Madrid

Walking out that first night looking for somewhere to have dinner, I noticed a handmade poster in a bar window not far from the Puerta del Sol. It was advertising a televised game between Real Madrid and Real Zaragoza. What? When? Tonight? But I had checked the Real Madrid website! Yet this wasn't a scheduled league game - it was a cup match - Copa del Rey semi-final second leg. The time was eight o' clock and the match was due to kick off at nine. Forget dinner - I was down the Metro steps and on my way to join an army of 75,000.

And then I was there - outside the Bernabeu Stadium, minus one essential aid - a match ticket! Greedy ticket touts tried to squeeze £100 from me. I asked people, waited at turnstiles, went to the ticket offices but no use. Time was ticking away. It looked like I'd be having dinner after all. Then the guy behind the pre-paid ticket counter called me over - "No, no money... It's a gift from Real Madrid to you!" And there I was like Charlie outside the chocolate factory with my golden ticket. Rushed up the steps of Torre C, right up to the third level then out into the light, a sharp intake of breath beholding the finest soccer stadium in the world. The players were out and tumultuous noise filled the night air - horns and chanting from "The Ultras". The game was utterly absorbing. Madrid were three up within twenty minutes. Beckham's visionary passing was a delight to behold while Zidane was strong and determined right till the end. The "meringues" won 4-0 - sadly one goal short of their target having, quite incredibly, lost the first leg 6-1. For a lifelong football fan this was a truly unforgettable experience.

Other highlights of the trip - The Museo America (Pre-Columbus artefacts from the Americas), The Reine Sofia Art Gallery (Contemporary art - including Picasso's "Guernica"), The train ride to the winding medieval streets of Toledo where I ate stewed quail and of course the three hours spent in the Prado National Art Museum - many stupendous exhibits.

Here's my album :-

From the top: Tio Pepe sign over Puerta del Sol square, Statue and communications tower by the Museo America. Statue of Neptune, Atzec carving in Museo America. Happy dog in Toledo, Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. Segment of "The Garden of Earthly Delights" - Hieronymus Bosch circa 1500 (Prado), Toledo rooftops. "Fabula" by El Greco (Prado) & Yorkshire Pudding boozing in Toledo street.

Break

Dear Visitors - Blogging pause so that Yorkshire Pudding can have a well-earned break in Madrid, Spain. I'll be back at the weekend with news of this little Spanish adventure.... Buenos dias! YP

Images

This is a little challenge I picked up from another blogger. I am sure we have all dipped into the mind boggling library that is Google Image Search. Now the thing is to select images from the very first page you call up - no cheating by checking out succeeding pages. See the headings below with my results.
City and Province/State/County where you were born. Current town/city of residence.
Your names - first and last.

Grandmother's first name.

Favourite food.
Favourite drink.
Favourite smell.

Favourite song.

Concessions

Okay, so when my masked band of cellphone vigilantes begin the planned assault on mobile phone culture, we will make certain concessions. For example, people who live in remote areas - like Amy in North Carolina - will be able to possess them and the People's Anti-Mobile Committee will also recognise their usefulness with regard to children's safety - thanks to Jane in Northampton UK. Kids will still be allowed to phone home in emergencies and parents will still be able to contact them. We also accept that busy businesspeople and tradesmen - like Brad in Seattle - often find mobiles useful in respect of work.

Steve, the Manchester City fan (Occupied Country) , appears to think that mobiles - instant interpersonal communication - were part of a science fiction vision that people shared in the sixties but that was never my vision. I am more drawn to the lifestyle of the original Australian aboriginals - naked, unchanging, at peace and in harmony with their often harsh environment. They lived like that for at least ten thousand years. That's my dreamworld.

Regarding concessions, I recall the story of a couple I know. They had been walking in the fells near Ben Nevis in Scotland. She didn't see a rocky hole beneath the heather and in a painful moment broke her ankle. He had to walk about five miles over rough terrain to the nearest house with a telephone, leaving his wife shivering in a wintry hollow. With a mobile, I guess they might have been able to summon help more rapidly. So, the Anti-Phone Fundamentalists will allow hikers and mountaineers to possess them for use in emergencies.

In the UK, a troubling phenomenon has hit the papers in the last few months. It is called "happy slapping" and it involves nasty teenagers attacking innocent strangers while the incident is recorded on mobile phone cameras. There have even been some cases of serious sexual assaults being captured - presumably for the titillation and amusement of the cruel and morally bankrupt perverts who engage in such disgusting behaviour. After the mobile phone fatwah begins, anyone found to have used their phones in this way will be coated in sheep's blood before being transported to the Amazon basin to be used as piranha bait.

Mobiles

In America, I believe that they are known as cellphones. Over here in the UK we know them as mobile phones - or more latterly, "mobiles". Whatever they are called, I hate them.

I have never owned one myself and I hope to end my days having never felt the need to purchase one of these moneysuckers. And yet I seem to inhabit a world where just about everybody else is glued to the damned things. In the morning, as I drive to work, I see people walking down the streets, standing at bus-stops, sitting in cars or buses, all gabbing into these technological comforters. Who the hell are they talking to anyway? At eight o' clock in the morning, I don't want to talk to anybody.

At night-time, there are ads for mobiles on the television, programmes sponsored by mobile suppliers - while at the pub, twenty-somethings arrange flashy mobiles next to beermats - waiting for Wall Street or lost cousins to call. Surely, this defeats the idea of going out - to get away from it all - instead these people are sending out a visible message - what I'm doing now is not enough, I need a call from outside to spice up the moment.

Then there's texting. Millions of messages in moronic English, dancing through the atmosphere -"cn i c u?", "lol", how r u?" reducing our wonderful language with its endless possibilities to ugly, functional soundbites.

It used to be that when a telephone rang, there was an insistent and unaltered ringing call that endured through the years. Now all these annually updated mobiles have their own "ringtones". I have lost count of the number of meetings I have attended where mobile interruptions have occurred. Pretending embarrassment, phone owners scuttle for their bags to the sound of "God Save The Queen", "Crazy Frog" or "Greensleeves". They grin their sorries while the rest of the meeting grins back as if to say - "Oh it's happened to me before now - aren't they devilish little things?" - all except me - glowering back as if to say, "You f***ing moron! Next time make sure that goddam thing is switched off and change your f***ing ringtone to a tune that fits your personality - you know something like Three Blind Mice or The Death March!"

In my house, I am afraid I have to concede that there are currently three mobile phones. Shirley, Ian and Frances each have them. With Ian especially, having a mobile has been like agreeing to tax himself further each month. He pays out around £2 a day. The bloody thing is always going off. He has texted so often I am surprised that he hasn't got repetitive strain syndrome - you know those delicate little muscles and tendons at the base of the thumb - they surely weren't designed for all this activity. It's a health timebomb.

I'm thinking of forming a terrorist group to rid the world of cellphones. Dressed like masked superheroes, my followers will snatch the offending articles wherever we go. We will scramble all text messaging so that readers only see Martian like symbols and nobody will be able to register any ringtone other than The Birdie Song and the powers that be that are tracking our every move through mobile phone location, won't be able to find us any more.

Cartoon

I post this cartoon at great risk to my personal safety, in the full and awful knowledge that it will cause enormous offence to any visiting Christian bloggers. As word gets round about my heinous offence against the Almighty, I fully expect crowds of placard carrying religious zealots, nuns and Seventh Day Adventists to crowd outside in the street chanting for my blood. But I don't care - publish and be damned is what I say! There God sits at his computer, playing with our destinies like a teenager zapping aliens in a shoot-em-up computer game. This isn't the benign, all-seeing God of the established church and The Bible but a mischievous technological overseer - "as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport". Yes, I know, I'm wicked! Perhaps this is because long ago, men in longboats came from Denmark and colonised Yorkshire. The evil was already in my Viking veins... (Pause) Oh Beelzebub! They're already outside burning the Yorkshire flag and smashing my car with baseball bats, grey haired women in cardigans, choirboys, Catholic priests and charity shop helpers shouting "Death to All Cartoonists!". Gotta go...

February

"February made me shiver/With every paper I delivered"

They said this British winter would be one of the harshest on record - by "them" I mean the meteorologists and the dumbass newspapers. I wish I'd kept some clippings of their scaremongering reports. We're into February now and to me the winter has seemed pretty mild, rather green with very little precipitation in January. Okay tonight it is chilly - my thermometer is saying minus one - but to some people that's camping weather!

I have become a little obsessive about feeding wild birds. Lord knows when this habit crept in to my daily schedule but for months I've been out there night and early morning replenishing the bird table and scattering leftovers in the middle of our lawn - well out of the pouncing range of local moggies like our Boris. Even though we're only a mile out of Sheffield city centre, we get a good variety of birds. My nourishment campaign has attracted a growing gang of sparrows and there are wood pigeons, magpies, a jay, blackbirds, a little wren, a robin, bluetits, collared doves and crows. If I ever miss a day, I feel guilty:-

SPARROW LEADER: Hey guys, where's the seeds today?
SID SPARROW: Lazy bastard! Bet he was up late for work again.
BRAD SPARROW: No time to chuck us a few scraps.
SPARROW LEADER: Ever see that Hitchcock film, "The Birds"?
MAGGIE MAGPIE (circling menacingly) Now there's an idea!

With February, the days lengthen. Even this morning as I stumbled into our bathroom, I noticed that the grey light was less grey and when I got downstairs the birds were already beginning breakfast. Far ahead I can see summer barbecues and me lying on the lawn again staring up at swallows dancing on the air under cauliflower clouds. Time moves on, day by day. It's hard to believe that my brother in France will be fifty five this week. It seems like yesterday when we were all boys and there was mum and dad and Oscar the cat and Joe Grubham swept the village streets and Mrs Austwick sold us homemade sweets and fireworks ahead of Guy Fawkes Night and we made dens in haystacks and there was Doctor Baker and Mrs Jordan with her rosy cheeks and the summers were golden and endless... but this was all long ago, long ago.