The transition from blighty to euroland is effortless enough. I manage to be completely manky for my trip, having sunk a vodka or six with monsieur henderson the night before at a magazine launch.
On the dazzling budget flight I have the pleasure of sitting with a herd of british idiots. One is definitely gay, though I don’t think he’s out, and the ample woman to my right shoulder plies me with cheap mint imperials and keeps shrieking ‘oo, I wanna wet me lettuce’.
A charming backdrop for my romantic gazing out at the mashed potato clouds, as my inflight, inhead transistor plays Paul Weller’s above the clouds…..
“Above the clouds, what's to be found
I have to wonder - will I be around
As my anger shouts - at my own self doubt
So a sadness creeps - into my dreams
When you're scared of living - but afraid to die
I get scared of giving - and I must find the faith to beat it”
And someone guffs very near my face. I shield myself from these heathens and pray that the bloke who keeps shouting daily mail jokes at me will disappear up his own flatulent arse. We are not amused. We are an artiste.
My phone tells me I am now a ‘movistar’, and the edge of reason crosses my mind – I ain’t no Bridget Jones, but I do always stop breathing whenever police are present, and though I packed my own bag, I have no idea what’s in there….
Border control let me in less a good frisking to my dismay, and I realise I have no map, instructions or compass, and pray that my famed aboriginal tracker instinct will kick in and won’t lead me into a dark forest of donkeys as history has had it….
I make it to the central train station, and head to the tourist info. Which is shut. I ask a nonchalant sweaty pig for a map but he just shrugs. I want the old town. Viaje? No, that’s journey. No bother, I set off using my tracker instincts, and find I have led myself towards the port. Once a sailor’s girl….And a heap of dodgy looking Vietnamese set me scuttling in the other direction. Which is a short cut. To nowhere.
I swig down some 17c warm water to avoid turning into dust, and stumble upon a quaint town map, that tells me I am here, and that the place of the virgin is somewhere near some trees. A bit of an extreme from sailor’s girl to virgin, I wobble off in a vague direction.
Fuck the virgin, there’s a quiet street café where I can write. The raging queen behind the bar informs me that the 3.60 special, advertised as available ‘todo el dia’, is only in fact available up to 2pm. So I ply myself with uht coffee, dismissing unlikely salesmen selling jingle-jangles, and thank Vishnu that body language is 80% of communication, as all I can muster right now is some scratchings of Hindi.
I catch the train to the countryside by a small miracle, and enjoy the wild landscape , which alternates in glorious european style, between expanses of mountain wilderness, hideous industrial outskirts, and villages from days gone by. I can sleep, the only babble being in catalan. Then a hideous englishman boards and bores the fishermans pants off his lady friend by musing upon who Les Dennis might actually be. They have the wrong tickets and the stern conductor gets his fire up. I do my best impression of a russian prostitute, (fairly convincing), and manage to keep him from severing my head in the name of the Queen.
I arrive in Tortosa, and my lively friends rock up, beers in hand, wind in their sails, freedom in their hearts, and the holiday has truly begun. At their solar-powered mountain ranch the sun sinks sleepily below the jagged horizon and we feast on ham, cheese and vino before drink-driving to the local village fiesta.
Now we’re not talking bestival here. We’re talking a difficult-to-find google image of a few confused women dancing with tea trays in handstitched 70s a-line skirts. Right up my avenida.
This time, we are denied access to the main event of the night; trestle tables adorned with food in colours according to your suburb. I am particularly horrified at the yellow table’s unidentifiable fried objects, and the poor local ceramicist who has dyed her hair baboon-orange, but has been allocated to the blue table. To eat blue food.
There being no room at the inn, we sit in the street at a local bar slurping free-hand vodkas with some other ex-pat outcasts.
It’s time to make our own fiesta, armed with some miscellaneous children, some olives so salty I develop rod-stewart cheekbones, and some help from a certain columbian friend…
Suddenly I am no longer in the darkening street framed by posters of bocadillos and julio eglesias, I am in a four by four, baby slung on lap, performing lines from a narcotic play…and when we emerge, alienated but hungry for the night, we are allowed into the abandoned hanger of a festival. The fruit of the looms have disappeared, as have the trestles, save for a few hepatitis-lined bottles of grappa and cava, which we purloin.
But rather than a chas n dave tribute band, which would have been equally as fun and more apt, we have a spanish ska band. Through my altered perception they are amazing. Suddenly we form a freakish troupe of blonde skankers, crazed looks on our dials, swigging second hand liquor and keeping a boggling eye out for the baby….
But as I start a conga, kickbox with some eighteen year olds and perform acrobatics with any man strong enough to hold me, the baby disappears from sight and we are three crammed into a rickety bog, locals aghast, baby in the mosh pit….
Still having not caused sufficient damage, we cram into another four by four down a dirt track, and carry on carnaging. At which point I start to feel a little sick. What’s wrong godiva? Can’t handle your class a, b, cs and ds anymore? Was it the fourteen hour viaje to get here? I switch on my phone as a plea for any kind of reality to hit me.
It does. It’s seven in the morning.
I am a twenty-four hour party person.
Thankfully my good companions burn out and we wind our way, stupefied, up the olive-covered mountain and truly finish ourselves off at the ranch with a dribbled philosophical debate on the purpose of life.
Which, according to me, is to form a union with any troubled soul who should call out to me, and to him is to buy up land with water for when the end really kicks in….
So the non-existent itinerary for the next few days, including the kickboxing match with five stallions I had arranged the night before, disappears further into the void, and instead I declare myself ‘aunty death’, and immerse my shaking, ageing body in vitamin d, nurturing my soul with hermaphrodite-drawing competitions and chorizo.
And the sun beats down, and we are without dongle, and the world floats off satisfactorily beneath us. And though I haven’t had a sufficient shit, there’s time to try. And the warm rays erase a comedown, and I love my friends, and from the mountain I never want to comedown.
So for six days I don’t. Not exactly soaking up the local culture, as the nearest neighbour is three miles away, but enjoying every drop of this simple life.
Alas, easyjet calls. At the train station the man informs us there are no trains the next day. There is a general strike. Like the one I narrowly avoided in france the week before getting here. Will this be another near-miss, or will we have to charge up the dongle and send apologies to my life that for the next few days there will be no life happening.
I would like to pretend that I was enraptured with the news, but the truth of the matter is I couldn’t be bothered with that degree of change after watching time stand still save for the drift of a few falling petals for the last week.
The autobus saves us. I am to leave tonight and stay in valencia. Adventure. That’s more like it.
Although not a cheap ticket to ride, the clientele on this bus needs a lot of help to be desired. Using my survival skills, and armed with a ham and cheese baguette, I sit next to a man whose prostrate has dropped significantly low enough to have a wee problem rather than a libido of any kind, and I dream and I dream out of the window.
This is even more awesome than the train journey, and as the sky blackens I gaze out at the silhouetted mountains and dream of being among them, with nothing but time on my side.
I stave off the temptation to realise that my bladder is near to bursting, and we stop at a place called castillo, where the bus terminates. This is not valencia. I garble in spanglish at the driver, who, in true public transport fashion, shrugs at me but indicates haphazardly that the bus shall be travelling on. Can I have a cigarette, I ask? He looks extremely disapprovingly at me. But I’d heard his ‘cinqo minutos’ at another passenger and repeat this to him, my head swelling up with pride that I have not been deterred by the barrier of language.
But unfortunately, the man loitering behind me has also heard, and follows me off the bus. He starts cooing slimily at me. I move away. I snarl, ‘ingles’, he says that I speak spanish though don’t I? For the wont of a more mediterranean expression, I opt for what I thought was a universal one, and growl ‘fuck off’ at him. But it doesn’t work. ‘BYOOTIFUL’. He says. Now, I’m all for women’s lib, but this ain’t it. The slimy fucker. Where’s the old man who smells of piss when you need him?
Well he’s back on the bus, but now three other old men who smell of piss approach me from the other side. Like a twisted, boosh-esque lambada, they encircle me. I can’t be arsed to find out what they are actually pretending to want, and skedaddle sharpishly back onto the bus. It seems no assault course in india can numb me from the perils of sexism, and I make a mental note to burn my bra. And strap my tits down.
I arrive at the hostile bus station in valencia at around ten pm. Having purloined a map at last, I plan to walk like a true brigadier to my prebooked residence. But even I am not stupid enough to risk dodging the unsavoury characters that belay me, and I get in a cab. And the fat fucker behind the wheel is not willing to understand my catalan. Or my map. I repeat words endlessly and hope we aren’t driving to my demise, and suddenly nearing the hostel he understands me. It’s not ‘HO ME’, it’s ‘HO ME’. Well that’s a lesson learnt……..
Yes, dear readers, a distinguished lady such as myself had vowed never again to stay in a hostel, but with twenty euros to my name I succumb. Will it be a repeat of the last time I stayed in a bedbug-ridden dorm with a stunted goblin monkey swinging into my bed to spoon-rape me, I wonder?
I gingerly ask how much a single room is. No singles. A double room? No. Six, twelve or sixteen-bed dorms only. I take my starched linen and enter room 32. A bald man suddenly sits bolt upright in the dark and mumbles canadian at me about the only spare bunk being above him. I wonder if I’ll flash my nether-regions at him from betwixt my be-moo-mooed legs, and try to disguise my horror at this mixed-sex modernity.
I go downstairs to write; the promise of a roof terrace quashed as it shut at ten pm. Outside the front I am taken hostage by hostel-dwellers. A grolsch-voiced dutchman informs me that the national strike tomorrow will affect all transport including aeroplanes, and that I’d do well to book myself in for another night here as spaces are filling up. Not with the consumption to withstand enforced panic, I abandon the writing session and wait for a free computer.
And I’m forced to take part in a deranged game of pictionary-charades, where, being the only english native, I keep winning by mistake.
I check my hotmail. I’m not ready for the seventeen facebook messages and mundane, evil chores that hotmail demands of me, and I wonder whether the lack of dongle for the past few days was an oversight.
There’s a message from easyjet a few days before saying I should change my flight. Horror sets in – how many nights will I be forced to lay awake on a soggy mattress waiting for the teenage maladjusted to clonk in from their late-night sangria sessions?
Well, one, as it turns out. No problema. And despite being the only female in the room, I sleep easy, borrow toothpaste the next morning and head to the roof terrace for some final sunsoaking and a discussion on east berlin, pre-wall.
And I know how much I love travelling. And I don’t care if it’s escape. I just want to stand for myself in my own context, surrounded by the unknown.
And I find my way home smiling, with no problems and a near-empty plane.
And I want this feeling to last. But as we touch down a grey sky awaits me, and as I switch on my phone reality bites me. And as the rain pelts upon me like acid from nuclear fallout, I wonder how I’m going to survive this holocaust.
And I wonder if I should follow the sun…...
Godiva went over the mountain, Godiva went over the mountain
Godiva went over the mountain, to see what she could see……….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90u1IV4dw8o
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