Events on a slightly larger scale than my essay on the enlightenment, or even the horrific ankle injury I suffered yesterday have kind of stolen my thunder this week, so I will be brief about my personal comings and goings and then go on to talk about how we keep abreast (haha. Breast.) of current affairs on a year abroad and generally try to stay involved with life back in old Blighty.

First a brief summary of my week although some of it has been blown from my memory like Osama’s house from its foundations (this is going to be fun). It started with two days spent writing aforementioned essay, trying to find some interesting sources to escape the clutch of that vile temptress ‘Wikipedia’  and ultimately failing.

On my way back from rugby training on Tuesday, I discovered that I have become one of these people who engages strangers that try to talk to me on the bus; an old guy who I am fairly sure was being truthful when he said he had been using the University library and was not a Mr Herbert from ‘Family Guy’ type on the nightly hunt started asking me questions about Scotland. I am not sure if I was motivated to answer his standard questions in full gory detail (it seems to be a place that fascinates Spanish people, meaning that I regularly have to disappoint them by telling them that I have never seen ‘El monstruo de Lago Ness’, or visited the birth place of Adam Smith, the father of capitalism {Kirkaldy: why in the name of Gordon Broon would I ever want to go there?}) by the openness and sociability I have been forced to learn this year, or by the kind of British uber-politeness which at times makes us just look saft in front of the Spanish, but as long as I do not get raped I do not have a problem with this new state of mind.

The next couple of days revolved around the beach, the gym, university rugby….and the record keeps playing the same old song…before Friday when I came back from a grueling four hour shift at University to find that I had missed all the fun of the Royal wedding. The only person in my flat who watched the wedding was ironically my French flatmate Valentine (FOR SHAME!) Despite her consistent protests that she just could not be bothered going to class and the wedding happened to be on every channel on Spanish television I cannot help but wonder if the interest in the wedding I was feeling from France (particularly on facebook) meant that all these royals were guillotined in vain in 1789. Other countries were not so interested, again on facebook I saw one American person state that she thought it was “maybe Prince Charles and his chick or something” who were getting married. The feeling I was getting from Britain using that substitute for real-life most people call facebook and I call the skynetmatrix was that everybody was going mental for the wedding which made me feel a little left-out. I could have been sitting in my back-garden eating strawberry tarts and drinking champagne with the landed gentry that used to be called the Cubie family, or throwing bottles of buckfast at police officers while yelling sectarian chants in Kelvingrove park in Glasgow (where I understand there is going to be an Osama party this weekend). Another thing I gleaned from skynetmatrix is that the wedding created the single biggest case of mob sexual harassment in the history of the world – I am of course referring to the Goddess Pippa Middleton (who, one group informed me, ”puts the ‘ride’ in ‘bridesmaid”’). I feel a bit sorry for the girl, after probably initially feeling slightly flattered by the fan pages, she maybe clicked on one to find a bombardment of graphically detailed posts about the disgusting things the facebook community want to do to her, although as always I was the one who took it too far by suggesting that she be invited to Osama’s funeral on the off chance she brings out a revealing black number (DARK TOPICAL HUMOUR).

Which almost brings me to this morning. The time between the royal wedding was spent getting drunk and playing rugby and the record keeps playing the same old song…the only new thing that happened was that I sustained only the third proper injury of my career, although a fat guy (‘puto gordo’ as I described him to the doctor, which roughly translates into Scottish as ‘fat cunt’) in my own team fell on my ankle to it’s not a particularly heroic tale. I did come back on to the pitch to contribute the conversion that secured a 14-10 victory on a pitch which overlooked a harbour  near Cadiz and smelt like fish which is slightly more poetic I guess but it all pales into BLOODY INSIGNIFICANCE compared to the news we woke up to this morning…

My brother was on ‘Reporting Scotland’ last night! Naaaah but it was funny and again made me feel slightly left-out again to hear that my younger brother managed to sneak into a shot of the Scottish leaders debate he attended – seen waving at the camera behind Annabel Goldie while eating a ‘MacDonald’s’ (which is important because it distinguished him from her entourage, who only eat caviar, and so there was no question of him being mistaken for {I risk revealing a slight political bias here} a stinking Tory).

This morning though, I felt fully involved with all the merriment surrounding the death of the man who is in a large way responsible for the racial/religious tension in the world (along with El Hadji Diouf and Neil Lennon. Just kidding. Osama was worse,) although I was slightly confused on waking to see a status on facebook which said ”can’t believe it took them ten years to kill Obama. About time.” My suspicion that there was a Donald Trump supporter lurking in Scotland was abated when I perused the hundreds of other statuses and fan pages and dance remixes and speculation about who will take the hide-and seek world title (there’s a joke in there too but if I told it they would probably/definitely remove my blog from this fine and reputable site). My favourite fan page so far is ‘the awkward moment when you realise Osama made seven Horcruxes’ and the speculation which followed about who and what they might be (Chuck Norris, Charlie Sheen, Neil Patrick Harris and Karl Rove were solid guesses) although an honourable mention has to go to ”The Prince gets married and the Bad Guy’s dead; are we in a Disney movie?”. There are some funny people out there.

I ramble and the new series of South Park is calling me (so many current affairs for Trey and Matt to sink their claws into. I’m drooling!) so I’ll leave you until next week’s installment tentatively entitled ‘Scottish election special’ .

Luego,

Gregor.