Adam’s Cerebral Spillage

One glorious week in very sunny Spain, that’s what I’ve just come back from, and it’s thoroughly depressing. The weather here is grey, rainy and horrible, and I don’t seem to have my own swimming pool any more, what’s going on with that??

Seven of us had a really nice flight out to Alicante from Newquay (after a few beers in the airport, and a few gins on the plane), and landed in Spain to the traditional Ryanair ‘fanfare’ which saw a slightly merry me cheer out loud. I’m surprised they didn’t charge us for hearing it actually, they charge for everything else… Anyway, after a quick beer in the airport we found the hire cars and made the 110KM journey up the Spanish coast to Javea, the town that was to be our home for the next seven days. The drive up was gorgeous, the motorway was empty and the scenery varied between beautiful coastline, mountains, gorgeous and the very alien Benidorm lit up like some kind of sci-fi moonbase from a ’50s comic book. The sat-nav guided us straight to the villa where we met up with the London contingent who got there earlier after flying into Valencia instead. There’s only one thing to do when you get to your villa – claim a decent room and get in the swimming pool! Ok, it was 1:30 in the morning, but that first swim was fantastic, I’d arrived. The villa was fantastic; six bedrooms, two kitchens, two lounges, our own pool, roof terrace and no-one within ear- or eye-shot.

Our pool, home of some of the finest pool volleyball ever seen!

There was a bit of an incident the next day when our eleventh somehow missed our greeting party at the airport and lost her phone, spent the rest of the day driving to the wrong town and arriving to find herself locked out of the villa as we’d all gone out for a meal, but that was quickly forgotten. The reason I was so descriptive with our journey to the villa is because the week itself was (thankfully) largely uneventful. We swam, lounged, read and drank a staggering amount of San Miguel and Cruzcampo beers. Pool volleyball was the flavour of the day again, although the amount of exercise it gave us was far outweighed by what we ate and drank. The evenings were when we mainly came to life, and we had a good explore of our surroundings.

Arty shot from the balcony at night, 30 sec exposure

One night we walked into the old town of Javea which was beautiful, and had obviously had some recent money poured into it, and ate at a lovely tapas bar. It wasn’t too cheap eating out, so nights out were mixed with more sedate nights barbecuing on our roof terrace/balcony thing, which included a murder mystery kit that someone kindly left at the villa and was hysterical. By far my favourite night out started with a wander along the promenade at Arenal beach in Javea, where we found a restaurant called Lungo Mare. It was an Italian place and packed with people, which is always a good sign when you’re looking for somewhere to eat. I’m so glad we did too, because despite not being overly keen on Italian food (hey, I don’t really like tomatoes or cheese – Italian’s normally a dead-end for me), I can safely say I had the best meal of my entire life there. Fresh Tortellini filled with beef and Spanish ham served in garlic and chilli oil – it was obscenely good, I could happily eat only that food again for the rest of my life. After stuffing ourselves stupid on pasta and the largest pizzas ever, we found an amazing cocktail bar and had a few more drinks (are you spotting a theme here?) before finding our way to Bora Bora.

The promenade at Arenal beach, that's Lungo Mare on the right

Bora Bora is a karaoke bar near the beach with a seemingly non-existent closing time, and although it was quiet when we got there we owned the place! I was still trying to pick a song to start with when my name was called out to go up. Unbeknown to me one of my cohorts had put my choice in for me, so I got up and belted out (at least that’s how it seemed in my head) my rendition of Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers. It just got better from there, more beer flowed, more gin (which seems to come in measures of at least triples!) and more songs including The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Suspicious Minds. It was an absolutely epic night which left me trolleyed and grinning from ear to ear. The restaurant was so good we went back the following night for our farewell dinner, but the free Limoncello shots after the meal finished me off I’m afraid, and led to the less-than-educated decision to that night paint half my face blue when we got home. To whoever owns the villa, I’m sorry about your towels and bathroom(s).

These little guys were everywhere at night, so cute!

The drive to back to the airport the day after was very quiet, not through hangovers but just because we were leaving our own little paradise and coming back to reality and work. We stopped off in El Campello for lunch and a last walk in the sun, and as much as I love flying, the flight home was bittersweet. Javea is a beautiful area and I’d thoroughly recommend it (and the villa) to anyone.

Technorati Tags holiday, Javea, Lungo Mare, Spain

It’s about time I updated I think. I had the week off last week and spend 5 days of it up with the in-laws on holiday in Somerset. It was a nice relaxing time and I got to spend lots of time with my extended family, especially my niece who insisted I went on as many rides as possible at the nearby theme park! I visited Longleat for the first time too which was awesome, there’s so much to see and do and feeding the deer through the car window while we went through the safari area was hysterical.

But now it’s back to normality and back to work. Luckily the unseasonably hot, sunny weather is still with us and I’m loving it. I’ve already managed to get a couple of barbecues under my belt (literally, with the amount of meat I ate), and it’s when I’ve been sat in the back garden in shorts and a t-shirt, relaxing with a beer in the sunshine that I have to remind myself it’s still only April! Long may it continue I say.

I’ve got loads lined up over the next few weeks, starting with a rock night before too long. It’s been AGES since we had a good club night out. I’m looking forward to hopefully having a few(!) beers this time and getting my mosh on! I’m feeling in the need for some excessively loud metal and a lot of leaping around with like-minded folk . With a bit of luck we’ll entice some rock night virgins up too and get them well and truly initiated (and inebriated). After that I’m off up to the bright lights of London for a weekend with my mates. It’s smack-bang in the middle of birthday season, so we’re going up to watch a night of boxing at West Ham’s Upton Park ground, featuring some of our latest Olympic stars such as James DeGale and Frankie Gavin. It’s on the same Saturday as the FA Cup Final, so it’s going to be a great day. Football, boxing, then back to the hotel to watch Amir Khan’s fight in the States on the same night – good times! Finally, the end of May sees our long-awaited holiday. Twelve of us are packing our bags and heading to sunny Spain (volcanoes permitting…) for a week of lounging in the pool and relaxing. Despite the fact that it’s Seni that weekend (noooooo) and the Eurovision Song Contest final on the same day (double-noooooooooo), it’s going to be great. I’ll just have to buy more pointless weapons and awesome Muay Thai shorts another time .

Training’s great at the moment, the change of each class to be focused on a specific grade has meant I’ve revisited a lot of the very basic stuff I take for granted now, and taken them apart only to rebuild them incorporating concepts I wasn’t introduced to the first time I learned. I can already see just how powerful those simple techniques are with proper use of shin chook applied, not to mention just how much better they look when done that way. I’ve always thought you can tell how accomplished a martial artist is by how natural and easy they make things look, and I’m hoping this is just the start of working towards that. I’m still struggling with the recurring hip injury I’ve been carrying for literally years now, and it’s really painful (not to mention annoying) at the moment. I ought to go back to the doctor again but they just seem to shrug it off, the most I’ve ever had done is some simple exercises from the self-referral physio. Ho-hum, maybe I should just take a leaf out of Bill Wallace’s book and only kick left-sided .

Technorati Tags barbecue, boxing, holiday, tang soo do, training

Tostadas has symbolism for two reasons for me now. Firstly it’s the only word of Spanish my friend picked up on holiday (it was written on packets of food he ate), and secondly it describes the state of us all on our return to England – ‘Toasted’.

After dropping the dog off with my parents on the afternoon of the day we left (which I’ll admit was pretty sad) everyone started to swing into holiday mode straight away. We made the short journey up to Newquay airport and after a little queuing to check our bags in, we were on our way. I was seriously impressed with how quick it is to get stuff done there, we checked our bags in literally thirty-five minutes before the plane took off. I hate waiting at airports so it was a welcome relief. The flight out was beautiful, really smooth and very fast (we landed half an hour ahead of schedule). The pilot told us the route we’d be taking so I knew to look out for the French coast, then the Pyrenees, and finally Valencia sprawling below us. Once we landed we found a bar open in Alicante airport and made up base there as we waited for four others who were on (delayed) flights from London. The trip to the villa was largely uneventful – save for one wrong turn and a bit of frustration – but it was definitely worth the wait.

The Swimming Pool at the villa.

That swimming pool was the glorious site that awaited us on our arrival (minus the inflatables, we added those later) at three in the morning. After claiming bedrooms – where we totally scored with an air-con room – the only natural thing to do was get into some shorts and into the pool. It was as warm as bath water and we stayed in until about 5.30; absolute bliss.

We couldn’t have wished for a better villa, it was so beautiful and so much nicer and bigger than I had imagined. I’ll add a couple more photos in this post but my facebookery friends can see them all there. I won’t bore you all with the complete itinerary of what happened on each and every day, but mostly they involved a pattern of drinking an obscene amount of local beer/gin/wine/sangria and going out in the evening for food and more drink, and those days were generally followed up by a pool day, full of lounging and splashing.

Bombs Away!

On the way to the villa we had to literally drive through the middle of a golf course, so one day two friends and I decided to go and treat ourselves to a round. After walking down to the course (a mile of two in midday sun – not the cleverest idea) we could not find the clubhouse, which sounds ridiculous and really was. We stumbled onto the course and walked up some of the most plush fairways I’ve ever seen, scaring wild parrots in the process, until we found it. Unfortunately for us they wanted €60 for a round, €10 for club hire and €25 for buggy hire (not to mention the fact that none of us had handicap certificates which they also wanted). The equivalent of £80 for a round of golf is a bit silly, so we headed back after stumbling on an enormous plaza which we’d somehow missed for the whole time we were there.

Villamartin Plaza at night.

I was amazed at how many Indian restaurants there are out there, I was expecting there to be more ‘British’ pubs, but with the exception of a few Irish bars I was very wrong. The first night we went out to eat we tried an Indian just because it was next door to the bar we were in, and much to my surprise the food was incredible! I’m a stickler when it comes to food, and whenever I have an Indian meal I always go for Chicken Madras, and this was the best I’ve ever tasted.  The last evening was really lovely, we all got our smart(ish) togs on and went back to the Plaza to choose a restaurant. We settled on one of the prettier ones, and again I’m very glad we did. It’s no understatement to say it was the best meal I’ve ever had, the food was incredible.

I love this photo.

But for now it’s back to normality, and the miserable grey weather of Cornwall. It was easily the best holiday I’ve ever had, and I can’t wait to do it again. Plans are already afoot for a Winter excursion somewhere. Good food, good weather, good friends – good times.

Technorati Tags holiday, Plaza, Pool, Spain, Villamartin

That’s right, as of tomorrow it’s a week of solemnity and quiet for the blog (which, let’s face it, isn’t winning any awards for being updated at the moment), and a week of rest, relaxation and fun in sunny Spain for me. I think everything’s sorted out, at least I hope it is. My mental checklist for the really important stuff has been like this for the last week:

• Passport
• Currency
• Travel Insurance
• Car hire

All of which I can happily say are covered, complete and present. Now all that remains is the small stuff like packing(!). There’s also a whole heap of other bits and pieces to remember I have stashed away somewhere just behind my consciousness which includes:

• Frisbee (very important!)
• International roaming for phone
• Phone
• Phone charger
• iPod
• Books
• Copious amounts of sunscreen
• Hat
• Sunglasses
• Camera

Some of that would probably be covered in most peoples’ idea of packing, but my idea of packing is usually much more simple and non-descript. The great news to me is that one of the friends I’m going with has secured three inflatables for the pool – a ring, shark and crocodile! We fly at 7.30 in the evening which is great as it gives me the rest of the day to pack whatever I forget to pack tonight. Tonight’s going to be busy enough as it is I think, there’s TSD, then some packing and then straight out to a local Rock night with my training friends. I’ve not had a decent Rock night in ages now and it’ll be a great way to start my two weeks off.

In other randomness, I managed to break the Bass pedal for Rock Band last night. During a particularly heated rendition of Train Kept Rollin’ by Aerosmith my foot was thumping away and the next thing I knew there was no pedal under it. It snapped clean just above the hinge at the base of the pedal. Being the enterprising sort of chap I am though, and armed with a roll of duct tape, I was able to get it working again. It’s not ideal, but I called EA last night expecting an hour on hold, miles of red tape and an agonising wait for a replacement and the hassle of sending the broken one back. Boy was I in for a surprise! The phone was answered within 30 seconds, they took my address details and told me that a replacement would be with me within a week, and that I don’t need to return the old one… you could have knocked me down with a feather – kudos EA for some awesome customer service there. Luckily the pedal broke after the mission I gave myself that evening, to tame the beast that is Vasoline by Stone Temple Pilots on Hard. That song has taunted me with its lack of high-score and lack of being completed for a few weeks now, so I was determined to break it. When you fail a song in Rock Band it tells you how far through you got, and thanks to the off-beat bass drumming in that song it’s always been a pretty low number in the past. Nevertheless I was determined last night to up that percentage little-by-little, just as I remember doing the first time I beat Bark At The Moon on Guitar Hero. Still the game mocked me, showing my feeble progress with each and every failure – 29%, 32%, 32%, 32%, 35%, 32% – you get the picture. Then, as if being suddenly injected with some kind of rhythm serum, I was no longer feeble and the pain-in-the-ass chorus section all fell into line and Wham! (no, not that Wham), I completed the song on the very next attempt. The feeling of success and achievement when you crack a song like that is enormous. Ok, so I’m a further two cities into my Hard career now and completely stuck again for the time being, but still, my bass drumming was to Vasoline as the horn was to the walls of Jericho – down it came!

The next time this gets updated I should be golden brown, thoroughly chilled out and ready to get stuck back into stuff. So with that in mind I expect I’ll see you here in a week, sun-burned, knackered and ready for another holiday .

Technorati Tags broken bass pedal, holiday, Rock Band, Spain, Vasoline

If you were to listen to the likes of Steven Hawking, or even Albert Einstein, they’d tell you the one certain way to slow time is to travel at near-to light speed. I however, offer an alternative theory, friends – waiting to go on holiday.

I’m off to Spain this coming weekend, and up until now time has just raced away from me. But now, with just one working week left, time seems to have slowed to a crawl. Early on Saturday evening a minibus will be pootling its way around west Cornwall gathering the suspects for our first ‘friends’ holiday, after a scant ten years of talking about it (and even now there’s still two who won’t be there). From there we make the short run up the road to Newquay airport, which is essentially a shed in a field, and then a direct flight to Espana! Naturally I’ve not even done half the things I need to, so that’s my week sorted out for me. I still need all sorts, including a couple of good hats, sandals, currency, a small vat of sunscreen (I burn very easily and managed to do just that yesterday at my parents’ barbecue) and various other bits and pieces.

Somehow everything seems to have come at once yet again, I was thinking ‘Hmm, I need to spend quite a lot to get my Euros’ and then remembered that I need to renew my road tax too. Oh, and my car needs an MOT. It usually doesn’t cost me much, but I can’t help but think it might need some work done this year. I do hope not.

My friend came around on Saturday afternoon for the first time in ages, which was a great treat. He’s been extra-busy for months now renovating his house with his other half, and we managed to have some quality rot time. Rot night was something we as a group of friends used to organise every fortnight or so, which gave us a chance to crash at someone’s house for the evening and just play games or watch the kind of films our girls would never sit through, but it’s not happened for ages. Saturday’s impromptu rot was a classic, we just sat down and played Smash Bros for about four hours I think. That evening more people gathered at our place and we all headed out for the evening. We went to the meadery (think ‘Medieval eating house’) which was awesome, I hadn’t been for years. A few libations and plenty of scampi later we headed into town for a for more drinks and a lot of Pool and Table Football. A thoroughly enjoyable day!

Sunday’s training was good fun for the most part. I’m back up to nearly completely uninjured now, so I’m training for the full two hours each time I go, and the second hour last night was the adults-only fight squad training. The traditional class went well, even if I did manage to muck up part of pyung ahn oh dan, and it was good to go through ho sin sool and il soo sik dae ryun with the 10th gups before their first grading next week. It’s unfortunate that I won’t be there to watch them and wish them well, but I know they’ll do me proud. The sparring for the second hour was really odd. When we do the adults-only training the contact levels tend to come up a bit and with it being continuous, but never with (much) animosity. In my second fight I took a kick down below which put me down for a minute or so, but luckily it was more frank than beans so I was able to finish. When I said it was odd before, I meant from a scoring point of view. Every fight I had I came off the mats believing I’d lost, where in actual fact that was only true of my first fight. I have no idea why, but either way I managed to clock up some points before my penultimate fight against my brother. I’m still not sure what I did, but during a hook punch I threw, something very strange and very, very painful happened to my arm. I tried to carry on just using my legs but it was so painful I had to stop, and had to concede my final match too. I’m not sure why but I don’t seem to be able to go to training without coming home with an injury at the moment. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was someone hurting me instead of me doing it all the time! .

Never mind, a week of reading, supping cold beers by the pool and relaxation should help me mend up nicely. I’m not looking forward to that first lesson back though .

Technorati Tags holiday, meadery, Smash Bros Brawl, Spain, sparring

It’s time for a little catch-up on general goings-on and suchlike. Think of this post as padding for my blog bra.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, my beard is nearly back in service. It was nice for a change to have a clean-shaven face, I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d run a razor over my chin, but I think I definitely prefer a bit of face-fuzz. I’ve also been told by some of the girls at training that I look ‘wrong’ without a beard, that helped sway my decision. It’s at the stage now where it feels a bit like Action Man’s head.

Speaking of training, it’s great to be back full-time now. I’m slowly getting my fitness back, my knee feels almost 100% fixed (although a short run last night left it aching) and my arm pulls seem to be just about mended too. I went along to kickboxking after the traditional class on Wednesday, and apart from the warm-up where I felt like I was going to pass out at one point, it was great. I was so pleased to be putting spin-hook kicks out at head height with reasonable control and power, and laying into the pads with power on roundhouse drills has never been as satisfying. I’ve started learning Bassai properly now (it’s the same as your Bassai Dai karate folks) and it’s great to be drumming a new form in again. Despite a small hiccup with a new neighbour and his petty squabbles with our landlord, the new academy building is going great too. It feels more like home every day and the floor is *awesome* to spar on ^^.

Due to either the weather or having other things on, I haven’t had a barbecue in weeks and weeks now, and if the weather’s looking better tomorrow I hope to redress the balance. An afternoon in the garden with a slowly burning pit of charcoal, supping a chilled cider and reading my book (which I really, really need to crack on with properly).

I’m loving music again lately too. I mean, I always love music, but I’m particularly into it again at the moment. I treated myself to the new In Flames album last weekend, which I wasn’t intending to do, but the shop had the special edition with bonus DVD for 1p cheaper than the regular version – what was I supposed to do!? It’s really rather excellent, and that’s been sharing playtime with (yet another) best of ’80s album, inspired by last weekend’s antics. When I’m not as poor as a church mouse with a double mortgage and a hefty gas bill, I’m going to invest in some new audio stuff for home.

Ooh and how could I forget, just a week to go then I’m jetting off to sunnier climes. My friends and I are invading Spain and I intend to be relaxation personified. I’m going book shopping during the week and intend to get through as much as I can, when I’m not acting like a 10 year-old at the nearby water park that is!!!!

Technorati Tags beard, holiday, In Flames, Spain, tang soo do, training

Looking out of my office window right now all I can see is grey skies, rain and the trees being blown about. Some July huh? It’s been a really sunny summer so far so I can’t really complain too much I suppose, but it’s got me wishing for brighter skies, which in turn reminds me – only three weeks until holiday! In 22 days my friends and I are jetting off to Spain for a week to share a villa and have a damn good time. We have a pool, barbecue area and lots of space, so I intend to do a lot of relaxing, plenty of swimming and no doubt partaking in the odd sangria or two . Usually foreign holidays for those of us living in ‘The Country’ have an added annoyance, and that’s the sheer amount of travelling involved before you get anywhere.

Cornwall has traditionally had really poor transport links – we’re talking 90 miles to the nearest stretch of Motorway, trains that take forever, no airports – but all of that has begun to change. Most of the above is still true, but with the advent of Newquay Airport and its subsequent improvements, the rest of the world has started to move a bit closer. Take this holiday I’m due for example. In the past it might have meant a drive to the nearest airport (normally Bristol – 3.5/4 hours, sometimes Gatwick/Heathrow @ 6.5/7 hours) before even starting. This time however we’re flying direct from Newquay (20 minutes drive away) to Alicante (30 minutes from the villa), and I feel so much happier and more relaxed about it. I have a really small list of things I want to take with me, mostly various swimming shorts, books and hopefully a very trashy inflatable for the pool. I’m fancying a giant inflatable dinosaur, but I think I might be out of luck there .

It’s back to the dojang tonight, time to infuse those mats with some more hard work and sweat (and hopefully not too much blood – it’ll stain!). I’m still aching all over from Wednesday’s antics, my shoulders aren’t used to things like dragon pushups any more. Between that and a stiff back from the Kickboxing warm-up which involved slapping the mat a lot as we changed direction, we ended up looking like apes (anyone who knows me can kindly refrain from any further comment there please), I’m not moving so freely. From the looks of things at least we’ll know if there are any leaks in the building.

I managed to find the single other person in the world who seems to not only have read Hyperion, but loved it as much as I do. Good day!

I can’t post songs from here, but I shall definitely be singing along to Snake River Conspiracy on the way home tonight, probably Breed followed by Lovesong.

Technorati Tags alicante, holiday, hyperion, inflatable dinosaur, rain, Snake River Conspiracy, summer, training