Sinbad the Anti-Vegetarian Sailor

Back at home. Only for one day and its one day that is filled with things that need to happen before I go to Edinburgh. Some of these things are not as essential as others. For example, packing for Edinburgh and working on my show for a last minute preview tonight are both very essential things. Whereas, going for a lunchtime curry with my parents and trying to pop into my friend Manisha’s barbeque are not. I mean, not to be detrimental to either friends of family, but if I turn up to Edinburgh without any pants and not knowing the end of my show because I was too full of curry and burgers, then I’ll feel like a bit of an idiot. Still I will be a happily full idiot and one that may be able to live off the fat content from today’s food in order to go without food for a week in Edinburgh. Due to my current money situation, I may have to do such a thing. I also have a week’s load of emails and FB messages to go through while tweeting enough today to make up for my lack of tweeting all week. As well as all that I should probably pay the cats some attention considering they were sitting behind the door waiting for me as I got home late last night. They then proceeded to follow me everywhere, which made me feel very loved. Then I fed them and they stopped acknowledging me before hurriedly going out to attack small animals, probably. While initially upset by this, I realised that I too can be far more friendly and flattering if I know it can lead to food. The same applies to sex, money, and being able to play my Xbox without anyone complaining. I’m not sure if this makes me more shallow than my cats or less.

My last day in Spain was one of adventure. For starters we went to a restaurant for lunch called ‘Sinbad’. What could be more exciting than that? Perhaps it was to be filled with arabian sailors battling cyclops and other mythical beasts? Maybe all the staff would serve things impaled on swords and dance with fire and be voiced by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (like the Dreamworks cartoon for the uninitiated of you). Sadly it was none of these things and was instead a small fish restaurant that sold whole small fish in batter and bits of squid and prawns all with the eyes and faces still on them. It was not the ideal place for a veggie, and when asked what I could have the response was merely ‘chips and salad’, which is of course my favourite meal ever. If I was a bland food loving twat. I didn’t mind too much and nor did it bother me that everyone else was biting into fish heads. I am relatively unfazed by other people eating faces. The only occasion I was ever close to retching was when I was in Italy with my friend Luke and we ordered pizzas whilst sitting in Verona’s main piazza. Luke’s pizza arrived adorned with asaparagus, cheese, tomato and four whole baby squid, just sitting there like they were meditating or more likely, dead and positioned carefully. Without hesitation he bit straight into one of their heads causing the brain juice to squirt over the table. Oddly, it wasn’t inky. Just gross. I had to eat my pizza facing the piazza and not him, which is actually nicer in terms of alliteration anyway.

Following the meal (or in terms of my grub, paltry snack) we all headed to the beach by ‘Sinbad’ as it was meant to be one of the nicer parts. It looked nice. The blue waves were crashing against the perfect yellow sand and there were very few people there to ruin it by spitting or shouting, which is what people seemed to do at the other bits. However despite its appearance it was actually a hive of dangerous activity. The sand, for a start, was boiling hot. This meant that as soon as the flip-flops were off, you had to dash towards the sea at 100mph to avoid burning the soles of your feet. That was when the second part of the beach trap came into place as the sea was full of massive sharp rocks and darting towards the waves I managed to slice my toe and cut the top of my right foot. As did four other members of Layla’s family. Lying crippled on a sunbed I realised that perhaps the restaurant was called ‘Sinbad’ because the beach by it was, like the sirens, amazing to look at it, but actually a deadly danger zone. I realise that this is unlikely and an incredibly tenous link, and its more likely that the owners were completely unimaginative and thought that perhaps it might persuade people like me to come along despite its lack of food options. For those of you who might point out that the sirens are from Greek mythology, I would like to direct you once again to the Sinbad cartoon which has the sirens in it. It also has the cyclops and it becomes more and more clear that Sinbad clearly stole most of its stories from Greek mythology and is just a big fiction thief. To be fair, he was meant to be a thief of sorts, so that all kind of works out.

I caught the plane home last night at 10pm Spain time. After a week of lovely sun and relaxing times, I was squeezed into another Monarch plane with poor air con and lots of idiots who made hilarious comments about the heat by asking the stewardess if she could ‘open the window’. Har-dee-fucking-har. Instead of putting up with that I made headway with Shappi Khorsandi’s book which I’ve been really enjoying and only have 40 pages left. The fact that I was reading a book that wasn’t written by a chick lit author or a famous football star meant that I was left to my own devices in my quiet window seat. I say window seat, but it was by the wall, between two windows. So infact it was just a wall seat. Once again, I am fairly sure Monarch’s were not built with any kind of royalty in mind. And then after plane, and car, I’m home. To the rain, the work and a month of madness up in Edinburgh. Guess I’d better prepare by eating a lot of curry.

Oh for any of youse in London that would like to go out and about this evening, why not come along to my last preview with Tom Craine. Details here:

http://www.oneworldclassics.com/shop/page.html?id=11