So I finished reading Fahrenheit 451, and I was disappointed. It’s a book about burning books, at face value, and it should be burnt.

It’s also about learning from our past mistakes and the value of information. I will take that with me, at least. Perhaps I am missing the point, so it is just as well it took only two days to read. Now I start on the next Harry Potter (order of the Phoenix). It will be my third book in a week, but I suspect it will take a good while longer than the last two.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I was still awake at half two, so took myself into the lounge and eventually drifted off some time nearer three. I woke up at six and then again, not quite so completely, at eight – just in time to make some breakfast, miss a train, sit on a delayed tube and be late on my first day back at work.

Fortunately I’d brought in Spanish sweeties, which served to placate.

It was Leo’s last day, so after a morning of checking and replying to mail (and deleting spam – only 0.007% of my mail is not spam, fact) we traipsed around to Star Cafe for lunch. Various order mix-ups ensued, but my all-day vegetarian breakfast arrived precisely as order and I ate all my mushrooms, so I would have qualified for pudding had I not been quite so stuffed.

We gave him his card and present and customary comemorative catch-phrase filled cover, which is a traditional leaving gift on any magazine, mere minutes before he popped off and then, after rounds of applause, we were left to sit in a quiet office with one empty chair.

Had it been smoking it would have been like the Spectre scene in Thunderball.

But it wasn’t.

Back from Sitges – and up to date with my notes. The entries for the week gone by, when I had no Internet access, are linked below.

Saturday 21st June : Arrival
…and now whole families – hundreds of them – from grandmother to grandson and everyone in between, sits on doorway stoops, and garden chairs, cutting the buds off newly trimmed flowers and plucking the petals from others… [more]

Sunday 22nd June : Corpus Christi
…The air is filled with luxurious flavours. Freshly mown grass, sprinkled on the street to pick out the details in green; carnations, last night mere buds but now magnificent blooms; coffee and chocolate powder, laid out to form black borders or the spots on monster ladybirds; and a smell familiar from childhood holidays… [more]

Monday 23rd June : Fireworks
…Many would even pop the stick of a rocket into an empty drink can, hold it high above their head and then watch as the flame took hold and carried it away in a streak of red and green sulphur. Others put smaller bangers right inside the cans, which they dumped amid the crowded streets. Seconds later they would explode and the can would all but disappear… [more]

Tuesday 24th June : Barcelona
…We

Discovered a very good way to make yourself unpopular in a short space of time – ask for big chunk of gift vouchers in a garden centre where they only have

No chance of a lie in this morning. Checkout was noon. Breakfast was ten, and in between was packing in a stuffy room. As usual I had my stuff zipped away in my bag in half an hour, and spent the rest of my time kicked back in what has become my regular spot over the week – a motheaten armchair that goes well in the room – reading my book.

Fahrenheit 451. Highly recommended on Amazon, but I’m not entirely sure it deserved it. More of a lecture than a novel, really, but the imagery is interesting.

I stuck with it, though, and read for two hours at Chiringuito – the last time we would sit there to drink as the world passed us by, and then some more on the bus to the dumpy Reus airport, which still shows too much of its military roots to be an appealing place to travel through.

I put it to one side as we took off, though, and didn’t pick it up again until we were back in familiar territory. Instead, I watched the airline TV, and the distant views through the window. We flew fast and high, and it took us an hour to reach our cruising altitude. Even up there, though, the sky was bouncy and we were shaken about from side to side.

We arrived early, though, and got home when it was still light and there was time to stop in at Tesco where, finally, my tan looked good against the pasty white skins of those around me.

A very late state to our last day in Sitges. The alarm was set to go off at eleven, so of course we missed breakfast and the maids were already knocking on the doors. We left them to it, heading out for Chiringuito for a breakfast of Coke and cheese sandwiches as we read our books in the shade.

It’s certainly been far hotter today, and even the sea, during the six hours we spent at the beach, has been warmer than the pool at the gym. It has also filled with fish since yesterday; perhaps they are attracted by the tepid shallows. Most are small, but a few – the easiest to see – are a foot long and look like sand-coloured trout.

They swim with swift purpose and make no effort to avoid your feet and legs. Instead they swim right into them and then wiggle past quickly as they run the full length of their body along your skin, like a cat marking its scent.

All of this, and the mild sunburn I have under my left arm, is in spite of the fact that the weather maps are showing an ugly front running down through France to the Pyrenees and up from the Costa Del Sol almost to where we are, leaving Sitges and Barcelona in a little dry pocket on the coast.

But beyond that there were no beach revelations. Nothing out of the ordinary, but a relaxing day, through much of which I slept, missing big chunks of my German lessons, after which I went out for a last wander to take pictures of the church.

That afternoon sleep didn’t make me feel any less tired in the evening, though, when the four of us did our best to recreate the excitement of our first evening.

After drinking as much as we could of what remained of the litre of vodka we’d bought at the start of the week we headed out onto the streets and walked down onto the seafront to hunt out the paella restaurant we’d eaten at a week ago.

I suppose calling it a restaurant is giving it a sense of grandeur it really doesn’t deserve, but it has tables and chairs and food so it almost qualifies.

Only tonight, rather than bangers in the streets, the roads were filled with growling Harley Davidsons, and Jon told how he’d seen a report on the Spanish news about a whole load of Hog riders from America arriving on a boat that afternoon for a Harley Davidson convention.

They roared up and down the front, their farty growl splattering the hotels and restaurants with an ugly, messy noise, as we did our best to ignore them and enjoy our food, which was sadly lacking in comparison to what we’d eaten there first time around.

Perhaps over the week we had all embellished our memories, of perhaps it really wasn’t as good this time around, but that doesn’t get over the fact that the order was part wrong first time around, and then delivered in strange batches when it finally arrived so that we were all eating at different times.

Still, it was filling, and like last time we left the table feeling stuffed, happy to walk it off.

We headed down to the little garden in the square where the wild cats live, and then on to look at the beach for one last time. It was hidden away in the dark of the night, but as we stood on the cliff-top and looked down our eyes slowly grew accustomed to the dim moonlight and we could make out the midnight swimmers paddling out into the surf in their underwear.

Deeper in the cove, where the sand is dry and the curve of the cliff keeps out the wind, kids were letting off rockets that streaked up into the sky, tearing apart the darkness with a thin phosphorous line of exhaust, and then exploded into a million white-hot fragments that rained down on the swimmers in the sea. The swimmers looked up, watching the beautiful sight, and then ducked down unde the gentle waves at the last minute to avoid being burned.

At one point the kids threw a whole handful of bangers on the fire – it was half one now and at home all would be safely tucked up in bed – and they exploded with the sound of a world war battlefield. The whole cove was lit up by brilliant disco flashes of red and green, and the kids jumped back towards the water, the explosions strobing their eager faces.

It was a beautiful way to see the beach for the last time, and somehow fitting. A celebration of the good times we had spent there over the last seven days, organised and played out by someone else.

Our hotel is a positive menagerie. A few days ago there was a red-eared terrapin on the side of the pool. Now we find there are eight – at least – in a small fountain with a dozen or so nervous-looking fish, which keep themselves very must to themselves about as far away from the terrapins as they can get.

The top of the hotel is a mix of flat roofs, peaks and turrets, and on one of the flat roofs we found a lizard, three feet long and with toes of four inches each. His thick muscular tail is ringed brown and black, and as he sheds his skin his face is a mess of peeling scales. He spends his time sunbathing, shunning the more comfortable shade.

Unlike him, I prefer to retreat under an umbrella on the beach, which is where I spent the afternoon, working through my German after the customary drinks at Chiringuito.

Nudist beaches are strange places. On the one hand they are great levelers. Every scar, spot or tuft of hair is exposed for all to see, whether you like it or not.

At the same time, though, there is the off one or two that are the embodiment of perfection. Toned, tanned and without an ounce of fat, they are the focus of all attention, and usually know it. They cover up, and leave the ‘almost-there’ brigade to flaunt their less-than-perfect assets (and asses if you believe in American spellings).

It can be a very demoralising place when it comes to suntans, too, for while my tan may look great in isolation it pales significantly beside the polished chestnuts that prowl the sand. I am only glad there are others with skin the colour of expensive porcelain teasets, beside whom I look great.

I was tired today, though, and so did not do so well with the German. I dozed off several times and so put in an hour of learning back at the hotel between showering and heading out for drinks and dinner and drinks with Trevor and Jon.

Jon reckons I might find Spanish easier to learn than German. In inclined to agree. I am picking up a lot from the signs we pass and the conversations I overhear. I even managed to buy a pair of shoes this morning through a combination of the shop-girl’s limited English, my limited Spanish and copious finger signs from us both.

Anyhow, dinner … I can’t say the portions were particularly large when the food arrived, but they were tasty and the service was easy on the eye. At the other end of the restaurant a table of rowdy Brits acted out whole episodes of League of Gentlemen with perfect voices, and the more we drank the less we could help but laugh along.

By the time we left, after vodkas, wine and shots, barely balanced by the conservative quantities of food, we were in no fit state to go clambering around on the rocky breakwater, which is exactly what we did.

It started out well enough. We could see the deep black gaps between the rocks – wide enough to snap your legs if you slipped into them – in the light of a solitary land-locked floodlight, but as we reached the halfway point the light snapped out and plunged us all into darkness.

All around us we could hear the gentle breathing of the sea, its waves collapsing along the sides of the breakwater, but our eyes could only just make out the feint outlines of the rocks that even in the light had been precarious to say the least.

I sat down for a while, looking out at the invisible ocean until my eyes grew accustomed to the dark and then together we picked our way back across the crooked, mis-shapen rocks towards the beach.

It was perhaps a foolish thing to do, and wasn’t helped by the fact that I kept on getting distracted by the wild cats that lived among the rocks. This town seems to be a veritable haven for strays. There is a whole fenced-off garden full of cats of varying sizes and colours up by the church.

And so it was a relief when finally we made it back to the smooth concrete head of the breakwater where we could sit down and relax our shaking legs.

I took an arms-length photo of Jon and myself – intrepid explorers safely returned – which he forbade me to put on the web, and we marched on into the town for celebratory drinks. It was like a minor homecoming, celebrated only by ourselves.

We woke up to a town in darkness. Metaphorically speaking. The sun was blazing down and the pool was full of days-old water, but the lights would not turn on and all that came out of the taps was an angry hiss of air. Seemingly our hotel’s water supply is electrically pumped, and with no electricity there is no water.

Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem. We’ve all been showering in the evening before going out, knowing that morning freshness will be obliterated within ten minutes of stepping onto the bath mat by copious quantities of sun creme.

Yesterday, though, we did the reverse, showering before setting off for Barcelona, and missing the chance of a repeat performance when we messed up on the trains.

It is fortunate, then, that Trevor and Jon are staying at the other end of town, where the power is back and the water flowing. They turned out to be saviours, providing not only hot water, but towels and soap, too.

Feeling considerably fresher and cleaner, then, we set out for what has turned out to be a fairly regular routine: an hour and a half of reading and drinking in Chiringuito, the beach front cafe where Gonzalo Ruano, apparently a famous author, spent five years writing a novel followed by a stroll to the beach and five hours spent lazing in the sun. It’s a gruelling schedule, and very hot work.

As I lie there, I am listening to the German CDs I copied to my iPod. Around me there are less family-friendly activities going on. Two guys having full-on anal sex today. That was a first. Usually it’s just what the swimming pool signs would call petting.

It’s a strange beach, actually. Mainly gay, mainly nude, but with the odd family dotted here and there.

Anyhow, the German is going well and in spite of the fact it’s starting to get complicated I am half way through disc five out of eight.

Every so often I have to jump into the sea to cool off – today it was rough and exciting – and then have to skip back a few minutes to recap what I have just learnt, but reckon I’m on track to have done all eight discs before going home.

So, after several hours of intensive language lessons it’s a walk back to the hotel and then out for the night for pizzas, paella and sangria.

It’s certainly an idyllic life and I’m missing nothing from home. I’ve not touched a computer in almost a week. My spam will be building up, and messages from friends will be sitting among it all, unread and unanswered.

Could I do it forever? No, certainly not. But for a week it’s hard to beat.

Barcelona, by train, thanks to the grey dowdy clouds of early morning.

We didn’t set out especially early, but perhaps if we had done we would have come back earlier, too, and saved ourselves a lot of trouble on the trains.

Anyhow, the trip out was easy enough – and cheap, too.

The flowers had been destroyed by the time we came out to eat last night, and when we got up this morning and walked through the noonday sun to buy breakfast (it had been a late night) all trace of them was gone. The roads were wet from the sprays of the municipal cleaners and all that was left was the more stubborn of the chalky white outlines.

The festival is over.

I think, to be honest, I may have overdone the sun today. Just a little. I’m not burnt, but I do feel weary, and kind of sun-strokey.

Breakfast, in the Chiringuito cafe on the seafront, turned out to be a long affair, where sitting around reading and watching the world go by far outweighed the actual eating. The manyana ethos was in full swing, and we asked form the bill several times before it eventually arrived and we were free to move on.

We walked for an hour and a half or so, well beyond the limits of the town to the point where the road and pavement came to an undignified end by a stony beach and a hollow of stagnant water. I think that’s perhaps when I caught the sun – and on the walk back home when it was on our backs and necks.

The afternoon, we spent on the beach, under the shelter of umbrellas until the day wore out and the ants invaded our towels.

We ate dinner in a square in the centre of town: the four of us beneath a wilting tree that dropped flowers onto our plates. All around us was a mad cacophony. A man beat a tea crate with his palms while the woman beside him danced a silent flamenco in straw-soled shoes in time to the beat. Couples holding hands, both mixed sex and same, chatted and shouted as they walked past, and all the time we were there – two hours or more – the sky was ablaze.

Fireworks screamed up into the sky, exploding all around us and strobing the face of every building.

They were coming from the beach where kids jabbed them into the sand and lit the fuse, not caring to stand back as they screamed off into the night. All along the front was gathered hundreds of people. Those on the pavements, like ourselves, watching the free show; the hundred or so on the sand letting off their rockets.

There was no thought of safety. Many would even pop the stick of a rocket into an empty drink can, hold it high above their head and then watch as the flame took hold and carried it away in a streak of red and green sulphur.

Others put smaller bangers right inside the cans, which they dumped amid the crowded streets. Seconds later they would explode and the can would all but disappear.

There was no explanation for these dangerous goings-on. We could only assume they were the dying hours of the Corpus Christi festival. Whatever or whyever, though, after we had watched for some time on the sea front we retreated to the safety of a hot, airless bar.

The sun slants down onto the bed, peeping in through the shutters, and wakes me some time after eight. I lay there listening to feint sounds in the street, then got up to investigate the Corpus Christi flowers.

The air is filled with luxurious flavours. Freshly mown grass, sprinkled on the street to pick out the details in green; carnations, last night mere buds but now magnificent blooms; coffee and chocolate powder, laid out to form black borders or the spots on monster ladybirds; and a smell familiar from childhood holidays on the farm: oat husks, which we used to feed to the hens, but here are used to colour the features of regal cockerels.

Already it is hot. The thermometer outside the pharmacy reads 28 and as I squeeze off the first 100 shots of the day I quickly wet my t-shirt with sweat.

Many streets still have no flowers – just chalky outlines of patterns waiting to be filled, but as I return from a break to eat breakfast I find myself walking the edges of magnificent floral carpets after every corner turned.

We spent the afternoon on the beach, the four of us, where the women have shaved their pubic hair into evil little moustaches – the kind Hitler would have had if his lip had been four inches tall. The sand blistered our feet until the sun fell beyond a cliff four hours on, and the ants came out to invade our towers.

It was a long, hot walk to the beach, and no cooler coming home, and we arrived back at the hotel dripping with sweat and badly in need of a shower for which we had no time.

We’d heard rumour that there would be a church service, then a procession, and then the virgins of Sitges would process through the streets, dancing their way through the flowers.

The rumour turned out to be false. Almost.

The main procession had already started by the time we got onto the streets. Men in 20ft-tall costumes were parading through the crowds, dancing among the people and twirling around so that the faces of their costumes looked in through the first and second-floor balconies of the shops and apartments that line the pavements.

The thermometer on the pharmacy was showing 29 and inside all that material, with so much weight on their shoulders, the heat must have been unbearable. Still, though, they trampled through the flowers and then on down to the seafront through the sun to the steps that took them up to the church.

It was an impressive sight and the noise that went with it of trumpets and drums and whole marching bands, was so loud that it drowned out the excited chatter of the thousands of onlookers that followed it through the streets.

And then it came to an end, for a while. The town’s virgins paraded into the church and the doors were closed, and for half an hour there was nervous chatter among the crowds, nobody quite sure what would come next, but as the church bell began once again to ring out it turned out they merely retraced their steps through the streets.