Surprise

The poor bloke. He gets a lot of stick from me for being no good at romantic surprises. Until this week I could think of two over the course of our relationship. 1) When he told me he was taking me to McDonalds and instead we pulled up outside our favourite Mexican, where he'd booked a table. 2) When he asked me to get him some water from the fridge and I grumblingly did so, only to find a bottle of perfume in there waiting for me where the jug of water should have been. Ten out of ten, both times.

For some men this sort of thing comes naturally. You hear about girlfriends being whisked away to Paris for the weekend on surprise trips by their significant others, who have secretly acquired their passports and even packed a suitcase of all the clothes they'll need for the trip. Surely they're embellishing the truth? Or going out with men who are secretly gay?

Anyway, I digress. Yes I berate the bloke for being crap in this area – but this week he came up trumps. It started out on the wrong foot though, when I arrived home to find an extremely grumpy bloke, peeved I was two hours later than he'd expected me to be.

We got into a stupid row about whether or not I'd in fact told him that morning, while he was in the shower and half asleep, that I would be late. But it was weirdly interrupted by him asking me to fetch him some pipas (salt-covered sunflower seeds) from the kitchen.

Not wanting further arguments I stomped off to the kitchen in a huff. But when I opened the cupboard to get the pipas my brain stopped working for a moment. I was seeing a brand new iPhone in there, but my mind just wasn't processing it.

He'd completely got me. Maybe if he'd asked me to get him a bottle of water and put it in the fridge like last time I would have twigged. But no.

An iPhone! He'd got me an iPhone – the only thing I'd been coveting for at least the past year, maybe more. As far as romantic surprises go this was the numero uno. Far more superior than jewellery, flowers or chocolates or any of that stuff. And better still, it was the third generation model, and therefore better than the one he had. I now have a better phone than my techno nerd boyfriend, oh how that must have hurt him to order. A sure sign of true love.

In my days of English teaching, a student told me that if you expect men to come up with romantic surprises, you will always be disappointed. It's just not in their nature, she said. Especially not Spanish men, who don't like to plan things, make dinner reservations, and prefer to just go with the flow. For special occasions you have to tell them exactly what you want, and most of the time if you're reasonable they'll be happy to make you happy. For celebrating Mother's Day this enterprising lady had all but given her husband a list of what she wanted – breakfast in bed, followed by an extra two hours sleep while he looked after the kids then lunch at a restaurant, which he would choose for them and book.

I liked her attitude. It was easy and everyone was happy. She was clever. (that's probably why she was a company director.) So I thought I would just take the same tack with the bloke, who has shown himself to be very romantic in other ways, but crap at surprises. But perhaps I was wrong on that last detail.

The iPhone incident has shown me that he does have it in him to catch me off guard in the most fantastic way.

Memory lane at Munki’s 30th

I saw her a split second before she saw me. You know how it is. That strange recognition light turns on in a comfortable part of your brain. Features automatically realign into an expectant and friendly greeting. Then there’s nothing to do but wait.

We locked eyes and she stopped mid stride, almost did a double take. Then a smile lit up her face and we were exclaiming each other’s names and reaching for hands. Two ghosts of work and social past reunited in god knows how many years, we couldn’t even hazard a guess.

Anna was just as I remembered her. Petite and beautiful like a porcelain doll, effortlessly feminine and chic in a way I’ll never be. But she was the same and different – more worldly looking, more sophisticated – and I told her so.

“We both look so much more grown up now,” she said in return.

We began our journalism careers together on the same London dance music magazine. I was the editorial assistant and she had just been selected for a graduate scheme – a bright young thing come from Sheffield, where she’d finished university and ended up totally skint, staying on her mate’s floor and working in a call centre to keep the wolf from the door.

This was her big break, as was it mine. I’d muscled my way in via work experience, leaving a job behind in the Civil Service, Policy Correspondance Unit. I felt like I’d won the lottery.

So Anna arrived, and we became fast friends and sometime partners in crime. Skulking around festivals, free drinks, club nights and house parties, circa 2000. I never ceased to be amazed at her ability to stay out for eight hours straight in heels I probably couldn’t even walk round the room once in. And she never smudged her lipstick either.

Eventually she went freelance and I went back to University, and we lost each other in the accelerated mess of London living. But before that we shared many memorable moments.

One particular night stuck in my head. One of my many flat warming parties (me and my then boyfriend seemed to move house every six months back then). Surrounded by red wine stains on the hours earlier pristine cream carpet. Lying on fronts, legs lolling in the air like kids at story time, telling each other: “No, you don’t understand – you just don’t understand how gorgeous you are.”

We laughed about it and many other silly little snapshots from our shared past.

It was certainly a night for a hop, skip and a jump down memory lane. It was my best friend Munki’s 30th birthday party. And in between just watching her enjoy the party she worked so hard on making happen (this I did with what I imagine to be the air of a proud parent) I played over a similar scene as the one with Anna, with many other key players from my past.

It really felt like a work reunion when I got a tap on the shoulder from Stan. Not only did we all work for the same magazine, but me and Stan shared an apartment – Casa Wonky – during my first season working for our magazine in Ibiza.

Where to even begin with the reminiscing?

Me: “Do you remember the time you swapped clothes with Phoebe that New Year’s Eve, and you walked down the street and no one even noticed?”

Him: “that time I had to change a tire on Jimmy’s car and you didn’t even get out of the front seat?”

Me: “What was it exactly that happened to Giles’ car – something about a television landing on the roof?”

Ibiza was a whole new world. I really had no clue what to expect. And Stan, having done it all for many years in a row, was something of a guru to me. We shared a room, though we were hardly ever in it at the same time.

Somewhere near the start of the season he told me: “Ibiza changes you – you wait and see.”

And he was right. But perhaps not in the way I expected. I didn’t turn my back on modern life to become a hippy and live in a squat. But I did make my mind up that leaving London was the right thing to do. More than that – Spanish culture, I thought, suited me nicely. It would do just fine.

So there we were, a decade on from when we first got acquainted. “So what have you been doing with yourself for the past ten years?” Anna asked.

“I hardly know,” I told her. “A lot of growing up. I learned a lot. I thought I knew it all when I was 20. turns out I knew shit.”

“Do you ever wish you could go do it all again, knowing than what you know now?” she asked.

For me it was an easy and iron clad no. My mistakes and fuck ups shaped me into who I am today, maybe even more than the things I’ve done right. They moved me along my merry way, stumbling to where in the world I am now. Small bits of the journey sucked, sure. But I wouldn’t change a thing – not even the bits that make me cringe.

It was all pretty philosophical stuff for 4am Sunday morning as we stood there in a disused leather factory-turned party venue in Shoreditch.

In days gone by we might have got the shots in and set out to find as much trouble as it’s possible to find. But times had changed. We were all flagging. I was gulping banana and strawberry smoothie straight from the carton and Stan had to drive back to Kent. He wasn’t entirely confident about where he’d parked his car – a dodgy type had asked him if he wanted to buy any acid before he’d even reached the end of the road.

So they left, with promises to come see me in Madrid, which I hope they keep. And I turned back to the party, replaying past scenes of my life in my head like chapters of a DVD. Till someone drew me back to the present day with a touch of the arm and something indecipherable shouted in the ear. It was definitely time to stop being wistful and start dancing.

Role models

It's an interesting question – who are your role models? And who were your role models while you were growing up? We got onto discussing it at a work lunch while talking about the typical things potential employers ask you when you're going for a new job. It's probably something you've sat down and thought about yourself, the night before a big interview. What did you say? And did you actually mean it? Or was it just a calculated comment - something you thought sounded good, would help you get the job?

Some of us at lunch found it easy to pick people out. There were the obvious current ones – Barack and Michelle Obama, Nelson Mandella – and the obligatory joke ones – Jordan, Kerry Katona and Belen Esetvan.

Me, I find it almost impossible to see famous people or celebs as role models. At first I thought it was the job I do that's made me feel jaded towards these so called 'stars'. But If I think back, long before my days of celeb news journalism, I never looked up to these kinds of people and emulated them. Sure there are a lot of people in the public eye that do great work for charity, are leaders in their fields, are inspirational in many ways. But none of them speak directly to me. None have made me get off my arse and say "wow, I want to be like you".

As one of our team pointed out, if you're in a minority, you need role models like this because often, you don't have much else to go off. She was the only black person in her Uni, for example. But I didn't have that issue.

“But you must have had someone you looked up to while you were growing up?” I was asked.

So I thought long and hard about it. Yes there was someone - my big brother Mike.

I have two brothers. I love them both of course, but it was Mike – ten years older than me – who became my hero.

He taught me it's OK to be different, good in fact to take your own road in this life. Break away and go somewhere both literally and figuratively far away from your everyday existence.

My earliest memories of my brother are of him painting. Doing his A Level art projects. Making huge clay heads and explosions of colour, which, if I was lucky, he would let me help him name. And painting his dungeons and dragons figures. Orcs, dragons and elves. I could sit and watch him for hours. He would tell me stories about ghosts and monsters to scare me, and sometimes he succeeded. But I didn't mind. I knew then he wasn't like other brothers.

He left home to train to become a priest when I was about eight years old, but realising that wasn't for him went to Liverpool to do a Fine Art and Theology degree – becoming the first person in our family ever to go to University. From that moment on he became almost like a mythical creature to me. I would look forward to when he would come home, bringing tales from Uni and occasionally friends or maybe even a girlfriend. Other worldly creatures who were vegetarians and spoke with strange accents. He would recommend me books – as he still does today – and I would devour each one. Everything from Tolkien to Stephen King and Richard Matheson – little gems that thrilled me because they told me what he liked, and it was all dark and interesting, and I liked it too.

One thing that really sticks in my mind was the time he picked me up from my guitar lesson after school. All of a sudden there was a commotion outside the school gates as the kids – and probably some of the parents too - crowded round to stare at the strange looking man with shoulder length orange hair, a manky looking jumper and jeans covered in paint and intricate drawings. Probably the sort of person you'd see every day in Eighties' London, but certainly not in Durham. At that point my ten-year-old self thought my brother was the coolest person in the world. Truth be known I still do.

He's a man of few words, never one to blather on about pointless crap. But when he does speak it's worth listening to. When he told me "Whatever you do, get out of Durham – go see the world" I took it as my gospel. And he led by example. Working in an orphanage in Romania, then after getting his PGSE qualification, going off to Africa to teach.

If I thought the stories from Uni were amazing, the ones from Africa made them look like a quiet night down the local boozer. I laughed so hard I thought my sides would split at one in particular – about one Christmas in Botswana. Him and his girlfriend had made a Christmas cake but a monkey came in through the window and pinched it. So Mike chased it around the room, screaming at it. He scared the poor monkey so much that it started pissing itself. But it didn’t let go of the cake. So there he was, running around his house, slipping on bits of cake and monkey piss, determined to catch the monkey. A lot different to any Christmas I’d ever had.

I wanted to be able to tell those kinds of stories. I wanted to travel. I wanted to be like my brother in so many ways. He is so creative – such a great artist. Like him I took A level art and my teacher quite unkindly told me I would never be as good as my brother. I was so angry at that I worked my arse off and managed to get an A, though I never had an ounce of the talent of my brother with a paintbrush.

Instead, words became my drawing materials. Writing is my creative outlet, and it’s something I’m damn lucky to be doing as a living today. But it might have been a completely different story if my brother and his girlfriend hadn’t let me live on the living room floor of their one-bedroom apartment in London after I dropped out of my ill chosen law degree. What if I hadn’t had that six months to sort my head out? If I’d gone back to Durham I doubt I’d be sitting here now, typing in my front room in Madrid. God knows where I’d be.

So thank you big bro. You paved the way for me to go and have adventures. Because of you, our folks weren't worried when I told them I was quitting London for Ibiza. Weren't surprised when I moved onto Barcelona and then swapped that for Madrid. And neither was I afraid, and never have I regretted anything I’ve done – and I’ve got you to thank me for that. I dance to the beat of my own drum but you gave me the confidence to find my own rhythm years ago.

Moving on and staying put

As I've said before, living in Spain, you're used to saying goodbye. There aren't many who come here with the intention of putting down permanent roots. You'd think that after a while you'd get used to it, but you don’t – you still get that little sad flower pushing up shoots through the soil of your happy everyday existence.

This week I had to say goodbye to my longest-standing and closest work friend, Rachel – a girl I've seen almost every working day, (bar holidays and sick days of course) over the last nearly three years. And now suddenly I won't see her anymore.

She'll still be working for our company, in the London office. But it just won’t be the same. I’ll miss sharing the morning cup of tea with her, I’ll miss moaning about work and will have to just keep it to myself when I find something really interesting or gross when I'm scouring the papers first thing in the morning. Most of all I'll just miss her.

It's hard to pin point the moment when your work colleagues pass the point of just being someone you see every day and move into the happy territory of being your friend. But somewhere along the way, many of them just do.

Being outside of England, and working with Brits means you feel bonded together – the group of away fans sat in the home seats - more than people in your average office would. You have immediate shared ground. you go from lamenting the loss of pickled onion Monster Munch to moaning about amount of red tape there is when you want to do something like renewing your passport.

But all the time you're all just patting yourselves on the back for managing to live in Spain. All of it gives you a sense of togetherness.

And on top of this, in our office, we've lived some shared experiences we won't ever forget. I know I’ve cried on Rachel’s shoulder a few times, and she's returned the favour. We both started around the same time, though all of that is in the past now.

At her leaving lunch we were each theorising about what our next moves would be. One girl is toying with the idea of going home to do an MA, one says she feels things have to change for her and her German husband and their two kids, and she's fighting the idea that sooner or later they'll end up leaving.

Me, this is it for me now. This is my home, full stop. And much though I once thought that would scare me, it doesn't. When I first left England I had ideas of going to live in South America. To teach English in Japan maybe for a good few years. And while I might visit those places now I know I won't live in them.

Madrid is where I've put down roots. I've got my bloke - whose family are now my family - my lovely friends, and even my little dog Dani. And one day, hopefully sooner than later, I'll start my own family here.

It's not so much that 'this is it', but rather that 'this is my happily ever after'.

Hen weekend

****Please skip the first few paragraphs of this if you are offended by words for ladies' rude bits. Thanks.

"I'm always saying cunt, I just forget about it," said Laura. "Cunt this and cunt that. There's nothing quite the same in Spanish. Coño just isn't the same."

"It's true," I chipped in. "you get little old ladies saying that on the news here. It's not the same as cunt – it's just so horrible."

"Twat is good though," said Karate. "Twat is well funny."

"Minge is the best," said Kate. "But it's best when a Spanish person says it. I taught it to Ignacio and he won't stop saying it. Meenge, meenge meenge."

We all laughed at that. And there we were. One native Spanish speaker and three English girls discussing the different words for a woman's nether regions. We also threw snatch into the mix then pondered why, when they all mean the same thing, do they all have different levels of offensiveness?

Frankly, it wasn't really what I was expecting in terms of your typical conversation at a hen party.

But then what had I been expecting, from the conversation and the whole weekend in general? Dildos on heads? Male strippers and whipped cream? Not really – I know the bride, Jane, well enough to discern that – thankfully – that's not her bag. Good: I rate that kind of thing as about as much fun as chewing nettles with a mouth ulcer.

Until this one I'd never been to a hen party before. By the time close friends started getting hitched I'd up sticks and left England.

Living in Spain means it's just not financially viable to go back to England for the wedding and the hen, so the hen gets forfeited.

But this one was in Barcelona, so it was rude not to. Plus rather than a trawling bars and clubs and drinking yourself into oblivion this was a weekend in a lovely sounding casa rural in the mountains near Vic – and it involved paintball, something I've always wanted to do.

So while the stags headed to Madrid where they'd be doing their best to traumatise the poor groom Jim, I took the AVE to Barcelona and we set off in the car for the country house.

Just as we got out of the city the heavens opened and the sky turned black. Once we got to the mountains it was beginning to feel more like Evil Dead with each passing second, and the icing on the cake was the Tom Tom trying to get us to take the road to the local cemetery instead of the road to the house.

Finally we turned onto the right dirt track and after a kilometre of steep, near heart-attack inducing hairpin turns we were there. God knows how Jane managed to drive us up without having a panic attack.

We were in for the night. All that was left was to get to know the other hens and not too pissed and not go to bed too late as to fuck up paintballing for the next day.

There's always that slight bit of anticipation when you go into a situation where you don't know everyone. It's that kind of first day at university feeling – what if no-one talks to me, what if they're all annoying or worse still, boring? But there was no need to worry – everyone was lovely, we all got on amazingly, and before we knew it, it was 2.00am and time to drag ourselves away from the karaoke and to bed. The alarm was set for 8.30am so we could get up and do some killing.

It wasn't too bad to get out of bed the next day. And I felt a damned side better after I got a call from bloke at about 9am telling me the stags had just left our house. It sounded like carnage. They'd drank about 50 beers in the first hour, dressed Jim up in his special outfit – a lovely golden catsuit, wrestling mask and dog collar – and toured the tapas bars in Barrio de las Letras.

In one place he decadent lads had shelled out for half a kilo of percebes, but spoiled the air of sophistication by one of them accidentally pouring a pint of beer over some poor girl's head.

On his travels Jim even bumped into another English guy dressed like him – no mean feat when your material of choice if gold lame. He was stuck with it though, after loosing his clothes along the way somewhere. They'd ended up back at ours and had trashed our flat while drinking till we were getting up for paintball. Bloke later told me it took three hours to clean up (onlot for them to come back the next night and trash it again.

No matter - However bad I felt getting up at 8.30am after six hours sleep, I couldn't feel as bad as them, I reasoned.

Paintball was definitely the high point of the weekend. Such an adrenaline rush, making a dash for the flag you had to get back to your own base. I was physically shaking while crouching behind the various trees and bits of wood they put there for cover.

I always knew I was a bit wrong in the head, but there was something really satisfying about shooting someone in the other team – hearing them scream when the’bullet’ made contact. Anyone who's done it and tells you it hurts isn't lying. As well as a good number of body hits I took one in the neck, which bruised up to look like a hickey. Brilliant. That's what you get for doing kamikaze runs towards enemy lines. I can still taste the paint in my mouth now.

After a few games some of the hens dropped out, leaving the hardcore of me, Kate, Chris, and Karate to join up with a stag party, who were swigging beer as they went. The poor groom – he got covered in beer, then at the end we were all invited to just shoot him at point blank range to use up the rest of our ammunition. Best he had some shiners the next day.

Why is it that the main point of a stag seems to be to inflict as much pain and embarrassment on the groom as possible? Does he deserve it for leaving his bachelor days behind? I definitely think they get the bum deal.

Our hen was lovely, and it was so well organised. Kate had it booked up months in advance. Lovely Anna did all the cooking (for 15 people!) and it only cost us 12 euro a head. And equally lovely Nicola packed a hire car with booze and drove it up to the house. And that only cost us 19 euro – plus we went home with two bottles of wine each.

The boys bless them didn't seem to know what they were doing almost up to the point that they went out. At one point they ended up walking round mala saña for 45 minutes trying to find a suitable bar they all liked. Not a problem for most, apart from poor Jim, who was wearing a dress with no front, heels, a string of pearls, and not much else.

Even though they’re probably having the week from hell right now, I'm sure if you asked them they would say they had more fun than us. And we, of course, would say the same.

Because that’s the point of it all in the end – fun, whatever that is to you. It could be gunning down your mates in cold blood and ending up black and blue. It could be doing Queen power ballads on the karaoke. It could be drinking till you fall over or dressing your best mate up to look like the world’s worst tranny.

It doesn’t matter – it’ll all make great stories for the speeches at the wedding, whatever it is.

Fright Night – a Valentine’s Day date with a difference

I want to hate Valentine’s Day. I really do. Valentine’s Day, with its nazi romance-by-numbers, corny clichés and billboard naffness. I want to ignore it and coolly say: “Oh no, we don’t celebrate things like that,” when people ask what plans me and the bloke have for February 14. Every day is Valentine’s Day for us. We don’t need an excuse to be romantic, etc, etc.

But truth be known I don’t hate it. I can’t quite manage to hate it. For all it’s been commercialised to within an inch of it’s life and is just another excuse for the consumer industry to sell us more shit we don’t need, I just love the base idea of it. A day devoted to the special person in your life.

Yet when I think back to Feb 14ths gone by I can’t think of a single one that stands out from the others. But I certainly won’t have that problem about Valentine’s Day 2010, which I’m sure I (and the bloke too) will remember until we’re 80.

I’d told bloke to keep Saturday night free, as I had a surprise for him. He agreed, and proceeded to display a range of emotions for the rest of the week, from mild excitement to slight fear.

This continued, right up until five minutes before we left the house on Saturday night. “Please tell me where we’re going,” he begged. “I don’t like surprises.” Then, with a look of complete horror: “Oh my god, we’re not going to the place with the transvestites, are we? Please tell me we’re not.”

After I’d faithfully promised there were no transvestites involved, we grabbed a taxi into town, and departed on Calle San Roque. As we approached the place where we were going to spend the evening, I felt a pang of disappointment when the bloke said: “Oh I know what this is.”

But his guess: “It’s that nice Mexican place, isn’t it,” was so far off it wasn’t even in the same dimension. We walked through the door to be greeted by this sight:



“Oh my god, what the hell is this?” said the bloke, half laughing, eyes wide with shock. “What have you done?”

What I’d done was booked us into el Ultimo Mordisco (the last bite) Self titled “the most terrifying restaurant in Madrid. Twee house track Lady by Mojo was playing loudly over the soundsystem, but the CD kept skipping. Sound effects of people screaming and what sounded like Vincent Price laughing were playing over the top.

“Do you think this is going to be alright?” said the bloke nervously, trying to look everywhere at once. “What on earth are we going to find in there?”

Before he could make a run for it, We were greeted by a man wearing a maid’s costume, (ah so much for my promise of no cross dressers) wig, and huge platform shoes. He said the lady of the house, the Duquesa wanted to welcome us but she had a terrible hangover. And she was having some trouble with her daughter, who had been left at the altar.

He took us through and showed us to our seats, and left us to peruse the menu –shaped like a coffin and featuring dishes with names like Pesadilla (nightmare), Hombre Lobo (wearwolf) and Fantasma. (ghost)

The place - I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Decked out in skulls, snakes, cracked mirrors and extoplasm. Gloomy as hell, but with a clubtastic lazer system, weird electric fake crystal chandeliers and flashing mini LED trees brightening the place up.

As the bloke put it: “This whole thing is so wrong. The staff are wrong, the music is wrong, even the food is wrong. I don’t want to eat it ‘cos I’m having psychosis it’s come from a dead person. It’s like every horror film we’ve ever watched rolled into one. It’s brilliant.”

He was right. We soon got to meet the Duquesa – the maid, now in a different outfit and blonde curly poodle wig and the splitting double of the real life Duquesa de Alba – and her daughter, fully decked out in a wedding dress and corpse-like makeup. Their whole aim was to mess with your head, whether it was getting up on stage and performing a routine to a mash up of Mecano songs or telling you they’d put drugs in the sangria.

I could hardly eat my food either. My solomillo came with a frambuesa sauce that just looked like congealed blood.

The music was similarly designed to freak you out. It ranged from The Final Countdown by Europe, to some unidentifiable early Nineties techno to Thriller, with all kinds of weird noises thrown in for good measure.

To my absolute delight there was even a bingo at the end of the night. And the icing on the cake – bloke won. So we came home with the possibly the best prize I’ve ever seen up for grabs in any competition, ever – a garish looking fluffy cat toy that raps and wiggles about with a mouse hanging from it’s mouth. We spent ages making it sing when we got home and trying to figure out what it was saying, and in what language. “Filthy bitch” and “mother and father” were in there somewhere, but beyond that, it’s hard to tell.

So that was Valentine’s Day my way. Not everyone’s cup of tea, and certainly not many people’s idea of ‘romance’. But just as I thought he would, bloke loved it. And our shared love of things like that, things which are quite off key, which is one of the things I really love about our relationship.

We really are two weird peas in a weird pod.


***Click here to see the rappin' cat in action

It's in his kiss… or is it?

It's a situation you might have found yourself in once upon a time. You're on your first (or maybe second) date and it's looking promising. The wine is flowing, the company is interesting, and you've found yourself getting giggly and flirty. Much to your delight, you fancy the pants off your companion for the evening, and you realise the feeling is mutual as he leans in for that magic first kiss.

Then joy turns to horror as your date clamps himself to your mouth and tries to extract your tonsils while covering half your face in a shower of saliva. Think the face hugger from Aliens, and you've pretty much there.

Though I have had that experience in my life before, in the comfortable realms of long-term monogamy it's now a distant memory. The same cannot be said of my mate Two Shandies. On her continuing quest for her half orange, she has come up against this slight hurdle in her latest conquest Mr Pony.

Mr Pony – christened by PB due to the fact he's a bit posh and likes to ride horses round his parent's ranch, is currently number one on Shandies' internet dating list.

Below was the lowdown after their unexpected first date (Shandies was on her way out to the gym when he called, but ditched treadmills and weights for drinks in la Latina.)

GOOD POINTS:
1) Tall and rather dashing
2) Broad shoulders
3) Easy to talk to
4) Gave me lift home
5) Waited to see I had got inside ok
6) Dark Spanish look
7) Sent me a sweet text saying how nice I am and he'd like to see me again

NOT SO GOOD POINTS
1) Maybe a little posh (he mentioned his parent's country estate - one half is woodland and the other has the cattle!)
2) He speaks at ten zillion miles an hour, felt like I was in an advanced listening exam

Promising. And good how the negatives weren't "bad points", but "not so bad points". Only two of them, both of which weren't so bad at all. So far so good. Then the revised list arrived after their second date (which involved three wines and a bit of snogging)

GOOD POINTS:
1) Really sweet guy and I fancy him
2) Understood him better this time
3) Seems to like me
4) Even wrote me a text this morning saying he woke up thinking about me (cheesy but nice)

NOT SO GOOD POINTS:
1) I think his family raise bulls for bullfighting
2) I think he learnt to kiss on the farm (but nothing some subtle guidance won't cure)

As for the bulls – Sa pointed out that whatever Shandies' views on bull fighting might be, it was his family that reared the bulls, not him personally. The second point, well I was a little puzzled at what learning to kiss on the farm meant (practicing with cows and chickens?) but could kind of guess. A Tuesday Club gossip session confirmed my suspicions.

So who's to blame in situations like this? Ex girlfriends - we're assuming he has some - a bad washing-machine kissing gene, over enthusiasm or just lack of practice? Surely men can't learn to kiss like this from watching porno vids (do they actually even kiss in pornos?) And is it an indicator of crap bedroom antics that will follow?

Two Shandies hopes not. She's determined to lick him (ha ha) into shape. In fact she already laid the groundwork by saying dejarme respirar! (let me breathe!) during one of their first smooching sessions.

Judging by the report on their third date, her kiss masterclass went down well. Apparently there was "phone charging and sexual confidence". Just exactly what that turned out to be exactly, though, I will have to wait and see.