Walking on Sunshine

Mass e-mail on Friday:

From: Radio Presenter

Sent: 05/09/2008 15:01

To: Everyone

Subject: Have you got.....

Dear Everyone,

Have you got a hamster type cage, a black wig, some mice or a headscarve lying around your desk???

If so please let me know asap .... we need to recreate a rock and roll moment for the show today.

Nice one

Radio Presenter x

Probably best not to ask.

On Friday night Shoes took me out for dinner to celebrate our 8 year anniversary, which was on Monday last week. 8 years. 8 YEARS. I don't know if I like the sound of that. It not only makes me feel old, but it is really burning the old ball and chain image on the back of my brain. Not that I'm not happy - I'm very happy actually. I'm sickeningly happy and in love, and even more content with my relationship now than I was in the honeymoon phase. Need a barf bag yet, or should I continue? I'm not a cynic when it comes to love, really. I'm quite romantic most of the time. But I generally take offense to people gushing on about how happy they are. Not because I don't think it's a good thing, but because I'd rather talk about stuff that's interesting. Good sex is interesting. Rambunctious behaviour out on the town is interesting. Grey's Anatomy is interesting (in a melodramatic, soap opera kind of way. Also, on that note, Izzie and George and their perpetual teenage angst (at age 30)? Not interesting. Writers take note.). How much you love your partner, and how you leave little notes for each other on the fridge - that's not interesting. The way you can speak to each other using only your eyes - that's not interesting either. Not even for a die-hard relationship girl like me. Cute, maybe. But about as interesting as catching flies with chopsticks.

Anyway, where was I? Dinner on Friday. We went to Babylon at the Roof Gardens, Richard Branson's restaurant on the 7th floor of a Kensington (posh area) High Street building. It comes complete with fabulous views across London and a garden built on the rooftop. Ordinarily, guests can stand on the rooftop terrace and overlook the garden with the London skyline as a backdrop. However, as we chose to go on the night that Winter heralded her arrival with torrential rains, flooding and a blanket of darkness by 7pm, we actually saw nothing but the outlines of buildings through the haze of precipitation. Still, the evening was fantastic. We drank far too much wine, talked about anything and everything and - prepare for a gush - remembered why we always have so much fun as just the two of us. Puke. Sorry. Pedalling away from the OC storyline.

I haven't quite finished telling the story of my holiday yet. You've traversed the dusty roads at Boom, been bussed through the sights of Barcelona; but you haven't yet heard about my favourite part of the trip - Mallorca. So here's my great Mallorca story...

We lay on the beach for 5 days straight.

Yep, that's about it. Oh wait, one day we skipped the beach and took a train trip through the mountains to Soller. But the other 4 days were spent pretty much flat on our backs on the sands of Illetas or Platja de Palma... or on lilos floating in the bathwater-warm Mediterranean. And when we weren't lazing on the white sand or dreaming our troubles away on the gentle swells of the ocean, we were tucked away in quaint little bars in Palma drinking cocktails made by hot Spanish men. Or dining out al fresco on seafood, seafood and more seafood....did I mention seafood? Food poisoning? Bah! We laughed in its face.*

It was relaxing, beautiful and pretty much my idea of a perfect holiday. We had some minor clashes within the group, as is inevitable when you travel with friends and certain people are, shall we say, more incredibly difficult (read: up their own asses) than others. But we managed to have an amazing time regardless.

Instead of crapping on about how tanned and skinny I was when I got back (the one good thing about dysentery is that you really can eat whatever you want and still lose weight - yes, this is not a healthy way to view an illness, I know!), I will just say this: Mallorca is possibly my favourite place in the world after Cape Town, and I plan to go back as often as I can during my time London. It's pretty damn close to perfect. Go if you can.

*But we stopped once we found out what we had. When we arrived back in London and Eyes and Shoes went to the doctor to get tested, the tests came back positive for the shigella virus. It's the nasty cousin of E.Coli and Salmonella - a killer in its worst form. It causes dysentery (which we'd pretty much figured out), and apparently you are supposed to see a doctor immediately if the symptoms persist after 7 days. Is it wrong to say we cheated death? We think it sounds quite brave.