There are some, admitedly very rare, days when you wish your life had contained more Bear Grylls survival documentaries and less constant repeats of Life on Mars when you ponder if it is a betrayal to all feminist principles entrusted to us by our brassiere burning forbears to find Gene Hunt strangely alluringly attractive...
Anway the point is if I'd spent more time listening to Nature's fanboy and less wondering where I could get a red Ford Quattro and fingerless leather driving gloves I might have known what to do when the great outdoors throws horrible and inexplicable things at you.
Lunchtime at UAM is often pleasantly solitudious which is my way of saying I don't know a damn person in the place so I take my apple, my tinfoil-wrapped cheese sandwiches and my carton of chocolate milkshake with wee red and white stripped straw and sit outside in the sun with a book and try not to look like a four year old. Not enough to actually substitute the milk for something more mainstream though. There's a little bench set back into the shrubbery and I sit and read there while I thank God for my Kindle because I am sure reading a paperback Matilda by Roald Dahl may just compound the preschool image.
The scene is set, I am content and just about to reach down and nab my KitKat when I feel a tickle and when I idly go to brush away the annoying little fly who has seen fit to waltz along my forearm I freeze because that's no insect. That's four spindly feet, a flickering tail and a little tongue that oscillates in and out with a pip-pip-pip. There is a damn lizard parading up and down my extremities...
My first instinct; "SNAKE!!!" coupled with jumping up and shaking the living daylights out of the poor little bugger would be, I think, a wee bit over the top. Don't they have those little sucker things on the pads of their feet? Or if not what if he digs his wee claws in and I contract some horrible affliction like pentastomid worms (yes I have been symptom checking and Wikipedia-ing) and DIE!
This anecdote has no particular purpose but to provide you with some amusement when you contrast what you may have been doing at half ten on a Monday morning with me standing, arm extended over an oleander bush trying to scrape the thing off me arm with the cover of the Kindle muttering "There's a good boy, let go, let go, let go, you hideous thing, OFF!" while he flails about, one leg hooked about my elbow region, holding on for dear life."
Traumatising lizard incident out of the way (and less traumatising but still fairly horrific classes finished) I decided the weekend should be filled with fun and frolics. So I went to get my first manicure.
Spain has not heated up yet; the middle of April still finds the shade cool but the sun is always out and the city is ridiculously photogenic. It was Sunday (fun and frolics on Saturday consisted of a Dominos and that deep and probing philosophical question "If I was an ice cream flavour, what flavour would I be?") and thus I was worried about the fact that the entire Spanish population spends Sunday reclining in a hammock sipping sangria and fanning themselves with sombreros. Not everyone in the same hammock, mind. That would be a step too far.
But fortunately I know a secret and know where to find a nail parlour hidden away in the back alleys where a mysterious Chinese woman answers my hesitant request for a manicura with "Of course" and then throws me well off track by asking me what colour I desire. The only colours I can remember are azul, verde, naranja y amarillo but I don't particularly want blue, green, orange or yellow nails and I lack the refinement of language which would let me request "A turquoise colour, with maybe a high gloss finish? No matte please." Also call me crazy but I can't rock Adultery Red in my smart/casual. I need to be in a certain mood that's either tassels on lampshades or overpriced sunglasses.
So she fetches me the colour chart and in the face of so much choice I panicked. I pointed. I picked. Veni, Vidi, rather nice shade of Vermilion. And so commenced half an hour of fascination where I stared with wide eyes an every stage of the process, nodded sagely when the regenerative prowess of various oils were explained to me and generally made a curious fool of myself, especially when she suddenly gave each hand three loud smacks and extolled "Now this, nena, is to increase blood flow and open capillaries." I wasn't going to argue.
Finally, with nails gleaming like the candy shells of M&Ms, I tottered off because we were bound for the English Version cinema again to treat ourselves to Titanic in 3D and glorious surround sound. And crisps and Coke and more popcorn than was necessary. I always wondered in a vague sort of way what I'd be doing on the centenary of the sinking. I always loved Titanic (history, etymology, controversy, legacy and other things ending in -y NOT Jack and Rose cavorting in the 1912 equivalent of the back seat of a Toyota Corolla) and I think celebrations in Belfast, touching though they are, important as they should be and manically hopeful of increased tourism as they may be would always have a hint of "Guys, our Norn Iron-built massively impressive feat of engineering and human endurance? Well <shuffles feet> she did sink like a stone..."
Enough of that, Cameron's masterpiece has lost none of its verve for you could have heard a pin drop in that theatre and I was painfully aware of that fact because I spent the "Taken turns on the fuck-off-huge-flotation-device?" scene trying to get at the last Pringle. Also knowing the end of the story makes for some dreadfully inappropriate lols. Fabrizio "can see-a the Statue of Leeeberty already!" Awkward silence...
That's about all for now folks and if you condense all that there reading material you'll see I've described a lunchtime, a trip to a nail bar and a film all of which comes to hmmmm around an afternoon in realtime. Thankfully next week sees what could well be my last trip abroad for a long while (given the reel of life unfolding in the form of finals, graduation and Begorrah Saints preserve us! jobhunting) as the flatties of Santa Engracia set off to Lisbon this weekend. And if I can't give you some embarrassment, amusement and downright enjoyment with that blog then I'll have failed as a writer. But not to worry. Knowing our luck it will be an adventure and a half. Got a snazzy title prepared and all...
xo
