Category: Everday life in Spain

I walked round this corner, coming round the building from the left, on my way back from lunch in Lavapies the other day.

There were 5 Sub-Saharan immigrant guys hovering over that big patch of pavement by the blue motorbike, covering the flagstones with their ragged ‘top manta‘ meter-squares of cotton sheets, full of the latest Hollywood Blockbuster DVD copies, idly browsed by the bored tourist trade..

…and the second they came into my view everything exploded into sudden action, as the men reached down to get the stings that attach to all four corners of the cloth laid out before them, and in one smooth movement the cloth had gathered the DVDs, they had turned on their heels, and sprinted through cars across the zebra crossing to sit things out nervously in the middle of the road.

Then I saw the police car that had pulled up just behind them. One of the agentes lazily made a show of pretending to get out, realised he’d achieved his aim of scattering them to the wind, and pulled his foot back into the car while his partner headed back into the traffic. A tourist bent down and picked up 5 of the DVD’s that had been dropped during the escape, and wandered off casually, showing them to his friends.

I stopped and watched the guys still hovering in the central reservation, sheets clasped tightly in their hands, ready to run again. I walked over to wait at the crossing. Looked into the window of McD’s – some teenagers with mum and dad, eating a burger – lettuce, slab of grey meat, looked like the bun had chocolate chips on top – what?!

Looking down, I saw I was right next to a palid, sad 40-something guy sitting on a scrap of cardboard, his back up against the wall below the burger-eaters window. He had a few coins laid out in front of him, a half-tin of catfood, and a tiny tabby kitten. Every time the kitten made it to the boarders of the cardboard he reached out, grabbed a bit of fur or a limb, and dragged it back. Again, and again, and again, and again.

But something in his half-dead eyes convinced me later that the kitten gave a scrap of meaning to his life, and that the kitten wouldn’t have made it without him either…

1. I’m glad I don’t want an iPad. I can’t see it doing anything for my life that my Macbook doesn’t do already! And I still just love paper books, as opposed to the e-versions…

One thing that strikes me though: imaginary conversation 20 years hence…

Son: Dad, what did you do in the evenings when I was a baby?

Dad: Well son, like millions of others around the 1st world, I found that pretty much nothing beat sitting in front of the computer watching second-hand coverage of a sales pitch from a guy in jeans for a brand new shiny object that wouldn’t even be available for another two months, and I really didn’t need. Now that was the way to spend an evening!

Son: Oh.

2. My yearly ‘blogging crisis’ set in this month, when I have no idea what to write about any more – or, more to the point, I have had nothing to say about Spain for a while…

So I start thinking about starting other blogs, then procrastinate for 2 weeks, then watch a great video on why it’s bad to have too much choice, and realise having multiple blogs is a nightmare, and decide to keep on writing about whatever I like (not just Spain) here again.

3. Why, shockingly, do I occasionally have nothing to say about Spain for a while?

After eleven years, Spain spends a lot of time being my background, not so much the foreground any more. What does that mean?

When you first move to a new country, every sight, smell, meal, encounter, taxi ride, confused shopping experience, language cock-up, weekend road trip, every time you step out onto the street in fact, is a wonderful, wild adventure.

The new country and culture is in the front of your mind every second of the day, it’s the chief stimulant, a constant cafe solo, perking you up, setting your eyes sparkling as you continue to discover new delights.

If 2010 is the year you are thinking of moving to, or spending a long time in, Spain, then don’t hesitate. I have a friend who moved here recently, and after 4 months he still glows with the excitement of a new life abroad.

But after eleven years my relationship with my ‘new country’ has changed somewhat. The constantly new has become the happily familiar. What jumped out at me as ‘different’ for years, is now, except for when I’m travelling, quite normal.

Does that mean that life in Spain is suddenly dull? Not at all! On the one had in makes it harder to communicate the joys of this country to you with the same regularity, and the same perspective of discovery as before.

On the other hand, it means that Spain can now become the background to new projects other than just ‘Spain’, which was my chief preoccupation for so long.

4. New projects, like what?

Still thinking about that a lot, but…

5. Cooking.

I’ve had a two bad habits for most of my life. One, letting other people do most of life’s domestic stuff for me, if I see they don’t seem to mind, and I can be lazy about it. Two, having an encyclopaedic (British?) knowledge of things that are bad for you, but not spending enough time learning about what is actually good for you.

Doing more cooking helps with both of these. Regarding point one, by doing as much of the family cooking as I can, I can take a lot of the weight off my wife, giving her more freedom, while also dealing with point two: I want to understand healthy food, and see how it makes us healthier as we eat it.

So I’ll be cooking mostly vegetarian food, trying my best to source organic, ‘eco’ ingredients… which still isn’t as easy here as it is in the UK.

I have always, yet reluctantly, loved cooking, usually picking one dish and cooking it repeatedly for six months, until we are both so fed up with it, that I never cook it again.

When we first lived together, I cooked so much chicken for 6 months, that Marina couldn’t touch it again for nearly 5 years! (This was mostly because I couldn’t understand the Spanish names for all the different cuts of other meats, so I only bought chicken!)

6. Writing and recording more – but not necessarily about Spain.

Self-explanatory. Watch this space I suppose. We continue to record Spanish-learning conversations at Notes in Spanish, but I hope to write more here again, about all these projects!

7. Cosmos

I have an increasing interest in understanding the nature of the cosmos – life, the universe(s), etc. Perhaps it’s because I was afflicted early on in life with a philosophy degree. I find that reading Discworld novels helps. Well, I read two, and to my surprise, they were rather good. Third one on the way, to continue my cosmic education.

7.b. Who knows this lovely beach?

8. Dickens.

Speaking of reading, I’ve just finished The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, both incredible. Despite having a fairly sophisticated culture and system of law, the Victorians really treated poor people and debtors like total sh*t. Inhumanely in fact, and Dickens portrays the horrors vividly (he’d experienced them first hand in earlier life).

But it makes me wonder: In 150 years, what will make people raise their eyesbrows in amazement when they read about social conditions in our times – what is normal to us now, but will seems absolutely unthinkable to them in terms of treatment of our fellow humans?

The fact that people are left to sleep on the streets perhaps, or overcrowding in hospitals … who knows…

9. Thank you…

This post breaks all good blogging rules by being too long, and covering multiple subjects. If you got this far, you are great 🙂 Comments are back on, they had to go off as the amount of email I was getting was detracting from my peace of mind! Please do comment if you like!

10. Here are some nice links:

Top Walks – Nice walking routes in Spain, with photos.

Secrets of Spain on a road less travelled – Guardian article on amazing Asturian route.

Delokos.org – Spanish site about vegetarian cooking. I met Eugenio over Christmas, a very lovely man with a total passion for vege food, that he passed on to me (see point 5 above!)

Spanish illness and doctor phrases and vocabulary – Fun bit of audio at notesinspanish.com

I was wandering around Madrid’s Retiro park today, when a familiar sound faded slowly in from behind – the loud rasping crackle of a single speaker, battery-operated, hand-held radio, turned up to full volume, blaring out an evening ‘discussion’ (guests shouting at each other) program.

That’s funny I thought, the oldies usually only listen to the football on those things. One thing was clear to me though, without even having to turn round: it was a man from that generation – the generation with the portly somach, the ‘jacketigan’ (brown cardigan-jacket cross-breed), and the little battery-operated portable radio.

I stopped to let him catch up and overtake, so I could take a look and confirm what I’d already guessed – and past he went, radio clasped at chest height, as is their way, whiling away the hours until caña-time, at a favourite bar down the road.

Rainy crappy weather in Madrid so I didn’t make it out of the house until past 6 p.m. and then only to a bar up the road for a quick caña.

There were a couple of policemen in there, one drinking non-alcohol beer, the other a clara con limon: shandy. Not sure British cops would drink shandy, even on duty.

I kept my ears peeled for some fine Spanish vulgarities from the local constabulary, but was disappointed. They just ate their bocadillos and stared blankly at the chat show on TV.

Never mind, the portero made up for them as I walked through our lobby on my way home.

How are you I asked?

“As they say on that Police program on TV,” he said, “hasta los santos cojones” – Pissed off to my holy balls.