Living in sin, sorry, Elche.

I liked living by myself, I could take my laptop or newspaper to the bog when I wanted to park my dinner, I could fart whenever I wanted to, and I never used to bollock myself for leaving the loo seat up or shaving stubble in the bathroom sink. Life was simple and I could watch telly in bed and if I fell asleep with it still talking to itself, I’d save myself a job turning it back on again in the morning.

Elche - my new home town for the foreseeable future

Within the space of about three short Christmas weeks, yours truly went from being a porn surfing, beer swilling, pizza eating, loud music aficionado single man in a vast seafront apartment to domestic bliss in the centre of what is really a very agreeable small city. The thing is there’s so much more to that statement than is immediately obvious. When you move in with the girlyfriend, however hard you try it’s always a bit like losing some old, unhealthy habits and quickly trying to acquire some new, altogether better ones.

A baffling machine

Let me explain, simple things like I had no idea what a vegetable was two or three months or so ago and now I look forward to them, pizza once a week on a Friday night, instead of daily, is eagerly awaited and once I’d figured out where to buy the Daily Telegraph on a Saturday things began to look up. On the down side, kitchens and the notion of cooking food has always scared me; with a fairly compliant girlfriend, day one of the new living arrangements involved ground rules, which were, you cook and I’ll tidy up afterwards, no need to waste perfectly good grub trying to make me cook it heh? Having said that, our mutually agreed simple etiquette wasn’t without complications, like most organised ladies, she who must be obeyed also has a dishwasher. Given that I’m the sort of bloke that a washing machine strikes the fear of God into, I leave well alone the difficult process of pressing three buttons in the right order and limit my contribution to loading it and putting stuff away afterwards. For sure something I’ve put away in the wrong place which will have long since been replaced and she’ll end up with two because she stumbled across the first one I inadvertently hid.

Carrefour supermarket - not the cheapest

Overall, I can’t believe the huge upheaval in my life has gone so well, sure it’s still a bit strange seeing my books and CD’s on different shelves and my sea view has been replaced by a BBVA branch, but Elche is an amazing place and everywhere nice is within walking distance. At this point it would probably be courteous to extend a sincere apology to the lads at San Miguel and Marlboro whose plummeting share prices coincided with me no longer being a single man living alone. Things though could have been so much different; a week after I moved in the good lady asked me to take her “somewhere expensive” so I did. When we got to Carrefour she bloody moaned!!