30 years - by Theo

I am, of course, a smug married, and a very proud parent to boot. If I wasn't I doubt I would have faced getting up at 6am on the day of my 30th birthday to cycle through driving wind and rain to my school placement with such equanimity.


As it was, there was no way I couldn't have a big smile on my face when I arrived home to find both my girls dressed up to the nines, a modest pile of cards and presents, and a table laid with homemade cupcakes decorated by my daughter. It was very touching and made me feel even more smug than usual!

Rosie got me a water bottle to take into class, my sister Hermione got me a cookbook and some posh new cake tins, while my parents splashed out on a scanner/printer combo to replace our old Spanish one which broke. There were also lovely home-made cards from Kate and Rosie, plus biscuits and an "In the Thick of it" box set from my darling wife. Plus, not forgetting my birthday bike, which my lovely mother-in-law Cathy had contributed to. So, all in all an impressive haul.

However, it was a work night, so there was no way I couldn't do some work. So, after Rosie had gone to bed, Kate and I snuggled down to watch the DVD of Skellig, one of the set texts from school. It was pretty good and I even managed at times to NOT think about how it might be used in class.

Cumpleaños a ti...

It was our venezuelan friend David´s birthday on Friday and so Saturday night saw us heading to his and Nataly´s flat for a fiesta. Jez and I were a little stiff and sore after an afternoon´s cycling around Casa de Campo, and were grateful to park ourselves on the sofa while trying to hide our glasses (as David would fill them up again immediately if he thought the levels were getting low). Belen and Cesar were there, as well as an old friend of David´s (also called David) and his girlfriend Olga. Everyone made a big effort to try our their English with Jez and to humour our attempts at Spanish. Personally I feel I´m nearly there on the language front, understanding most of what is said to me but still struggling to select the right tense and person when responding.

Nataly had, as usual, laid on a delicious spread with plenty of veggie options, and as the booze flowed we pushed on into the early hours, dancing away to some of Cesar´s mix CDs. Clearly David and Nataly don´t like their neighbours very much!

Birthday Weekend

Last weekend was not only my Birthday weekend - I reached the grand old age of 28 - but was also, rather awesomely, 4 days long. Thanks to the fact that we don´t work on Fridays and that Monday 12th was a holiday here in Spain for some reason or another, I had plenty of time to relax and enjoy myself.

Our first guests at our new flat arrived on Friday - my old school friend Dom and his Lithuanian girlfriend Justinia - and we quickly dashed to IKEA to buy a couple more chairs so we´d all have somewhere to sit. There had hitch-hiked and bussed their way to us from Braganza in Portugal where her sister is studying, and it was really nice to host them for a couple of days. A night out together on Friday featured all our favourite haunts - El Gato in Pueblo Nuevo, La Solea Flamenco Bar in La Latina and Choclateria San Gines - punctuated with in-depth political discussions; Dom and I have similar masters degrees (International Development and International Relations respectively) but different views. As Kate and I largely agree with each other in the political sphere our conversations on the subject rarely challenge us to justify our views, whereas Dom and I were still good-naturedly going at it when we dropped them at the airport on Sunday morning!

In between we hosted our first fiesta at our new flat, inviting a few friends over for drinks and tapas on Saturday night - I wanted to avoid the hideous Spanish tradition of the person whose birthday it is having to pay for everything - to warm the flat up. Rather stupidly we completely neglected to take any photos. Kate gave me a series of useful presents; shirts, a juicer and a hand blender - though she rather hilariously decided to start things off with a couple of kilos of oranges which left me rather perplexed, until the next present provided the rationale. A wonderful bottle of Venezuelan Rum from David and Nataly, some very fine wine from Cesar and Belen, a bottle of port from Dom and Justinia and some lovely scented stuff from Jero and Jose has helped make our flat even more homely.

The Vines

When we embarked on our travels more than 6 months ago, at the beginning of April, the landscape that greeted us here in France was full of fields dotted with brown stumps. Gradually, over the following weeks, a few touches of green appeared on them and now, as we return to France those leaves are slowly turning red and the heavy bunches of fruit are visible from the roads. They are of course the vines, and in a way they have marked our travels around Europe, a natural calendar charting the time scale of our trip.

Yesterday was my birthday, my 27th, but instead of a lazy day after 3 days of driving, we were up at 7 to take part in le vindage - grape picking. Jean-Christophe and Christiane are a little like a French version of the Larkins, except they have fewer chilren and probably pay their income tax. Their little farm about 5 minutes from Cathy's is a menagerie of donkeys, horses, chickens, ducks, patridges, pigeons and finches, while they grow sunflowers, grapes, oilseed and plums.

We and about a dozen other people - friends, family, neighbours - were helping them pick grapes for their own home-made red and rosé wines. There was no cash payment involved, just endless food and as much booze as was safe to drink while wielding a pair of secatuers. Beers were handed round the vines by way of mid-morning refreshment, while the four-course lunch was preceeded by copious potent apertifs of which Pa Larkin would have approved. Lunch itself was accompanied by the house vintage and afternoon tea (complete with pastry turned into a birthay cake for me) was washed down with sweet cider. When we were invited back for dinner (along with half the neighbourhood) and of course, more booze. Perfick!

The work itself wasn't hard - 3 hours in the warm morning sun then another one and a half in the afternoon when there were even more helpers got the job done.
Christophe stacked the crates on his forklift, emptied them into a machine to separate the grapes from the stems and got the fermentation process under way. Naturally all this was done in a very French way - everyone watching, momentarily taking charge or giving advice. Vastly entertaining for us though. All the gloom and doom in the news about the financial markets seems a world away from this rural idyll of helpful neighbours, home brew and rustic feasts. A perfick birthday.