Ho there! It's been a while, hasn't it?
Rest assured that very little has changed at my end, apart from the fact that it's been a while now since I've had a student loan to fall back on (you're welcome, past me, you little shit), so I've ended up stewing in the microbrew Millennial Classic No. 3, So You're Living At Your Childhood Home Until You Maybe Earn Enough To Start Having To Pay Back Those Student Loans. (I like to imagine Nos. 1 and 2 are So It Turns Out Capitalism Is Fucking Bullshit And Who Was It That Was Giving Us The Mythical Participation Trophies Anyway, and Oh Fuck, Democracy And The Planet Are Just Two Things We're Never Going To Be Able To Pass On To The Kids We Can't Afford Or Are Too Emotionally Scarred To Have. Maybe "like" isn't the right word there...)
Oh, there's also the natural stage in the lifecycle of any dipshit French learner (I'm thinking some kind of slime mould that's a bit more snail-y?) where you decide that fuck it, if I can do French (desperately ignoring the decaying state of your French has nothing to do with it, MMKAY?) then Spanish will be a piece of piss, right? You just start pronouncing all the letters you usually ignore and putting accents on everything. Oh, and forget how to do the S sound properly ever again.
My line of work is remote enough that I can do it from anywhere with wifi (I believe that's No. 7, Gee I Guess It's Nice To Have The FlEXiBiLiTy To Work From Wherever, But You Know What Would Also Be Nice Is Fucking Job Or Indeed Any Sort Of Security XOXO) so when I'm not abusing that hefty privilege to live rent-free (or at least in Not London), I can doss around abroad. Hence, reader, I find myself in a generic (to me) part of northern Spain for the month (not in Catalonia, Galicia or the Basque Country, which as I'm still proudly regional I wouldn't refer to as such anyway) with a nice cathedral, winding little streets and a midday sun that heats the cobbles so hot you can hear the English tourists sizzling from fifty paces, and that was before fucking global warming. (It's regularly been over 100°F/40°C, which I gather even the locals think is a bit much.)
Luckily, the standard way of dealing with this (I'm reliably informed by my dating app matches - talking about the weather translates? Score!) is to stay the fuck inside and possibly sleep on the floor at night, when you're not out carousing. So basically, it's a return (haha, yeah, I've definitely stopped doing that in the same way that I have a real job, house, car, spouse?) to my good old chaotic student habits of never going outside while the hated day moon shines except maybe for food sometimes or court summons and going to bed... at some point? Probably?
Minus the stage where you're free to wander about and do crazy things like have the bloody windows open before about 11, that is (seriously, I still have to ignore the daft urge to open the window when it's too hot and then wonder why it's suddenly too hot-er as often as Facebook birthday notifications for people I couldn't pick out of a police line-up and probably wouldn't give enough of a shit about to help get released anyway – I imagine the apathy is mutual).
So how's my Spanish? Well, I believe the phrase is de porquería (crap). Like, I'm actually one circle of Hell lower than even the Gallicist stereotype I outlined above because I make use of my poncey training in Latin and linguistics and all that to guess at what the words should mean, which means I kind of sit there for two minutes looking at signs or when people say stuff to me going "Carry the H, divide by ie, add an -o...", only to go "Oh yeah!" and feel like (even more of) a prick when my actually-Spanish-speaking friend I'm living with tells me the word because it's bleeding obvious in hindsight (sometimes I even remember not to go down a totally pointless derivation rabbithole!).
We've ended up instituting a Fash Cash Jar, by the way, that we put a euro in whenever one of us mentions Brexit, Trump, or the fact that a crudely animated collection of whatever bits of his hair and bodily fluids end up clogging the White (Power) House plumbing that makes my lazy reliance on shaky lapsed Latin look positively Stakhanovite and is largely responsible for item 1 is now the fucking Prime Minister. We've yet to decide what we're going to do with our nest egg, but I suggested resisting the temptation to blow it on enough knock-off sherry/rum to forget the preceding (my memories of Russia are still intact, it doesn't work) and keeping it till fucking Halloween (see what the lizard people did there...) and given the exchange rate, buy a nice portion of Central London with it. Hell, if you can't beat the Brexiteer Schutzstaffel...
Ahem. As you might imagine, neither of us are planning on sticking around under those dark Satanic shills. Sadly I only have an Irish great-grandparent at best, but I live in hope of the UK humans freeing themselves from the Westminster State. Haha, kidding – I'll probably end up in Berlin or somewhere along with the other disaffected Liberal Elite™ dossbags.
Wait, food! I went for tapas and had genuine local ham the other day – it was good, but chewing on the inch of fat on the outside did kind of coat the inside of my mouth with wax for a second each time. Actual Genuine Paella was better, probably because pescatarian flatmate could have half of it so I didn't have to roll away afterwards. I don't know why fairly dense, gloopy food is just what you want in this weather/climate, but it definitely is (see also: churros (worth getting your rolled R down for) with the kind of chocolate sauce I had in Russia too where it's literally just a thick, melted chocolate bar). I've found myself baking a lot of bread and bread-like things despite the only measuring thing we've got apart in from spoons being a measuring jug with *shudder* US cups marked on, I think in a bid to hit the same spot.
We've ended up keeping our bread in the microwave (never used, in nearly appropriate Hispanic style, as I'm told they prefer storing things in the oven and frying everything else, because like emphatically unhurried customer service, some of these notions are based in reality) to avoid ants and buying more kitchen equipment than absolutely necessary considering we're both moving out in a few weeks, but I think it's worth it. Especially when you get to knead/knock back the bread (it rises in about 30 seconds in this weather, and your clothes get bone dry in a similar interval!) and imagine it's the doughy features of any one of our unelected overlords...
Shit, that's got to be at least 3€.
(Potentially) while next time!
