The Marvelous World of Jaume Balmes

Balmes is our street. My son was born on it. I work on it. I zoom down it and crawl up it.

I cross it everyday for a coffee at Paula’s. I cross it to go to the bank. Sometimes I meet friends on the way over.

There’s a Romanian-looking lady standing on the corner with Marià Cubí. She holds her child in her arms and her hand out for money. On the opposite corner there’s a news stand where they stack the papers in piles in the morning. Some stacks face the street and others, generally La Vanguardia, face into the shop. That way you have to turn your head sideways or all the way around to read the headlines. They stock international news papers too, and wrapping paper, best sellers and birthday cards.

We buy birthday cards for each other in there. They’re normally pretty bad, horses' heads or cats playing with balls of wool. Then we sign them with insults and kisses and hand them over two months late.

Down the way there’s the Metropolitan gym where the well-heeled and well-tanned go. Large motorbikes clutter the pavement outside as we pass down for lunch. The window beside the gym entrance is translucent from the shin up to just above the head. We cannot see in, much as we’d like to.

Down the way there’s the Japanese, pan-asian as Nicholas calls it. We know the menu off pat and the lady on the till always has to add everything up and ask us whether we want to pay separately or together. She messes up the change and smiles and wonders and starts again. Always the same. Same as the food.

Trabal has a catwalk sunken into the restaurant floor between the tables. The chief waiter/fashion icon floats about us, looking over our heads at his reflection in the olde-world-Barcelona-black-and-whites framed on the walls. The dishes are as descriptive as the song titles on a Sufjan Stevens album. Wordy, touchy and feely but short on information transfer.

On the way back and past our door you’ve got Paco Tabaco, frequented by a miscellany of smokers, drinkers and faux-artistes. A service beyond the call of duty is de rigueur. Service with a smile at least, an embrace at most. An advert stuck on the floor presents a cigarette packet as an obstacle. Reassurance from Paco diminishes this obstacle as it does others. The last bastion of vice on this block on Balmes.

Bar K’s literary references stop there. Just where the home grown and common or garden begins. Mari knows everyone’s name, but mine (I must introduce myself). The stainless steel counter and Formica table tops on metal tubing legs provide surfaces fit for food that can be ordered in one word per course; gazpacho, ternera, flan, cafe.

Then back full bellied and rearing to go. Till tomorrow, till at 12.59 it’s time to venture out again into the marvellous world of Balmes, ecclesiastic, writer and philosopher.