Pretentious Pollocks, Mad Crocodile Man and Crazy People at Adventure Golf

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Don't poke a crocodile with a stick, no matter how big your stick is. That is the most important thing I have learned today.

The day started like it normally does for us in Spain, which meant getting lost for an hour and a half before we found what we were looking for. Today the elusive intended destination was the Picasso Museum in Malaga.

Now I'm not into Picasso but had to learn a bit about him at college and could at least appreciate that he knew how to draw before going all nuts and developed his own 'style'. Thus I presumed that I would come out of this pleasantly surprised, but no. It really was mostly childlike crap that made no sense whatsoever and was not visually pleasing to me.

If art has an intended message behind it, the message should be fairly obvious without having to read the paragraph of bumph on the wall beside it. What's the point of a message that no one can understand without a translation? That's poor communication skills, Pablo, must try harder! If there is no message, it should provoke an emotion, be it pleasure, joy, terror, disgust - anything really. But the only emotion I felt was 'what a pile of crap', but what amazing marketing skills to have successfully peddled said crap for such a lot of money. The guy didn't even bother to get creative with the titles which were as exciting as 'Geometric shapes by Cutlery' or 'Woman in Stripey Bodice'. The only decent painting was 'Paulo on a Donkey' but it would have been better without Paulo. Oh and one well observed image of 'Nude with Cat', the cat was sitting on the nude's bladder.

Glyn assures me that this museum is not the best of Picasso - I should hope not! As I said, I know PIcasso had artistic talent but he stopped using that. It's like me learning to use a camera expertly, telling amazing stories with visually pleasing images and then deciding it's a better idea to take a bradawl to my lenses, smother them in lard, then dip the camera cards in cat pee and then everyone gets super excited, buying the photos for millions. So in a nutshell, I was not impressed. I was even less impressed when Glyn and I got told off for walking around the museum 'the wrong way'.

But that's not the end of it, we also got to go and see the exhibition of Jackson (B)Pollocks' 'Mural'. Again, I was already aware of his work and was hoping it would all be impressive when viewed in real life. No such luck, I wandered around full of horror surrounded by people who pretended earnestly to be interested. I didn't realise I'd already seen the actual mural, the centrepiece of this exhibition until after I'd passed it, as it didn't stand out any more than the others as a bunch of splatters. But I can tell you that if I'd commissioned an artist to do a mural for my wall and it took them a year to come up with that rubbish, I would have been livid.

So it wasn't my bag really.

Now that we were cultured out, it was time for the Crocodile Park in Torremolinos, a town a bit more classy than it used to be, but not much. I associate it with college kids claiming that they lost their virginity in Torry because no one could prove that they hadn't.

The Crocodile Park was next to a water park that had the most amazing looking slides but the most un-amazing looking queue of European chavs. They were playing mega loud chav music and I felt sorry for the crocodiles and alligators.

Upon first entering the park, I could only see lots of ducks and ducklings and I was a bit concerned where they were going with this. However, I got to see a video of a domestic cat giving a crocodile a slap and the croc backed off much to my relief. Then after a few large terrapins, there were tons of crocodiles, all piled up on each other, lounging in the sun, almost still as statues, many with their big gobs hanging open. One got in the water near me and had a right go, I would have hit the ceiling if we were indoors. There was an area of baby crocs who were no less mean looking and then an indoor area where also we could see alligators who it turned out are even moodier. But then, I once had to live next door to chavs who constantly pumped out tripe music and I wasn't my best back then. There's no point complaining to the council either, poor crocs and allis.

Every couple of hours is a talk by the guy who I presume runs the place and is an older, milder Spanish version of Steve Irwin. I struggled to understand him at times, but who cares, the man is a loon! He took us into the indoor area and leapt in with the crocs, armed only with a long stick, with which he proceeded to poke two crocs until they snapped at him. The purpose of this exercise was to show that the warmer the croc, the quicker they snapped. The cold croc was a bit slower, but still snapped his jaws with power and ferocity; the sound of it had high pant-crapping shock value. If you poke a croc long enough, and it hasn't managed to eat you, it will then get in the water and hide in the hope that you get in too, as there it has much more of an advantage over you. You will die and there is no question about that. This was shown a couple of times - the crocs choosing to go in the water, not kill people.

Ne the mad croc guy got in with the Big Daddy of all the crocs, it was HUGE and chilling out, so of course the man sat on him. This didn't bother him too much, but the pokey stick (it wasn't a hard prod, just an annoying nudge) soon got it into attack mode and the croc man moved on to annoy other, smaller crocs.

Alligators were the next to get wound up, they have smaller jaws but mad croc man said he'd have even less chance in the water with an alligator than a croc, and so we had less stick action. But still, why even try?!! On the plus side it's helpful to know that a crocodile or alligator probably won't eat you if it's not hungry, on land and a bit cold. Good to know.

I'd have loved to understand more of what mad croc man had to say, but I struggled to understand his English over the god-awful chav music.

For an extra 50c each we could hold a baby croc for a photo. This was baby Emma, who at 6 months old would take your fingers off in an instant, so her jaw was taped up to prevent that. Holding her was bizarre, she was fairly calm with a cold clammy underbody; a great experience but I would prefer a kitten any day.

Afterwards we finally found the Adventure Golf at Fuengirola!! Woo Hoo!! And it was so near to where we'd looked before, not annoying at all. We were behind a lively European trio who were making their way around the course aided by a handy bucket of beers. At one point we saw the German lad peeing on a bush on the actual course and admired his classiness. We soon overtook them as strangely, things were going slow for them.

It took us about an hour to get around and were rather disappointed by the lack of a windmill, but it was still good and Glyn only just beat me. When I say only just beat me, I mean by my usual standard of getting my arse kicked.

Returning to our accommodation by 6pm, I was determined to use the pool at least once before we left. This meant going to the 'heated' pool as the wind was coming in off the sea and the sun was slipping behind clouds. The heated pool turned out to be tepid, which is certainly better than icy, which was the alternative. Glyn and I rescued a few drowning ladybirds before deciding to give up and relax in the sinking sun for a while.

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Photos

Mural by Jackson Pollock
This actually took a year to paint and was a commission for a private home. If someone gave me that after a year, I would be furious!

Cat on Nude by Pablo Picasso
Photo of postcard and see, that cat is on the bladder. A cat trick to get you out of bed.