Have A3 boarding pass, will travel

Mrs O and I are off for a long weekend in southern Spain tomorrow.  We're doing a greatest-hits tour of the places we know well - Jerez and Cadiz.  I adore Andalusia; it's so vital and so brutal.  We've never been there this early in the year, and it's going to be bastard-hot.

We normally head down to Al-Andalus in late September at the earliest.  Even then it's generally scorching.  I've a photo from Jerez of one of those giant thermometers you get outside pharmacies (pharmacists, why?).  It reads 39 degrees.  So presumably in August it's like sitting in an inglenook fireplace whilst dressed like a Norwegian trawler man.  Oh, well, the hotel has a pool, and Cadiz is on the Atlantic, so what's the worst that can happen to a pasty London Irish weed, comme moi?

The greatest pleasure on Earth has to be cowering from the relentless heat of an Andalusian day until the sun begins its descent and then heading off to a sheltered bar somewhere that has a view of the sea or a river and sipping a freezing-cold fino sherry.  The astringent quality slakes the thirst no nothing else I've ever quaffed.  Suddenly, the limbs lighten and the brain springs back into life for a few hours.  Colours appear more vivid and you just want to embrace life.  Necking Guinness whilst listening to sean nos in a dark pub in the west of Ireland is fantastic, but it doesn't get close to this.  Nosirree.

Ambre Solaire and lager

There's another mini-break looming on the horizon this weekend.  The missus and I are off to Belgium tomorrow for a couple of nights.  We're heading east to catch a bike race, Liège-Bastogne-Liège.  I appreciate that this is some (i.e., most) people's idea of hell, and I understand and celebrate that stance on the subject.  Imagine what the world would be like if we all enjoyed the same things: that's right, even duller than it currently is.  I'm all for diversity of opinion.

Anyways, I'm really looking forward to it.  Belgium is the spiritual home of road racing.  It is to them what football is to the English, or rugby to the Kiwis.  Everyone there understands the sport, and has forthright opinions on it.  No such thing as neutral in these matters.  The Scottish pro rider David Millar once observed that he particularly enjoyed racing in Belgium because "it's so damn...well, Belgian."  

I concur.  Yes, Belgium isn't the most beautiful country on Earth, or the most exciting, but it is its own man.  It's happy in its own skin.  It cares not two hoots if you enjoy or even understand its ways. But if you take pains to study the place and understand its people, your efforts will be met with open arms and a winning smile.

It's strange how difference nations hold different opinions of each other.  Apparently the Dutch think the Belgians rather "other" and exotic although they only live about 50 miles away.  For example I was once on a cycling holiday in The Netherlands and spotted a Belgian restaurant.  I couldn't resist a closer look, so that evening Mrs O and I booked a table.  We didn't know what to expect.  I'd never been particularly bowled over by the cuisine in Belgium, save for the hand-wrought chocolates, which are rather good. 

The food was fairly workaday if I'm honest: fine but not brilliant, but the decor of the restaurant was a work of art.  It was kitted-out in dark wood panelling, heavy 19th century furniture and doilies, billions of doilies.  It was like being inside the drawer of a giant Welsh dresser.  This is at odds with the prevailing Dutch aesthetic, which is functional and easy-wide.  This contrast in visual sensibilities and the tradition of dangerous monastic beer gave the Belgians a romantic and wild-eyed quality that the Dutch felt they rather lacked.  I couldn't see it, myself.  

I suppose we're all guilty of this to some extent.  The English tend to think of the west of Ireland as a cross between Middle Earth and Cornwall.  The truth, I can tell you from family experience, is rather more prosaic: ill-fitting jeans on ill-fitting buttocks, sat in Hiace vans outside supermarkets, and drizzle...plenty of drizzle.

Mustn't grumble

There's a chap who works in my office who habitually looks under so much pressure that the expression on his face alone is enough to give me fantom shooting pains up my arms.  He's very ruddy of jowl too and some 14 stones overweight.  

His job requires a lot of travel, and he's never without his trusty Samsonite wheeled suitcase by his side, least he be sent to South Georgia on business at a moment's notice.  It's like a faithful hound, this case.  It's even stands guard when he's at the urinal in the executive washroom.  I dread the day I see him without it, for fear it might have been run over or put down by the council for having attacked a Lollipop Lady, and he bursts into tears telling me.

The strange thing is that despite all the effing-about he's forced to do, and the manifest damage this is dishing out to his chassis and psychological well-being, he really appears to enjoy his job.  It just serves to illustrate the truth of the old adage that pain and pleasure are but two sides of the same coin.