So, what have I been up to?

Fear not, dear readers! No calamity has befallen me, no sudden tragedy has put an untimely end to my blogging career, I have simply been on holiday, and now I am back.

I won't go on about the rest of my holiday in Spain cause, quite frankly, it was so long ago I can barely remember it. I met some dutch boys, there was an unfortunate vodka and orange night which ended up with me making very good friends with a toilet bowl (an experience I hope never to repeat, alcohol only in moderation for me) and then I came home.

Then it was time for Soul Survivor. In the days before it I was very busy learning how to put up tents and reassuring an anxious Vicky that all would be fine. It wasn't until Vicky phoned me to ask some final questions the evening before we left that I realised I'd forgotten one rather vital thing: food. One quick trip to the Co-op later we were stocked up on pasta and various sauces and ready to go.

(You may note that I've left out several details in the days before Soul Survivor, namely the conversations I had with Richard. In the first one I was terrified by his friends who kept asking if Richard was a good kisser. In the second one I broke up with him, for stupid reasons which sophie immediately told me off about when she heard and she was quite right.)

Anyway, so we set off for Soul Survivor. We arrived a day early and got in by driving up to the bloke on the gate and sort of giving the impression that we were on the staff. The conversation went a little like this:

US: Hello, we're just here to drop some stuff off for tomorrow.

(which was true!! we were planning on just dropping our stuff off at Richard's pitch then finding some bed and breakfast to stay in for the night!)

HIM: Ah, are you on a team?

(by this he meant the stewarding team, or the enabling team, or something similar)

US: um, yes

(it is an automatic reaction of mine to agree to anything, before I even realise what I've been asked. I did not intend to lie.)

HIM: ok then, just go up to that green tent and register, I'll phone ahead to let them know you've arrived.

At this point we drove into the camp, carefully avoiding the green tent and instead making our way to green 5 where Richard was camped.

Helen and I put our tents up then joined Richard and his friends for a nice sing-song before attempting to cook on our tiny gas stove. The pasta stuck to the pan and the sauce was horrible before we smothered it with cheese, but it was not so bad, and we got hot chocolate of Ian and Jane (Richard's parents) afterwards.

Day 1 - monday (yes, I'm stealing Richard's format, but I've stolen most of his other stuff already so I don't expect he'll mind)

It rained. We moved the tents from green 5 to red 4 (in the rain) and were forced to shelter in one when the downpour became torrential. It's amazing how, if the circumstances require it, you can fit 4 people in a 1 man tent. We had to break the rule about no mixed tent sharing though, so if the Soul Survivor organisers ask you, it never happened.
The rest of the day I spent having a really nice shower (for 40 minutes), then dried my hair (another hour). Some people may think that this is a little too long to spend on grooming but, at this point, it was a thing that really needed to be done.


Day 2 - tuesday

I went to my first seminar today. It was called Practical Holiness but I think the trade descriptions act may have a little something to say about that title. I listened for half an hour or so to this bloke telling me to follow the straight road of holiness and not fall into either of the ditches of lawlessness or legality before I lay down to listen to him with my eyes closed and promptly fell asleep. I awoke to here him saying "well, that's all we have time for" and joined in with all the clapping, pretending that obviously I'd been listening to every word and found it fascinating.

In the evening I finally snapped after seeing Richard in his hideous Slazenger top one time too many (and quite frankly, once is one time too many) and decided that he NEEDED some new clothes. I said this to Richard and Andrew (being the selfless person that he is) immediately offered his spare hoodie to Richard to fill the void before Richard could procure himself a hoodie of his own. It was bloomin' hard getting Richard into that hoodie, I tell you. First there was the whining ("but I'll look like a rude boi"), then there was the general unwillingness to co-operate in any way when we put the hoodie on him, and finally there was the sulking once we had the hoodie on (Richard was actually a pretty good sport during all of this considering what Andy and I were putting him through, we'd never have got it on him if he'd really objected).
I was having some slight clothing issues myself at this point. Andy (who I probably should have told you is a member of Richard's youth group) kept throwing me down in the mud which require complicated contortions to prevent my skirt (a fetching cream Ra-ra number) getting thoroughly dirty. There was also a rather strong wind, and it being a Ra-ra skirt... but we won't go in to that.
Anyway, Richard, Andy and I, all hoodied up (we even got baseball caps for Andy and Richard) all traipsed down to the market place to browse the hoodies there. We got Richard to try on loads and eventually I took pity on him and his little sulky face and left it till the next day to actually purchase one for him.

The rest of the evening we spent in Chasers. For those of you who don't know, it's the coolest place ever! It's a disco in a tent! They even have a glitter ball! Chris Greenhouse (who I am so going to marry, I mean, come on! Greenhouse and Browncross, we can combine our surnames and become Sarah and Chris Greenybrownhousecross!!! You know it makes sense) [if Chris ever finds this and reads it, he may protest and insist that his surname is actually Greenhalgh. Do not listen to him! We all know that Greenhouse is a much better surname, don't we!] Nick, Mark (all members of Richard's youth group) and I all went down there to boogie the night away. We were shortly joined by Richard who did not so much boogie as stand around and hold all the layers of clothing that we discarded due to the intense heat. Most of them were mine as at this point I was wearing my original skirt, top and jumper, plus Richard's Slazenger top and Andy's hoodie and baseball cap. As you can imagine, I quickly overheated. The baseball cap, when I eventually took it off, travelled around the circle a couple of times before eventually coming to rest on the head of my future husband. Chris took great delight in wearing it backwards (he said it was to conceal his bad hair, yeah, like we believe that!) and we immediately pounced on him, styling his hair upwards to come out in a little quiff through the back of the baseball cap. He wasn't so keen on this new hair (can't think why) and tried to fix it. We couldn't let this happen, so Richard and I took hold of his arms and marched him back to green 5 to get a picture of this epitome of hair styling. We got to green 5 only to discover that Richard's camera was out of battery so we took hold of Chris again and marched him to red 4 where I got my camera out and got snapping away... [results in the next post]

Yet Another Spanish Blog

Hello everyone, from a comfortable office chair in the South East of England. "What? But Sarah's in Spain!" I hear you holler. Well, you are correct, Sarah is in Spain. I however am not. By a bizarre mix of threats, insults and 'a look that is impossible to refuse', she has managed to hire the services of the me to write this blog. The me being Dickybod/Richard/'chard/whatever else you want to call me. By the great medium of MSN Messenger, Sarah is telling me about her day, and based on what she tells me, I am writing here. Yup, i could just copy and paste it, but I think I'd best put a little effort into this, or I may have some very thoroughly kicked shins at a later date...

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So, where to start?

anyway, i went to the nudist beach yesterday

That'll do. Ok, so from what i can gather from the conversation I'm having, Sarah went to a beach where the novelty value was found in the total lack of clothing on most of the patrons. A place where, true to form, lack of clothing (as a necessity) was experienced by the author of this blog and her friends (well, the female ones at least. As you probably read in the last post, they disallowed the inclusion of their male companion into this nude excursion).

Jeez, cheers Sarah. How can you be tasteful and tactful when talking about large amounts of people with no clothes on. MALE AUTHOR!!!!

Well, anyway. With clothes removed (stay focused...) Sarah and her chums enjoyed a slight swim, before attempting to avoid the gaze of the obligatory teenage boys peering over the fence at all the naked people.

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At this point she says that this proabaly isn't suitable material for her blog, and I rather agree, but since she has been offline for the last 20 minutes in her quest to gather more time on the internet, in order to tell me more suitable things to type, this is all I have, so I'm going to type it.

So what did Sarah learn from her day on the beach?

1. Strutting around starkers can be very liberating
2. LOTS of suncream needed. I don't want to imagine what the consequences would be...
3. Naked men are much less attractive than naked women (her words, I hasten to add)

Well, seeing as she isn't back yet, I may just have to post this without her approval, allowing the words above to be a possible slur on her character from the cynical author she requested to write them. It also mean this focuses to much on the nudity, and I'm sure that wasn't all she did.#

Ok! She's back, after some young rapscallion (yes, i really do use words like that) stole her computer. Ok, now for some more tasteful topics!

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They put there clothes back on, and went back to the clothed beach, then hung around the capsite for a bit, when the author read some of MY copy of Stupid White Men, then dinner at the camp restaurant, where Sarah (different other) and Theo abondoned Sarah (author Sarah), Hannah and Stephanie at a table. At this point the started telling the waiters that non-author Sarah fancied the fat one who served the chips ('Chip-Boy', who looked like another waiter who was then christened 'Chip-Boy-Bro'). Hannah spent the evening attempting to convince author Sarah it would be interesting to wave and blow kisses at chip-boy-bro, only to have the effect of half the restaurant staff thinking they were mad, and the other half thinking they fancied them.

Slow down Sarah I can't type this fast!!!

They then 'mosied' down to the beach where Hannah got very drunk with some French lads, while the rest chatted to some dutch boys who are apparantly going to take them to some rock tomorrow and show them the view. They also plan to flirt with a person who works in some shop (if your that person, run, run away NOW), though Sarah tells me she wont be doing any actual flirting, just asstisting the others. That's author Sarah, not non-author Sarah.

Oh, and we're back on the naked issue. I think I should just publish this post...

Hopefully Sarah should be back with her normal blend of sanity and slightly more coherent writing style.

Richard xxx

PS. If you found this post humorous, while finding the tremendously bad set out and spelling tremendously endearing, pop over to my own blog! It's full of witty and cynical posts such as these! End Advertising.

El Blog d'España (part four)

Hola!

Today, dear readers, I am off to the nudist beach. We have forbidden Theo from coming with us (none of us really want to see him naked) and we are departing after lunch.

Yesterday was loads of fun. I'm settling into a routine now. I get up, put on my breakfast outfit of the day and have breakfast. I then wander down to the washrooms and on to the reception where I purchase my hour long internet session. I spend a pleasant hour talking to Richard before changing into my bikini and pool outfit and spending most of the day lounging by the swimming pool, occasionally playing cards. In the evenings I have a shower, change into my evening outfit, and we all head down to the beach to spend the evening talking to foreign people. Fun, fun, fun.

El blog d'España (part three)

No blog today I'm afraid dear readers.

I'm not feeling so good due to some licor de meloncoton last night and I've been talking to Richard the whole time.

Lo siento

El Blog d'España (part two)

Hola!

I am starting to get the hang of all these hills. The trick is to combine more than one activity at the same time, so when I go down to do the washing up, I take a towel and have a shower at the same time etc. I am going on to the pool after this so I am sitting here blogging in my brand new bikini. I finally got tired of feeling overdressed in my modest swimsuit so I have conformed to peer pressure and bought myself my very own itsy bitsy teeny weeny green marble effect bikini. It consists of four triangles of material cunningly attached to each other with bits of string and yet I am still wearing more than most of the Spanish girls. Most of them seem to be so poor that they can only afford three triangles. I now plan to wear my bikini almost constantly and use it to lure in all the cute Spanish boys with! (Only joking, Richard, I haven't looked at a single Spanish boy since I arrived, I couldn't even if I wanted to; my sunglasses are so dark that I can't see anything more than a foot away).

I have been meeting some French boys though. Last night and the night before we have all gone down to the beach and hung out with some French boys who seems to spend their entire lives sitting on the beach, blazing (hence Hannah's cunning nickname for them, the Blazin' Squad). I have been acting as translator due to my GCSE French, but it's amazing how much of a language comes back to you once you start to speak it! I could understand almost everything they said, and communicate with them pretty well. Apparently, once you stop learning a language, you forget 90% of it within the first couple of months, but the rest of it will stay with you for up to 30 years. We're not going back tonight though, we ran out of things to say.

Everyone else went to a restaurant for dinner last night, unfortunately I could not as the only vegetarian things on the menu were the salad and the bread. Yummy. Last night was fun though. Sarah and I stayed up talking about various people and situations until gone 2am. It's ages since we've been able to have a good ol' chinwag so it was really nice.

Hannah and Theo entertained me yesterday by trying to teach me the Essex lingo. I've been picking it up quite well. Here is my holiday is Essex speak:

Wot goanye? I is bin coching an linking wit ma links so as to not get banged by scary little English kids. Tis bate all nang.

I considered attempting to teach them what I knew of 1337 but decided against it. I do have some sort of cool facade to maintain.

Anyway, why was Michelle evicted? I couldn't believe it when I found out, I thought she was really popular! Did she suddenly become horrible after I left? Why wasn't Jason evicted? These are important questions that need to be addressed. Answers in the comments please.

My mother, noticing that I was clearly pining for something, found a picture of Boris Johnson in her paper and cut it out and placed it on my pillow. But now Richard has come online so I must depart.

Adieu