The Loved One made some remarks, doubtlessly very accurate and apt from her point of view, about me compulsively repeating certain behavioural patterns every time she pointed a camera at me. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

The Fuengirola Zoo was something quite remarkable indeed. There were no bars anywhere in the area, and by this I mean bars of the kind that are used to make cages of, not the kind where refreshments are sold in. This tiger was lying amongst the ruins of some ancient temple or other, presumably digesting a bunch of foolhardy tourists, and gracefully let me take a photograph before continuing to lie perfectly still, slowly digesting, unaffected by anything.

I’m aware that holiday photos of animals in the zoo are almost as boring as photographs of general scenery. This does not prevent me from putting up a photo of two warthogs with evil gleaming eyes. There’s always a place for a photo of a warthog (or red river hog, to be more precise. I think they're warthogs anyway), especially one (or, in this case, two) with evil gleaming eyes.

Check this out! General scenery! With palm trees!

Highlight of the week was the Saturday night. We went dining out in a place called Casa Florido, with a chef who’s worked in various Michelin Star-restaurants and with no other customer than ourselves. The three-course menu was absolutely delicious, beautifully served on glass plates with an above-average bottle of local tempranillo. Compared to the quality of everything, everything was ridiculously inexpensive. Afterwards I took the Loved One to the nearby moonlit beach, kneeled down and asked her to marry me. The answer was “yes”, as the picture above might subtly indicate. Which was nice.

THIS WEEKS’ BOOKS OF CHOICE:
I took two novels and two Sandman graphic novels with me to Spain so I wouldn’t run out of things to read. Of these, I read a dozen or so pages of George Carlin’s “Brain Droppings” and didn’t bother taking the others out of the suitcase. Also some 80% of the clothes I took with me came back unworn and used only for wrapping the wine bottles into. Now, as I’m back home, I’ve been idly leafing through “Brain Droppings” now and then, appreciating the casual aforism I find to my liking (“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls”) but mostly it tends to veer too much towards bashing the American culture and their habits, which is probably very fitting and sharp but also very uninteresting to me as such.

I accidentally read the book about Nightwish as well. If someone asked me to explain why I did something like that I wouldn’t have an explanation. Their music has never touched me and their story wasn’t very interesting. Reading books like this is probably something a person is prone to do on the fourth week of his summer vacation when he has decided to do nothing very remarkable at all. Normality is restored next week when I will return to reading thick epic novels in foreign language and wondering what was the meaning of that word and what has happened during the last five pages.


THIS WEEKS’ SOURCE OF BEWILDERMENT:
A few days ago I was meeting up with my friend mr. Leinonen to go and see the new Batman movie. Being a bit late, I hastily emerged from the tube station and headed for the movie theater when I laid my eyes upon something quite unsettling indeed: The Wonderpizza vending machine. Right next to the more usual machines you get soda cans and chocolate bars from. I had to stop to see what was all this about. The machine wasn’t in the operational mode yet, it just stood there, functionless and with no evident explanations of what was to come and what kind of stunts was the machine expected to perform apart from supposedly baking a pizza. This was utterly baffling and after the movie we had to return to give it a closer examination. No text anywhere to tell how to operate the machine, all the buttons marked with unintelligible symbols one could only guess the meanings of. No prices visible and not a clue what kind of fillings were available. Pushing and shaking the machine availed to nothing. Everything was nicely shrouded in the veils of mystery. Until today I ran a Google query of “Wonderpizza” and the search results, effectively but also unfortunately, removed the shroud from this particular mystery.