Beaches, towels, nightclubs and a crotchety Dutch woman.

Monday started like the rest of the days really - late. Lunch at Can Josep was followed by a bit of time in the sunshine and no particular rush to do anything at all. I finished off the novel I was reading concerning the siege of Malta and freshened up ready to go to the end-of-festival party at the beach bar - somewhere I hadn't, as yet, reached. In fact, it occurred to me that I hadn't even set foot on the beach in five days. Something had been troubling me in the bathroom since we arrived and I think it's best described with the photograph below

Close inspection of this photograph will reveal that the Spanish apparently  wipe their bottoms with their towels

To say this photo left me a little nonplussed would be an understatement. Anyway, I got a text from Marina asking if we wanted to walk down to the beach bar with her and her friends and we met up with them after another (rather nice) hotel dinner. That we didn't arrive until it was dark was no real surprise but it was an opportunity for another classic photograph

Day six and I finally set foot on the beach. This was met with a smattering of derisive applause.  As far as I was concerned , I was all ready for a moonbathe.

The night was fairly slow-starting but soon geared up into a quite ridiculous shindig. There was Titch resplendent in his Irish gear, a load of Russian women dressed as hula girls, Ant and his mate in matching yellow kaftans (but differing sombreros), Noel wrapped up in toilet paper running around like the little monkey that he is, a beach comb to find Lexy, some great music and the whole thing washed down with jugs of Sangria at nine euros a pop. At one point this happened

Yes I've got no idea what's going on here either but Kitty seems fine with it and Gwen  & Lexy appear oblivious to me feeding her Sangria. I'm such a giver.

It wrapped up around half past two but a few of the more hardcore amongst us decided to chance our arms at one last drink in a great bar called "The Golden Gloves" in Calella. Not knowing where on Earth we were going, we were relieved when our wine waiter from the hotel pulled up alongside us in his car to say hello. He pointed us in the right direction and we got there for last orders, with landlord Richie initially reluctant to serve us until the appearance of Chris and Sera (A lovely pair) who knew him and confirmed our drinking credentials. A Guinness later and he suggested he could get us all into the Memphis Disco. Fabulous! What better way to end The Psychobilly Meeting than in some late-night Tennessee-themed drinking hole. WRONG. He frogmarched twelve of us down there and got us in free to the MENFIS disco. That is only a letter "T" off something entirely different. I loved it. The music was loud, the drinks were awful and the people were over-dressed for that time of the morning (it was now almost 4am). It was like being at home, with one or two exceptions: I remained in the company of the lovely Marina, there were Psychobillies dotted around all over the place and in his infiinte wisdom Richie had decided to buy me shots on top of the large vodka and diet cokes I was knocking back. The following photograph resulted

You might call this three people jumping about like lunatics in a dubious Catalunyan nightclub at half past four in the morning. I call it FUN.

I got a cab home with Richie around 5am. Steve had walked on ahead. I beat him home by a good thirty minutes. Apparently he had his annual "Save a rockstar" moment somewhere between the Menfis Disco and the Aqua' Hotel. More, I'm afraid, I cannot divulge. I slept pretty bloody well, anyway.

Not being able to face a lot of food, Steve and I shied away from Can Josep on Tuesday and instead had a late snackette of "Bikinis" in a bar across the road from the railway station as we awaited Marina and Mellina in order to bid them farewell. To find out how that went, have a look here . As we walked back from the station we spotted Titch and Lexy again, who were already back on the sauce. That seemed like a perfectly good idea so we had a few lagers with them and various other people who were waiting for their shuttle buses  to Girona for their flights home. Titch again reminded Steve that he wanted him to play sax on his new album and no-one bothered arguing with him. I hope Steve is a quick learner. We headed back to the hotel for dinner and then met up with Russ, Owen, Priscilla, Maki, Pip and Alex for a leisurely last drink in The Buccaneer. There was a spectacular thunderstorm that lit up the sea with fork lightning and (more importantly) finally cleared the resort of the dust that had coated it for the last week. The bar shut at 2am. We were obviously still there. On our return to the hotel we sat on the balcony and had one last beer, whilst talking in hushed tones (I had all but lost my voice). These were not sufficiently low to prevent us waking our newly-arrived (and clearly light-sleeping) octogenarian Dutch neighbour, who crawled out of her bewildered pit to berate us in first her native tongue and then broken English, to the effect that we were apparently waking up the entire hotel. We pointed out that a. we weren't and b. she was lucky she hadn't been there for the last week - she really would have had something to complain about. I'll finish this little run of Iberian blogs with a final photograph - well, when in Spain...

Ay caramba!