Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Take A Stroll Down Strummer Street

April 4, 2008 by Mike

San Jose

The French schoolkids were up and out of the site, tents, zits, teenage angst and all, before I emerged into the morning sun. Either that confirms it was them.. or, more likely, I'll never know. Unless they *did* take pictures of me nudie sunbathing and they're all about to post them on Facebook. I don't think they got my name.

Today was a good day.

-- a smart hike, north of San Jose this time
-- no naturist beaches, you'll be glad to hear
-- finished a Colin Thubron book for the first time in my life
-- met Dave The Bookman back in town, where I restocked on decent books
-- used to work for Maggie Thatcher, then thrown out of Morocco by an irate government, and no suggestion that was for anything political. Boy oh boy, there's a story there, somewhere: but it's not my story

-- got to know some fellow biking campers:
-- Clive and Marie, on a Goldwing because anything faster and he'd kill then riding too fast, living in a campsite in Benidorm, loving it, LOVE and HATE tattoo'd on his knuckles, broadest Lancashire accents ever
-- Carlos, a newspaper photographer from Barcelona, riding a BMW GS-something-or-other, ready to chase around town with me late into the night, looking for a bit of life:

-- a bar called El Duende (not a patch on my favourite El Duende)
-- a bar called Bla Bla Bla: all very blah blah blah
-- a bar without a name, dark and sweaty and smokey, playing obscure 60s garage *in a tiny town in rural Andalucia*. Yes!
-- Federico, my new favourite barman: Italian, much too much hair, loves San Jose, closed his place early to take Carlos and I to that mythical place - the bar where all the bar staff retreat to after hours. And yes, there are the hippies from El Duende, the young Argentinian from Bla Bla Bla. Nobody from the bar without a name -- which I suspect never closes. We're in Calle Strummer -- Strummer Street -- where Joe and his pals would carouse late into the night and early into the morning. We did him justice tonight.

--

Some items from the newspapers here this weekend:
* 22 people died in incidents in Iraq on Friday;
* 22 people died in traffic accidents in Spain on Saturday night;
* a five year old boy in the next town died this week. Suspected cause: obesity. He weighed 55 kg.

--

I've been looking forward to Cabo de Gata for some time because a good friend had told me how much I'd love it. Gracias, Jacqui -- you were right, as usual.

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