The Mystery Around Loving a Place

Nobody is alone in here.

Conversation is banging up against the walls like it’s trying to get out. The floor has scattered islands of saw dust to soak up the beer that’s splashed off the trays or the bar. It is, in fact, a practice that promotes sloth above cleanliness. And we buy it under the banner of tradition.

Bar Tomàs is an institution in Sarrià. The average person here is beautiful; even the ugly ones have dickied themselves up with flash clothes or the right creams.

Scarves are good if you’re a girl. If you’re a guy try a pair of black plastic-rimmed glasses and something with a collar. It doesn’t matter if it’s worn out as long as it cost a pretty penny when you bought it.

Enter young man who hasn’t shaved today, (or yesterday) but he looks good for it. He pulls his orange jumper down to meet his trousers just enough for us to notice his desirable black underwear with a thick branded elastic waistband. He doesn’t care for his appearance, he seems to be saying. Let’s not split hairs.

The toilet has double doors like a saloon. You can bash in and out of them and we can notice how you effortlessly hip you look in your studied easy gait. You can carry yourself back to your chair like you are walking across the living room floor. Make yourself at home, we’re at ease with the world.

None of the girls has messed around with their hair. No dies or bleaches or yelling reds. Quality cuts and more-than-daily grooming serves us up a sight to behold; a vision of healthy youthfulness, healthy roots and not a split end on a shapely head.

This is a place to meet after school on weekdays, after lunch on weekends and after work on days when you should have gone home earlier. Waxed jackets, Shoei helmets, slacks and loafers are post-work wear. If you’ve got a tie you can loosen it and unbutton the neck of your shirt. You can speak of deals or sport, last weekend in the Pyrenees or next week’s skiing if this damn warm spell would break and we’d get a decent snowfall. It’s nearly December for pity’s sake!

How can all this go on amidst such shabby surroundings? Here again Formica is king, a paint job from way back when the Olympics buoyed rejuvenation and above the bar a collection of clay wine dispensers that could do with a dusting. How can it be?

Perhaps it’s the bar staff aplenty. Their pseudo-uniform of black trousers, white shirt and navy tank top might be the draw. It might be how they participate in your evening, how they comment on any hint of personality you let slip as you sat down. They’ll remark on your clothing, your attitude, your order or your lack thereof. To be a waiter here you have to be happy, it seems. Or very sad. You have to be a character or we don’t want you. It may be that the place has made them what they are. They started average now they excel themselves in oddness, affability and the ability to slip into the slightest crack that appears in your conversation.

It’s bravas and beers I’m afraid. Don’t come the sophisticated here. You can have anchovies in brine or meatballs if you’re lucky. They could root out some cheese if you push for it or bread in a basket lined with a napkin. You’ll get a toothpick to lift what you bought from the plate to your mouth. No cutlery needed among friends. You can raise your hand and we’ll bring you more. You can step out of the way too, when we have to pass by from the back store to the kitchen with a plastic bin-full of potatoes hand cut into chip shapes. We are all friends here for there is no need to struggle or be aggressive. A joke can overcome a misunderstanding and a bill can be slashed if we like you.

The suits are arriving as the evening pushes on. The school girls with the scarves wrapped tight indoors are checking mobile phones and leaving. Till receipts are appearing on tables as those standing bear down on the seated.

A typical bar is Bar Tomàs. A mystery to a newcomer. The very salt of life to a regular.

Dirt, Death and a Bonny Baby

This evening on the Plaça de la Catedral I saw a man moving large green boxes around on a pallet truck.

Before I saw him behind it, I saw the green mass move, as if floating, between other boxes. It found a resting place in a line straight enough to delineate a passage.

In a few days these wooden boxes will open their upper halves on hinges and present themselves to the world as the Mercat de Santa Llúcia.

With Christmas in mind we’ll stock up on handcrafted earrings and necklaces. We’ll buy all the necessary accoutrements to build a crib even if we don’t believe. There’ll be running water and plenty of moss; great blankets of moss that we’ll clip with scissors or rip with our hands. A full complement of angels and animals will feature, huddled around a swaddled child that will not attract the attention of anyone but the faithful.

The others will muse at the caganet figure with his trousers about his ankles, his rear end cocked, depositing its refuse in the presence of the son of God.

The first moments of the physical intersection between God and our world are blessed with the defecating man whose form changes every year. Will he be a footballer or a politician? An actor or the Pope? Who knows but the factory that is currently busy pouring plastic into new moulds? When the market opens we’ll see who has won the honour and we’ll laugh like we did last year and the ones before that.

Tiós, logs with faces and forelegs will be bought in all sizes from miniature to mini-tree. The small ones grow, of course, into the big ones when you feed them. If you care for them during the weeks before Christmas they will swell with goodness which they’ll pour forth as presents on the night of the twenty fourth.

When the Tió is big and fat we’ll cover him in a blanket to keep him warm. We’ll sing songs to him to convince him that our love is not based wholly on want. Then we’ll beat him with sticks and order him to defecate, nay, shit, yes to shit, to shit presents!

Pregnant with goodness the Tió will offer up presents which parents will pull from under the rug. The children will be rewarded for their care of the Tió over so many weeks and the night will be a frenzy of playing, laughing and being together.

Of old the Tió was found in the forest where the family sought him out. He was then only a log but the children dressed him up and cared for him. After he had thanked his carers with presents he would be placed on the open fire where he would make the ultimate sacrifice; he would give his life to heat his friends.

In accordance with the inexorable cycle of life, the Tió’s ashes would be taken next day to the forest from whence he came. There they would be sprinkled on the ground, fertilising it, infusing it with life in the springtime when a new Tió would slowly rise from the ashes of his predecessor.

And in all of this Jesus is absent. He is in a manger on the shelf where the lights flash on and off and the recycled water runs ceaselessly in tiny mountain springs. Beside him the caganet we chose as our favourite, the figure that represents our year, fertilises the winter earth, helping to bring new life.

This tale is a beautiful yarn spun from the threads of nature and goodwill. This tale seeps into the fabric of life. In this tale light and running water nurture and bring joy to life.

Ah, but without dirt and death there would be no life at all.

Ah, but what of the bonny baby?

How Gardeners Get Their Kicks

Baldo had his hat on. He came through the door his head bowed slightly like he had to avoid the lintel.

Ricky was there in black. Mole too. Steve had left an hour earlier. We all waited for Xavi.

I greeted a table heavy with drinks. Along the back row Ferran looked comfortable in his role as anchorman. He had the rope tied around his waist, ready to lean backwards when the shout rang out to take the strain. Rai nodded a hello, thrusting a hand forward like somebody reaching into your soul. Bonhomie washed over the group, a non-verbal celebration of being there on an important birthday.

Xavi had just stepped out to for tobacco or something. He’d left his jacket but he’d taken his girlfriend. That meant he’d be back. Or that’s what they said.

Gonçal was present in mind, body and spirit. Spirit is perhaps what we will remember Gonçal for. He’d just finished recording the new album and it was going to be a goodie. Pablo played me the first one some years ago. One track he introduced as being “one for the girls”. The new album had lots of that, Gonçal maintained. He was animated about it. He was looking forward to the mixing, the mastering and the getting it out there. He’d listened to the raw cuts on the way home in the car and they were good enough to make him smile contentedly and nod his head. Infected by Gonçal’s positivity I turned to Mole for conversation.

He was understated as usual. He’d played his piece in a day, could have done it in half a day, he said, without exaggerating or selling it as a strength. The drum tracks underpinned it all. They were the place where everybody else would hang their coats.

I was sold on the new album and called for a beer. Xavi was on his way we supposed. No new information, it was past one a.m.

Baldo is sitting down now. His hat nestling on top of a pile of jackets like a mother hen sitting on eggs. I took some time out beside the hat which came up to my shoulder on the next seat. Baldo’d picked it up in London. He’d shopped around for it. Not sure what he was looking for but London had it all. He finally found his head gear in a fashionable store for young types who don’t normally play accordion as well as this man.

We spoke about my motorbike and how it carried me round door to door. We discussed my accident and he asked me what bike I had. “A Scoopy fifty” I said. “Good bike” he said, he’d been looking for a bike to get about town. The car, he’d driven down from Lleida when he moved to Barcelona to live in a flat with others capable of wearing provocative head gear, was parked up in Montjuïc while he wasn’t using it. The windows got broken or it got a dent now and again. He’d take it back to Lleida and leave it there next time he had to pay to get it fixed, he said.

His buy-a-new-motorbike budget was six hundred euros. He’d looked about but stubbed his toe on an advert for a seventies original Hammond organ. Six hundred made it his and stalled the motorbike dream while the organ pumps and hums under Baldo’s fingers and toes. It fits in his bedroom with a lot of other instruments with keys.

Xavi hadn’t arrived. He was capable of drawing a crowd, not appearing and not loosing face. That is an achievement. Such a friendship may only be cultivated over many years of attentive gardening. Perhaps he was watching us from across the road, enjoying what he’d given us on his birthday. He gave us the pretext to meet and catch up, to share dreams, news of our projects and recent purchases.

There will be more birthdays and more nights around heavy tables under hand-made smoke clouds. I look forward to them.

Happy birthday young man, I raise a glass to your green fingers.

No Comment Necessary

I have to wait here till 7. That’s nearly forty years minutes.

The glass on the picture I had framed was scratched and they’re replacing it. And so I find myself in a bar called Mauri. It’s an old style place with old style bar staff that prepare old style tapas. They speak in Catalan and fuster around incessantly behind the wooden bar.

There are three windows in this room, each with its net curtain, reminiscent of those used to keep the neighbours from looking in. The largest window had the curtain pulled back when I sat down. The elderly barman shuffled about half clearing up glasses and paper off the tables, drawing the curtain as he went. It must be that time of evening. When the street should not see what goes in a haunt such as this.

We are ringed in by shoulder-high wooden wall panelling painted brown. At chair height it’s scratched to the grain by arriving then adjusting then leaving.

Two young men come in and take a table. They reach across to an adjacent table and claim the ashtray thereon. One wears a black-and-white-knit Union Jack jumper while the other smokes like a lady. They call for carbonated water and iced coke. Small bottles so as not to over do it.

Serviettes sit on each table in flat metal containers with legs. A staple feature of any bar. Their contents have spent the day migrating to the floor where they have not yet been swept up into the dustpan with the wooden handle that sits over there in the corner.

Punters enter in dribs and drabs, bums on red leatherette covered seats with straight backs and no mercy. They are a place to deposit one’s weight while the tubular bars make their mark on the back of the thigh. The ashtrays too have their way of being. They are round and glass with straight sides with cigarette-supporting chunks cut out of them while they were hot. They are made to be broken, to go unnoticed, to serve.

Formica table tops on exactly square four legged frames have chips off the sides, a sign of age and experience. Of having spent much time being about while life went on. None are lop sided, a testament to simplicity and durability. None are attractive or desirable, the kind of table that you could sit a printer on or throw out on a Thursday when the used-furniture collectors call around.

The young man sitting opposite me is wearing a t-shirt advertising anti-virus software. Fashion is what you make it.

These crisps are potato flavoured. Just plain potato. They are served in a bag on a plate, elevating their lowly status onto a par with a potato tortilla or chicken croquettes. This particular strain is hand made in Premià de Dalt since 1975, the year the Caudillo passed away yesterday.

So much life came from so little death.
And so much death from a life.

Evening in a bar when nothing happened while they were replacing the glass on the picture I had framed. Another day that doesn’t merit comment. Perhaps I should stop here.

Life on a Platform

It's that time of the evening when most people finish work and head home.

I hope it’s not rush hour here because there’s only a smattering of people in the enormous train station ticket hall. The Estació de França is an anomaly in this city. It only enters conversation when a rock concert crowds the platform or someone talks about turning it into a library.

Not many trains pull in here. Only the ones that nobody I know has ever taken.

Three policemen arrive on the scene; hat’s are removed with right hands and placed delicately under left arms. They lean on the railway bar and call for late afternoon sustenance. The echo of voices is hollow and empty, church-like, goodbye-like, kiss-until-later-like. A young couple sits on the ground reading books. They make up one tenth of the crowd. A tall man with a bag is restless and paces about, back and forth, back and forth.

There’s a bag scan on the way to the train. The security guard is sorry for the trouble caused and feels like he could be convinced to give it a miss just this once.

Before he punched my order into the till, the gentlemanly waiter asked me if I was rail staff. “No”, I replied, knowing instantly that I had given the wrong answer. “That’ll be 3.50”, the till advised him, 1.60 for the coffee, 1.90 for the croissant. “I hope they pay well here”, I said, remarking on the exorbitant prices. “That’s the price around here young man” he replied, neither defending nor criticising company policy. A model employee to be sure.

The prices have had their affect in this café fitted out for a thousand. No more than fifty people sit here and wait. Over there they smoke, while over here it’s prohibited. Nothing more than a sticker on the table informs us of this ruling.

The building is all arches and marble floors, the new annex that houses the offices is minimalist and clad in that fibrous stone that Mies Van der Rohe chose for his pavilion on Montjuïc.

Descend to the toilets and such select interior design gives way to functional white glaring light. There is paper in the cubicles, but there are no seats on the pots. A group of four young men enter behind me and I hastily finish up my business. In surroundings as hard and uncompromising as these it is not wise to find oneself outnumbered.

Back upstairs at the ticket office the constant queue of five people is maintained as only one window attends customers while the other has a closed sign hung between the queue and a second ticket seller who does not deign to sell tickets. More than ten other windows lie idle, curtains pulled down and lonesome looking.

One row in front of me on my left sits a grey-haired man with glasses, cupping his chin in his hand. At the same angle to my right sits perhaps the same man in a younger guise, a dark suit and black hair. I know he’s the same man because he cups his chin in the same way, he leans back on the chair and crosses his legs, left over right down at shoe level. They are both staring out across the smoking area and on to the horizon that is the great lobby and shining marble waiting area. They will stand up in time and catch trains. They will not realise that they are living the same life, just that one is ten paces ahead of the other.

It is only in a place as empty as this that we can see ourselves. When the commotion disappears we are easier to identify.

Near-death Experience Number X

I almost died the other day. Again.

It was morning and I on my way to work. I noticed the building on the corner was coming along. They’re up to the first floor now, taking the casing off to reveal the skeleton of what will be home for some of us.

At the lights I pulled up on the left of an ambulance. I knew it would go straight on as the depot was a left turn. The morning shift would be beginning for the crew too. They wouldn’t be turning back home this early on a sunny morning when there was so much to be done.

I scratched up against her underbelly, the lowest painted bit down the side of the ambulance. Just in front of the double rear wheels. My bike slid, and was crushed a little. I slid beneath her and felt nothing. I didn’t hear anything either. It was a moment of freedom from thought, control, and decision making.

They saw me in the left wing mirror as they sat facing out with their orange sweaters and blue trousers with reflective stripes behind the knee. The driver rolled down the window and looked out at me. Was I alright? I didn’t know the answer either. There’s a thirty second gap after an accident when you are incapable of answering that question. Lie still or sit still and let the question answer itself.

I lifted the scooter off and felt my legs, arms, my elbow was aware of itself. My left hip called out for notice as did the thigh on the same leg. I stood up slowly as passers-by gathered, caught between caring and wanting to get off to work on time. I was in fine enough fettle considering. The ambulance had moved a little further off the road to the left.

The scooter had taken a bashing, loosing her back light and an indicator, the plastic panel on the left where my leg was, had come away from its anchor and jutted out just enough to need replacing.

I dwelled on the irrelevance of these details as it was clear I had been pardoned. I had been given a slap on the wrist and shown how easy it is to do away with me.

We searched for insurance forms and laughed about the incident. Together we pieced together the details for the insurance companies. They called me John and I called them by their names. The morning sun warmed our conversation and I unzipped my jacket as we settled into our roles.

The side sliding door of the ambulance stood open. Pumps and chairs, a stretcher with wheels, small drawers containing everything needed to keep you alive on a short trip.

“Could you take a look at my hip” I enquired. “I might as well, as you’re all set up and that”. I sat into the ambulance and lowered my trousers. The ambulance man applied antiseptic to the two superficial grazes on my leg. He cleaned them off nicely “So as not to dirty your trousers” he said. A nice chap indeed.

We shook hands and wished each other well as I set off for work, they set off home, they had seen much suffering. It was time for bed.

It was nine o’clock, I noticed. I started the bike, which still worked in spite of her appearance. A block from home, I decided to ride around to the crèche where I was just in time to meet my wife dropping my eighteen month old son off for another day of life. That I nearly missed.

How the Eve would Taste if you could Eat it

The dew was down at eight o’clock this evening. I went back to get my bike on the Plaça Catalunya and it was covered in a mat film of water. The cooling air had squeezed out the surplus moisture, cleaning up of an evening like someone shaking a table cloth out a window.

It’s not yet Christmas. The lights hang colourless and lifeless above the street. Men with ladders are putting them up day by day around the city. Santa hasn’t appeared yet nor have the sounds of Christmas begun to chime in our ears. I heard John Lennon’s “And so this is Christmas” the other day on the car radio. It sounded empty, and unrelated to life on the street in Barcelona today.

There was lots of room in the shops where buyers haven’t yet decided to buy. Browsing was the order of the day. Let’s leave it ‘till it's too late like we usually do, so we can push through streets filled with masses of scarves and bulky clothing grappling with shopping bags. Today Christmas shopping feels like planning a little too far ahead.

The Rambla has a new tarmacked road surface after lying scratched to the grey bone for days. The white lines are painted sharp on black, the dots that marked out the middle are still visible between the dashes. Casually oblivious that it is their fate to dissolve away in the next rain or passing bus tyre. Tourists are easy going too. They stand about taking photos at Canaletas as if the streets were empty. The shoe shine man smokes as he waits for custom.

Down at Boadas the cocktails come easy, and even in La Oveja Negra, den of beer swilling, the pace is reserved at this early hour, on a day when nothing much is planned. The terraces out beside the Triangle are full of sippers who don’t need to shiver, unless they choose to.

It is a good time to be in the city. It’s the eve of something. It’s the time before all that commotion is visited upon us. Now is the time we’ll forget about because our calendars remain empty of great occurrences. The coming weeks will bring a desire for the near future. A focus that will get things done before we all sit down for a while and chew the fat.

This is the eve, a time to enjoy, a time of low expectations, making happiness all the easier to obtain.

The shoe shine man is finishing his cigarette and tidying his tools on the mat he has set before him, an arsenal ready to be called into action at the drop of a coin. There is no need to rush today. While other cities are afire with light and bustle, here in Barcelona we have been afforded time.

Just like the hours in the evening before dinner at ten, hours which don’t exist elsewhere. This is a chunk of life we slyed away from whoever doles it out.

Savour it. What we do not spend now we will spend later.

Two Evils Meet at Midnight

I raced out without my wallet. Downstairs in the lift that visits the even numbers, the odd numbers were broken. I had to come back.

It was ten to twelve and the filling station attendants strike was starting at midnight. The needle on my scooter was about to flash red for empty so it was essential I got to the station before the strike kicked in.

I pulled onto the forecourt, alone, not a one about. The attendant was still at the night hatch. I pre-paid six euro to fill up the tank. In the end I was hard pressed to squeeze five sixty six into her. “What’s the strike about?” I asked him while paying. “Same old gripe” he answered, “Money, we’re looking for a raise”. “Fair enough” I said safe in the knowledge that my tank was full.

I waited across the road to observe what a strike looks like. At twelve on the dot the attendant left the hatch and withdrew to the backroom. I can’t imagine the staff quarters are very big, at least not big enough to remain comfortable for the two full days the strike is set to run.

A Vespa pulled in carrying a man whose helmet was designed for a smaller head. He parked in what I am sure is his habitual fashion and walked over to the hatch. He waited patiently, no shouting, calling or knocking on the window. He was seemingly unaware that his wait would surpass his expectations.

Then a Seat Leon arrived, red and rearing. Its driver was well groomed in the gelled short-haired style. He carried his keys in his hand as he made his way across the forecourt to obediently stand beside the Vespa rider.

They both stood glancing through the shop windows to see whether the attendant was perhaps finishing off his sandwich or retuning from the bathroom. Alas no, he did not appear. Following Union orders you see.

Having seen my fill I mounted my bike and drove across the road to inform them of their fate. “What time is it now?” the large-headed small-helmet wearer enquired. “Eight minutes past twelve replied Mr Leon”. I explained the strike had begun at twelve. “I’ve been here for a long time”, the helmet pleaded.

A two day wait is a long time when you’re cold and it’s midnight on a back road. A low salary is perhaps a curse that’s worse.

Starting Low but Looking Up

There’s a helmet on a stool beside a red tiled bar with a stainless steel top. There’s a teenage girl waiting beside a coffee for someone to finish playing water polo in a very hot swimming pool.

Out here in the bar the young people play with coffee spoons in empty coffee cups. They’ve eaten their croissants and drunk their coffees. Now it’s back to conversation. Helmets lie on the ground beside swimming bags stuffed with gear. Some helmets have fluorescent lightening strikes and fins out the back, others are sober, cheaper, whiter.

The girls on the left talk of study and sports clubs. The short haired young men at the next table cannot be overheard but stretch and sit sideways on their chairs. Some speak Catalan while others speak Spanish. Some switch constantly, borrowing words from both languages.

Last week’s elections have passed and the coalition government is showing signs of solidifying. Talks are underway and are reported everyday on the news. Here in this swimming pool café there is no talk of politics among the young. They have a vote but whether they voted or even thought of it is not clear on this Saturday morning at 10am.

The girl with the helmet at the bar is jigging her leg like she wishes something would end. She is more wrapped up in warm clothing than is necessary indoors. Not two days ago we entered that time of the year when motorcyclists dress out-of-synch with the rest of the population. The cold felt on a speeding bike is many degrees below that felt by a stroller with a shopping trolley.

The volume rises as parents come up from the pool where the water polo match has ended. Discussion of play and neighbourly conversation is in the air while the cook and the waiter emerge from the back room where they have been resting. Perhaps the rush hour upon us.

And just now all the young people who have been seated around me have stood up, taken helmets jackets bags and natter and left for the dressing rooms. I am alone with the parents who are ordering sandwiches, coffees and small glasses of beer. The coffee machine is grinding and squealing like a conscript forced into the fray.

A teenage boy and girl are standing together at the bar now. He has seated half of himself on a bar stool that tilts his body towards her. She adjusts her trousers and wiggles a little. It is an early start, indeed.

The weekend promises.