Lopez Blogs

You know if I’m honest, as the weeklong break in Spain rolled around, I was getting more and more dubious about spending a week so close to Christmas in a hotter climate. I enjoy the cold winter, the festive shopping, the dark nights and so on. So i decided to make the best of what I had. The hotel was rather lovely, and if one squinted a little bit at the view from the room, I could pretend it was a modern day Bethlehem. The abundence of unattractive teenage moms strolling around certainly made me believe that immaculate conceptions could take place! Next up, I decided to do some Christmas reading. Lemony Snicket’s first foray outside his unfortunate series of events is The Latke who Couldn’t Stop Screaming, which believe it or not, is a rather gruesome tale of Christmas and remembering the true meaning before you get, er, eaten. Lovely. Much less gruesome is Marly’s Ghost by the very ace David Levithan who literally rewrites and remixes a Christmas Carol as a touching tale of love past at Valentines Day. It’s totally faithful to the source material, yet something fresh and new on an old favourite. Quite quite lovely.

Next I found a dancing Santa and pretty much started stalking the inanimate festive god until there was no one around so I could get a picture with him. Clearly my top is a bit bunched up here which adds the illusion of unneeded holiday weight, but I swear i will work it all off in the new year! Ho ho ho! And the early mornings (ie after stumbling in drunk from westlife tributes and pub quizzes) were spent watching festive films like Fred Claus (dreadful), The Holiday (amazing) and The Family Stone (adequate). And to finish it all off, I tortured Darren with a local radio stations cd of disco Christmas megamixes, which you can download as a zip file below. It’s all very cheesy and seasonal, but if you fancy a europopbop to classics like Feliz Navidad and Go Tell It On The Mountain you can’t go far wrong…

Highlights…

• Leaving for the 2 1/2 hour journey to Spain at 1.30am and not arriving in our (granted lovely and sunny) room until 13 excrutiating hours later was so much fun!
• The flight was fine except the dear old lady next to us snored like a grizzly bear and produced such virulent flatulence that people ten rows forward were gasping for air and glaring accusingly at us…
• All was cleared up when her incredibly large husband came back and loudly announced “it’s been five minutes since i took a shit and i’m still sweating” Honestly, it really doesn’t bear thinking about…
• The food in the restaurant was organically delicious. I can already feel my Elizabeth Taylor blubber floating away…
• For some reason the locals seem to hate autumnal leaves. One woman walking up steps to her apartment kicked them out the way with such ferocity and with such annoyance on her face, you would think they had chosen to land there just to spite her. Which is entirely possible I suppose!
• The entertainment was dubious to say the least. A sexy magic act involved a mother (60+ and a Joan Rivers lookalike) and daughter called Sticky Vicky and Demaria (sounds like a cream you would buy to clear up thrush) dancing around naked and pulling candles and razor blades out of their respective clitteri. Oh my days.
• Much more clothed was a westlife tribute band (see above) which consisted of a meatloaf lookalike, 2 gays flirting outrageously with each other and a clearly gay for pay dude. They were quite good, even though their selection of westlife songs consisted of 2 backstreet songs, an atomic kitten number and a Big Fun tune. Variety is the spice of life! Still Blame It On The Boogie did elicit screams from the grannies (and shamefully me) when the cute Spanish one did some undulating pundulating grinding hip action!
• Much more ugly were a Take That tribute band who were just hideous to look at. As Darren said “I don’t normally swear, but my god they are fucking ugly.” He wasn’t even shamed to learn they were standing behind him at the time!!
• Shockingly, up there with the revelations that reindeer are real, Darren had to wide eyed and patiently explain to me that there weren’t 2 types of eggs as i thought (one that became food and one that became chicks) but just one that has a different destiny. Oh my days!
• Daily trips to the spa were lovely and invigorating. Perhaps i shouldn’t have screamed so loudly when the shower went from hot to cold to stimulate blood flow. Still was very relaxing. Not sure about the latex socks though…
• In addition to the annoying and won’t go away eye rash I have, dazpanteloons and I had some weird reaction that made our hands swell up big time. Luckily, we had the foresight to take off the wedding rings as the swelling started. Nobody likes a tight ring.
• Darren randomly started doing the Thriller dance in the middle of a game of Upwords. I do adore the insular little world in which we live. The old folks at the hotel seem to adore us. I think we are pretty adorable. Apparently, we are like Dale Winton but not as gay or orange. Whatever that means…

Download: Benidorm Christmas Mix