Should I be annoyed that I'm not on the list? No, I suppose not.
Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls - the most humble of humbles, the lowest of the low, the trainee account director. (goferus put-uponipus) The trainee never asks for the recognition she deserves for the work that she does, primarily because ninety per cent of the time she doesn't actually do any. But this time she did and now she feels unappreciated. Boo hiss.

"¿Recordáis este jingle de la fiesta de Navidad? Pues fue premonitorio. Hemos ganado el concurso de las “*”, dejando en la cuenta a * y a *. Enhorabuena al equipo: Alvar, Laura, Ana, Maite, Maria, Eva, Roger, Monica y Marta. (ahem... ahem... aHEM...)"

*Brand/company names have been excluded to protect my sorry ass.

It is raining and I can't wait to get out into it, for the rain to be on the back of my neck and the wind to be messing up my very messy hair. The sky is that white/grey that hides a million different colours and promises lightening later.

Amanda lifeboats is coming back today which is good but Daniel has found a flat already so now I don't have anybody to play Playstation with which is bad.

Seeing old friends and not needing to explain your absence from their lives is one of my favourite things. Tapas is another of those favourite things.

There are only 33 Spanish Words Which start with a "W". All of them are derived from other languages, the Worst of Which are " water polo, m. (sport.) - water polo", "wattaje, m. - wattage" and "whiski, m. - whiskey".

The whizzing water-worm weaves a wicked web of water-vapour waves westwards past walloping whales, waltzing over whispering white horses and whipping past wandering, wafting whitebait below. Widening like wildfire the water-vapour waves whelm all wildlife warping the well-known world into a woozy, whistling whirlpool full of wasted wishes.

The start of this post seems like so long ago in my mind. Words make me happy.

Incidentally, this makes me happy too.

Alright, I know I've mentioned the related search bar before, but this time it's serious. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it's the ad that Blogger puts on your page so that you can have the webspace (I think). Anyway, you'll notice that it says "Related Searches:" and that the searches it comes up with change as I post more things. It looks at the things I am writing about and puts clever little links to Google about what it thinks are the most topical... topics.

By the time you read this post, I am sure that the related searches will have changed. But as I look at it the phrase that it has come up with to sum up my writing is "Backstreet Boys fanfiction".

If you don't know what fanfiction is, ask Paddy. I'll be sulking in the corner over here....

...hrrrmph... backstreet's back COME ON!?

Oh, here's another one that hasn't been realised yet.

Become good (or even mediocre) at Mathematics.

I just got asked to figure out the percentage of something and then realised I had absolutely no idea how to do it. I knew it was something to do with dividing by a hundred or multiplying by the percentage but couldn't figure out how to get the right combinations of buttons to press.

I feel little and dumb.

Does anyone want me to compare leadership styles of Pinochet and Castro?

Or want me to recite Spanish verbs?

Or want me to give a brief biography of Gloria Estefan?

No?

Just the percentage, you say?

--------------------------------------------------- leg it --------------

Peanut butter crisis over, thankyou all for worrying...

Childhood dreams realised -

Go and see Arrested Development live in concert.
Shake the hand of Speech from Arrested Development.
Be old enough to have pudding before meal.

Childhood dreams still to realise -

Become most important and hilarious person in world (nearly there)
Walk on hands.
Go to Oscars.
Become pirate.
Become medieval character in the vein of Robin Hood's Merry Men.
Work at Disney World.
Build and live in entirely edible house.
Become dolphin.
Procure personal candy floss machine.
Sit on a cloud.

I don't think I'm going to be able to get my head to think about writing today. I've been overwhelmed by this enormous, angsty feeling. I don't know what I can say, it's very serious.

It's just come on, just now. It snapped into my brain and now I can't shake it. And the biggest problem is, is that being here in Spain, there's nothing I can do to rectify it, I just have to wait until it passes.

Is there somewhere I can go to get help? A counsellor or a therapist? A doctor?! Maybe they can take out the part of my brain which makes me feel this way. One thing's for certain, I don't know if I'm going to be able to ride this storm out. The need is burning in my head and scorching my brain and I can't handle it very much longer...



==iF aNyOnE kNoWs WhErE i CaN bUy PeAnUt BuTtEr In ThIs BaRbArIc ToWn... PLEASE rElIeVe My MySeRy==

Enio says that if, when I am writing about work, I only write about Marta, invisibilism and boredom then I am crazy. He means that I shouldn't focus on the negative. In his words, "we are lucky guys". He says I should write about everyone who makes me smile at work and he is right, of course.

Enio is my friend with the broken jeans, hair all over the place and the good heart, or so he says anyway. To me, he is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly smoggy city. On Saturday, the protests were still happening. At 10pm on the dot the people of Barcelona leant out of their windows or stood out on their balconies and made as much noise as they could with pots and pans and whistles and voices. When Enio came round, we went out on the moto, driving down to the centre of town and every time we stopped at traffic lights everybody blew their horns and made a racket in protest against terror. It made me feel local and pretty cool. When we were at the bar, we had deep conversation in Spanish and English (okok callate, nen... yo sé que estas leyendo...), mostly English, I confess... But it was good and so nice to talk properly again, when you feel like you're spiralling out of control as each thought inflates, grows branches and runs riot around your brain.

Lú is the only Brazilian person I know. Her stories make life sound wonderful and full of people and colour. I should have exploited the fact that she was in Barcelona while she was, and spent as much time with her as I could. As it is, she is back in Sao Paolo and I have big dreams of visiting one day. At her leaving party she was resplendently drunken. The night was all about her and she had been trying to breathe in the most of Barcelona before she left. For this reason, she hadn't slept in about four days.

Katherine big sistered me while she was here at the agency. She is another Brit and knows totally what it's like to feel ineloquent or stupid when you know, deep down, that you're not.

Martina has travelled everywhere, it seems. She has learned Spanish so quickly it scares me. I'm terrified of her when she is stressed and we fight sometimes but it is just that she knows what urgency really is and I still have no idea. I am incredibly jealous of her because she has quit her high-powered marketing job and is going travelling and seeing friends in Sydney (probably the only place she hasn't been yet) in June.

There are a lot more people who make me smile as well as these ones. But in indignant response to Enio's accusal that I am negative, I have noted the biggest smiles.

So, work's not bad at all.

Barcelona answers the terrorists






This was an incredible, breath-taking evening. The Passeig de Gràcia is one of the biggest streets in Barcelona, it was mobbed, there was no space to move anywhere. Between seven and eight o'clock, there were very few voices to be heard among the one and a half million people on the street. The protest took two different forms. The first was a clap, either in a rythm of three after three after three repeated or just randomly. This clap started at the front of the group, hundreds of metres away from me. It came up like a wave washing over the heads of everyone in front of us, rolling up and giving us a chance to hop on and ride it. "Here it comes again..." and as it arrived and passed over us going way way back we joined in, clapping and making a noise that symbolised the unity and resolution perfectly.
The other form of protest was with both palms raised and forward. Vulnerable, but neither scared nor defeated. It was a symbol that we have clean hands, we will never dirty our hands by involving ourselves in acts of terror, taking innocent lives.

Our government would not have been able to take part in this protest.

After eight o'clock came the noise. The shouting and chanting and sitting down in the middle of the street urging people, pleading with them to oust the government on Sunday. Various political leaders who attended the protest were taunted, called murderers and forced to leave by the people, who are still totally confused and indescribably sad. It stayed this way for hours.

Here are some more links with some photos on them -

albertobastos

Manifestación 11-M

Especial 11-M

...And the unquestionable Steve Bell

*Photos used with the courtesy (but not permission) of El Pais*
(I don't really know what the deal is with putting photos from newspapers on to blogs. Can I get in trouble? Tell me and I'll take them off if I can.)

I am wading through today.

If you shut your eyes and surround yourself with other things then it does go away for a little bit. But then when you open them again and uncross your arms, its half-closed, scorching, bloodshot eyes are staring at you again and its claws are going for your heart.

Today there are manifestations around the country. The people in my building went out onto the street in protest and reflection for five minutes and then got back to work. This thing is happening all over the city, I would imagine.
At lunch time, I'll go to the centre of town and soak up the mood. More reflection, more remembrance.
And tonight that mood will flip over and turn to anger when the people of Barcelona take to the streets against terrorists.

This murder is happening too frequently now. It is a shock that numbs your brain until the next one and the next one and the next one hundred. Eventually they will figure out who was responsible and they will add the name to a list that is ancient and excessively tangental.

Get back to work, get back to lessons, get back to laughing. But don't try to get back to Wednesday. Thursday stays with us, full of regret, riot and eventual resolution.

Don't forget.

In a blink, it becomes the kind of day that you want to paste over and start again so watch out. If you could rub out the morning and re-write it with everyone getting from A to B safely, on time and preferably with a donut and/or coffee.

The news is on in one of the meeting rooms downstairs and people are filtering about and through the mood. Mostly it is normal. But I don't have anything else to say today.

Remember me?

Sorry for being absent [minded] for so long, I've gone part-time at work which means that now I only have to sit in front of the screen for half the day.

I can only begin to express how lovely this has been so far. Mostly, I doss about the place - practice my diablo, go to the park/beach, play playstation, watch DVDs, wander about in the sunshine. Suzie says I've re-found myself. Not that I had lost myself, but I became a different gilly for a little while. Stressed, tired and irritable but learning a lot. So while weird worky gilly still exists, she has to co-exist now with old, dosser, student gilly. They will (hopefully) live happily ever after... at least for the next two and a half months.

Last night we had two revelations regarding my future. The first will make my millions, the second is what I will spend those millions on.
1. Musical backpacks (entirely copywritten/writed/righted/wrote). A regular rookie (?!) with built in speaker and CD player, harking back to the days of the ghetto blaster on the shoulder but far less manual labour. Groove along the streets attracting the longing and jealous (they're longing and jealous, not laughing and sneering) eyes of passers by.
The dance moves you come up with while walking are quite incredible.
2. My cruiseship with dog track, casino, disco-funk club and dog track (did I say that already?) My giant fur coat, tree trunk cuban cigar, Pat Butcher hair and solid gold shoes with tiny wheels on the bottom which make it look like I float effortlessley from dog track to dog track to dog track.

That's my dream, baby. Ain't no one gonna stop me. Fuckin' G...

I didn't mean to post so much today, but this is a pretty funny article, if you have time to read it...

'I'd like to buy 100 hamsters, please'

Can I take a moment, for a second? Just a wee minute where I can see you for a bit? In a while there'll be all the time in the world. But right now, can I just have a tick? What I have to say won't take long.

[yadda yadda miss you blah blah love you jibber jabber near you always]

Aww, I'm so proud, my little baby's all grown up. eyes of a blue dog has broken its one hundred visits mark. While I am almost completely certain that these "100" people are actually just the same five people who have checked from a hundred different computers, I can't help but feel a little bit of pride and a lot of curiosity.

"Hello?"

"hellooo?" "hellooooo?" "heeelllloooo?"

--------------- (My echoes bounce of the walls of the empty cave.) ---------------