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.