How is it that something so beautiful can taste so, hmm, blah? And why is that the ones in Moro, in cold northern London, taste better than the one I had here? I think I prefer the city to its namesake…

And here I am, in full-blown 43-yr-old glory:

Now I feel like I’ve stepped back into some kind of antechamber, as if I’ve left behind a fantasy world and am preparing to go back to reality. Oz, the Phantom Tollbooth, Wonderland are no more; it’s time for the prosaic reality of London, of wet weather and of finding work. Much as I am looking forward to being in London again, to playing with my flat and my friends there, I know that I am going to miss the life that I have been living in this city. It’s been both incredibly simple and yet stimulating: I’ve had very little money, and therefore very few choices but a routine of Spanish classes, homework, walks with friends, taking photos, blogging, Nano-ing has been enough. Oh and lots of glasses of tinto and tapas too of course.

Part of me wants to sit and reflect on what I’ve learned, what these three months have meant and what I will take home with me, but the rest of me doesn’t. The rest of me is very aware that that I have only ten days left and, now that cold number three is slowly abating, I want to make the most of them. So, sod reflection and consideration for once, sod banging on about what I’m thinking, I’m off to find a glass of tinto and a tapita…!

As ever, the Alhambra is the most photogenic of sights, whatever the time of year, probably because when you look at it, and from it, you see mountains.

Last week the Sierra Nevada, the mountain range you see behind the Alhambra, had its first decent snowfall. Can’t quite believe that four weeks ago I was swimming in the Mediterranean and, this weekend, the ski season starts…

I’m sure there are lots of psychoanalytical reasons for this and since I’ve spent an awful lot of my income on therapy, counselling, coaching…you name it, I’ve had it…I’m not going to trot out the various answers I’ve been given or discussed ad nauseam. But one of my personal explanations is that twice a week, for seven years of school, I lost spectacularly at every single sporting activity/race/game I was subjected to. It was more than humiliating to be last in every race, the person who was never picked for any team (netball, hockey, tennis, swimming…) and who even the teachers didn’t want to teach. I only ever once competed in a race for sports day, the 100m hurdles if I remember rightly, and even then I came third. Since I spent the rest of my school career being an annoying little swot, sport was my Achilles heel, the one thing I couldn’t do, and couldn’t do spectacularly.

My least favourite activity was running the 1500 metres. It was slow, it was long-drawn out and unlike the sprints, where the humiliation was over a lot faster, there was lap after lap to be last. On one particular occasion, a hot hot sunny day (why is running a good idea in the sun?), I was last as usual and being overtaken by Tamara, known in my charming comprehensive as Tammy the Tampon (I think that even beats Tucker the Fucker) mainly because she beat us all to them. My ‘best’ friend, a county running champion, was shouting at me from the sidelines ‘Come on Louise, even Fatty Tamara is beating you’. She was fat, mean but true, and there is no one as mean as a teenage girl, whereas I was a skinny runtkin, but my body just, still doesn’t, do running and however much the humiliation of being overtaken by TTT hurt, I couldn’t go any faster.

So why then, I often wondered throughout this past November, had I chosen to do the literary equivalent of a 1500m race every day, writing a novel, or 50000 words of one, in a month? I hate deadlines almost as much as finish lines, only because I don’t like to miss them (no surprises there then…), and since this one was unlikely to be met I was setting myself up for failure. And yet NaNoWriMo isn’t really a competition with anyone but yourself. You become a ‘winner’ if you write 50k in a month but only you know if you have done it properly or not. (I was intrigued to see word counts of 130k in some profiles in week three, which to me suggests that some were using the NaNo equivalent of steroids, that is ‘ones they’d prepared earlier’.)

Its aim, on a grand scale, is to encourage writing and one of the main purposes of the project, apart from supporting a lot of creative school programmes in the States, is to overcome the two main opponents to anyone’s creative ambitions, and certainly my main ones: procrastination and perfectionism. In terms of the first, there is, ironically, no time for it; if you don’t throw down some words every day, it won’t happen. I planned two large gaps, for my return to London and for my friends visiting, and found myself facing a deficit of, erm, 10 000 words, on Thursday of last week. If it wasn’t for the appalling weather today, I wouldn’t have got through the last 6k either. In terms of the second, the NaNo team expressly forbid you from editing what you’ve done, or even rereading it. Obviously, no one is taking notes so if you choose to do either of those things you’re not going to lose any points, not that there are any to lose. But, quite simply, if you have any sort of life and are writing as well as trying to live that life, you don’t have time to do anything other than hit the word count.

I have tried to write a novel over and over again for the last decade. Interestingly it always seems to be the same story, one that I am currently living: woman leaves terrible job and runs away to Spain, a fiction and a desired reality that I have thought about ever since I first came to Granada in the spring of 1997. There is usually some family tragedy in there too which, equally interestingly, was in my head long before I lived my own. I have never got to the end of this novel. I usually manage about 20 000 words and then get bored. When I met Fay Weldon through work once, she told me that it was not enough to want to write, that anyone who needed to finish a book needed ‘something to say’. As soon as she said it I knew that was my problem; I really didn’t know what I was saying.

But as much as I think she’s absolutely right, I also think that most wannabe writers (and I include myself in that group) want to live the life of a writer rather than find a story and do the work. As another volunteer at the Hay Festival in Segovia said to me last year, we want to wake up one morning and find the manuscript by our beds, all written and edited, for us to enjoy and sell, with none of the graft. I have battled with the desire for the finished product, the hunt for something to say, and the resistance to the work required ever since I started to write and NaNoWriMo is the first thing that has ever pushed me over the finish line. I couldn’t procrastinate, I couldn’t think about the glittering career that awaited me if only I could get past chapter one and I couldn’t go back and fiddle with my subordinate clauses. As a result, today, I got to 50 500 words and I still have lots and lots to say. It’s not an exciting book, it’s not a good book, but it is a book. And, no, it is a not a Jack Nicholson in The Shining type of book. I was amazed to find that 1666 words per day (the amount required to get to 50k in a month) takes about an hour and I rather enjoyed every single lap. Perhaps some competition isn’t so bad after all.

London and publishing, an industry in which jeans and scruffiness are de rigueur, have beaten that notion of ‘best’ out of me but this weekend has reminded me, in a very roundabout way, that I haven’t quite rid myself of the habit.

Ben and John came to stay for a long weekend and we planned our trip to the Alhambra for Saturday, since it was the only day I could go with them without skipping Spanish classes. It also felt a little like saving the best till last, though not in any conscious way and since I discovered that Ben is another of those people, like me, who combines the favourite bits of his meal into one final and glorious mouthful, it seemed like Granada’s glorious mouthful was best suited to their last day.

Except that we went to a very good restaurant on Friday night, good for lots of reasons but not good at cooking chicken. I noticed that the chicken leg wasn’t quite cooked through so I didn’t eat any. Ben noticed the same thing, but still ate some and so did John. Thus, instead of seeing the Alhambra, they spent their last day in bed, not savouring any feasts, visual or otherwise.

As I sat on the sofa, wondering if they would be able to down the Spanish equivalent of Lucozade (Aquarius, if you’re wondering), I kept thinking how much more sensible it would have been to go to Granada’s greatest attraction earlier in their stay, and not at the end. Their unlucky encounter with chicken meant they went back to London without visiting the Nasrid Palaces, which is a bit like going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower, or going to Siem Reap and not going to Angkor Wat. We weren’t procrastinating about going, but we did, whether consciously or not, save the best till last and thus they missed it.

And the whole experience made me realise that I still haven’t quite given up that notion of ‘best’ and perhaps it’s time to do so. I bought a new skirt two Saturdays ago. I was saving it to wear on my Dad’s anniversary on the 11th but then I spent that day in bed with a filthy cold. I took it to wear in London last weekend but the weather was more suited to waders than tights and then, finally, I was saving it to wear during Ben and John’s visit but, unlike London, it’s been too hot and dry for anything vaguely wintry. It’s still in the wardrobe, still with all its labels, still unworn. I don’t want to compare seeing one of the greatest monuments in the world to wearing a Desigual skirt but I think it’s time to get on and enjoy it, whatever the weather, in case the opportunity is lost.

So although I was hoping to take back anything I’m either no longer wearing (my summer clothes) or can’t wear (the two pairs of heeled boots which, in the Albayzin, seem destined to break my neck or my ankle) I have to shed both. Then I realise that I also have to put my handbag in the same case so first I empty it of heavy and travel-necessary things (keys, my mobiles, my wallet, lipsalve, bottle of water, passport and boarding pass, tissues) and fill my pockets with these, then I work out everything I can borrow or use at Kate’s or, more simply, replace. I had already decided against the hairdryer, toothpaste, shampoo and cotton wool, but I can probably live without taking a bottle of wine too. Then I start to consider whether I can bear to be without make-up (answer: no) or a book (yes), my spare camera battery and case (yes) and my phone chargers (yes to the Spanish one, no to the British one). But even with all of this stripping down to basics I am still at 11.50kg which, I think will cost me about £25.

At this point, I had about an hour left, needed a shower and had had no lunch. And suddenly I both saw red and thought of two rather fundamental things. The first fundamental thing was refusing to worry about the overload. I thought ‘fuck it; I don’t care if it costs me £25 or £55. By flying from Granada instead of Malaga, I’m saving myself two or three hours of extra travel and pain which, in itself, is worth tons more than £50.’ I then remembered that I’d checked in online…and no one would be weighing my bag. Granada airport is tiny and whereas at Stansted they weigh bags before letting you into security, online check-in or not, in Granada they don’t. As soon as I realised this, I stuffed all my summer clothes back into my bag and decided that, if by any stroke of bad luck, the system had changed at the airport, I would just wear them all, however undignified I looked. (I decided not to push my luck by trying to wear three pairs of shoes.)

I have just cleared security at the airport with both my bag and my dignity intact, and seem to still be clutching a bottle of water, brought from my kitchen. I’m not on the plane yet, so I could still be dressing like a scarecrow but I’m feeling rather pleased with myself so far. I am, however, flying Easyjet (no hand baggage weight limit, as long as you can lift it) on the way back…

Today is the 7th anniversary of my Dad’s death, a date which I will never forget and which, because it is also Remembrance, or Armistice Day, the world never forgets either. Every year in England I see signs saying ‘Please Remember My Daddy’ above pleas to buy a poppy and every year I mumble to myself ‘I don’t need reminding, thanks’. This year I’m not in England though, and no-one in Spain is wearing a poppy. However, although I’m in a country full of sunshine it is still freezing and I am in pyjamas, wrapped around a borrowed hot water bottle, my eyes weeping with a cold rather than sadness, drinking hot whisky. It’s not that easy to forget the winter, even in the south of Spain.

But, despite the cold mountain air, I think my Dad would approve of where I am right now: of the sunshine, of the choice to live in a different country, one that has fascinated and intrigued me for a long time, and of the whisky. He wouldn’t approve of the hot water bottle, since he hated the winter, but it seems apt to me. Snuggled up in this cosy bed, sneezing like a mad cat, the heat and the smell of rubber make me feel safe, like a child, like a six-year-old who doesn’t know what is to come, what can come. Winter for that little girl was about fireworks, birthdays and Christmas, about nothing more stressful than what to watch on the telly every night. And today of all days, thanks to my hot water bottle, it is lovely to be reminded of how good it felt to be small, protected and loved.