And the weather here is..

Scorchio. Blazio, whatever. In fact, I went out and bought some factor 30 yesterday to stop my skin's four colour breakdown including 100% magenta.

The tops of my forearms are now a nice brown colour.. still a little white below. I remember as a kid on holiday holding my arms up parallel with my eyes and imagining they were small sharks, with a dark topside and pale underbelly.

There are clouds around mind. This place is temperate by Spanish standards. I saw a weather forecast the other day, and literally everywhere in Spain had a blazing sun icon, apart from here near the Pyrennese, where it was mixed up with the odd cloud.

Been seeing the sights. Barcelona is one charming city; beautiful in bits though it does smell. The standard of design in branding and advertising lags quite significantly behind that of the UK, but if people here are too busy worrying about wholesome things like food, family, and not having to work in the afternoon, who am I to point out that an 80% distort on some headline type is ugly as sin.

They're a proud old bunch round here though.. don't actually like speaking Spanish that much at all. When I lamely said "no hablo Espanol" to a guy in a shop the other day, he responded rather forcefully with "you mean you don't speak Catalan!". Oops.

Went and tried to catch sunset over the city last night and missed it, though did get to walk past the old Olympic stadium, where they were holding some 15th anniversary type event. My personnal memories extend to sitting watching it in Matt's room with Matt and Jim the cat in the summer of 1992 while the sun shone outside. That and the Freddy Mercury tune of course.

On the way back down dropped in to a gallery sponsered by a Spanish bank (Caixa Catalunya?)It was open late and completely free, and they had an exhibition of paintings and engravings by Hogarth.. most of which I've seen in textbooks and slideshows, but never up close. Excellent stuff. 'Gin Lane' and 'Beer Street' (the first public health information posters?) were there in print form, along with a series called 'The Four Stages of Cruelty', and 'Marriage a la Mode' as etchings and paintings. 'The Rake's Progress' also featured, though not the paintings, which I presume are still under lock, key, and panel in the John Soames house in Holborn.

Off to the beach later. After cofee and a croissant somewhere.