What You Can See with a Pen

I had to buy a pen to make this worth while.

There’s nothing happening and there’s nobody around, except tourists and die-hards.

No fish – that’s the killer. No fishmongers, no crowd. No life, no smells, no locals. Why open if there’s nobody here. No fish on Monday.

The sound of an electric plane paring down wood is about all I can hear over the voice of the delivery man sitting next to me. He’ll never forget, he says. Something bad has happened. He’s taken a seat for a smoke and to talk of how Mondays are slow, how Mondays are always slow. Now he smokes and speaks of Christmas. His companion talks of family for Christmas – how to get paid double for working on feast days. That way he can make a little more, cash in hand, and juggle his days to see a little more family for Christmas.

The Boqueria without the hustle and bustle is like a film set before the stars arrive. All vans and hard work; preparation.

The barman has a lumpy scar on his face that runs from his right sideburn to his chin. It must have been quite an opening – perhaps someone with a knife wanted to see in – or wanted him to see in. He seems to have forgotten about it. It doesn’t tilt his face or make him twitch. He doesn’t raise a hand to touch it. It has become part of what he is – a turn he took that left a brand.

Miles of aisles run away from me in a grid that becomes a radial convergence of bare stainless steel benches at its heart. On any day but today fresh fish lie gaping, some slithering slightly, piles of crabs crack their exoskeletons at us as parents point them out to children.

The ladies call us guapo and reel us in with special offers and recommendations. They tell us how fresh it all is and turn a specimen over on the bench or laugh and joke while skinning a sole.

They are visited at election times and photographed when the man-on-the-street needs to be seen. Like a wet finger in the air, the good folk of the Boqueria are turned to for direction. The opinion of the masses distilled through the heat of conversation, so many mouths all achatter – ceaselessly selling and buying.

You can eat fresh fish at the bar. They carry it ten paces across the aisle from a stall and place it on the pan for one’s good self. Today the fish that lie exposed under angular glass bar-top vitrines are of dubious origin. The chicken, yellowing and pasty now, is not to be recommended. Perhaps an open minded foreigner might order it in an effort to get closer to the local customs.

But then the locals cannot always be relied on for their discerning taste. They may well be immune to death by poisoning or a dodgy stomach. Beware gullible traveller, while tonight you are big, tomorrow you may awake as if bound to the bed by a myriad of tiny cords.

The floor is strewn with cigarette butts and empty sachets that held single helpings of sugar. The clock is ticking and the bar staff are not inclined to sweep up what rubbish lies in the aisle – the public highway.

In the corner of my eye a gentleman with a blue sleeveless anorak orders a coke and ice in a long thin glass. He pours the coke slowly and watches the bubbles rise. He stops three quarter way and taps the base of the bottle against the glass – to make it fizz more, it seems. He pauses then, then waits a little more, then drinks.

The quirky ceremony of the individual. Signs of life indeed. What greater ceremony can there be?