Sunny one so true, I love you.

I always heard the stereotype that the British are always talking about the weather… but how could it be other way!! I’ve myself become a weather nuts. I check the weather forecast t twice a day everyday, and it defines how will be my mood for the next 5 days: normal, happy or extremely happy. Few things in the world make me happier than the view of 5 big yellow suns in the BBC weather forecast. I’d rank those extremely rare moments at the same level of my last exam at Uni, the Eurocup 2008 victory or the view of my first mountain bike. That’s the good point of living in England: to really appreciate the gift that it’s the sun, to praise it. That is something that is quite unusual to find in Andalusia and in fact it's more common to curse it. Here you get the same rush than winning a Eurocup every now and then. And you don’t have to wait 44 years to enjoy, maybe just 44 weeks.


On the other side of the spectrum is the colour of the sky most of the days (this picture was taken on the morning of 22nd Jul). Those tons of plain grey clouds that hang over your head for weeks and weeks, crashing you until you get use to it (after some weeks, months or years). I got over it repeating myself over and over again “the sun is over there. Even if you don’t see it, it’s over there over the clouds”. That is something that you really notice in the plane.

Through the plane window you can see a big nice sun over projecting its light over a sea of clouds creating nice figures with their shades in constant movement. Then, slowly but unstoppable, the plane start to dive through that see like a big and rusty Russian submarine. Inevitably, turbulences hit the plane waking up all the babies in the packed Ryanair plane, provoking a chaotic chorus of cry accompanied by the voice of the flight attendance trying to sell the last bottle of perfume though the noise speakers. Then the sun is gone. And only the green of the country, scratched with endless lines of semidetached houses, is left under the grey sky. I think you’d feel the same in a submarine going under the ice of the Arctic with the submersion siren hitting your hears remembering you that you will not see the sun again for a few months.

That’s why I like to travel last time of the day, in the dark of the night. To avoid to see the sun disappear like that and make the process less painful. With premeditation and nocturnality, you arrive home at early hours of the morning, after a long bus/train trip of flashing dreams, crawling to your bed and falling sleep in seconds.

The morning after you wake up and the last days that you spent in a sunny place are just a dream, of which only your suntan remains. And you find normal that grey sky over your head. Because you know that the sun is over there, you saw in your last night dream, over a thick layer of Arctic ice.

Free festivals

Summer in London doesn't bring sunshine, but brings lots of music events, and plety of them free. The second week of July I went with some friends to the Rise Festival in a park in Finsbury Park. The aim of the festival, which was called Respect, was to combine music with exhibitions and displays covering the work of individual trade unions, voluntary groups, charities and community organisations in the area of equalities. The athmosphere is great, with lots of people doing picnics all around the 5 different stages.

In one of the stages there's this group (Lines of Faith ft. Poetic Pilgrimage) with Jews, Muslims and female rapers from London. Fantastic mixture and really good music.

Then there's another stage with African music, really lively and inviting to dance. And the main stage wasn't less. It's a pity that the organisation decided to cut the energy at 20:30 on the spot, in the middle of a song of the main group of the Festival... The rules are the rules...

if you didn't go this year, don't miss it next one!!

PS: one piece of advice. do not try to carry your 89kg friend in your shoulders if you don't want to break your back... word of wisdom...

One of the places that I discovered thanks to live in the South of the river for a while was Rotherhithe and the Docklands. The area was, as the name indicates, the docks of London. But the history comes far before the English Empire was created and with it the need of the docks. From the Roman times the only bridge over the river was London Bridge, which originally had houses on it, and it was the gate that was crossed by the cattle every day on their way to the central slaughterhouse in Farringdon (as in other medieval cities only live cattle was accepted inside of the walls) . There was the town of Bermondsey, surrounded by marshs that went up and down with the tides of the river. This was the perfect conditions for the leather trade, which established itself in the area with many tanneries (the last closed in 2007), making it a very unpleasant place to leave due to the strong smells of the skins getting tan and the putrid waters. One of the products more appreciated was the sealskin.

With the Empire the big development of the docks started and it spread from London Bridge to Greenwich, and it was a place of trade until 1960 and 1970, when the shipping industry adopted the newly invented container system of cargo transportation.

All the front of the river is full of nice warehouses that have been refurbished as luxury lofts, but there’re still places left behind by the developers (or they just kept them under their sleeves).
The walk along the waterfront has some nice views of Tower Bridge, the City and the new Canary Wharf.
At the end of the walk you can arrive to Greenwich another nice place…

Introduction

Well, as the famous sentence goes, in life everyone should do 3 things before dying “Plant a Tree, Write a Book, have a Son”. I did the first one long time ago. And now I’m starting the modern version of the second one. That’ll gain me some more time before the difficult task of the third one…

In a couple of months it’ll be my 6th year here in the UK. As most of the people, I arrived saying that it was just for a year to improve my English. I left Malaga in a sunny day and arrived to Bristol in a dark and rainy day. Crows sitting in bold trees were the only thing that I could see from my window, with the background of the plain grey sky. I still remember their crawling and how it brought to my mind the poem “The Raven” by of Alan Poe (now I understand better the dark stories of Poe or Lovecraft).

One year went by quickly thanks to the great experience that leave in a foreign country was for me, and after a break of a couple of months in the sunny beaches of Cadiz, I moved to Birmingham. I lived one year in a University campus and met lots of great malakas, my ex-girlfriend and other friendly people with who I enjoyed my last year of student life.

Then London. I’ve been here for the last 4 years and I’m still discovering new places and getting surprised by all the things that this city has to offer. Now that I’m (nearly) immune to the weather So I decided to start this blog to share the thoughts and experiences with my friends, and to summarise my live in the UK. Before I’m too busy with a child to loose time in these silly things…

This it is, and nothing more...

PS: forgive my basic command of English. Long time since I opened a grammar book…