I spent part of today having a look through the Convento de Santo Domingo de Bonaval, and the adjoining Museo do Pobo Galego (museum of the people).

The museum covered a lot of the traditional culture of the people of Galicia, and there were at least a couple of notable things in there, including an overcoat made completely out of bunches of straw (i.e. not woven - there´s a picture here, but you´ll have to scroll down to find it).
Covering the entire body (including the head), it makes the wearer look like a scarecrow without any clothes (as the persons clothes are not visible beneath the overcoat).

I can understand that if you´re poor, and without the ability to nip down to the nearest woolworths or second hand clothes shop, then making do with whatever you can find in nature is only sensible, and for reasons like this I usually allow the more bizarre aspects of traditional culture a bit of leeway.

However, the second thing that caught my eye just had to make me laugh because of the absurdity. It was a photograph taken maybe 80 years ago, and showed a folk dance in the countryside, four men facing four women, all surrounded by a group of local onlookers.
The men all looked typically dour as they do in these sorts of photos and so did the women, but each of the women had a reason to look stoney-faced as they each had a rock balanced on her head, keeping it there without the use of their hands while dancing (sorry about the pun).

That´s right, a rock, not a stone. They were roughly hewn, and about half the size of a person´s head. You see something like this and just have to wonder who would think of coming up with such a dance/tradition.

But certainly the most incredible thing in the museum wasn´t an exhibit at all. It was a staircase, or rather three staircases. I´ve seen postcards over the last couple of weeks showing a wonderful spiral staircase, and in one corner of the cloisters I found it, except that whereas I thought it was a single staircase it was actually three separate staircases, each starting from a different point in the round stairwell.

Magic! I looked up and it was impossible to tell where each would take you to, and indeed it was like the ever-moving staircases at Hogworts (Harry Potter), taking you to a different destination each time you used them.
As soon as I had descended from one, I looked around and immediately couldn´t tell which one it was that I´d used. I had to try them all, and the most special thing was that one of them lead right to the top of the building and out onto the best view over the rooftops of the old town, shimmering in the sun, that I´ve seen.

The museum was in the cloisters of the Church, which I entered afterwards. I´ve seen plenty of churches, but it was incredible walking into this one, as the silence was absolute, and there was an incredible and overpowering smell of flowers, the strongest I think I´ve experienced.
The reason for this, I found, were the numerous large wreaths laid in a chapel commemorating local heroes. Because of the recent fiesta there had been a commemoration of local identity in the church, and the wreaths had now had a few days to start to decay in the warm Santiago climate, and the church was swimming in the aroma.

Speaking of local identity, there´s a lot of sentiment in Galicia for independence, and strong political activity in general, and the morning after the fiesta many of the banks in the new town had graffitied slogans across their windows.
The funny thing is that, given that there are strong campaigns for independence or at least autonomy in many parts of Spain, including Galicia, the Basque country, Catalonia, Asturias etc, I wonder exactly how much would be left of Spain if everyone was to get their way.

By the way, you might notice that I´ve added links to the right to a handful of other blogs. Each of them is well worth checking out (in my humble opinion). For various reasons I´m not reading too many other blogs at the moment, but will add to this list in time.

Given that Santiago De Compostela is the end of the line for the pelegrinos (pilgrims) walking the camino de Santiago, it´s impossible to miss the new groups streaming into town each day.

Each afternoon when I pass through the main square in front of the cathedral, there´s always a group or two sitting in the sun on the stones in the square, talking animatedly in Spanish. These pelegrinos are typically young, and are almost certainly those Spainards that have done the last 100km or so of the camino in order to qualify as an "official" pilgrim.

It is easy to distinguish them from those pilgrims who have walked the entire camino (i.e. typically starting in Roncevalles, something like 800km to the east), as the young Spaniards are jubillent, and their clothes and features don´t have the dusty appearance and meditative expression of the true pilgrims.

My spoken Spanish is coming along quite nicely at the moment, and I think I´ve learned a few things that have enabled me to jump ahead a bit.

One of the most important is the observation that there are so many of the more specific words which are essentially common to both English and Spanish.
This means that, in the middle of a conversation, you can make a guess at a word, and as long as you twist the pronounciation and get the ending right, you´ve got a fair chance of being understood.

Not only are many words (but not the verbs, unfortunately) similar between the language, but there are many phrases that translate exactly - one that caught my attention yesterday was "crocodile tears", which has exactly the same translation/meaning in Spanish.

I guess this has something to do with a shared romanic influence and christian culture (i.e. the bible).

Want to see something funny? Check out this over at Radmilla´s "My Two Second Shelf Life" blog.

Two important discoveries today; a fantastic park, and a museum of comtemporary art bigger than a town such as Santiago has a right to.

The park is large and arranged over a series of levels, and has plenty of spaces to make one´s own, with plenty of the type of well-nourished green grass that demands to be sprawled upon. I spent a good part of the afternoon lying in under the shady fringes of a well placed tree, following the shadow round the tree as the sun crossed the sky. For much of the time I was practising my Spanish, and have found an excellent tool to help me do so. I´ve bought a graphic novel in which the dialogue is completely in Spanish, and it is complicated enough to help me to improve my vocabulary (I reach for the dictionary each minute or so), but I am still able to understand most of it as I read it. I´m pleased with how I´m doing regarding some of the nuances of the language, such as tenses, imperatives, and accented verbs (there are different meanings for a verb, depending on whether it is accented or not).

The contemporary art museum was also a real find, and is very impressive, having had recent exhibitions by good artists, including English artists such as Antony Gormley and Gillian Wearing.
There were a number of artists being exhibited, but one that really got my attention was David Claerbout.
His work is in the form of video projections covering large surfaces, and although I liked all I saw, one in particular was fantastic.

It was a projection of a still shot showing a plane falling out of the sky, a split second away from crashing into a lush landscape. Overlaying this still was a projection of the same landscape, a long loop of the colours and the patterns in the landscape changing as the sun and clouds changed overhead.

In spite of the imminent tragedy of the aircraft, it was such a beautiful and restive scene, and I stayed there watching it a long time. You can see a shot of the scene here, but be warned that this is absolutely nothing like seeing the work itself.

Learning another language (i.e. Spanish) makes you realise more about your own language (English, in this case).

In Spanish there are two verbs for "to have". The first, "haber", is similar to "have" in English, however there is a second, "tener".

In English we have derivations of this second verb, such as obtain (to get to have), detain (to keep having) and sustain (to continue having), and the Spanish equivalents are similar (obtener, detener, and sustener).

However, at some point English seems to have lost the root form of this verb, which I guess would be the word "tain". I´ll have to look this up in a big fat old English dictionary to work out if it ever was used in the English language.

On another note, across the street from the flat is a shop called "De Noche" ("Of the night") and it is open 24 hours, which is quite handy when everything shuts down around here during seista and on Sundays.

I was picking up a few things there for dinner last night, and was about to buy a tin of sardines, when I looked a bit closer at the label. It was called "Miau", which is the noise that cats make in Spanish (like miaow in English, however Spanish dogs go "Gau" which is a bit weird).
Although it turned out that it wasn´t a can of pet-food, it made me more aware of the perils of buying food in a country where you don´t always know exactly what you´re buying.

In the same shop, I saw something which only proved that we are living in the age of the Internet; sitting on the shelf behind the counter was a box of chocolate bars called "online".

I keep coming across some lovely Spanish phrases to represent similar ideas that we have in English.

A couple that I learn the other day are:

To give birth = "Dar a luz" ("Give to the light")

Honeymoon = "El viaje de leche Y miel" ("The journey of milk and honey").

Hands up who can play a tambourine.

Now, hands up who can play a tambourine well.

I was walking through the town this afternoon, when I came across a group of young Gallegos, maybe 18 or 19 years old, playing an impromptu session of celtic folk jigs in the middle of the street leading down from the front of the cathedral.

There´d been a march and demonstration in the main square to do with "Nunca Mais" (more about that below), and people were dispersing in all directions.

I´ve never thought much about the saying "the piper calls the tune", but it was true in this case, as the only melody instrument was a set of Galician bagpipes being swapped between two guys who could play them, and they started the songs, with a young girl and guy playing marching drums around their waists, plus a couple of others with tambourines.

There was nothing professional or rehearsed about it, and they were making such a great sound, really vital and alive. The songs they were playing were folk jigs, and it seems that many people in the crowd knew them as people would come from the crowd to dance for a number or two, or in a couple of cases whip out a tambourine from their bags.

These two tambourinists who joined in from the crowd were probably the best tambourinists I´ve ever seen; people think of it as a simple instrument, but to play it well and make it come alive is a special skill. They were playing fast stacatto with their fingertips, and the same time catching the main rhythm with the heel of their hands, and were incredible to watch.
A couple of young girls, dressed similarly to boy scouts, joined in from the crowd and danced some wonderfully complicated jigs with each other, turning each other round and round against the music.

It was a fantastic experience, the musicians enjoying themselves just as much as the crowd, and we all spent more than an hour swaying with the music while the Galician drizzle got worse and worse.

I mentioned "Nunca Mais" above, and it there are many posters, T-shirts etc here in Santiago that bear that legend. It took me a few days to work out what it is about as I couldn´t find "Mais" in my dictionary; it turns out it´s Gallegan, but not too removed from Spanish, and simply translates as "Never Again".
It refers to the sinking of the oil tanker Prestige off the Galician coast last November, and with the tanker still leeching oil the coastal wildlife and fisheries have been devastated. There´s a strong local feeling about the disaster, and blame against the Government for not doing enough to prevent it, or cope with the aftermath.

It´s the night of the start of the fiesta, and Santiago De Compostela is all dressed up in her finest clothes.
The streets and windows of the buildings have been cleaned, the lights are up, music fills the streets, and the fireworks are all ready to go; it should be a great sight.

Things kick off formally at 11:30pm tonight, when the fireworks in front of the cathedral are lit. I´m not quite how long the party is supposed to go, but asking around I´m told not to expect any sleep for the next day or so. Suits me fine, as my next Spanish class is not until Monday, so there´ll be plenty of time for sleep in between.

Today´s activity with the language school was a trip to the cinema, where we saw a French film, dubbed into Spanish, based on an English story. Mas Confusado!, and it was one of those French films where everyone is jumping into bed with each other. I managed to pick up a few complete phrases, but much of the time I was only getting isolated words, although it was possible to work out what was going on.
The problem with seeing a movie in Spanish, unlike buying something from a Spanish shop, is that you can´t say "Puede repitir?" ("Can you repeat?").

Many words in Spanish are remarkably similar to English, and it´s often easy to guess at the meaning of a word, but the thing that really stumps an English speaker is the incredible number of variations of a single verb.

For example, in English there is the vowel "live", which I think only has four forms (i.e. "I live", "You lived", "We are living"). There may be other words used with this verb, depending on the usage (e.g. "I could live", "They went to live"), but it´s essentially pretty simply.

Not in Spanish.

The infinitive is "vive" ("to live"), but there is a different form of the verb for each person, including the formal (e.g. vivo = "I live", vive = "formal you singular/he/she lives", vives = "informal you singular live", viveis = "informal you plural live", vivamos = "we live", vivan = "they live").

Ok, so that´s six forms of the verb in the present tense.
Then we have the future tense (another six forms), the conditional (six more), the simple past tense (yet six more), the present subjunctive (yep, six more), the past participle (one more), and possibly an imperative (another one).

So, given the above, it´s quite typical that a Spanish verb wll have around 32 variations.

Phew! There are rules for the formation of these verb forms so it is possible to guess verb forms for an unkown verb, but the real killer is the irregular verbs (in English, a verb like "go" is irregular, as it can be "go", "went", "gone").

So, to be able to fully work with the Spanish language, the big challenge is to conquor verbs, including the irregular verbs (I forgot to mention that, unlike the English language, Spanish also has features such as gender, where a particular none is treated as either female or male - for this there are rules too, but also many exceptions).

I´ve been wondering what the point of all the ugly scaffolding that they´ve been putting up in front of the cathedral in recent days is, and this afternoon I found the answer.

Come the day of the festival (St James day, Friday 25th), the entire facade of the cathedral will have been recreated in paper and cardboard, and come the appointed hour it will be set light to and will disappear in a blaze of fireworks (fuegos artificiales).
Why they want to pretend to burn down the church that they are obviously so proud of is a bit beyond me.

Speaking of fireworks, a few days ago I was walking down the street I lept out of shoes when an almighty explosion, like a cannon-shot, went off overhead. Turns out that it was a "chupito" (literally, a "shot") which is a very loud sky-rocket, used for it´s noise rather than it´s display.
There was a religious procession wending its way along the street, with four men carrying an effigy of the virgin Mary, and the closer they came to the church, the more excited became the old man letting off the chupitos, until they were going off at 5 second intervals.
The Spanish really like making noise and are very talented at it, in all forms.

Something else I saw today which was very poignant: we had a tour of an exhibition of works by a well-known local artist, Jose Angel Valente, who was principally a poet, though he had many other talents.
It took me some time to decipher some of the inscriptions, but one of easiest was:

"La palabra poetica empieza justo donde el decir es imposible"

which translates beautifully as "the poetic word begins exactly where speach is impossible".

Day two of my Spanish language course, and I find myself picking up a bit of confidence. The other students are all quite lovely, and although my class is just myself and an Italian girl, we have a combined break in the morning and in evening everyone that´s currently studying in the school gets together and we go and check out something around Santiago De Compostela (note: after a week here, I think I´ve finally worked out how to spell the name of this place correctly).

This evening it was a house in the old town, that was "muy tradicional" and was used, amongst other purposes, for teaching the young men in the Tunas. Four quite tiny floors, with the basement being used for the horses (who had to enter through the front door, and then walk down a flight of stairs), and the top floor being used for the kitchen, because of the good availability of light at the top of the house (the tiny and cramped streets tend to reduce the natural light in the lower floors).

It´s at times like this that I realise how hard some expressions are to translate from English; I was going to say something in Spanish about how it´s a bit weird having the kitchen on the top of the house, and I realised that there was no way I´ve come across yet to say "upside-down" in Spanish. It´s funny how simple things/phrases like this can really stump you.

Something else interesting I saw today: when we first arrived in Santiago, we saw a statue of two old women in a park, brightly painted and planted in the middle of the footpath, making it easy to mistake it at first glance for the real thing.
Taking a coffee this morning in the cafe across from the languge school, I noticed a large photograph on one of the walls of the same two old women, except in the photograph they were real people.

I asked, and given that my Spanish is still far from perfect the story goes something like this. They were know as "las dos Marias" (the two Marias), and were always friends, being involved in some way in the Spanish Civil War on the republican side. I´m not sure whether it was because of the war, or because of something else, but both of these women somehow became convinced that they were forever living in a certain year, and related to everyone for decades after until their death as if time had stood still.

Every day for many years they would walk round the town for much of the evening arm in arm on their paseo (as is typical of most Spanish couples, families and friends), and they became such a fixture because of their presence and their gentle madness.

They both died in 1976, but they were such a part of town life that they are still remembered, and have been immortalised in the statue in the park, and in other places around the town.

I mentioned the paseo above, and the act of spending much of the evening simply strolling through town and sitting with one´s family and friends is something that is so wonderful about Spanish public life. It´s a bit hard to describe, but it makes Spain such a relaxed place to be, with people simply happy to be social with the rest of the community on a daily basis. There is no fear or problems in walking the streets in the evening as there are so many people around, and somehow the act of living one´s life in public like this has such a salutory effect on the children. The Spanish children (and the adults they grow up to be) are all so wonderfully open and well-mannered, and it seems funny how such a simple daily act can have such a wonderful effect on a society.

Sure beats sitting at home watching TV all eveninig (the Spanish tend to do much of their TV watching in the middle of the afternoon, during the siesta period).

There´s something on this blog that I included when I first started it. I´ve never explained how to use it and I´ve since largely forgotten all about it, which is a bit dumb of me. It´s a means communicating when someone reading this blog has seen something that they want to reply to, or who just want´s to drop something into the conversation.

If you look at the bottom of each of these posts, you´ll find a little link titled "Comments". If you click on this link a new window will pop up, which will show any comments that other people have left about a certain post, and will let you add your own comments.

It´s easy and safe to do at home, and any comment you leave will be there for me (or any other person visiting this blog) to see. The counter next to the "Comments" link indicates how many comments have been left, so it´s easy to tell if anyone´s left a message.

The reason my mind´s been jogged about this is because I´ve just had a look back through some of the recent posts and have noticed comments (which I should have seen earlier) from friends, and other people, including a nice one from a Serbian woman who noticed a post I put up about a poll of peoples attitudes to money, body image, and fame.

It´s funny to think who ends up reading these musings.

While in Salamanca I had the chance to check out the local art galley, which was showing an exhibition of rather loosely related works portraying children, called "Niño".
Although the standard of work varied a bit, there was one artist, a photographer called Loretta Lux, who really got my attention. It´s great when you see someone doing something truely original and innovative, especially with portaiture.

Back in Santiago, the town´s busying itself for the festival, this coming week. The big day is July 25, St James´ day, and here in Santiago the celebrations run for a week. Already the lights are on around town, and there are performances in the streets by musicians, dancers and performers.
I spent part of last night watching Galician folk dancing in the square next to the cathedral, and it made me realise how closely related the people in this part of Spain are with the celtic culture that you find in places such as Ireland and Scotland.
The Galician bagpipe features large in the music, looking like a cut-down version of its Scottish cousin, but makes just as much noise, while the dancing is not so dis-similar to some of the folk dances that I´ve seen in the UK.

Alcochofa.

Now there´s a wonderful word. It means "artichoke" in Spanish, and I ordered a plate of these the other day, not being exactly sure what I´d end up with (in the past I´ve managed to order head of lamb due to similar menu infamiliarity).
The alcochofas turned up, doused in olive oil and served with bacon, and were delicious. It also helped that I´d had the luck to chance upon a good cafe in Salamanca with a hidden garden terrace where I could watch the sun going down while enjoying them.
There´s plenty of other intriguing Spanish words, but most of them I have yet to learn their meaning. On Monday I´ll be starting a Spanish language course back in Santiago de Compestella, largely conversation based, so hopefully the vocabulary will come along leaps and bounds.

Neo-conservative.

Now there´s a word I hate. Bush and his cronies are out to create bitterness and division in this world, largely in the interests of corporate greed and nepotisim, and there currently doesn´t seem to be anybody willing to stand up to them.
There´s a lot more that I could write about Neo-conservatists, but it´d just put me in a bad mood.

Oops!
I´ve just realised that the email address link on this blog has been wrong for the last few months. It´s now been sorted out, and should anyone who doesn´t already have the correct address want to email me (maybe to find out how wonderful the weather is in Spain, or how cheap the beer is), I can be reached on jason.darwin@twoducks.net.

Kate and I meet up in Santiago de Compestella (the end of the pilgrim trail that Kate´s been walking for the last month, which translates beautifully as "St James of the field of stars"), and completed the three days walk from Santiago to Fin Isterre ("the end of the world").
The Galician countryside is very beautiful, and also very verdant and lush because of the high rainfall, having a climate similar to Ireland, but warmer (we actually got caught in torrential rain on the last day to Fin Isterre, so cheated by getting a taking for the last 25 kilometres).
The walking is excellent, and as long as you follow the yellow arrows scribbled on the ground and on the backs of signs and telephone poles, you travel along infrequently used country lanes and along walking tracks.

There are horreos everywhere, which are grainhouses made from stone and on stilts, used to store the corn harvest. We had some beautiful views of morning mist covering the fields with the newly risen sun showering everything with a golden light, truely sublime.

According to Kate the refugeos/albergues on this last stretch of the pilgrims´ walk are of a much better standard than she typically found along the rest of the route, and come complete with good beds, decent showers and kitchens, all for whatever donation you see fit to give. One small thing that got me into a bit of trouble is that you are supposed to have a compestella (the document proving that you have walked a significant part of the camino prior to Santiago) in order to stay in these places, however we managed to persuade the people at the refugeos/albergues to let me stay.

Fin Isterre itself has a beautiful and simple romanesque church, built on a slant, and then about twenty minutes walk out to the cape is the light house and the cliffs and beaches where pilgrims celebrate the end of the walk. It´s customary to burn your (presumably ragged by now) clothing having been walking for many weeks, and there was plenty of evidence of ashes around. However, it was a bit of a wet day, and Kate didn´t have any clothing that she particularly wanted to part with, so that was one custom we didn´t observe.

Arriving back in Santiago we had a wonderful night wandering around the town, finding a great place to eat and to celebrate the end of Kate´s camino (although the saying is that the walk has finished, but the camino has just begun) with an excellent menu del dia (I think about 6 euros each for two main courses of good food, bread, a bottle of very acceptable red and a dessert).
We visited the Parador bar (the ritiziest hotel in town), but the atmosphere didn´t feel quite right for a drink, and outside at the other side of the square we found a Tuna in full swing. A Tuna is a band of young Gallician men dressed up in medieval costume, playing traditional instruments (lots of mandelins and tambourines, although I noticed a duble bass in there too) and singing Gallician folk songs (from the celtic tradition) with good strong voices.
The music´s upbeat, and a senora/senorita is selected from the crowd to be bashfully serenaded by the Tuna, while members of the crowd dance to the music.

I´ve really enjoyed Santiago, and it has a very special charm and character, although I think it means different things to both Kate and myself, as for Kate it represents the end of her camino.

Fifth day in Spain, and I´ve negotiated the north of the country from Bilbao, where I arrived, to Santiago where I meet up with Kate this morning (in, of all places, an Internet cafe).

Bilbao made a great first impression, and I enjoyed wandering round "las seite calles", the seven streets (well, there´s a few more than seven) of the old town, which are pedestrianised and full of humanity of all ages gracefully gliding through.
One of my first impressions was of how well mannered people seem to be, all very polite, even the ocassional beggars.
The Guggenhiem was fantastic, but almost too much to take in as far as the building goes. The art inside was just as impressive, as they are currently staging a retrospective of the mid-late twentieth century, and it was full of works (well, plenty of work, but well spaced out over the massive interior) by artists such as Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Alexander Calder, Andreas Gursky and others.
Interesting how particular artists (such as Jasper Johns) seem to have dated, while others which you think would date (Jeff Koons) still seem fresh.

After Bilbao, Burgos, which was a sweet interior town, with a nice river flowing past the old city and an impressive Catherdral (being catholic, Spain is quite awash with grand ecclesiastic buildings).
Burgos is also on the pilgrim route, and it gave me my first chance to watch dusty pilgrims stumbling into town, some stopping to pose by the statue of the pilgrim resting on the park bench.

Leon was next, and once again a cathedral, albeit the most impressive yet, dominating the middle of the old town, and the stonework sparkling clean (the workmen had retreated to the cathedral´s interior where the noise of their tools reverberated round the inside of the building.)

I´ve developed a means of learning the Spanish language which, while maybe not novel, is certainly quite enjoyable; it involves sitting at a table outside a cafe, scanning a chapter of my grammar or phrase book over a beer, before moving on for a walk round part of the town and then stopping at another cafe to repeat the experience.
So far it seems to be working, and I have been getting to some grips with the construction and grammar of the language. I can understand much of what I read, but am not yet up to more than a very basic conversation - the problem is trying to keep up with what people are saying, and swapping the verbs and pronouns round to match what I understand from English sentance construction.
For example, the sentance "I have it for you" translates into Spanish as "Tengo te lo", where "Tengo" = "I have", "te" = "you" and "lo" = "it".
There´s a certain logic to it, but it seems back to front coming from an English-speaking culture (of course, the Spanish would claim the same about English).

Overall, the initial impressions of Spain and the Spanish are great, and the climate and people are both very friendly. It´s staggering how many cafes and bars there are - some streets seem to feature no other type of shop, but try and find a supermercado (supermarket or grocers), and you´ll spend an entire day walking round town.

My northern adventures have now come to an end, and I'm back in London for a few days to have a wisdom tooth removed, before heading off to Bilbao, then Santiago to catch up with Kate at the end of her trek.

Hadrian's wall was singularly cool - pretty impressive remains of the wall itself, bridges, forts, milcastles and watchtowers, plus great views of rolling Northumberland countryside (some pictures of the territory here).
I spent two days walking the central section, from Birdoswald in the west to Chesters in the east, about 25 miles. For much of this distance the wall follows a great natural stone ridge rising out of the landscape, called the whin sill, and it gives you the chance to enjoy great views in all directions.
You've got to be impressed with the Romans - they managed to build a wall 4 metres high, 2-3 meters across, plus a milecastle and two watch towers every mile, for a length of 80 miles, with only manpower and horsepower.
Add to this the central heating, glazed windows, and concepts such as coinage that they introduced, and you have to admit they had it pretty sussed given the resources of the day.

I also enjoyed checking out Newcastle, a city I'd not been to previously. The waterside, with the "blinking" millenium bridge and the Baltic building is cool, and the Antony Gormley exhibitions were great, especially Domain Field - he must be contemporary artist number one with the british public these days.

I didn't detect too many signs of the hard northern drinking culture, although it was obvious that Saturday night starts about 2.30pm in the afternoon (about the time of day that I saw a hen-party making their way derminedly towards a bar).
There definately seems to be a high-level of what I guess I'd call body-conciousness - almost everyone, irrespective of age, seems to be dressed in tight fitting t-shirts, with liberal helpings of fake tan, sharp-haircuts, and splashes of jwellery and cologne in equal amounts.