Rio

We stayed in a villa called Rio, even though it was no where near the real Rio de Janerio, a whole group of us. We were all friends, or friends of friends from university, and there must have been a dozen or so of us. Sarah was there (without boring Tom) and we ended up sharing a room, getting inappropriately drunk and talking until 4am every night for two weeks.

Observation. Its hard to see what your friends become quite often. What you predict so often goes completely off from what actually happens. One of our friends who was a hotshot economics graduate who could barely say a word that wasn't management-speak now runs a surfshop in Devon. Not the city whizz kid we all anticipated. Likewise, our friend Keira was the biggest political activist, feminist rebel dedicated to smashing the system and fighting the patriarchy has now settled down and is the mother of two adorable (but thankfully absent children). She now reads the Bodens catalogue rather than The Communist Manifesto.

We all had those conversations after the union closed where we wondered what would become of us, and we all thought we would become actors, musicians, writers and running the country. Instead we just became ordinary people, the sort your mum and dad know. Accountants. Conveyers. The man who manages a surf shop in Devon. Its nice in its own way, but not at all what we thought.

There was also this one girl, who I didn't know quite that well but who had shared a house with someone else at the Villa. Saphire was a psychology graduate from the same course 2 years below me and Sarah. Having this degree meant Saphire was of the opinion she knew everything there was to know about psychology. Not a conversation would go by without her "psychological insights", be the conversation about men, the Spanish nation or Big Brother. What's more her psychology degree somehow gave her insight into economics, history, philosophy, politics and advanced medicine. Impressive, and made me wish I had graduated two years later, because all I seemed to learn is a bit of research methods and Piaget.

Don't get me wrong, Saphire was a sweet girl, but clearly someone had taken her to one side as a child and said "Darling, you must remember that when people have a conversation, you must tell them everything you know about the subject, in a very authoritative manner. That way you will make friends". Needless to say there was a lot of facial gesticulation and eye rolling in that typical British way, but we weren't actively rude or did anything like try to hide from her (only blog-bitch about her in retrospect- again a terribly British way to do things).

Saphire left after the first week. Frankly, I am not sure what her occupation was (not able to get a word in edgeways), but I think a think tank somewhere could have collapsed without her.