Home Banker

Thank you Mark Jonathan Peirson for choosing CAN for all your Spanish banking needs. We pride ourselves on our service and our ability to occupy every third building in Pamplona. Thank you for supplying us with your passport, national insurance number, NIE number, your inside leg measurement, a quart of your own blood and for making a sacrifice of a small goat.

This is just a short 2,395,234 paged document entitled ¨Let us count the ways that CAN loves you¨. It is enclosed in a folder on which we have put a confused face on the front cover. Don´t say we didn´t warn you. This document is what we expect from you, unfilincing loyalty and devotion, and what you can expect from us, a nice new shiny bank card.

You can expect your bank card within the next 6-8 working months. When purchasing something on your new card you must produce a copy of your passport or identity number, failing do to so will result in a diplomatic incident and a possible nuclear attack on Dorset. Further details can be found on page 3,493, under the sub heading GT-34-DU-830T.

You will have noticed that each and every page (even the many blank ones) have been copied twice or sometimes even thrice! This is not a mistake for CAN do not make mistakes, see page 59,684, sub heading HV-78-OL-924M. The reason for this is not to break your spirit so you just sign the damn thing, it is that many people need a copy. Your signature is only required on soeme of these copies, signing the wrong copy will lead to restarting the whole process from scratch and the removal of your thumbs.

To acquire your new credit card please see Appendix G6. If you do not wish to receive your new credit card please sign and return the document headed HF-small picture of a dog-IL8-love heart-Ñ, which we have failed to provide.

CAN is an ethical bank. Each new customer is assigned a cause that we truly believe in. Causes range from the replacing a mere fraction of the rain forest which was destroyed to make this document to African children to orphanages in Eastern Europe. You have been assigned:

THE UPKEEP OF PAMPLONA´S CITY WALLS.

You will receive regular updates about the walls, pictures of the walls and a Christmas and birthday card from the walls. If you wish to change your cause from the mundane task of reducing the local government´s costs to something that make a fraction more difference, please go to sheet YSH-9347-K which is locked in a safe in a vault somewhere of the coast of Chile.

If you haven´t passed out yet then we arrive at document bfh34fd45D45QDBV790B8T (a personal favourite). You will notice the word Titular written vertically in tiny letters in the bottom left hand corner. Please refrain from giggling at the word Titular, CAN punishs laughter with paper cuts to the gentials. Despite the fact that on each other copy you had to sign the one with Officinar written on and leave Titular, this time for reasons clearly written in Wing Dings on page 7,353, you must sign Titular and leave Officinar well alone. Signing the wrong copy will lead to the process starting again and the assassination of a family member/beloved family pet.

Trying to leave CAN is not advisable. When your time to leave Spain arrives we ask for every documentation about you that has ever been written, among a few other small requests. Including pictures from that family holiday to the Isle of Wight you had when you were eight. Please refrain from even attempting to read the other pages which consist of information about how we can get out of any responsibility we have for your money, written in type so small it appears to the naked eye as a line.

I hope you have found this document to be enlightening as well as a enjoyable. Once you sign copy after copy, including one that looks worryingly like a cheque please hand over your ten euros. You will receive your very own copy to take home! We suggest framing it.

The Duck Worth Lewis Method

I hope all is good in your particuliar hood. Things here are beginning to pick up pace. I received my timetable today a document with more codes than America´s nuclear arsenal. So puzzling is it that we have to have indivdual sessions tomorrow morning to make sense of it all. What I do know is that I´m back with the business men with the added terror of a few classes of teenagers.

I´ve also had the chance to meet everyone. Cormac and I managed to find our way to the building to be shuffled into a room by the finance guy, a man by the name of Alfonso who by the look of his underarms was a lot more nervous than we were. The building is incredible. It´s actually a Doctor´s college, its a beautiful old building that looks like its got lost on the way to Paris. We were told no to get used to it, the normal building is a much more modest affair. Everyone is lovely, I would feel a little bad listing them all as they dont know their names would be appearing on a tenth rate blog. However one guy does deserve a mentoin, the teaching, tour guiding, financial advising, career planning, contract supervising, technology loving, Spanish translating, bus getting, lady pulling wingman machine that is Nick. He has a vocabulary like nothing you have ever heard, he also bears resemblence to the guy who used to present the crystal maze, you know the one.

We spent our first days filling out paper work which is as tedious here as it is at home. We were taken to get our NIE numbers which is like the national insurance number. We were sat in a cafe while Alfonso locked horns with the bureaucratic jugguarnaut, thats how paperwork should be done.

However the best thing was next. In Spain they have the funny notion that to be employed in Spain first you must have been unemployed in Spain. So we were taken to sign on. So until the grand contract signing (which I´m imagining to be like Bismarck signing a peace treaty at Versailles) on Friday, I´m on the Spanish dole. The Spanish tabloids will be furious. Needless to say the job office in Pamplona is a lot nicer than Dartford. They also called me Don Peirson which made me reach levels of happiness that I hadn´t reached since they announced that Atomic Kitten had broken up.

We then had "a little tour" which knackered everyone, but give us all a chance to move around and talk to everyone. We were then back at the Doctors school where they revealed there was a resturaunt downstairs. Not my usual sort of resturaunt, the sort where the menu is encased in plastic on the wall or is in a service station, but a good one. We were again told not to get used to it, it was a concession to the school. We weren´t paying so we all cashed in. Topic of conversation ranged from the feasibility of an independent Basque state, the Euro, Spanish culture and that Des Walker was actually class for Sampdoria in the 1990s. I also had to ride to the defence of the noble art form that is Test cricket, Spaniards just don´t understand, cretins.

After lunch we were free to go, we had some drinks in a bar obsessed with Pearl Jam We managed to attract some singing attention from a gypsy, who got annoyed and shouting at a few of us who tried to join in. We learnt about each others interests some of which include an absurd amount of football trivia (who is the only man to play in the Milan, Mersyside, North London and North East derbies? answers on a postcard), the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, is Cat Stevens really Youseff Islam and fantasy roleplaying. Pretending to fight dressed as eleves and dwarves, not what you were thinking.

Once the internet in the flat is up and running I´ll put some pictures up. Buenas noches.

love love love x

The Equestrian

Hola! Despite the doubt, the jokes and the scorn, I made it in one piece without too much difficulty. The biggest problem was the disgrace that only wearing a bum bag can bring. After leaving New Ash Green at half four in the morning it was such a relief to finally get through the front door at half five in the afternoon.

Stanstead was easy enough. Other than queing to check in when I noticed there was a fellow New Ash Greener directly behind me. Not usually a problem but this particuliar girl thinks (rightly) that I´m a dickhead after some drink related incidents and a friend wreaking havoc with my mobile when I was asleep. So I stood still and upright and tried not to draw any attention to myself which I think I managed and then like any real man I went and his myself in a corner. The flight itself was easy and my bag arrived without a problem! They should invent a new word that describes the joy and relief that you feel when you see your bag come through on the conveyer belt. Mind you dragging the bastard around almost killed me. Thats right ladies imagine those guns.

That left me with a few hours to spend in Bilbao. Bilbao is described as one of the roughier and uglier of Spanish cities, if that is the case Britain may be in more trouble than we think, because these people have clearly never been to Dartford. Though not stunning, I didn´t see the problem. The Guggenheim gallery they have there is absoultely amazing. When not back in an internet cafe (no rap in this one, just a Spanish legal drama) I will put some photos of it up. It looked great, like it landed here rather than being built. While waiting at the bus station I also learnt I can get the bus all the way to Bucharest!

The bus journey itself was also fine, other than the man who was sitting next to me decided he had enough with five minutes and went and sat somewhere else, what a prick. The drive gave me a chance to see some country and it was beautiful. Lots of forests, mountains and small towns all with the red tiled roofs.

When you arrive in Pamplona the bus pulls into an undeground complex. It´s all dark marble and the driver has to punch in a code. It was all very Bond, I half expected a man called Yuri to meet us when we got off and tell us we are actually in the base of a volcano. Maybe that is how they recruit all those foot soldiers.

The flat is great, I´m really surprised how nice it is. There are only two of us living there for now as there had to be some jigging around. Picked myself a room, then changed to another at 1 in the morning. I did have one nightmare, I turned on the kitchen tap only to for it fall off and spew water everywhere. While panicing and preparing to go down with the ship to a watery grave I was told that it has been doing that for a while. It was a massive relief, I didn´t want my first action in Spain to be handing the land lady her kitchen tap. Spent the first night getting to know Cormac who moved in earlier in the week. We spent an evening with Spanish television which is utterly ridicilous. I´ll go into that more at a later time, but they had people blacked up. There was also some classic wrestling, they just don´t make them like Ravishing Rick Rude anymore.

Pamplona is lovely. It actually hasn´t stopped raining but it looks great nonetheless. I´ve had a quick look around but nothing to serious yet. I´ve had a few broken Spanish conversations in which I haven´t covered myself in glory. I did tell someone I only speak Spanish a little, she just wandered off and I beamed with pride. I start teaching on Wednesday which seems pretty scary right now. A class of Spanish teenagers could eat me alive.

I hope you are all well

love love love x

Quarter to Eight

This will be the last post from sunny Kent, and for once it is sunny, its gone to our heads I saw a man in shorts OUTSIDE IN PUBLIC. Its the last days of Rome. The next we speak I'll finally have left. The gibbering and filler will finally come to an end. Things are beginning to wind up now, most things I do these days are the last time I do things for a while.

A brave group of us went out in Gravesend on Saturday night, only one person got punched so we didn't do bad. Well most of us didn't do bad, one person who shall remain nameless has a lot of jokes to face upto. At one point he drew a crowd. The bigger shame was the next morning. After sleeping innocently on John's front room floor I had to walk to the bus stop in last nights clothes. People were judging. It was the walk of shame without the fun part, just the shame. It also meant I missed Church, the last one before I go. It turns out on the newsletter they had written me a nice goodbye and not wanting me to miss it the nice man from up the street knocked on my door to give me a copy. I answered the door in my lounging shorts, any self respecting man has a pair, and a scruffy t-shirt and not having showered yet it was not a pretty sight. There was no hiding it, I didn't miss it through packing or a family engagement I had just been in Gravesend acting like a dickhead. I sensed his disappointment, he expected better, now I know how Derren Brown must be feeling.

Before leaving I've been ticking things off my to do list. I went down to Wiltshire to stay with my grandparents which was... tranquil. There was a lot reading, staring out of the window and a shit load of the weakest link. Whose job is it to gather that much trivia?? Devizes is a strange town. People go on holiday there, if you can call cramming into a canal boat a holiday, what do they do? Drinking to forget seems to be the common thread. My nan works in the towns tourist office and even she says that she struggles to think of anything to suggest if they have "more than about an hour and half to kill". They have a brewery, the canal, a market, the canal, flats in the shape of a castle, the canal and a "lovely" book shop. It was good to see nan and grandad though.

Despite leaving VERY early on Thursday morning I've not even thought about packing. My mum has left a case outside my bedroom door as a not so subtle hint but I'm not raising to that bait. My packing is dreadful, I'm hoping if I leave it it will just do itself.

I have to confess to not being terribly excited about it all, more relieved. I've been facebooking (should I poke him?! oh facebook etiquette!) one my future house mates who is much more excited about the drive than actually being there. These last few months feel like a waste though after working for a bit I will probably miss them. I'll miss everyone more, make sure you keep me informed!

Anyone who needs a holiday (not you Dizzee Rascal) get yourself on a plane.

Days to go: 2
Level of Spanish (it still sounds like this to me):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctaszjeaDK0
Level of English: Still dropping, I blame society
Packing: None

love love love x

Donde es platanos?

Life is quiet, it mainly involves the unstoppable football machine that is Charlton Athletic. Inbetween each glorious victory against titans like Walsall, Hartlepool and Wycombe my feeble attempts to learn Spanish continue.

The lessons tend to be the same. I come in make some awkward conversation, she asks if I've been partying (I haven't) and then comments on how much paper I have, she should know she gave it to me. Sometimes I feel like its going well and I'm retaining all this but then I think of even if thats true I still know approximately 0.00000173% of the Spanish language.

For example, verb endings. Just like the Romanians the Spanish mess around with verb endings, call me paranoid but I'm beginning to feel tinges of conspiracy. Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they aren't after you. In English the ends of verb change to indicate (among other things) time, talk in the past changes to talked. In Spanish its different, the verb ending changes to indicate who you are talking about. Like this:

The Spanish verb to talk, is Hablar. You knock the last two letters off and stick a new ending onto the end depending on what you are talking about.

Yo (I) hablO
Tu (You) hablAS
El/Ella (He/She) hablA
Nosotros (We) hablAMOS
Vosotros (You plural) hablAIS
Ellos (They) hablAN

With the exception of every single slight I have ever suffered, no matter however petty, I don't have a very good memory. I've been clearing out my room and my memory is being severely tested as I can't remember so much of the stuff I found. The only one I have managed to remember is why I was keeping a stone in the bottom of my wardrobe. Siobhan had brought it back for me all the way from the Norfolk seaside, I couldn't throw it away after that. So remembering all the different endings is proving a bitch. To make it worse not all verbs are the same. It won't have escaped you eagle eyes that hablar ends in ar, but other verbs end in -er and -ir and they have different endings. Though in fairness they aren't a millions miles apart. Sometimes I fluke remembering the different endings and begin to feel smug and happy with myself and then remember that once this is down that this is only one tense. Bugger.

I've been taught how to order food, very generally. Things like "I'll have the meat". Also any food that my teacher doesn't like is strictly off the menu. I also spend a lot of my time translating sentence after sentence. My room has become a Spanish bunker. There are bits of paper stuck everywhere, things like the clock, colours, prepositions, verbs, adjectives and days of the week.

lunes = monday
martes = tuesday
miercules = wednesday
jueves = thursday
viernes = friday
sabado = saturday
domingo = sunday

naranja = orange
rojo = red
azul = blue
verde = green
amarillo = yellow
purpura = purple
rosa = pink
blanco = white
negro = black (hmm)

10 days to go. 10 days until something hopefully worth reading. I hope you are all well.

love love love x