My first contact with kiwi truckers last night was certainly an insight into the blasphemy of the English language. It went along the lines of
“argh yerh that f*cking c*nt b*tch w*nk cock sucking b*stard better phone soon else I (burp) knock his yerh bro yerh bro another beer churr bro (raucous laugh) f*ckin stink bro (burp) f*ck c*nting yerh bro” or something along those lines?

Our tent nearly got squished by said trucker friend at heaven knows what time in the night. I have never been so pleased to insert my ear plugs (into my ears) and cruise off to snooze town.

Our surfing instructor ‘Dean’ was something else. I think he must have been an army reject.

His favourite catch phrase was ‘come on use your arms, paddle out’ ‘heres a beauty, get ready to go..pop..pop..pop. He even used the expression ‘ bloody hoons, spoil it for everyone’ at one point to describe the local rif raf. Hilarious.

He was pretty cool really as we asked if we could carry on surfing at the end of the class. ‘Sure just drop ‘em round my house’ he shouted as he sprinted off up the beach and jumped in his V8.
After an hour and a half we were close to drowning despite our 10ft unsinkable galleons. All good though, ‘caught a beauty’ and ‘rode her home’!

It was only the next day that I thought I may have ripped out both the origin and insertion of all my abdominal muscles and let me tell you there are more than you think (more than I thought too). Oh well it all contributes to being ripped before 35!

All forms were with us and none of them were recognised by the delightfully happy official U.S. of A. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (what a mouthful) We considered making a joke about the dis-organisation, however reconsidered when the ‘lady’ that we were dealing with looked like she had eaten her last victims fresh from the very same queue and so we begrudingly filled the forms out all over again. Had several body parts scanned. I am suprised we didn’t have to leave a urine sample and have a saliva swab done too.

I don’t know what all the hoo-haa is about, seriously, we in no way want to stay in your God forsaken rainy hole of a city anyway.

L.A. Airport.
When we arrived it was raining. In transit for 5hours it continued to pour. On boarding it was cats and dogs. At take off it was still hosing it down.
Our impression of this authentic america airport experience was decidedly soggy and tedious.

You can keep L.A.

Stuff it up your jumper and run away with it to mom n’ dad.

Our car hire and driving on the correct side of the road in Vancouver went swimmingly well apart from that fact that the roads are so broad, anything from 4 to 8 lanes, that unless other cars are on the road its difficult to place yourself on the right side of the dot to dot surfaced tarmac. There was an incident with driving up the left hand side of the road onto oncoming traffic, some horrendous road works by night on the way back from Whistler, many tram-buses to contend with and some really weird pedestrian walk rules and car priority rules on turning right over red lights. Under all circumstances the key is don’t hesitate just drive!

Stanley Park surrounded on three sides by ocean with the mountains looming over it and Vancouver City sky scrapers practically tickling the shore line its pretty cool. We, that is the royal ‘we’ decided on a run around the 10km circumference of Stanley Park at 7.30am with a promise of a slap up Canadian breakfast at the end. It turned into an 8am start of what was one of the most impressive runs I’ve ever been on although I have to confess I found it difficult to look up and enjoy the scenery as I was concentrating on making it round, lungs bleeding and a face of steel. Breakfast was predictably an enormous portion of Blueberry pancakes and a massive relief to tick the run round Stanley Park box.

My German friends have been consuming gluhwein by the gallon and making biscuits. Me? I have settled into my advent calender. No chocolate, pictures only. The first one I guessed correctly, because that is what you have to do. Come on walk with me here I need a little sanity.
So every morning I guess what is under the calender door. On the first it was a christmas wreath. I guessed correctly and have to say was overly chuffed with myself. On the second I guessed an  angel…it was a black labrodor, on the third I guessed a bell, it was a rabbit, not just any old rabbit…a Christmas rabbit, just like the black lab is a festive lab. Yesterday I  thought it can’t be another animal so guessed a candle….in your face….DONKEY! So on the fifth, I finally picked up on the animal theme and nature of my calender I hazard a guess at either reindeer or kestrel? Yes, Crimble kestral’s they are all the rage now! I decided that reindeer by the skin of my teeth might be more likely. It was only a a present tied with a ribbon!

Since I wrote this I have had a variety of un-identifyiable birds that could be turkey, hen, rooster, kiwi and pigeon, a cow with a bell and the classic yuletide fish.
Damn calender, its ruining my chances of getting 50% right this year! A real battle of wits!

Today I saw two huge English guys that wouldn’t have been out of place in Lock Stock. Pock marked faces, skin heads, leather jackets and a few scars. They were reading the learned paper known as ‘News of the Screws’ and decided to sit next to one another. Like a cartoon their shoulders, hips and knees were wedged together so much so that they had to stand up together on the count of three to get de -wedged! Very funny.

Then there’s the beggars and buskers. You thought it was bad in London. Here its been taken to another level. There are some class acts. Three young guys with accordions. Singing, dancing and joking as the train skirts at speed around the corners, off balance but still playing. The real comedy of it all was they plonked down two large speakers for extra value and volume. Then the lady in fake furs with bright red lip stick and a karaoke yellow microphone attached to a speaker that is wheeled behind her like a suit case. Mobile karaoke. I think it could catch on?  She can make some really strange shapes with her mouth and howls like a wounded crack fox who’s had about 50 fags. I requested Keane ‘Somewhere Only we Groan’  but she didn’t know it!

The Metro is cheap travel but generally smelly in parts. Some sewers must be always over flowing at my tube station where I change trains for university in the mornings. No one runs for a tube here. Or very rarely. Its just not the done thing and they have a special habit of pushing in front of you then walking at the speed of a snail.

The other thing about commuting in Madrid is that no one has any spacial awareness, not even of their own body! The carriage is empty but someone will come and sit immediately next to you. Or there is only standing space so they will come and stand on your foot. To be fair I haven’t exactly got the biggest feet. You have to stand pretty close to get my tiny toes. Perhaps it me? Maybe its a secret form of Madrid greeting. Perhaps its like initiation into the gang? Either way its annoying and painful!

One thing that is great and would never happen in London is that the tube driver will wait for you and sometimes even open the doors again for you! Now that is a good service! But please remember its not the tube its the METRO!

I think my teacher has been particularly cruel. I have had to do a written essay AND make this presentation. Heaven only knows what I have saved on that memory stick of mine. Knowing me quite probably nothing! Shhhhhh****t.

I decided to write about Dexter Dalwood as the one criteria of the assignment, apart from Spanish and power point and no longer than 8 hours work was that the artist you focused on was born after 1940! Ober contemporary here as always!
The great thing about this is that know one knows if what you have presented is fact or fiction so I can rest easy in a cloud of lingual misunderstandings!

I have been having classes organised by a Colombian friend of mine which are great but how many tenses does one language need? For goodness sakes. Not only that but how many varieties of language does one country need. I went to the Thyssen the other day to see Espanol, Galego, Catalan and Euskera as the choices for Spanish Nationals. Can you imagine going to the National Gallery and having pamphlets in Welsh, Cornish and Jordi or Brum? Perhaps the Welsh need to get on the bandwagon of pamphlets where their language is concerned? You know make it official an all!
I have Michael Thomas the inevitable voice of reason and pronunciation on my iPOD and my Spanish friends who I asked to teach me some useful phrases. They taught me some phrases, how useful they will be in daily life I don’t know:
‘he’s as mad as a goat’
‘hot cocks’
‘kinki’
‘you look as though you have the three legs of a cat’
‘when you are like a bear you are more beautiful’
‘the problem is he is like a screw’
‘you know he’s like a clothes peg or perhaps a pair of tweezers?’ Not sure.

and my favourite
‘your about as useful as the Pope’s cock’
Which I would like to express to some of the delightful, attentive and cheerful waiters here on occasions.
So my language attempts persist. If you would like me to say that any individual is crazy or useless I’m your lady! Otherwise forget it! I don’t think that there is anything quite like the comfort of your own language.

I have been protesting about the changes to university institutions in Spain.

The issue surrounds the ‘Declaration of Bologna’ signed by 29 European countries in 1999 with the objective of facilitating the official recognition of university qualifications on a European wide basis and the free movement of lecturers and students around the European University system. The five universities most affected by the anti-Bologna protests are the University of Barcelona, Autónoma de Barcelona, Complutense, Sevilla and Valencia. These universities have 250,000 students which in total account for a fifth of all public university students in Spain.

One of the main reasons why students are protesting against the declaration of Bologna is that they believe that it will pave the way for the gradual privatisation of public universities and that study fees will inevitably go up (by 10 times) The university vice chancellors have attempted to deny this, and protests continue to grow all over Spain.

This particular protest involved camping out at the faculty all night, translating a manifesto from Spanish to English…goodness only knows if what I wrote was F.A.C.T., but it sounded alright! A meeting, some banners and a kip on the fourth floor outside my painting studio! I spent half the night when not translating making what became know as Nicko’s Balls! A an enormous pile of newspaper balls that blocked an entrance.

The evening was kicked off by the three wise men sporting compulsary beards, one with a mullet non-cut, two out of the three with a silver stud earring in one ear and a doting lady friend that gazed longingly and who bought copious amounts of beer and obligatory weed for our three hairy friends to smoke whilst talking quite frankly what sounded like a load of rubbish…for hours. Music blarred from tinny speakers, not the marching tunes of a revolution but the score from Dirty Dancing! Many pairs of doc martins slipped off to paint banners and a group of art students with blue hair in common teamed up to run the ‘blockades section’ The team office by 04.15 am was thick with smoke and several characters in dressing gowns. My eyes watered whilst putting the finishing touches to the manifesto which essentially said…we disagree. Perhaps in reflection I could have saved myself a lot of time with that summary?

The remainder of the night was then spent making more banners and causing general mayhem on the walls of the corridors. I was asked to make a banner in English so I wrote ‘we fight for our rights’ which covers all manner of sins in a protest you would have thought? However, it provoked some genius to write in Spanish,what are rights? A fair and honest question scrawled across a third of it! I give up, that’ s me and international co-operation done. I made a few paper balls and badly translated a manifesto. You win some you lose some and this one I think they will eventually have to accept as a lost cause.

The next day some students managed to convince our drawing tutor to cancel the 9am class that I had been waiting around for literally all night. Most classes got cancelled as a result, except for Mr Sauve and his springy step, who ploughed on in full glorious spanish prose. I need to learn some more Spanish.