Avocado Leg & Squid Fanny

I love reading through my day-to-day diary occasionally. I tend to update some things in hindsight, and reading back reminds me of some of the good things that have happened each week. So, for example, we have:

8th January: Long, shameful lunch (Cat)

17th March: Charlie > Bristol - RWA; Build-a-bed; Gig at Mother's Ruin

14th July: To Dorset to meet my niece :)

12th August: Gin + Tonics + Arrogant Man

...none of which I'd be able to tell anyone else about in detail without those notes. Some of the best days this year were in April and May in Valencia; my first holiday abroad for three years and, reading back, it was lovely.

Saturday 28th April
One of the most difficult journeys I've had, both London-side and on the plane. Then, as soon as we managed to leave the plane, everything was fine.

'Twas raining as we left Xàtiva Metro and, as we walked up the stairs, Alice (to the right) noticed the magnificent Bull Ring: 'oh, wow!', whilst I (to the left) noticed McDonald's: 'oh, no...'. Due to the various travel related delays, we were later than we'd hoped we'd be, but had a burst of excited energy as we passed various exciting attractions: The Bull Ring, Gotham - a cute comic book store, a costume shop with beautiful bespoke gowns on display, and a lovely little church.

This one's been posted before: Our View.

The hostel was as we expected it: clean, bright and comfortable, with various rules posted in the communal rooms (no using the kitchen between certain hours, no hanging anything from the windows... etc.). We were asked to be quiet on Sunday evening at around 10:30 (which, yes, is the time a lot of the Spanish go out for dinner) when we were just talking with our door open. The rules didn't affect us too much, though. We mainly spent our time in the hostel sleeping (or having a siesta in the early evening), reading or getting ready to go out.

On Saturday evening we found local shops and Mercado Ruzafa, which was minutes from the hostel and sold delicious fresh food, and the small coffee house next to the hostel that would provide us with morning (well, noon - Spanish morning!) tea/juice and tostas and some broken English chats with the beautiful camareros (possible owners).

€4.20 bought us two glasses of wine and some tapas before we walked what felt like miles through the city to a slightly Italian meal. One small allergic reaction later, we had a lovely dinner, enhanced by a beautiful little girl - possibly a Somalian adoptee - who was having dinner with her impeccably behaved older brothers and lovely family. You'd not often get children in a British restaurant that late, but then not many would behave quite so well.

Sunday 29th April

Despite some slightly broken nights, I slept reasonably well considering the sometimes noisy room.  My diary tells me that on Monday night the bank holiday (1st May) partying kept us up a little and that we were woken by the church bells at 8:50 (they never quite struck on time), but that I was sitting on my bed looking at the blue sky behind the 'tin can tiles', so I was clearly content.

On Sunday, meanwhile, we spent some hours sitting in the sunshine overlooking a church in a busy but calm square. We then meandered through the city to the Jardín Botánico, which was tranquil, hot and full of KITTENS. Somehow none of the photographs either of us took of the kittens came out -one of a number of bizarre incidents across the week- but they were certainly real.

Turia Fountain, beside 'Lazy Square'

Sunday continued with a stroll for some tapas (5pm lunch, anyone? It's rather like being with the Benthams), a long and lazy siesta and an 11pm wander through the pouring rain (our main rain during the week) in search of a drink. It was very quiet, but we followed the sound of singing to the only place that was open: The Bull Ring. We paid €10 and were given a litre of beer (tankard ladies), which I followed with a bratwurst with trimmings. 

That's how we ended up celebrating Oktoberfest in a beautiful historic building (in which so much blood has been shed) in Valencia on a wet April evening. Songs were sung in Spanish and English and frequently interrupted by the Italian football anthem. We danced with some incredibly drunk couples, and admired two beautiful men from afar.

And then we ran 'home' in the pouring rain; our bellies round with beer and our heads heavy.

Irretrievable Glumpiness

That wonderful Mr. Lear termed his melancholy thus, and it’s often his A Book of Nonsense that joins me when mine hits. I don’t own an e-reader and find the weight of books reassuring. I love new books; they're crisp, creaky and secretive. However, old books have so many more stories to tell. Those musty, age-stained pages have seen and shared a lot, and often all sorts of people have read them in all sorts of circumstances. Like old houses, we’re really just borrowing them for a while. We don’t truly own them.

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of books, and Lear’s is one of several I won’t part from easily. Whenever I had a bad dream as a child, I’d turn to The House at Pooh Corner, and just a few pages would relax me.

There are two books my mother gave me between the ages of 12 and 14, both about truly heroic girls but with stark contrasts. Adeline Yen Mah tells the story of her upbringing as the Chinese Cinderella. I admired the hardworking, stoic little girl and loved reading about her culture, yet could not comprehend the cruelty and neglect she suffered. Her home is not recognisable from the wonderfully romanticised world in which Maria Merryweather blossomed in The Little White Horse. Two of my heroines growing up show, in their independence, endurance and optimism, some of what I’d like and some of what I’ve since found.

I won’t give up these books, and a few others, easily. As Jeanette Winterson says: 

'Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and space.'

There is warmth there too - a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm. When you’re there, you know everything’s going to be all right. That may be more relevant to children, but the wonderful evocative escapism works for many adults, too.

I may never be as strong as Adeline, as fierce as Lyra Silvertongue, as sensible as Elinor Dashwood, or as determined as Jane Eyre; however I’m learning to recognise my glumpiness and what causes it, and I will continue to learn how best to manage it.

It may be irretrievable for a while, but the storm always passes. And I blink for a while and realise what and who, fictional and living, have helped me through.