Blog 4: Foreign Safety Standards

If you’ve ever been to a foreign country, I wonder if you’ve ever noticed that the health and safety, especially in the rest of Europe anyway, is just not the same as in England. I’m in Spain as I’m writing this, although I’ll probably be back home before it gets blogged. Anyway, I’m staying in this apartment block on the beach at a town called Xeraco, which is nearish to Valencia. Today we went to a town called Bunol, which is probably better known for one of its annual traditions. This is the reason we went there anyway. It’s called the Tomattina, and you may have guessed that it has something to do with tomatoes. It is a massive food fight. People come from all over the world, I saw Australians, Americans, Poles, Italians, Britons, Frenchies, Germans, and even some Spanish. Anyway, every year the town gets a load of trucks full of tomatoes to deliver to the town for this festival. It’s about 10 tons of tomatoes, although whether it’s tons or tonnes, I’m not sure. Still, it’s alot. My dad and mum and sister didn’t wanna get tomatoed, so me and my brother Stephen went off and went to see this little tomato-fest. On the way there we had seen people literally covered head to toe in tomato mush. It looked like a laugh. At first it was alright, if a little disappointing. I only managed to find two tomatoes, and everyone looked pretty clean. There was a news reporter and she was all dressed up nice in red with her hair and makeup etc, and I thought, there’s all these people here covered in tomatoes, it’s not fair that you’re clean, so crushed the tomato over her head, and my brother threw one at her. That was funny. We were shirtless, because apparently the tradition is to rip off any shirts, male’s or female’s. We found out that this was because the shirts were dipped in tomato mush and thrown around, making a horrible weapon. We progressed further down this at first rubbish procession, and then we saw it. The square was basically a slightly wide road, with another road going to the left. We could see one of the trucks, which carried people in yellow shirts around, and they threw tomatoes on us. The square was full of people, literally, and when we eventually made our way into the square, the people had to compress into nothing. My first thoughts were, “He he this is fun”, however, when we were crushed between to massive swarms of people going opposite ways, I remembered the incident years ago when people at a Liverpool Juventus match died for similar reasons. I realised that if someone was to fall they would be trampled, probably to death. Little did I know that my mum and dad had seen about 6 ambulances go by towards where we were. Anyway, I told my brother that we should leave, but as we were making our way towards safety, the two confronting armies decided to have a pushing match, and we were split up. I was forced down the road to the left. My brother made it back, but for all I knew he could have been dead. There was a small child with his dad in front, and they looked like people out of Blood Diamond, all panicky, with the kid crying. He was basically being smothered and pulled down by the crowds all around. I helped the dad a little, but me pushing back at about 300 people pushing forward didn’t do much. Eventually I lost them. The entire floor of this street was literally a small stream of tomatoes, with shoes and ripped shirts and beer cans all over. It looked like a river of blood. It was quite weird, seeing loads of Spanish men with long black hair, bear chested, roaring and throwing stuff, covered in red, walking through red. It was like Apocalypto there. Anyhoo, after being pushed halfway down the street I managed to make it onto the sides. Here people were standing. Some girls were climbing up the wall to reach a man who was on a balcony with a long sheet, pulling them to safety. He was quite like Jesus, bearded, and saving us from “sin” which was in this case a bloodthirsty tomato nightmare. I spoke to some Americans, who were soon taken away, probably to be slaughtered to the Gods, and then this small Chinese girl, who was half my height began to follow me, using me as protection. I tried my best to save her, but in the end, she too was eaten alive. By now the street had got a little less crowded, and I decided to go back, and get away. I had to take my flip flops off because they had basically shifted so they were up my leg rather than on my feet, due to the amount of people treading on my feet, and the back of my flip flops. I got away, only to be bombarded with freezing water. We began our long way back, covered in tomato, and surrounded by other similar war victims. We were like refugees, escaping conflict, half of us injured and bleeding tomato. Everyone stank of tomato. Cars couldn’t get past the waves of wounded near-dead people. There were queues for hoses, and some people used the water hose at the car wash. On the way back my mum found a massive paella dish and decided to spend ages taking photos, while I stood there practically unconscious, and in shock. Eventually we got back to the car, washed with water from mineral water bottles, and dried of, got changed (though I kept my tomato pants on) and drove home, which took about 2 hours, and all I could smell or taste was tomato. I thought i was traumatised, but I had ketchup with chips later, and then in the evening had pasta with tomato, so obviously not. Although I couldn’t help but think it tasted like the tomatoes smelt. The only good thing that happened today was when I was walking back, slightly large stomach out for all to see, and this hot Spanish girl eyed me up. Literally looked at my face, then my body, then my (wonderful and manly) legs, back to my plumpy torso, and to my face again. I felt good. Even though I was covered in tomato. The best thing about Spain is girls seem to look at me a lot here. The other day we went to a restaurant with Spanish dancers and I held this really hot ones gaze for a whole 4 seconds, before her dance meant she had to turn around. They say if you can hold a girl’s eye for 3 seconds, they’re interested. I held hers for 4. She must have wanted me to marry her. She was gorgeous.