Only two and a half days of the holiday left and our last ‘guest’ left yesterday and a good mate from my Prague days who has been in the resort at the same time leaves at 5pm. It has been a wonderful time. We had so many people coming and going and it really has made the holiday extra special. My mother and one of my nephews were here for the first week and so that made for a certain type of holiday and Paul was staying with us in the villa and so Patrick, Paul and I had another type of holiday which went on well into the early hours of each morning! Then Paul left and two days later ma left too, my ex boyf. arrived – we are still very close and affectionate friends (though not THAT affectionate I should point out before I get a horrified email from him LOL!) It has just been great spending time with him and seeing how Patrick and he get along… though the occasional bullying from BOTH of them to get me to do stuff was unnecessary!

So now we are just two. It was a bit strange going to bed in the huge villa knowing there were only the two of us in it – though I did point out that at least Patrick could escape my snoring at last. We have a couple of days now to just relax and do only the things we want to do which will include an afternoon getting some sun in the dunes featured at the top of the page.

Must be off – the sunshine is calling.

It’s been lovely the last week. Patrick and I rented the vila that I have stayed in for some years now and we had a friend from Belfast for the first week to join us and now my ex is staying with us. During the first week my mother and one of my nephews also came to stay nearby. It has been a very social week. Sadly with the pound sliding against the euro it has also been a third more expensive than in previous years.

That aside though we are all having a great time; getting out into the sun, sightseeing, dining out and of course having a few drinks too. The island is gearing itself up for Xmas; I have gotten very used to seeing Santa Claus with sunglasses on.

Here are a few snaps we took last week on various days out – hope you like them. Happy Christmas to you all!

Above: The Maspalomas sand dunes with the old lighthouse in the distance – a handy reference point for when you get lost in there!

Above: We took a boat trip from Puerto De Mogan to the best fish restaurant on the island at Arguinagen – the fishing boats arrive at the back of the restaurant so you get very fresh fish.

Above: The bay at Mogan – a lovely safe place for swimming and tons of nice cafes and shops.

Above: A windy day down at the coast and the palm trees were blowing every which way!

Above: Sun set at Maspalomas – a lovely view from a great cafe.

and I am finally finished packing and unpacking then repacking. I’ve done my best and now it is time to sleep till 6ish then up to finalise the packing, take Fintan out for a loooooong guilt ridden walk because at 8.30 Paul is picking Patrick and me up to go down to Dublin to fly to Gran Canaria.

I am really looking forward to my holiday as ever – this year even more so as with all the problems selling the house I had to cancel a trip to Prague and also a mega trip across Sweden, down Finland and then over to Estonia, all because of that bloody Italian!!

I know it is going to be great fun; lots of people coming out to visit and plenty of good times in the gayest sunniest spot in Europe in December! There is a nagging, niggling feeling though that I should have stayed here in belfast and rescheduled this holiday. Not for any other reason than I feel I have barely had me feet touch the ground here before we set off on another plane journey. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining; it’s going to be a fab time. It’s just that I love our little house, the friends we have and I know that this year more than any other previous ones I will miss Fintan. Though Fintan may not have enough time to miss me as many people are queueing up to baby sit while we are away.

So… off to Playa Del Ingles we go!

More from me once we are there.

but this time it’s because we are getting ready to go away on holiday. The last few weeks have been so busy with setting the house up and flying back and forth to Birmingham for my courses. On Saturday three of us fly from Dublin to Las Palmas airport in Gran Canaria and two of us are staying till the end of the year! I like saying that… it makes it sound even better than it is – and it’s great!

My courses were great and I have two amazing new skills to add to my repertoire, the crystal foot zone therapy class blew my mind! I was so tired though as I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in my parent’s/aunt’s house – in the kitchen; noisy is not the word. Still, back home on Monday and straight into holiday preparations – there are people with worse lives than mine LOL!

I’m about to head out to get some holiday clothes and also get some food in for Friday. We are having six people for dinner and I’m cooking. I thought we’d have two or three curries with rice, nan bread etc. I don’t have time to make my own dessert though I could do a fruit salad with ice cream – what do you think; cake or fruit salad???

I’m going to Birmingham this evening for the two courses I have to do and of course I am dreading it. Not the courses just going back to the city, especially this time of year when everyone is going crazy with Christmas shopping. It’s funny that I spent so long agonising over this move but since the van pulled away I have barely thought of my old house. I guess it is true when they say that you take your memories with you.

I plan to pop down to the cemetery to check that Desmond’s ashes are ok. Desmond had a very definite idea of what he wanted doing with his remains and although it took me two years to be able to part with his ashes the job is done. I can’t go into too much detail as I think that strictly speaking what I did may not have been legal but I wanted to respect his wishes. The morning I took his ashes out of the house I ‘spoke’ to Desmond and assured him that he could stay in the house, go to the resting place he wanted or come with me and Fintan to Belfast… I’d like to think that he has come along for the ride here. He knew Belfast as he served over here when he was in the British Army.

I’m enjoying the time away from work but I must sort something out when I get back from the holiday as I do get bored eventually and I am running out of things to do around the house. I promise to sort some pictures out soon – I’m just not that great at taking pictures; especially inside. It’s great living where we do – we have mountains in view almost all around us and the sea takes up the space where the mountains aren’t! We don’t have a view of the sea but you certainly know it is there with the changing weather; this morning the mountains were covered in snow yet the sun shone brightly. Life here is certainly different!

It’s been really cold here the last few days, frost on the grass when I take Fintan out for his walk, but the view from the bottom of the road of the mountains and Belfast docks is lovely whatever the weather is like.

We’ve been sorting the house out still; there is just so much to do! The ‘public’ areas look good though – we have a huge dining table to sit about eight people and last night (Sunday) we had a few people round for dinner and wine… lots of wine. We christened the house for sure and when people left several hours later though it was cold outside the house was well and truly warmed.

Back to Birmingham again this weekend for two therapy courses I fancied doing. I don’t really want to go back but I love that particular training centre and I know that the quality of instruction is especially high. Come the new year I really do have to buckle down and figure out how to recoup some of the expenditure on these courses.

Hope your weekend was good

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In Belfast, so nice to be here but so cold!!!

I took a few pictures and I’ll try to get them onto the laptop so I can share them with you – I keep forgetting to take the digital camera with me so they are just off the mobile. I took a picture in Birmingham, early on Saturday morning as I was travelling to my IHM class and I think it’s lovely – ‘Sunrise Over The Bullring’… I will share that for sure.

Well, I’m back in Belfast for a fortnight before I have to go back to Birmingham to do two one day courses over that weekend and then the weekend after that one Patrick and I are away to Gran Canaria for two and a bit weeks of sunshine (hopefully). My mother and a nephew are coming out for the first week as is Paul, a friend of Patrick’s (and now mine too). In the second week the ex boyf. arrives for a week so it will be a lovely social holiday for sure.

So many things left to do but of course I also need to start looking for a job for 2009… I wonder what I’ll be doing!

Edit: The photograph at the top of the page is the ‘Sunrise over the Bullring’ one – it is a central part of Birmingham and a major shopping area – always has been (well for about the last 400 years or so I believe). To the left is the iconic Selfridges building (a very unusual building which I adore) and to the right is St Martin’s in the Bull Ring. Click on the names to see more if you like. Some Belfast pictures coming soon I promise!

…nope, not having any of them! I flew back to Birmingham Friday night to go to the last session of my Indian Head Massage class and by the time I came back from the class by train and bus to my parents house I knew that I had very definitely made the right decision to leave this city.

I’m not going to go on about it but suffice it to say – for now at least – that life in a big city like Birmingham was so not a thing I should have been doing for the last few years of my life and now that I have seen the light I don’t intend to return to BIG city living… Belfast is plenty big enough for me.

It’s been quite a week, lots of things to do and I’ve been busy getting on with them. I made more money than I thought I would from the sale of the house so it has been great going out and buying the things we need – Patrick shelled out quite a lot of money on paint, washing machine etc etc so it has been great being able to even things up a bit. Waking up next to him every morning has been wonderful and though he’s been busy with his various Arts work responsibilities – including singing in the Belfast Gay Choir (search for ‘quire’ on youtube), helping to run the second, and now hopefully, annual Queer Arts Festival (try searching for Belfast+Outburst) etc we have had plenty of time to just be together. I could go on but I know some of you will be vomitting into your handbags already… it’s hard being cynical (or trying to appear thus) AND feeling such strong feelings of love for another person – but it’s worth the effort of trying!!

So, I’m stuck here in Birmingham until my flight on Monday morning; cursing once again at my inability to drive or I’d be heading for Scotland, the ferry and my partner and doggie too!

Hope you are having a nice weekend.

Wow! That was a stressful couple of days! The van arrived on Thursday morning last week and I realised straight away that it was too small. There was nothing to be done about that though as it was too late to have it taken back, I kept telling my self that I could do it. I spent most of the day filling that damn van – it nearly killed me! I banged every bone in my body as there was just me to do the filling – everyone was away at work.

By about 8pm I had to accept that more of my stuff was going to have to be left behind and I began emptying boxes that I had previously packed to see what I could do without. I thinned my book collection down by about another sixty books and left behind some of my kitchen things, it wasn’t an easy task as I really had sorted through all of this before and decided that what I was left with was the minimum I required to survive lol!!! Of course that’s not true at all – though it felt true at the time.

I slept on the sofa with Fintan on the floor next to me and woke at 5.00am, showered, cleaned the bathroom, took Fintan for a final walk and then Rolf came in a taxi to begin our road trip. We had to leave so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to think too much about the fact that I was leaving the house, my safe place for the last twenty-seven years when I was gallivanting around Europe and living it up on the London club scene in the Eighties. I have had many chances to say good bye to my past live(s) led there and most importantly to Desmond who died there and I think that that made the leaving easier. I stopped in each room for a moment and said a silent prayer and then let Desmond’s spirit know that it could come with me, or stay here. Then we had to jump in the van and be off.

The journey from Birmingham to Stranraer went very well, we made excellent time and managed to stop several times to let Fintan out for a run around (me too!!). We arrived in Stranraer with plenty of time to spare and so stopped by the estuary and had some food and just drank in the view – I’ve only ever been to Edinburgh and so it was especially nice to see a bit more of Scotland.

The crossing was fine – only two hours (the benefit of driving from England to Scotland you see), I was a bit upset that I couldn’t stay in the van with Fintan but apart from that it was okay. We had a lovely sunset and before we knew it the lights of Belfast were coming up and the sight of the massive Samson and Delilah cranes confirmed that my new home was in view.

It’s been almost a week since that fairly traumatic day of packing and I’m settling in well. Patrick, Fintan and I are very comfy in the new house and the stuff I have brought over seems to fit in well. I won’t be looking for a job till next year now as we are away to Gran Canaria from the 13th December but I will be busy all the same as I have more therapy courses to commute back to England for and also I have a city to get to know and love.

Gosh I’ve been busy! So much to do and only so many hours in the day to get it done. My poor little house doesn’t know what’s hit it as the contents have disappeared into boxes and bags. I had to hire a ‘skip’ (don’t know what it’s called in the US) and I filled it to the brim with years and years of stuff that Desmond or I had kept “just in case”. It was all taken away on Monday and of course none of it is missed. The local charity shops have done well too as they recieved more books and clothes – books and clothes that I thought I needed to keep when I did the last great purge. It broke my heart when I brought about 200 LPs to the charity shop, it was silly keeping them as I haven’t listened to them in YEARS, but still it was very sad to see them go and I sense that at some point in the future I will regret their passing from my hands.

I was in work for two days this week and today was my last day. I’ve had my head down at my desk for the last two days making sure that all the students ASDAN certificate folders were perfect and ready to be handed in and then I had to mark several ESOL speaking and listening exams – I don’t teach that subject at the centre but I’m the only one properly qualified to invigilate and assess the exam. I was busy right up till 15 minutes before the end of the day. I had ten minutes to clear my desk and then my manager and colleagues came in with wine and a card for me. Despite having had some thoroughly unpleasant experiences there I was moved by the affection that my peers had for me. My boss thanked me for all that I have done since I started there in January. She commented on the way I just hit the ground running and at one point WAS the entire ESP department! What I hadn’t realised till tonight was that it was the quality of the work I did and the results I achieved with the longterm unemployed that has resulted in the centre winning double the business for the new teaching year – I’m very pleased about that.

While I’m blowing my own trumpet my boss also told me that in December all the ASDAN tutors from all the branches throughout the country will be attending a ‘standardisation’ meeting in the South London offices of TBG Learning, they will be presented with completed ASDAN certificate folders to illustrate what the standard is and how they should be done… guess, just GUESS which teacher’s name is on ALL the folders that have been created? Yep, MINE!  I say all this because I had some pretty dark and depressing times there; when I felt that what I was doing was going unnoticed, that the people I was trying to help hated me for attempting to lift them out of the ‘slough of despond’ they had sunk into and that my determination to stick to my professionalism were unnecessary qualities in what is fundamentally a money making enterprise.

I was of course sad to say goodbye but I knew it was time to move on several months ago – it is nice to be told your efforts were appreciated though. I rushed down to West Bromwich bus station past all the general nastiness of that dirty little town and got on my bus to head home, as the lights of West Bromwich faded in the distance I put my MP3 player on and was rewarded with Fade To Grey by Visage… rather apt all things considered.

The van has been hired and all being well it will arrive tomorrow morning, I will load it up during the day, do the hundred other things I need to do and then around 6am my mate Rolf will drive Fintan, my belongings and me to Stranraer to catch the ferry crossing to Belfast and the next chapter.

I will blog for sure about how much I am going to miss my house later – so many memories; after all I’ve lived here on and off since I met Desmond when I was fifteen (and a half!).