Of Teaching And Beer

After five days of intensive training with a English teaching company based in Madrid, I sallied forth to the Spanish HQ of one of Europe's largest beer-sellers. My pupils are some of the company's top executives, which felt a tad daunting to begin with. Also, with precisely zero experience in teaching Business English and only a few hours of one-to-one teaching under my belt, I had to throw out the "discuss in pairs" and "compare answers" basis to my CELTA qualification and make some serious modifications. Oh, and there are no textbooks to act as a guide and conveniently provide me with off-the-peg lesson themes and exercises. I have to invent every lesson from scratch.

Given that it takes me around an hour to reach the office where I teach and most of the lessons are individually timetabled at an hour and a half, it's not proving very time-efficient so far. Luckily, the cost of the one-change metro-and-then-a-bus journey works out at 77 cents a time, so at least the travel is cheap. I'm getting lot of reading done on Madrid's public transport and sometimes I even attempt to improve my (slightly better than non-existent, but not much) Spanish. As an added bonus, I haven't yet had anything nicked by Madrid's legendary pick-pockets either - touch wood.

On top of the journey time, the lack of handy teaching materials means it's taking me around two hours to plan each lesson. Tot that up with the travel and it's costing me four hours of time for every hour and a half taught. Not what you'd call breath-takingly effective.

But these aren't complaints. Mainly because at the moment, I'm enjoying both the lessons themselves and the planning process. Fashioning a fully-functioning, interesting and bespoke English language lesson out of nothing actually feels rather creative. Also, I'm well aware that the more material I produce now, the more I can adapt and re-use in the future. As we're in the business world of teaching English, let's call it a time investment. Ah, that feels better already.

Then there are my pupils, who are all very likeable, very attentive, all do their homework and in one case, even give me a lift to the office on Friday mornings. Compared with the ten crazy nine-year-olds Theo does battle with, they're a breeze. And I'm learning all about beer, which just goes to show my students aren't the only ones getting a useful education.

things I miss about Clifton (no.435)

One thing Bristol, and particularly Clifton has over Madrid, and especially Mendez Alvaro, is decent florists. Round here the choice of fresh flowers is really very poor.

In a related note, Kate and I will have been married for 10 months tommorrow. Woooo!

Spanish bureaucracy

It's a Catch 22. I can't get a Resident's bank account without an NIE (Numero de Indentidad de Extranjero) and I can't get a non-Resident's bank account without proof of income; unfortunately my only proof of income is my contract at the language school which proves that I AM resident in Spain and therefore am ineligible for a non-Resident's bank account. I need a Resident's bank account which I can't get until.....

You get the picture.

So now you're asking "Is it hard to get an NIE?" Well, no. You just go along to a police station, fill in a form, hand over a photocopy of your passport, show the original, pay a 10 euro administration charge and you are issued with the number. The tricky part is getting an appointment at a police station; such are the numbers of foreign nationals in Madrid that the earliest my employers could secure me an appointment for was May. I guess I should be thankful that's May this year!

Happily though, Kate's employers - who pay their staff on a freelance basis and therefore need them to get their NIE's as soon as possible - have a handy little wheeze to get around this. As they have an office in the beautiful nearby provincial town of Segovia, they issue their teachers with a Segovia address and get them an appointment there. Hence Kate and I got up at 5.45am this morning to catch a bus to Segovia (where it was snowing) to get her NIE. We were back in Madrid by 11am and immediately went to the bank so Kate could open an account.

Of course I'm not allowed my own debit card (residents and non-residents can't share accounts) so I'm going to have to hand over my entire salary to Kate and live on cash handouts from her until May.

So no change there then!

if this is the future of commercial healthcare....

... then you can keep it!

Give me the friendly, mildly inefficient but personable NHS GP surgery over this morning's ruthlessly efficient, cold and impersonable conveyor belt Medical Insurance clinic any day!

As one of the 'perks' of my job I was offered a free medical check-up - part of the school's insurance policy, apparently. As it's been ages since a Doctor cast an eye over my anatomy I figured why not. Hence I got up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 in order to ride three different metro lines across town to the clinic clutching my little pot of urine, freshly produced this morning. I didn't know quite what to expect, apart from a blood test and eye exam, but I wasn't expecting such a ruthlessly efficient system. The hospital we'd attended in Luxembourg had been efficient, but without being inhuman. Here you were tagged at the front desk, then led off to change into identifcal blue shirts and blue plastic over-shoes before being called up one by one to be stabbed with a needle. Then we waited, herded together in a corridor while one by one we were called into a side room, before being returned, only to wait again for another summons. Whenever that rare event occurred - one of the 30 odd patients being permitted to change back into civvies and leave - the rest of us gazed at him (they were all men) with what I imagine is that same kind of envious looks inmates give freshly paroled prisoners. The whole experience - a good 2 hours - simply made me feel like so much meat waiting to be prcoessed. If this is what capitalism does to healthcare - strip it down to the bare essentials in order to process as many units as quickly as possible - then we would do well to keep healthcare public, however shambolic the NHS may be at times.

And, while they were all perfectly nice and very patient with my lack of Spanish, not one of the nurses cupped my balls and asked me to cough!!

flat fiesta

This weekend was decidedly more active than the last one; after a week of working hard with Kate at training for her new job from 9 til 7 and me supervising classes of manic children, we decided to play a bit harder too. (Though not as hard as our flatmates it has to be said!)


We started off with a flat-warming party on Saturday night, inviting along friends of ours from both Pueblo Ingles and Vaughan Town, plus our flatmates. Apparently it's not really the custom to invite friends round for food - the Spanish tend to just meet in a bar - while starting things at 8pm is definitely not the usual way of things in Madrid, but the food at least was reasonably Spanish. Indeed my first efforts at Spanish-style tortilla and aubergine fritters were gobbled up with pleasing enthusiasm! We'd set up an ice-breaking exercise ("find someone who?" bingo) for a bit of fun and nostalgia (it's something we had played at Pueblo Ingles) and to get people talking, not that we needed to encourage them - they're a sociable bunch! Pete our flatmate got on the DJ decks and spun a little set, which started to make us think it might be nice to go somewhere for a dance. Cesar obligingly phoned a friend and had 10 of us put on the guest list for a trendy club, which we headed out to at 1am - still early by Madrid standards. In fact when Kate and I left at 3am we had to queue to get our coats from the cloakroom - because there were loads of people waiting to hand theirs in!! It was a great night and lovely to see our friends again.

Sunday lunch and curries are two great English traditions, though it's rare that we combine them. Today however, after a lazy morning, we ventured out to the Guru restaurant in central Madrid to meet an old childhood friend of Kate's, Kirsty Frost, her husband Juanmi, parents and aunt and uncle (all friends of Kate's parents). Kirsty has been living in Spain for 10 years now and she and Kate really enjoyed seeing each other again - our social circle here is rapidly expanding. Despite our protestations, we were treated to lunch. Again. If we have to buy back all the meals we've been treated to we're going to be bankrupted rather swiftly. Just as well Kate starts work tomorrow!

Work

After nearly 9 months without a day job, the first week back as a wage-earner has been as good as a holiday - relaxing and traveling can really take it out of you!! In all seriousness, it has been mildly uncomfortable to have to answer the question (repeatedly asked over the last year) of "What do you?" with "Sod all - I scrounge off my wife's savings" so it feels nice to once again be contributing!

My working week is hardly arduous - 23 teaching hours plus 3 paid preparation hours is as full-time as most teaching jobs get here in Spain. I start work at 4pm in Pueblo Nuevo, a 35 minute Underground ride away, finishing at 10pm except on Friday when we all finish at 7.30pm before a mandatory staff meeting in the nearest tapas bar. I'm teaching all ages from 9 to 13 year olds, teenagers and adult classes of various abilities, seeing each class twice a week for 90 minutes at a time. As some classes share syllabusses this effectively means 9 classes a week, which, with the aid of thoughtfully provided text books, I seem to have got down to about 30 mins preparation time per class. Most of the other teachers have expressed amazement at this: "Plan? What's that?" has been their frequent comment. In time, I too aspire to their level of professionalism!

A weekend whirl

The weekend has passed in a blur of not doing much at all, really. Friday evening was spent in sociable fashion, first in a bar in Pueblo Neuvo with various colleagues of Theo, then in a barrio kebab house with the lovely Jero and Jose. Except this kebab house was a lot more civilised than those we knew - and tended to avoid - in Bristol. There were tables where you could sit down and eat your kebab (or falafels, in our case) and you could buy yourself a beer. I drank some sort of yoghurt, lemon and salt drink on Jero's suggestion and actually, it wasn't too bad.
On Saturday, we spent a few hours wandering around central Madrid and admiring the Royal Palace and Plaza Espana in the snow - before the cold sent us scuttling into a cafe in an effort to avoid our ears falling off.
We then had a typically Anglo-Saxon afternoon, joining our flatmate Pete and his cheery scouser friend, Paul in a bar to watch Northampton overcome Pete's team, Leicester in the rugby. Pete and Paul stuck to coffee and sparkling water, having both gone continental, if you ask me. Theo was the only one who indulged in a beer and that was only a cana. This sort of thing could do serious damage to the British drinking reputation abroad.
Despite having the whole of party-mad Madrid on our doorstep, we elected to go back to la casa after the match, get out of the cold and settle down to home-cooked dinner and a DVD. It actually felt rather luxurious.
Today, Sunday was another largely lazy day - apart from a stroll around the local park (which included the opportunity for a snowball fight - won by Theo, more for persistence than accuracy) we mainly relaxed in the flat, chatting with Pete and Alex in passing, writing our Christmas thank you letters, doing some lesson-planning (Theo) and playing a bit of guitar (me).
Tomorrow we're both off to work, in my case doing some training with a company who will then find me some paid employment, all being well. Yikes, an actual Monday.

Some actual Spanish

Today was a red letter day in the development of my Spanish linguistic abilities. I managed an actual conversation with someone and - possibly even better - won an argument with a supermarket checkout girl.

Admittedly, neither exchange was especially complex, but it's progress. Numero uno (see what I did there?) was a short chat with the nice man who copied the keys to our flat in efficient fashion while I waited at the counter. He asked which country I came from, if I was English and told me he came from Cuba. I answered all that and explained that I had only been in Spain for five days. I observed that coming from Cuba, he at least was able to speak Spanish already - he agreed that that made it easier and I said I hoped so. At least, I think that's what we said to each other. As near as dammit, anyway.

The argument with the checkout girl concerned my ID - to pay for something by credit card in Spain, you have to show your ID, in the case of us foreigners, a passport or driving licence. But when I proffered my driving licence at the till in Hipercor, the chica on duty told me it wasn't acceptable and I had to at least show my passport. Having previously paid for goods in the same store by credit card - and indeed, having used my tarjeta de credito twenty minutes earlier in other departments to pay for the keys and a new jumper, I was pretty sure of my ground. But my insistence that a passport wasn't necessary just wouldn't wash with said chica - even when I held up my store bags and credit card receipts from that same day, she still wasn't convinced. I must have a dishonest face or something.

In the end, it took a phone-call upstairs before she would deign to believe me. Now, despite my limited Spanish, I do know most of the words used to make an apology and I don't believe she availed herself of any of them. If you've read my previous observations about Spanish shop assistants, you'll understand why I wasn't all that surprised by the omission. But I was feeling far too smug about winning the argument to care.

snow (and our new flat)

We woke up this morning to see gentle, thick flakes of snow drifting down past our window....

...and here are some pictures of our new flat....

The Customer Is Never Right

After hearing of our experience in the Movistar shop trying to recharge our phone, our friend Cesar said, "One thing you will learn in Spain - when it comes to shopping, the customer is never right."

I wouldn't describe Spanish retail assistants as rude exactly - indeed, compared with, say, Russian retail assistants, they're sweetness and light. But you do get the distinct impression with most that their attitude towards customers is at best, tolerant and at worst, disinterested.

The sales assistant Jorge flagged down when I was trying to buy my A-Z was a case in point. She made no attempt to disguise the fact that she had much better things to do than serve us and could scarcely contain her disgust when she realised the sale that required so much effort on her part only came to six Euros. Jorge and I both saw the funny side.

Theo, however, is more easily traumatised by unhelpful shop assistants and baffling retail systems. Shopping is a necessary evil, as far as he's concerned and large department stores can give him noticeable allergic reactions. This morning we had all the fun of returning a faulty item to just such a store - and boy, does it add to the fun when you can't speak or understand the language!

In my experience of large stores in the UK (M&S, Ikea, TK Maxx) if you want to return something, you take it up to their customer services counter, queue for a bit then have the exchange or refund dealt with then and there.

Part one of that process is the same at Hipercor in Madrid - Theo explained that the new computer speakers we'd bought the day before weren't working and the assistant dutifully fillled out a piece of paper and gave it to him.

At that point it all got rather hazy. Now what? If the assistant had indeed explained to Theo what he had to do next, he hadn't understood and when I found him (I'd gone to a different department to buy some contact lens solution) he was wandering around, gingerly holding the piece of paper between finger and thumb and looking bemused.

The paper itself contained no obvious clues, so we went down to another customer services desk and brandished it at the woman there, wearing pleading expressions. As it happened, we had found one of those rare creatures in Spanish retail, a kind assistant and when it was clear that her patient explanations had left us none the wiser, she actually smiled and told us to follow her.

Our customer services lady took us back up the ramp to the electronics department, all the time telling us reassuringly how difficult it was for people without much Spanish to understand the way things worked (ironically, both Theo and I understood perfectly what she was saying at that point). She then led us to another sales assistant, explained our situation and making sure we had finally got the hang of things, bid us farewell and left us to it. The rest was a breeze. The money was refunded to our credit card and we were free to go and find a replacement set of speakers.

As we walked back to the flat, Theo confessed that he felt rather dispirited by the whole episode. "But at least we managed it in the end!" I said, encouragingly.

I know what he means though. The frustration of not even having the simplest language at your fingertips to deal with a largely straightforward situation does make you realise what a long way there is to go with your linguistic prowess. But let's be realistic, we've only actually been here for four days. Meanwhile, we are more motivated than ever to learn the language and more thankful than ever that we moved to Spain and not Japan. At least we've got an alphabet in common.

Full House

You can tell our new abode is basically a bachelor pad from the moment you see the sitting room with its smart but minimalist decor, black wood furniture, DJ decks set up in one corner, a bicycle propped up in the other and a huge flat screen TV in the middle. A slightly closer look would suggest the two main interests of the household are sport (specifically, rugby and padel - a game similar to real tennis) and technology.

As it happens, this all suits Theo and me very well. Theo's sport of choice is rugby, which immediately gives him something in common with Pete, the English PE teacher. We're both interested in learning to play padel, which makes the fact that we live with a padel coach rather useful (Jorge, the Brazilian) and there is nothing more useful than a helpful geek (believe me, I use the term with affection and reverence) to assist with the inevitable computer problems - that's Alex, then.

Our first impressions that this would be a fairly easy household to live in are so far proving correct. Everyone is friendly and easygoing and there is an obvious and inclusive camaraderie among the flatmates.

With Theo being away at work yesterday afternoon. I was taken on a mini tour of central Madrid's shops by Jorge, who'd decided to peruse the sales for a new sports top. In fact, he made a pretty decent shopping companion, being patient when I was perusing the hosiery for new tights; helpful with my mission to purchase myself an espresso maker (one of the few things the flat doesn't have - I'm living in Spain with four non-coffee drinkers, for heaven's sake!) and positively bombastic when it came to flagging down a sales assistant so I could procure a Madrid A-Z.

Jorge himself couldn't find a top of the exact shade of white he wanted in his size, so all in all, my shopping mission was more successful, although his was definitely cheaper. Jorge, although Brazilian and therefore a native speaker of Portugese, has excellent English and Spanish, so the shopping session also proved to be a useful tutorial for me as I continually tested out and tried to expand my Spanish repertoire.

Theo's first attempts to expand the English repertoire of various Spanish people proved to be something of a let-down, mainly because most of his pupils didn't actually show up to their lessons. I'm sure the four that did go to his classes found it highly worthwhile, though. And the fact that his final conversation class attracted no one at all at least meant he was able to go home early.

Unaccustomed unpacking

Despite the holes in Theo's jumper and the fact of our marital status, Alex and Jorge decided to give us the thumbs up as flatmates. Hoorah, a hole in one! We could move in that very afternoon.

Cesar and Belen were quite disappointed our stay with them would, after all, total one night only. We had offered to be short-term lodgers, rather than long-term spongers and apparently they'd been considering charging us €500 per week (which I said we would consider provided we were brought a cup of tea in bed every morning and were allowed to watch the naked vacuuming). Belen was also disappointed that Mendez Alvaro was such a trek from SSDLR - but seeing as everywhere in Madrid is a trek from SSDLR and Belen doesn't walk anywhere if she can drive, we're not anticipating the distance to be a huge impediment to our social intercourse.

We got a delicious farewell lunch consisting of Belen's own recipe tortilla de patates followed by turron and did some silly dancing in the lounge to Christmas songs on Youtube before we took our leave. After Theo's and my clumsy pas-de-deux to Fairytale of New York, Cesar and Belen were probably relieved to see us go. If not that, then definitely after Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses.

Our new landlord/flatmate Alex was cheery enough when he came to greet us at the gate, despite our arrival coinciding with his holiday siesta. Within a few hours, Sheena was safely installed in the underground garage and we were safely installed in our new room. Oh, the wonderful sensation of unpacking all the belongings from our van! To be able to put things in cupboards which didn't need the bed to be dismantled before you could open them! To be able to cook without kneeling down or sitting on a bucket! Theo and I might be sharing one room in a flat, but after nine months of living in a van, it feels palacial.

The rigours of Spanish hospitality

The relief of knowing we wouldn't be consigned to the impersonality of a hotel or hostel with nowhere to cook and a big hole in our lifestyle leaking euros is hard to quantify. But it's big. Our rescue from that fate by Cesar and Belen dramatically improved our moods and outlook and even better than that, we got our revenge for the nocturnal phone-call by turning up at their flat while they were still in their dressing-gowns. Given that they are a handsome pair, we were pretty pleased about that. Apparently, if we'd turned up five minutes earlier we would have caught Cesar doing the vacuuming while in the nude, but you can't have everything.

After some restorative caffeine, we were back online busily pursuing the various website links friends had sent us for accommodation in Madrid. Being a dizzyingly efficient type, Theo had whacked off about thirty emails and phone-calls before I'd finished exchanging news with Belen and after a certain amount of faffing about with lost PIN numbers (Spanish mobile phone) and form-filling (Spanish social security) - untangled with the help of Cesar's Spanish - we were back in Sheena and on the way to a flat viewing.

Our first stop was the social security office at Delicias, but we were too late to go in and sort out our numbers for the Spanish system, so we resigned ourselves to returning first thing on Wednesday morning (Tuesday being los Reyes - the big Christmas present-giving holiday in Spain). Our next mission to recharge the Spanish mobile phone involved almost half an hour's queueing and an impossible conversation with the sales assistant (owing to the mutual non-existence of each other's languages). A helpful customer who could speak a little English took pity on us and it turned out we could have recharged the phone in two minutes flat using a machine by the door, which included instructions in English. Still, we know for next time.

The flat in Mendez Alvaro left us slightly giddy with its purpose-built luxury - something many Spaniards take for granted, but they are much better organised when it comes to high-density living than us and our "Englishman's home is his castle..." approach. Fully detached isolation, preferably surrounded by a garden (with hedges) seems to be the apex of most British people's home-making ambitions. It's a right pain if you deliver the newspapers, I can tell you. In Spanish towns and cities, it's not uncommon to find large apartment blocks with underground parking, door security, a shared gym and swimming pool as part of the deal - and indeed, this is what we encountered here.

As well as the swimming pool etc., this particular flat came equipped with a tall Spanish IT specialist (Alex); a sporty Brazilian hotel-worker (Jorge) and an English-teaching DJ (Pete). The fact that it was also across the road from Estacion Mendez Alvaro (a hub for bus, metro and city rail links), two stops from the centre of town and within easy walking distance of the shops only increased its charms. You can get rooms in shared flats cheaper than €550 per month, but they rarely allow couples (this one did); often don't include all bills (this one did) and you'd be lucky to get all the parking and swimming pool stuff thrown in as well. We put on a major charm offensive and told Alex and Jorge we could move in immediately, if they thought they could live with us. We left with fingers crossed.

During the flat viewing, I got a phone-call summoning me to a job interview in an English academy. The chat seemed to go promisingly and the hours would tally well with Theo's timetable, so fingers crossed.

Back at San Sebastian de los Reyes with Cesar and Belen and they'd organised a los Reyes eve get-together with some Venezualan friends, Natalie and David, at a Chinese restaurant. This being Spain, the table was booked for ten pm. But if you think that's late, our friend Jero called to invite us to a party with him after he'd finished a meal with his friends. When our meal was finished at midnight, we rang him to see where he was. They were just sitting down to eat.

Instead, we were invited back to Natalie and David's apartment for drinks. As two a.m. came and went, Theo began to sink into a doze on the sofa. I don't think his internal clock is really cut out for Spanish-style socialising. Whether it will adapt remains to be seen. In the end, we were back at Belen and Cesar's and in bed just before three. Jero and his friends were probably only just on dessert.

Moving to Madrid

It was still dark and had that pre-dawn bitter chill in the air that keeps most people in the warmth of their beds (apart from breakfast news-readers, as I know only too well) but Theo´s Dad was outside to see us off. Plus parting gifts of a tupperware pot of fresh pineapple (with tooth-picks thoughtfully provided) and a handful of post holiday Euros Theo´s Mum had failed to spend while visiting us in Barcelona. She was waving from the window as we pulled away from the driveway of Berry Mansion in Cirencester. No Just Traveling this time - we were moving to Spain for real.

Our hideously early start was rewarded with a pastel watercolour sky making even the M4 look romantic as we followed the almost empty motorways down to Newhaven, where we were catching the ferry. We had been so careful not to be late that we arrived at the dock more than an hour early, meaning we could have got up at 0630 instead of 0530. But that´s the beauty of having a campervan as your main transport - we took the lost hour of kip in the back while parked outside the ferry terminal building. We can only apologise to Theo´s parents.

The crossing was about as close to millpond smooth as it´s possible to get in the English Channel - even Theo didn´t feel queasy as we made our way to Dieppe. It was around five thirty pm local time when we got there, although not yet dark, thanks to the hour´s time difference. That meant we were treated with another gentle rainbow glow in the sky as the winter sun disappeared while we headed south.

Theo had hoped to reach Bordeaux before stopping for the night, but fatigue forced him to quit a little before Poitiers. In minus temperatures, we parked outside a motorway service station, did our teeth in the loos and snuggled under the duvet, relying on bodyheat to keep out the cold.

It worked because when we awoke, we both felt pretty warm, but there was ice on the inside of the windows. Getting up wasn´t much fun - Theo´s teeth were actually chattering. But parking outside a motorway services means you can get a thawing cuppa even at six a.m. Just as well.

We hit the road and by dawn, we were passing Bordeaux and making good for the Spanish border. We crossed shortly after midday, put on one of our Learn Spanish CDs (all about booking a room in a hotel - we would put it into practice in a matter of hours) and ate home-made bocadillos for lunch.

Our route accidentally took us past Bilbao, whose suburbs looked as ugly as we remembered them from our visit last year. And we missed our turn again, just like last time. And Theo got cross again.

After that, it all went smoothly. As we neared Madrid, the Sierra Guadalarra reared its snow-encrusted ridge above the clouds and into another beautiful colourwash sky. What a welcome! We texted a warning of our arival to various friends in Madrid and looked for a hotel.

As a location for a romantic dinner a deux, the underground carpark of the Ibis in Alcobendas takes some beating, but the veggie chili had to be cooked somewhere and Spanish hotel bedrooms don´t even have tea-making facilities (as Theo´s mum pointed out to us in shocked tones when she was staying in Barcelona). The warm shower was welcome and the wifi connection expensive (but necessary) as we embarked on The Great Flat Hunt. It made us both feel stroppy and dispirited (not difficult, given the exhaustion of two long days on the road) - we gave up and collapsed into bed by half ten.

Blearily, I woke up in the pitch darkness to the sound of my mobile phone trilling somewhere in the room. I answered it to a firm telling off from Cesar, one of our Spanish friends who had just found my text proclaiming our arrival.
"Where are you?" He demanded
"Alcobendas."
"That´s ridiculous! We are just around the corner!"
In fairness, we hadn´t known if Cesar and Belen were in Madrid at all and not in, say, South Africa spending the holiday with his family there. But it was lovely to feel cared for. Cesar ended the phone-call with an order for us to report to his and Belen´s home the following morning. We had definitely arrived in Madrid.

visitations

One of the the things about living overseas that I did know (having previously lived in Yemen and Kenya) but had forgotten was just how hectic trips home can be. Being back for a mere couple of weeks and trying to squash in visits to as many people as possible within that time frame is pretty exhausting, particularly when the time in which you are doing it is meant to be your holiday. Mind you, it's definitely worth it - it was wonderful to see so many of our friends and family again.

We were back in the UK for 3 weeks exactly over the Christmas and New Year period and hurtled around the country - London, Bristol, the Cotswolds, Chepstow, Devon and Cornwall - meeting friends in cafes and pubs, sleeping in 8 different houses (plus a Yurt for 2 nights and Sheena for one) and just generally catching up with the news. New Year's Eve was wild - we finally got to bed at 9.30am - and I'm still not entirely sure I've recovered. Cheers to Dean and Nikki for having a bunch of people they barely knew round for a party! In fact the whole visit was great; lots of comedy, some tragedy and lots of romance with first our friends Stuart and Sam announcing their engagement and then my sister Hermione agreeing to marry the wonderful Richard. The perfect beginning to a New Year!