Steve Lawler and I made a little trip to a town near Córdoba the other day. The town is called Montoro and the Río Guadalquivir approaching it from the west begins to wrap itself around the northern half of the town before changing its mind and continuing on its eastward journey downstream towards Córdoba.

As you might imagine, I live a life luxury and excess but Steve, frankly, lives in abject squalor. There are no silk sheets for him! Instead he beds down on an old mattress and covers himself in a mouldy blanket.

And so when we choose accommodation close to where we go fishing we tend to have to compromise. We look for something cheap and clean. For our Montoro jaunt the establishment that satisfied these requirements turned out to be Hostal Restaurante Montoro which is straight off the A4 motorway between Córdoba and Madrid.

Hostal Restaurante Montoro is a funny place. When we turned up we thought there might be some reception area where we could book in but it so happened that booking in is done at the bar while drinks were being dispensed all around to a pretty well oiled clientele. Things were chaotic but they were interesting too, just the way I like them.

Most of the people that we came across had a few drinks under their belts. They would emerge randomly in significant numbers, literally sometimes by the busload, and proceed to get down to celebrations. The justification for these festivities might have been occasions like birthdays or christenings but I suspect that the folk there don´t necessarily require any particular reason at all.

On the last night of our stay a couple of middle age men, spurned on by an enthusiastic crowd, and emboldened by no small amount of liquor, climbed up on top of a horse. The horse rocked back and forth but was unable to dislodge them. There were screams all around and friends and family were recording the excitement on their mobile phones. That was some party!

The next morning we checked out and as I was walking out I took the opportunity to take a photo of the horse. Here it is:

It occurred to me to write this post while I was at work today in my lab. I was sitting with some girls in my tutor group just before lunch. We probably all had more productive things we should have been doing, but never mind. C´est la vie.

We had the following exchange of words which resulted in much hilarity:

Me: hey girls, guess what I am going to call this thing I´m writing?

Girls: what?

Me: two drunk men on a horse!

Girls: were you one of them sir?

Me: of course not!

One of the girls: were you the horse?!