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.