Unfortunately, and almost bizarrely,  NOTHING had happened at the point of exiting my usual Tuesday visit to Senior Karate Class.  There has been a couple of Incidents within the carpark, after the Senior class had finished, which almost makes me sound like some kind of pervert hanging around dark car parks at night.. not helped by the fact that both incidents seemed to involve at least two female colleagues from Karate.

“Tart” as a friend called me, and no matter how much you protest your innocence; it only seems to make you seem more.. more… something-or-other!

However, it was incident free.  Nothing extraordinary had happened, apart from me not making some kind of arse of myself as usual, and no unintended double-entendre’s had been uttered.  How uneventful.

I was just musing on how quickly a holiday can fade into memory, and even more on how much you get out of shape during said hols!!  The evidence m’learned colleages;

• First karate lesson after coming back from hols and I managed to completely destroy my hard man of karate persona (self delusion is a wonderful thing); Shouting Ichi! Ni! San! Shi!… and then squeaking like mickey mouse on helium “Go”, “Roku”…
• The Alfa Romeo has decided to act all Alfa Romeo’y and decide it wanted 450 of my finest english pounds to be spent on its lower regions (brakes, disks and bearings)
• My sunburnt head has now turned to a peeling head.. I look like a “shoulda used head-n-shoulders” disaster advert.
• 563 work emails on the first day back is never a fun thing to behold.
• The holidays are not even a week old and I feel like I need another one.

Ah well, there was always Senior Karate?  Unfortunately I was bloody awful!  I felt like somebody had strapped lead weights to the ends of my arms, which wasn’t clever as Sensei was not in a very forgiving mood today.  I think I caused at least one of the press-ups that were metered out as punishments, but not all the others.  I was sweating, heaving and panting by the end of the lesson.  Nice!

I wouldn’t mind all that, but it didn’t look like I had even BEEN on holiday.  I stood next to Libs and looked all wan and pale next to her gorgeously tanned self.. Even Sarah looked more tanned than me, and as far as I am aware she spent the past two weeks in rainy England.  *sigh*

Chewy condom anyone?

..and then to top it all off, as I stand in line at a BP Station to purchase some much needed cold beverage to throw down my parched throat, I hear from the two young teenage girls standing behind me; “Eeeerrgh! You’d think he’d be too old to need those!”.  I look down at the pack of chewing gum I have also decided to impulse buy.

I look up at the two girls, who look back at me like I’m the perv as described in the first paragraph of this blog post.

“Whoah, hang on…”

But it’s too late, they wander off.  So now it’s official, I am now too old for chewing gum, or worse.  I woulda given them a reverse shuto to the heads, but I was feeling my age and couldn’t even if I wanted to.

*double sigh* time to check the calendar and figure out when the next holiday is…

The complete lack of light around means that we have an unimpeded view of the stars above, which makes for a heck of a view whilst supping on the cold cans of beer that have magically appeared from somewhere.  Trying to decide whether to get under canvas tonight or just stay out in the open; Neither option seems to deter the mosquitoes from using all of us as snacking boards, at least outside is a wee bit cooler (temperature is apparently about 26c tonight!).

Tomorrow we’ll see how far we get on the bikes; there’s no particular route or plan, we just point ourselves in a random direction and see what’s around the next corner.  Probably not the most efficient way of getting from A to B, but it’s a damn site more pleasant and is loads more fun when it’s time to figure out where we are – the shrugs of “I dunno, does it matter?” makes for a more interesting holiday.

As for tonight, somebody is moaning “what are these?” as they scratch at the itchy, red mosquito bites that are starting to appear on all of us.

“Love bites?” comes an unhelpful reply.

“It certainly does” floats in from the dark somewhere.

…and suddenly the holiday is getting noticeably shorter and “normality” closer.

Most of my time is being spent trawling through 253 unread emails, most of which seem annoyingly similar in nature to what Mr Clayton-Bull terms a ‘pathetic use of email‘.

If you see me on MSN or facebook today, PUULEEEAAASEEE drop me a line to save me from this inanity.

Edit: Leaving me a facebook wall message, or an MSN message, informing me that “ha ha I am on holiday in a hot country” is not the type of get-my-mind-off-work message I was looking for!

• Didn’t get sunburnt on hols! yay!
• Sitting in the total darkness of a Toledo countryside, with a beer in hand, and family around you looking up at an unspoilt view of the stars IS as good as it gets.
• Number 1 son finally learns how to use the gears on a mountain bike. yay!
• Coming back to a rainy Luton after the hols have finished is a rude landing back to reality.
• Being in a hall full of 300+ karate instructors and black belts, being taught by the founder, and moving in perfect synchronisation is VERY cool!
• Visiting Alton Towers this Bank Holiday was loads of fun.
• Being able to sit on all the BIG and SCARY rides with Number 1 son was a defining moment.

All updated? Good

Plenty of grounds to go cycling in, our own private pool to splash around in….. and probably no wifi that I can hack into to be able to check in on my facebook progress or update my blog whilst bored… EEEeeeekk!!  For the more mentally balanced amongst you this may not present any kind of problem, but for this technofreak – it is.  I’ll be like a junky without his fix.

Looks like I should be coming back a wee bit fitter than I left, and finally get the boys and myself fully trained up in Saifa and Bassai-Dai.

On the positive side; we had a 4.7 scale earthquake early yesterday morning! The whole tower block shook alarmingly for about 30 seconds and allowed me to turn to the wife, whilst still in bed, and ask; “Did the earth move for you love?”

Of course the inevetable happened; as soon as I took off my shirt I turned a nice shade of red all over. The top of my head is a lovely angry red and my shoulders a shade under that. This does of course mean that I am wandering around the beach in long shorts, t-shirt and my favourite Oz hat to shade all parts of the body, in a desperate attempt not to scare the locals with my luminous skin

During the height of the heat I am staying strictly in-doors and when not spreading thick wads of after sun on, I am dialling up the internet using my little Nokia N800 Internet Tablet and my Razr mobile phone. The speeds aint great, but I can at least post these little entries (thanks to BloGTK) as well as do small updates to my facebook profile. I was hoping to find some open Wi-Fi hotspots around these parts, but the Spaniards have been a little too security focused and not left any of them open

I may post a little entry about the Nokia N800 later on to show you how useful this little device really is, but that may wait until I get back from hols – or at least find an open Wi-Fi connection