An uplifting story about chemo, crafts and cheese

This is kind of gross, but I have to make sure that this story goes further than just me. I was telling my friend at work about my hair-woes today, and she told me that when she was recovering from chemo a few years ago and was unable to walk, she would sit in bed, watching TV, obsessively combing hair with her hands, and collecting the hair. Which she then felted into a hamster shape, and glued googly eyes on. God, I love working with her. I was appalled, but I also just about bust a gut laughing. That story really cheered me up, because though I might feel wretched at the thought that I may be losing my hair, in a few weeks I could have my very own hair-hamster. (Blogger is being a little bitch about posting pictures, which means I can't post the picture I found of - non-human hair - felted hamster. It's worth taking a moment to go and Google it though. Go ahead, I'll wait. Back? Good)

I'm going to be sad to leave my current job, mainly because I really get along well with this woman.

Yesterday she was showing me pictures of a Turducken she made last Christmas. But it wasn't enough for her to just ram various pieces of poultry into the orifices of a larger bird, oh no. She detached the drumsticks and wings from the duck and chicken, and used skewers to attach them to the turkey so that what she ended up with was a nightmarish six-limbed avian creature that would have looked perfectly at home in an illustrated edition of the collected stories of H.P. Lovecraft. It looked utterly horrifying, and yet strangely alluring.

Last week she was saying that she wants to get married a second time, and have a cheese themed wedding. If I didn't already think she might actually be my birth mother, this alone would probably convince me. Her dream cheese wedding would be held in Bega, every course would feature cheese, and the cake would just be  wheels of cheese balanced one on top of the other (I seriously considered that for my own wedding, but I was eventually talked out of it - apparently not everyone loves brie as much as me).

And the pièce de résistance? A cheese dress. She's got it all picked out, and all she needs is a bloke.

I might have to ask Jo for a divorce just so I can marry him again, but this time in the dress of my dreams. Maybe being friends with this woman is enough to make me want to ask to stay on when my contract finishes... probably not. But then that's why we have the internet, so that the people in our lives that we take a liking to are stuck with us.

Things Are Different in Spain, Part 1

Last night was the big annual Festival of Unreasonable Volume, which is traditionally celebrated by gathering under the bedroom window of foreigners and screaming yourself hoarse. This is, of course, after the fireworks and drumming without which the festival just wouldn't be the same.

It sometimes feels that people aren't just being noisy from a sense of ebullience or excitement, but from a sense of competition, out of a deep seated need to be louder that the person next to you. This is bad enough in a full cafe, but when the street is full of people all trying to talk louder and louder the noise gets to deafening levels. Last night was, in addition to the Unreasonable Volume party, some sort of medieval fair - we were far too sunburnt and miserable to go and check it out (more on that later), but we did go on Friday night, which was sort of the warm up for Saturday. There were market stalls selling food, clothes and hippy crap - the usual. But everything was set up as a mediveal fair, with people dressed in costume and a medieval tavern set up in one of the squares that was selling pinchos and drinks. We managed to ingratiate ourselves with the sausage cooker by dint of being overly excited about the giant BBQ loaded with chorizos.

This is him humouring us by letting me hold the tongs;




















The man knew how to barbeque a sausage, and it was some of the best chorizo and cheese I've had here so far (and I have eaten a lot of chorizo and cheese in the last couple of weeks);

There was also a little petting zoo, with horses, sheep and goats, and an enclosure full of hunting birds, with a lynx in a cage, which was later let out to run around the crowd to general amusement and uneasiness.

It was a fun night, with great atmosphere. These are some of the most relaxed crowds I've ever seen. It's probably due to the fact that everyone pretty much lives outside anyway, but these are people who are comfortable in a crowd. They are relatively patient about negotiating streets that are jammed full of people, especially when it comes to children and the elderly. They don't get aggressive, and - and this is the bizarre thing for someone from Sydney - you can walk about late at night though the busiest drinking streets like the Calle Estafeta and the Calle San Nicholas safe in the knowledge that you are extremely unlikely to be hassled by groups of drunken guys egging each other on to start a fight. Drinking is very popular here, at any time of day, but being drunk is somewhat frowned on. Again, I think it has to do with the fact that people live to tightly packed together and spend so much time in bars and cafes - the levels of antisocial behaviour in terms of drunken fights and aggression simply can't be tolerated, and people seem to have found a way to limit that kind of behaviour. Pissing in the street still flies here, though. Little tip for when you head out at night; wear covered shoes and watch your step.