The Benefit of Research

Finished for the Day

It wasn't a holiday. Before I went I also insisted, "This is NOT a holiday! It's a research Trip. But did they believe me? I packed note-books and pens in with my bikini and riding hat. A box of paints nestled in amongst the gaiters, and a copy of A Concise Dictionary of Chinese-English For Lovers by Xiaolu Guo was suitably protected by a beach towel. It was a novel I would race through over the first days.

And I arrived in Spain.


Casas Blancas

To a little hotel in Mijas Pueblo.



And I was home again. *Big Sighs*



So for the first four days I rode Andalucian horses across the hills and galloped along the dried out river bed, and in the evening I found myself filled with words and sounds and images I wanted to capture.



So I wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote. And now I now where I'm going! With the novel at least!



I think I was sceptical before leaving the UK that I would actually do any writing but I was wrong. And I can't pinpoint what it was exactly that got the words flowing again. Perhaps it was the warm salted air drifting inland off the Med, or the brilliance of the sun on white-washed houses edged in yellow, caressing my skin as I walked around town. It may have been the sound of Andaluz, dialect slowly emerging from the depths of my mind. But it might have had something to do with being in the car with my friend, a local woman, who drove along winding mountain roads, steering round bends with her knees to blaringly loud Spanish Rap that frightened me beyond measure. I thought, "I'm go to die on the Mijas Road in car and my book will never be finished!"

So I gathered materials for my research...


Our first house in Spain


Cooking Sardines on the Boat


Could this be the reason I was 2.5kg over and had to pay 18 Euros?!

On I go with the novel which is evolving each day, with every new thing I remember; cultural differences, the beauty of Andaluz 'speak', that feeling of really being alive I have in Spain, the people so open and friendly... the music, the horses.... Christ, I could write a book about it ;-)

BUT

Teaching starts up next week and I shall be walking that old tightrope between work, study and family. And riding. Un doble Humph!!!

P.S.

And of course I went to the Beach!