinking that it would be sufficiently late, and found that no-one else was in the restaurant. They didn´t start arriving until about 10pm, and even then it didn´t get going until much later. I don´t think I can keep up the pace, to be honest; methinks tactical siestas are in order.
Flat-hunting is underway, and hopefully should result in somewhere to live pretty soon. We´ll see. Can´t get over how friendly people are here; even tramps are polite, and buskers are awesome. Seems like a pretty great city if you ask me. One bad sight is the prevalence of McDonald´s restaurants, Starbuck´s Coffee, and Burger Kings everywhere; you can travel across Europe to a new country and still not manage to escape the noxious signs of Yank economical imperialism. The really sad thing is that even Spaniards go to these places, despite being surrounded by great restaurants, coffe houses, and fantastic indigenous cuisine. The daft buggers. Anyway, I´m enjoying it a lot. Your postcards are all in the post...

2004-07-18T17:26:00.000+01:00

Righty ho then; next up in the top 5 lists department is the best five films ever made by anyone, anywhere, ever. These are subject to the usual rules (i.e. you may disagree with my choices, but that's okay because you're wrong. Simple). 1. The Shawshank Redemption. 2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 3. The Lord of the Rings trilogy. 4. Donnie Brasco. 5. Pulp Fiction. Quite an eclectic selection, but then again I am a reasonably eclectic person with considerably eclectic tastes. If anyone reading this hasn't seen Eternal Sunshine, I would urge you to do so. It is surprisingly good. Not quite as surprising as Greece winning Euro 2004, but still pretty surprising.

2004-07-02T16:28:00.000+01:00

I feel like John Cusack in the excellent comedy film "High Fidelity" and therefore have decided to make a few top 5 lists. First up - how could it not be - is "Matt Vaughan's Top 5 Novels Of All Time, Ever", and they go a little something like this:

1. "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
2. "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert.
3. "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" by Louis de Bernieres.
4. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.
5. "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams.

Actually, there are loads more books that I want to include; perhaps a top 10 would have been more appropriate. Ah well. You have to be agonisingly selective in this game. Now I have to think of another top 5 for tomorrow. Maybe films. Bet you can't wait...

2004-06-30T23:36:00.000+01:00

Much as I might moan - and I do moan - about England, about its weather, food, people, tabloids, pettiness, pessimism, pretentiousness, costliness and arrogance - it's still nice to be home. Spending time in Toulouse with the housemates was lovely: 35 degrees, lovely food, and a swimming pool. Landing at Stansted wasn't so good: 18 degrees, cloud, light drizzle, and the football, rugby and tennis campaigns have all ended in embarrassing defeat. Still, that's life. Went to a friend's party before flying out to France, and had a good time. Met a lovely girl called - irony of ironies - Gemma, but she lives in Cumbria, which brought that little adventure to a crunching end. Again, that's life. Now I need to go home, sleep, see the family, and get a job. And try to find a nice English girl who doesn't live in Scotland. Is that too much to ask?

2004-06-24T11:21:00.000+01:00

After five days of sun, sand, and stunning scenery it's back to Blighty for a party. Our flight leaves at 11.20pm tonight and gets in to London an hour later, and then I'm off to a friend's house to prepare for his party on Friday. After that it's back to the airport to fly to Carcassonne without sleeping. Not ideal, but it could be quite amusing. On Wednesday it's back to England again, down to Oxford to wash some clothes and sleep for a while, then home. I'm looking forward to it, although it's hard to leave a country with such lovely coffee and such cheap wine. Alas. A cheeky mention must go to Germany after they were humiliatingly knocked out of Euro 2004 by the Czech's reserve team. Must find a German tourist and laugh at him...

2004-06-23T14:51:00.000+01:00

I think I've been living in the wrong country all my life. Italy has lovely weather, stunning scenery, wonderful food, beautiful people, and welcoming people. What am I do messing around in a country with lousy weather, pessimistic people, too much crowding, chaotic trains, and dull food (apart from Mum's cooking)? Because I was born there, and it's hard to pull someone up by the roots and ditch them in a completely new country. I still intend to do it at some point though. Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun. Your postcards are all in the post.

2004-06-20T16:39:00.000+01:00

Italy rules. The food is great, the weather is great, and the scenery is great. Italian keyboards are less great, which means that typing this is taking longer than usual, but there we go. Italian women are also excessively fit. I sense there could be confusion over what that word means to the youth of today; for anyone who doesn't put themselves in that category, it doesn't mean healthy. Anyway, just to confirm that I am fit (that one does mean healthy) and well and happy and well-fed. See you all soon.

2004-06-17T20:52:00.000+01:00

I hate adverts. I HATE adverts. I'm not exactly sure which kind of advert is the worst: either furniture adverts (which haven't evolved for decades), shampoo adverts with their tacky little computer animations showing how Pantene smooths out all the cracks in your hair, or the really puerile beer adverts which use childish innuendo and scantily-clad women to sell their products, imagining (with some justification, I think) that blokes are all shallow ignoramuses (ignorami?) who wouldn't understand anything more complicated. Worthy of special mention is the range of eSure adverts "starring" Michael Winner, the humour of which revolves around people finding out that "it's a commercial" and waving to the camera saying "hello Mum!" in a nauseatingly cringeworthy way. I hate being patronised, and all adverts do is patronise me and make me angry. If I had my way all prospective adverts would be put before a committee (consisting of me) and if they scored less than eight out of ten they would be banned, and the cretins that made them would be put up against a wall and have eggs thrown at them. The only good thing about adverts is the way they make me appreciate the BBC even more than I did, if such a thing were possible. I wonder which I hate more, adverts or English football hooligans. It's a close one, but I think the hooligans just win it. But only just. A hooligan starring in a Pantene advert: now there's something that would get my blood boiling...

2004-06-17T10:50:00.000+01:00

Okay, cricket is finally over for another year. Wadham collapsed like a house of cards, allowing us to win Cuppers having already taken the league on Monday. "Balliol at the double", the headlines will run. Maybe. Now all I have to do is finish this essay for a tute today, then tidy up my room and pack for my holidays. Ooh, so exciting...

2004-06-15T15:15:00.000+01:00

The cricket Cuppers final is tomorrow. We won the league yesterday after crushing Worcester, our main rivals, by 50 runs or so, and I made a number of stunning stops at gully which I felt happy about, but the batsmen weren't so chuffed. I think Jonny is coming to watch as well, which should be nice. Apart from that, I just have to nail the last essay of term and then I'll be off to Italy to laze around on a beach for a week, after which it's back to England for one night to go to a black tie ball and then back out to Toulouse again for another week in the sun, after which it'll be...Basingstoke. The sublime and the ridiculous. Ah well.

2004-06-13T23:53:00.000+01:00

Cricket dinner last night was good fun, and I felt surprisingly sprightly this morning, all things considered. We then played our Cuppers semi-final with a communal hangover the size of Brazil and won by a distance, bowling Merton/Mansfield out for a miserly 59 and knocking the runs off in 10 overs. The final is on Tuesday. We also have league games on Monday and Wednesday, and we only have to win one of them to win the league as well. Impressive stuff.
Had dinner with Tim tonight which was nice. We had Thai food, which was really just a glorified Chinese restaurant. Very tasty though. Now I'm off to bed to prepare for my last week in Oxford for a year. That hasn't really sunk in yet. Maybe it will when I arrive in Madrid looking fresh-faced and pale.

2004-06-10T10:39:00.000+01:00

It never ends. The Oxford world only stops being frantic and bustling when term is over. An example: although I only have one more essay to do this term, I've got a shelf-full of reading to do for it, not to mention cricket matches on five consecutive days, from Saturday through to Wednesday. We have a poetry reading to go to this evening, cricket dinner in Hall on Saturday, dinner with Tim on Sunday evening, a jazz concert to go to on Monday, and a farewell BBQ with Carol on Thursday. When - and only when - all that is done, I can finally bust out of here. About time too. Latest thought for year abroad: after finishing in Madrid, why not go to sunny (and, crucially, French-speaking) Mauritania to teach schoolchildren English? Why not indeed. Teaching children in a hardcore Islamic republic: Mum and Dad will be happy.

2004-06-08T14:53:00.000+01:00

I swear girls get more attractive when the sun comes out. I honestly believe this is the case. It's probably a combination of tanned skin, skimpier garments, and the feeling of joie de vivre that sunny weather brings. Fantastic. Tim and I are also planning to go hitch-hiking round Europe as well, with Jonny if possible. I reckon we could make it to Moscow in two weeks easily, but we'll have to do some planning first.

2004-06-07T20:27:00.000+01:00

Cricket is a ridiculous sport. People who don't know about it often say that, citing the complicated rules and the odd dress code, but I don't agree. What is ridiculous about it is the generous, altruistic sportsmanship that it seems to inspire. We played a bunch of old men today and they were sporting to the point of idiocy, clapping every time we fielded well or played a good shot or took a good catch. They obviously wanted to win, but every time we did something that made that victory less likely, they clapped instead of getting annoyed. It's a very English game - formal, old fashioned, slow paced, and played by ridiculously polite people. And me. And it was absolutely baking today. My cricket tan is incredible - my arms up to the elbows and the back of my neck are olive brown, and the rest is pasty white. A week on an Italian beach should sort that out nicely...

2004-06-06T21:21:00.000+01:00

Incredibly, the house survived more or less intact. There must have been a good hundred and fifty people tramping around the property, with an unbelievable amount of alcohol being consumed, and there wasn't any damage done to the house at all (as far as I know). This morning the garden looked as if the Israeli army had been through it looking for militants, but it only took half an hour to clear up all the detritus. And everyone who came said how good a party it was, which is nice. The weather is lovely, England are doing well in the Test, we won our Cuppers game against Worcester, I was sent a free Lonely Planet guide to Africa by the Cherwell to thank me for writing for them, and I'm going on holiday to Italy in two weeks time. If only I didn't have an essay to do for tomorrow...

2004-06-05T11:30:00.000+01:00

Work is now underway to prepare our house for our first, last and only house party, to be held this evening. Neighbours have been warned, food and beer are being bought, and rooms are being stripped of anything breakable or valuable to minimise damage. I'm slightly apprehensive of how it will all turn out, especially as the weather isn't looking great. Ah well; you're only young once, etc etc.

2004-06-02T22:29:00.000+01:00

I watched a bit of "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" the other day. It wasn't a pleasant experience. Frankly, anyone who can make such a wonderfully brilliant book into such an appalling, banal, mind-crushingly dull film needs to be held responsible for their actions, preferably by putting them up against a wall and throwing cabbages at them. It's the same with Troy: I haven't seen it, but reports from friends haven't been favourable. Unbelievable really: you hand a director one of the best stories ever written, a huge budget and a stellar cast, and he produces tripe. Perhaps directors think that having stunning special effects and Brad Pitt in Greek armour makes up for wooden dialogue, implausible stunts, and (in the case of Corelli's) one of the most diabolically awful cinema accents ever (take a bow Nicholas Cage). And how much did Troy make in its first three days? Over six million smackers, apparently. We need to encourage good film-making by not going to see crap films. But as long as bad films feature Brad Pitt wearing very little, it's a forlorn hope...

House trauma

2004-06-01T10:00:00.000+01:00

I suppose it was inevitable. You can't put seven strong-willed people in a small space for a year and not get clashes. Yesterday I commented on the appearance of one of our housemates - not in a derogatory manner at all, in fact it was quite positive - only she is extremely insecure about her appearance and didn't take it too well. By that I mean that she never wants to talk to me ever again and doesn't trust anyone in the house any more. I tried to reason with her for half an hour, but reason isn't something she possesses in any decent quantity, so it was fruitless. So there we go: the third major argument in the house so far, and the only one I've been involved in. I hate awkwardness and I hate confrontation, but we now have both in abundance. And there's nothing I can do about it. Ah well. There's only three weeks left of term, and we were doing so well at maintaining the peace...

2004-05-30T11:13:00.000+01:00

The last day of Eights went pretty well. We were bumped by a crew who were blatantly superior to us, but we managed to make it to the boathouses before they caught us which was a massive effort considering how good they were. Eights dinner was also good fun, with much banter, drinking games, good food, and hilarity. I'm feeling surprisingly sprightly at the moment, all things considered. Now I need to find something to replace rowing in my life. Hmm, maybe work...
We've got a cricket match as well, which should be fun. The weather isn't brilliant, but at least it isn't raining. For a change.

2004-05-28T14:47:00.000+01:00

Rowing's a funny sport. Today we made the best start we have ever made, with the boat zipping through the water like a greased weasel with a firework strapped to its back, and we were still bumped by Christchurch after a minute or so. Sometimes you get Beer VIII crew who are made up of 1st VIII rowers who have finals and can't spend much time rowing, but who are still vastly superior to novice punters like us. Today was one of those days. Still, rowing has been extremely enjoyable and a great experience, and we've already bought a crate of beer to carry in the boat tomorrow to crack open when we've finished. You might not hear from me for a couple of days...

2004-05-27T16:41:00.000+01:00

Well, we got bumped today. We got a better start but still didn't row as well as we have done in practice, and St Peters chased us all the way back, bumping us just a tiny bit after the boathouses. There was a bit of controversy as Lincoln almost bumped them just after they bumped us so there was a break while they cleared up exactly what happened. Ah well. I had to umpire a couple of races after that: one women's race was over just after it had begun as one girl caught a crab and they had to concede. The second was better: Jesus II were being chased all the way by John's II and just about managed to pull away by the boathouses but their 5 caught a crab by the finishing line and they were just bumped. He was pretty much inconsolable. That's life, I suppose. I'm almost unbelievably exhausted. No specific muscles hurt; it's more of an all-body thing. Well, I have rowed 2km and cycled around 8km today with one good leg. That's not bad, I suppose.

2004-05-26T18:47:00.000+01:00

Well, the first day of Eights was pretty good. We rowed over, which means that we didn't bump but weren't bumped. Our bow caught a massive crab on the second stroke which completely screwed up our balance and meant that we made the worst start we have ever made. It wasn't good. He managed to sort it out after 30 seconds or so and we rowed well after that, and we even almost caught Merton III even though we were a good four or five lengths behind them after the crab. They're definitely ours tomorrow. We also won our cricket match by a huge 9 wickets, and it now looks like the League and Cuppers double could be achieved pretty easily. That would cap a pretty sweet term. Out to dinner to celebrate a friend's birthday, but I'll be early to bed to prepare for more rowing tomorrow...

2004-05-26T09:24:00.000+01:00

Our first race begins at noon. I haven't been this nervous for quite some time; my operation was probably the last time my heart was pounding this hard and so many butterflies were cruising around my stomach at such high speeds. I'm not that bothered if we do well or not, I just don't want to screw up and ruin it for everyone else. And hey, if we mong up completely and get spoons, at least we have a nice souvenir of the summer...

Sports week

2004-05-25T00:18:00.000+01:00

Not only do I have Eights on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but I also have cricket matches on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Hence this week is officially Sports Week, and if I make it to the other end alive I will be happy. My knee has been hurting a lot more than usual as well, which led me to consider having an operation to remove the wire, which I think is causing most of the pain. It'll have to hurt pretty badly though: I don't fancy two days in hospital, general anaesthetic, major surgery and NHS food again. I didn't enjoy it last time, and I doubt I'll enjoy it this time. Could be helpful in the long run though. This low-level residual pain can be a right...er...pain. Um. I'm going to bed.

2004-05-23T18:27:00.000+01:00

A good outing today, and we're getting much better at starts. You'd think that they were the easiest part - just stick your oars in and pull until your back is almost breaking - but they're not. I won't bore you with the details, but they're really not. Giles and I are going to sort out the team kit for Eights as well: navy blue sleeveless T-shirts with the Balliol lion in white on the front, and numbers on the back. We are going to look sharp. We might look like incompetent crab-catchers, but at least we'll be smart incompetent crab-catchers. I do have serious reservations about my ability to keep up the pace for any length of time though; if 30 seconds of rate 36 almost killed me today, what will four or five minutes of it do to me? Best not think about it...

2004-05-22T17:10:00.000+01:00

I like to contribute to BBC online debates every now and again. Usually my contributions are not published, as they tend to be rather more full of bile than the average contribution, but this time the BBC have seen fit to print my thoughts. Check them out here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3738305.stm
More rowing this morning. We were practising starts for Eights, which are quite fun. My technique isn't great, but who cares? I get to row in front of fifteen thousand spectators! Oarsome. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha (dies).

Eights here we come...

2004-05-22T10:53:00.000+01:00

Rowing-on was an unqualified success. We did a piece all the way down the river at rate 36, which is a rate we have barely achieved in practice, and managed to catch up with St Annes 2nd boat despite starting about fifteen lengths behind them. And we beat the qualifying time by a massive two seconds, which means that next week we will all be rowing in Summer Eights in front of fifteen thousand spectators. I'm excited, frankly. Then we have the joy of Eights Dinner in College, when the drink ban which has been imposed on all the rowers comes to an abrupt and messy end. When it happened last year I found one rower asleep in a flowerbed, and another passed out with his arms clasped around one of the quad trees. Students, I don't know...

2004-05-20T23:38:00.000+01:00

The essay test was passed with flying colours. Well, my colours weren't exactly flying, but they were definitely flapping their stubby wings enthusiastically and almost getting off the ground. It wasn't a great essay, but it wasn't a bad one either. Rowing on is tomorrow, and the butterflies are waggling their wings in anticipation for a couple of laps around my stomach. A 7am outing on the river should sort them out...

The essay test

2004-05-20T07:28:00.000+01:00

Having spent yesterday rowing and playing cricket, my essay on medieval Spanish literature is as yet not completed. Er, actually it hasn't been started yet. So the test is: can I bang out a reasonable essay in time for my 3pm tute? My thinking is yes, as I have done it before. It's not ideal, of course, but I'm a busy man, and work occasionally finds itself pretty low down on the priorities list. That's not the way it should be, and in an ideal world it would have been done long ago. But if you still think this is an ideal world, you obviously haven't seen the papers recently...

2004-05-19T10:48:00.000+01:00

Well, one of Oxford's criminal underclass is now £230 better off after milking my debit card like a cow for the last day or two. I hope they feel good about it. Apparently I'll get the money back "as long as everything is legit" according to the bank lady, who also gave me a dodgy look when she said that. Perhaps I looked shifty. Part of me says "ah, the poor criminal, I bet he had a tragic upbringing in a broken family" and part of me says "lynch the bugger from the nearest lamppost". Guess which part is louder at the moment...
While we're on the subject of lynching criminals, here's the link you need to access my recent article on the Daily Mail. Haven't had any feedback on it yet, but that's life. Most people barely notice the author's name at all, to be honest. Ah well. Read away, and let me know what you think...

http://cherwell.ospl.org/viewarticle.php?ID=1505&Author=by%20Matt%20Vaughan

2004-05-18T18:20:00.000+01:00

It turns out my phone was stolen, and my cash card along with it. I went to get some money out today and found I didn't have it. The bank told me that some thieving little swine got cashback at Sainsburys and then spent sixty quid at Moss Bros. I'm angry about that, but at least I'll get the money back. I have also disconnected my phone and am fervently hoping that they haven't been using it to ring Australia with, as I'd be paying for it. A mixture of emotions, really: anger that someone was brought up badly enough to see nothing wrong with doing something like this, annoyance at the severe amount of hassle that they've put me through, and worry at the damage that may have been done to my stable but finely-balanced financial situation. On top of all that, we had a half-hour erg session which came reasonably close to killing me. And I've got cricket tomorrow. And an essay for Thursday. And qualifying for Eights on Friday. Oh boy.

2004-05-17T23:23:00.000+01:00

My blisters are nowhere near the worst in the boat, but they still sting. Getting in the shower after an outing is a painful experience. My knee also aches more than I would have thought possible. That's about all the sensory experiences I have at the moment: hand pain, knee pain, and extreme fatigue. I'm going to bed.

2004-05-16T21:32:00.000+01:00

I ache. I also seem to have lost my phone. That's what happens when you play cricket, go straight from there to rowing, and go straight from there back to cricket again. Still, a lovely game of cricket in lovely sunshine, and I hit a lovely four as well. If it wasn't for my phone, it would all be so lovely...

2004-05-16T10:01:00.000+01:00

My body aches. I've stopped complaining about individual muscles hurting because it's far quicker to detail the parts of my body that aren't hurting, as there are far less of them. My head, for example, is pain-free, as are my arms. My feet are okay, and so are my chest and stomach. Apart from that, pretty much everything else aches. And guess what we've got today? Cricket at 2, rowing at 4, then back to cricket straight afterwards. I'm a glutton for punishment. Still, at least my tan is coming along nicely with all this outdoor activity.
The landlord has also just arrived and is mowing the lawn, despite the fact that Ilana and I mowed it yesterday with our antiquated push mower. He's brought his swarm of infernal dachshunds too. Now, I like dogs, but the last time they were here one of the little blighters bit me on the thigh and actually drew blood. I think the indignity of being assaulted by an animal the size and shape of a decent-sized salami was worse than the pain. If he accidentally runs one of them over with the mower, I won't be too concerned...

2004-05-15T17:36:00.000+01:00

Rowing is fun. The feeling when everyone clicks and the boat skims through the water like a greased dolphin is a great one. However, there are two main issues: firstly, as I'm a novice, I catch crabs like an expert fisherman, and one was so huge I almost got knocked out of the boat. The other downer is that I am chronically unfit, and am in so much pain that I could barely walk afterwards. New muscles are springing up everywhere and starting to ache.
One event today has made all this pain seem irrelevant: the great, wonderful, blissful news that Piers Morgan, that smug, self-satisfied twerp of a man, has been fired. This makes all my pain vanish and a warm, contented feeling seeps into my heart like a shot of morphine. Ah, happy days.

P-A-R-T-A-Y

2004-05-15T02:22:00.000+01:00

Halfway Dinner was a blast. All the second years together for a lovely meal in hall, followed by drinks in the bar and a night at the Cellar, a renowned Oxford hotspot (or at least relatively lukewarm spot). I love my friends. They are great. And I'm going to Madrid for a year to get a tan and eat good food. Does it get any better than that? Well, hopefully yes. But it's still pretty sweet. And I have rowing in 10 hours, so I really should go to bed now...

2004-05-13T19:04:00.000+01:00

Sheesh. The essay got done okay; a masterful 2,500 words on French naturalism (if I do say so myself) and seemed to please my tutor. Now I have to do a piece of Spanish translation, organise a woman's cricket team for tomorrow, organise a men's cricket team for Sunday, have something to eat, write an article for the Owl on "The Need for Satire", and pretend that I have a social life. I also need to go food shopping, because living on pasta and Pepperami Mini Cheddars isn't a good idea. Believe me, I've tried.

Le douleur

2004-05-12T08:42:00.000+01:00

Getting up at 6.15am is unlikely ever to be fun. Getting up at 6.15am to go rowing, only for one person to forget to show up and thereby waste everyone else's time is never, ever fun. And as for getting up at 6.15am to go to the gym and do an hour of back-breaking, knee-knackering ergo training - well, I haven't been this tired for quite some time. Now I realise just how unfit my knee injury made me. And I've got a cricket match later and an essay to do for tomorrow. Oh boy...

A Brave New World

2004-05-11T19:42:00.000+01:00

These are exciting days indeed. In an attempt to update my image to make myself seem more in tune with the Information Age, I have started a blog. From now on my various ramblings, musings and incisive witticisms will be found here, instead of being scrawled across pieces of paper or uttered to the wind, which has a nasty habit of not listening very well. On a slightly more serious note this will also enable me to keep friends and family updated with news when I go to Madrid next year to drink sangria, go to bullfights and develop a passion for siestas. Er, and to teach Spanish children how to speak English. That too. You'll be hearing more from me just as soon as something interesting happens. And knowing Oxford as I do, that could take a while...