Outlandish

Temperatures have dropped in Madrid and it’s raining.

I had to grab a jacket from the coat rack before I took the bottles out to do the recycling earlier. How neglected they all looked hanging up there. And the shoes — kicked to the back of the cupboard save for a pair of knackered old trainers I use for shopping trips and taking the bins out. 

Once on the street, I pulled the toggles of my hood and it closed in around my ears, amplifying the patter of rain. Puddles were collecting in the uneven pavement slabs and small streams were racing around the turn in the curb. 

I felt as though I had been transported back to Inverness.

If I shut my eyes, I could even have been walking up the road by my house on the Black Isle. Constant drizzle. Clean, cold air. Hands in pockets.

When the quarantine began, I felt close to those back home as I was inundated by messages asking after my safety. But now I feel miles away.

After five years, I consider Spain to be my home but it’s not as profoundly my home as Scotland is. 

If I was to try to quantify it, I’d say that I have soaked up Madrid skin deep — its language, its way of life, the friends it has offered me. But Scotland goes all the way to the bone like an easterly wind blowing up Church Street in Inverness.

The kind of wind that feels like it has a personal vendetta. One that can penetrate a 10-pint beer jacket. But not one that will stop you from getting chips and cheese.

The weather in Madrid, by contrast, is a breeze. 

I only usually get homesick on Sundays but as the days blend into each other under lockdown, every day could be a Sunday. The fact that I’ve binge-watched 10 hours of Outlander in the last two days doesn’t help my cause. 

For those of you who haven’t seen Outlander, it follows the story of a Claire Beauchamp — pronounced Bee-chum for some reason — who is accidentally transported from the 1940s to 1740s Scotland when she touches a stone circle during her honeymoon in the Bonnie Highlands, leaving her new husband, Frank, distraught. 

Back in time, she quickly settles into life among the Mackenzie clan. Her attempts to get back to her husband become fewer and farther between when she shacks up with a ripped ginger guy called Jamie. 

I, myself, am using the quarantine to become a ripped ginger guy.

But all too often my workouts consist of me writhing on the floor like a worm in the rain while an American fitness instructor with impossibly white teeth shouts at me from Youtube. 

“Smile through the pain, you can do it.”

If only you could see me, Mr Popsugar, you would not be saying that.

I find myself jealous of Claire BeeCHUM, not because of her polyamorous and cross-dimensional love life, but because she is free to stroll down Church Street in Inverness. 

When I’m not seething with jealousy watching Instagram stories of friends back in Scotland on the beach (must be rough), I’m constantly pausing Outlander and shouting “I know where that is! I’ve been there!”

I can’t be transported back to Scotland. There are no stone circles near my flat, just recycling bins. 

The shattering of glass bottles as I pushed them one by one through the hole echoed around the square outside the market as though I was announcing my presence. The only person nearby was a man wearing a surgical mask walking his dalmation, and he wasn’t keeping count, which was my main concern.

It got me thinking, though. There must be at least one day a year when the sun shines directly through the holes of these bins. 

When that day comes, I shall crawl through the opening —providing I’m not too ripped by then — and perhaps I’ll emerge from the bins near the Fairy Glen in Rosemarkie. 

From there it’ll be a short walk up the hill to get home. 

And if it’s raining, I’ll just pull the toggles of my hood tight around my head.

 

Spain’s general elections, a litmus test of a nation’s fear and loathing

About a week ago, I was sat having a beer outside a bar in a well-heeled street across from Madrid’s Retiro Park.

At the table next me were three Spaniards, two women, and one man, all of whom were probably around retirement age and had an air of not being too economically troubled.

They were discussing Catalonia within the wider context of the general elections coming up on Sunday, 28 April.

“I don’t know, I think Pedro Sánchez isn’t that bad, he’s good-looking!” one woman said, addressing the man, who I believe was the partner of the other woman.

“He’s a son of a bitch traitor,” came the retort.

“Well you’re not telling me you’re voting for Vox, are you?” the woman asked.

“No, but who can I vote for?”

“I suppose we need some sort of a dialogue with the Catalans, this thing goes back years – whether or not they want to be in Spain – maybe just let them decide,” she said.

Through a screen of smoke billowing up from a graveyard of Marlboro butts in the ashtray that made for the centerpiece of their table, even I could see she was not exactly enrapturing her audience.

“Don’t fuck yourself like that, seriously, don’t fall for their fucking trap, they’re a bunch of bastards, Catalonia is Spain,” he said, voice rising to the point where things were becoming a bit socially awkward.

His partner, the source of most of the smoke, chipped in, trying to lighten the mood.

“Anything other than politics?” she chuckled.

They moved the conversation on, so I stopped listening.

It’s a touchy subject. I sometimes find myself tip-toeing around it in conversations at work or with people I’ve just met for the first time.

Outside of Spain, the reaction to seeing Catalan separatist leaders go on trial to face hefty charges, including rebellion, in a process broadcast live on TV in lieu of having international observers, has been one of muted indifference – whether that is tongue-holding or otherwise – or of cautious condemnation.

As an outsider in Madrid, admittedly one who openly feels uneasy watching the trial at work day-in, day-out, it can be hard to find common ground on the subject, even with people who share most of your political convictions.

“They broke the law, what do you expect? You have to uphold the law or else it’s meaningless,” is a frequent go-to.

Push too hard on the topic and someone might kindly remind you that it is not really your issue to worry about anyway, all the while drawing comparisons with Scotland’s own independence push.

They are right in a way. It is a very Spanish issue. In fact, it has consumed the nation.

The debate is often vitriolic, not only among friends outside bars near the leafy Retiro Park but also at the highest political levels.

Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera, Madrid. Photo: Jake Threadgould

In February, I went to cover the pro-Spanish unity rally in Madrid’s Plaza de Colon (nothing to do with bowels, it means Columbus Square).

It starred Pablo Casado, leader of the right-wing Popular Party, Albert Rivera, leader of the center-right Citizens (Cs) party, and featured Santiago Abascal, the frontman of Vox, the far-right group whose heady rise can largely be attributed to the Catalan independence bid.

The demonstration was called to pressure the prime minister, the aforementioned “good-looking” Sánchez, leader of the Socialist Party (PSOE), into slating early elections – which he did a few days later – but it also acted as a preach-to-the-choir moment of it’s ok to be proud of your flag.

A compère standing by the huge monument at the back of the square kicked things off with: “Let me see your flags held high, I want to see them.”

And so the flags were hoisted high, red and yellow atop a crowd gathered under the largest Spanish flag in the world.

“Yo soy español, español, español, español” rippled through the audience.

Other people held up signs saying “coup-plotters to prison,” in reference to the Catalan separatist leaders, and “Sánchez = traitor.”

The events in Catalonia back in October 2017 rocked the whole of Spain and, as if prodding a sleeping dragon, revitalized a latent nationalism that blossomed in Madrid’s streets in the form of Spanish flags, which emerged by the thousands on the city’s balconies.

The response from the Spanish right has been reactionary and based heavily on legal arguments drawing from the 1978 Constitution which, as the date suggests, was drawn up as the country transitioned into democracy after Franco’s death.

For many on the Spanish left, such overt displays of nationalism still reek of Franco.

Many people gathered at Plaza de Colon back in February, however, felt their identity was under threat. As if those in Catalonia wanting to tear away from the rest of Spain were forcibly stealing something that did not belong to them.

But that fear often manifests itself as loathing.

“Golpistas,” loosely coup-plotters or putschists, has become a well-accepted epithet for Catalan separatists among those on the Spanish right-wing.

Traitor is a heavy word so lightly thrown.

And yet, standing in the crowd that day under a small sea of Spanish flags, the impression I got was not one of national triumphalism over a political class seeking to breakaway or unilaterally alter the definition of what it is to be Spain, or Spanish, but rather a sense of fragility.

The possessiveness is such that removing Catalonia from Spain would be akin to yanking a block from an already leaning Jenga tower.

In this instance, we cannot forget that Spain’s modern democracy is only as old as the movie Grease.

Spain’s right-wing politicians, backed by favorable coverage in a number of widely-read dailies, have instilled this fear and hatred and have tried to capitalize on it.

The PP, Cs and Vox have therefore positioned themselves as the defenders and saviors of Spain’s geopolitical integrity all the while claiming that the PSOE would allow for it to be destroyed.

However, when the time came for the politicians to address the crowd on the day of the rally, both Casado and Rivera insisted that they could not share a stage with Abascal.

They instead gave short addresses to the press just off to the side of the main stage.

Abascal’s presence loomed in his absence.

Pushing through the crowd to the press pit, I saw a visibly excited woman on her phone.

“I just saw Santi (Abascal), honestly, yeah, he just walked by the stage, yeah I saw him!”

Leader of the Popular Party, Pablo Casado, Madrid.  Photo: Jake Threadgould

Enter Vox.

“Well you’re not telling me you’re voting for Vox, are you?”

Free from any sort of track record in government and proudly spurning political correctness, Vox looks set to become the first far-right party to enter the national Parliament since the end of the Franco’s fascist military dictatorship with his death in 1975.

Vox proposes a simple solution to the Catalan issue – end all autonomy across Spanish regions and centralize powers in Madrid.

Ironically, this would be unconstitutional, but it is the kind of constitutional change Vox supporters would not mind.

Although careful to keep a distance from imagery harking back to Franco, Vox shares some overlapping rhetoric, with its ideas of a grand nation united under one flag, its push to rid the country of “illegal immigrants,” to downgrade LGBT rights and neutralize feminism.

Abascal also sees himself as the Christian defender against the “Islamification” of Spain and even posed for a photo dressed as a reconquistador, although the helmet he wore was actually from the wrong century.

Like Salvini, he has harnessed social media to amplify his message and play the victim of a wider conspiracy against his party, pushing the idea that his supporters are unfairly shamed or made to feel scared to openly admit they support Vox.

All this not only plays well in the minds of those who feel nostalgic for Franco’s regime but also, and perhaps more importantly, it chimes well with traditional PP voters looking to jump what appears to be a sinking ship.

Whether or not they agree with Abascal’s other policies, they certainly feel at home with his hawkish position on Catalonia.

Casado knows this and has left the door ajar to the possibility of collaborating with Abascal in the future – like the PP did when Vox broke onto the scene taking 12 seats in the Andalusian chamber last year.

Spain’s public research body CIS has tipped the party to take around 11% of the national vote on Sunday but – and this is where this article becomes pretty bloody subjective – based on conversations I have had with people whose ears are pressed to right-wing circles, Vox looks likely to take more.

Pro-Spanish unity supporter, Madrid. Photo: Jake Threadgould

I would hazard a guess at around 17% (this is a guess based entirely on instinct but so what, it’s my blog – also, bet your grandparents on it).

Should this come to pass, Spain will have three major right-wing parties in parliament, spanning the center-right (Cs), right (PP) and far-right (Vox).

Most pollsters predict the country is on track for another hung parliament although Sánchez’s PSOE, which has campaigned on a message that it is the only party that can stop an unholy trinity of right-wingers, is tipped to take the most votes.

Spain’s left-wing parties, which includes the progressive Podemos, hope to sway the roughly 10 percent of undecided voters if they want any chance blocking a Frankenstein right-wing executive.

Alternatively, Cs might break with its election promises and strike up a conversation with the incumbent PM.

Perhaps the most logical coalition would be between PSOE and Podemos, although Pablo Iglesias’ grassroots formation looks set to be dealt a blow in Sunday’s ballot.

So, the make-up of the future Spanish government looks uncertain.

What is clear, however, is that hordes voters will be heading to the polls with a belly full of rage and Catalonia on their mind.

At a time when emotions are running high and when friends are arguing over their beers outside Retiro, Vox is waiting in the shadows to use the disgruntled right-wing as a springboard to national decision making and beyond.

The tip-toeing around conversations at work is far from over, although with Vox few people mince their words.

“Anything other than politics?”

 

 

 

The Bucket List

For the last three months or so I’ve been emptying my kitchen sink using a bucket. It’s a big blue one I bought from the corner shop. Every time I finish the dishes, I duck into the cupboard, unscrew the cap on the pipe and whoosh, out pours the murky water, flecks of lettuce, spaghetti ends and whatever else I’ve scraped in there.

Then I pick up the bucket, waddle it over to the toilet and chuck it in. The water, and the undigested detritus, rushes down the shared, external pipe in the courtyard, the calling sign in our block that someone has just gone about their business. That, and the fact that the other day I realised, somewhat concerningly, that from my toilet, I could hear the sound of my neighbour sniffing and clearing his throat.

Of course, the bucket it’s just a temporary thing, while I gear up to prepare to get ready to compose myself to tell my landlord. It’s his precious sink, after all, I’m only renting it.

I’ll add it to a growing to-do list. A bucket list, if you will. One of the Big Ones™ on that list is getting a driving licence. Yes, hello, I’m a 32-year-old man who doesn’t drive. A dying breed, but a valiant one with good calves. I did finally sit my theory test, in Spanish, in July, two years after I signed up. (Side note: in Spain they’ve rigged it so you cannot so much look at a car without first passing your theory). 

Aside from that there are Small Ones™, such as phoning the bank to tell them I’ve forgotten the PIN for my card as well as my online banking. Actually, that might belong to the Big Ones™ pile, or at least the Medium Ones™, along with defrosting the freezer. 

There are also some positive things on the bucket list. Things that are less looming.

Top of the positive list is learning to surf, which is ideal considering I live about a four and half hours drive from the nearest surfable beach. Well, surfable for others. And drivable for others, too. But I’m working on it. Another is to get back into golf, which I gave up when I went to university, in St. Andrews, ironically.

I went surfing four times last week, in Asturias. There, I met an Australian guy, Nate, who owns a small surf shack by the beach, where he offers lessons and board rentals. 

I’ve already done my surfing theory (a 45 minute lesson last year), so I went straight ahead and rented a board, the longest he had, an 8ft beast cut from the finest foam, and a wetsuit, the largest he had, freshly washed of the last person’s piss. 

Zipped up like a ginger pilot whale who’d learned to walk, I strode off into the waves and began to paddle out beyond the white water to line up with my fellow pros.

I took a thorough, briny beating on the way out but only lost control of my board four or five times — maybe six — as children no older than nine zipped passed me with ease. 

I made it out the back, panting from the paddle, and positioned myself among the two dozen or so surfers already there. I’m not quite good enough yet to sit up on my board, so I just laid there on my foamy, craning my neck around to keep my bearings. 

There’s something meditative about waiting for a wave. Moments of calm, the sound of the shore, the bobbing as the smaller waves lift you up and place you gently back down. The chatter of the surfers. There was a haze on the horizon, smoke blown over from a wildfire in Galicia. For a moment, I forgot about the bucket. The driving. The freezer. That thing at work. 

And then came the Big Ones™. Sets of four, five, six waves rolling in. The surfers around me began to paddle this way and that, left or right depending on where the waves were peaking. I flippered myself head on to the incoming swell, riding it up and down. Some of the slightly more experienced in the bunch began to catch the waves heading to shore, springing up with ease and coasting down the surface of the wave. And I let them, wanting neither to collide into them nor show them up. 

Now it was my turn. I looked back out to sea to find a monster rising up into my eyeline, standing 1.5, nay, 1.6 metres tall. 

In the blink of an eye I paddled, popped-up and nosedived hard into the water, the board yanking on its tether like a dog chasing a pigeon. 

As I came up for air, the next wave crashed onto my head. Back down into the frothy bowels I went. And again. And again. 

Several hours and a million bailouts later I trudged my dripping corpse back up to Nate. 

“Here he is, how did you get on today then, catch a wave?” 

“I’m still shite,” I said as I slipped out of my wetsuit like an Orangutan in a straight jacket.  

“I’d have you standing up in no time, I reckon” he offered with a laid back smile.

“You’re probably right, I did manage to stand up, once, sort of.” 

He didn’t know that I’d already passed my surfing theory.

I handed back the board.

“Oh no, looks like we’ve lost a piece,” he said looking at the two black fins where there was once three.

“Oh, shit,” I said, staring blankly at the board. 

There was a moment’s silence. 

“Okay, not to worry, should have some somewhere.”

“Why didn’t I at least offer to pay for it?” I thought to myself later that evening, on our way to the driving range. “He would have said no, probably, but it would have been the polite thing to do, not just stand there, in your stupid swimming trunks, nipples out, and say nothing at all. Idiot.” 

My girlfriend’s family, with whom we were staying, are golf nuts and play most days. Some of the younger cousins in the troupe play off a near scratch handicap (very good, indeed, for all ye layfolk). 

I’ve barely swung a club in 10 years, but to fit in with the family at lunch I have perhaps taken some liberties when hamming up my skills.

All this hot air, my false legacy as a troubled bright spark snuffed out in his prime had fueled a curiosity that came to a boiling point when I was invited to the driving range at the family’s local course to hit some balls. 

I had five sets of eyes on me as I settled in for my first few shots, including my own as I glimpsed my reflection in the rivers of perspiration coursing off my forehead. I was borrowing a set of clubs from one of the cousins who wasn’t around that day. A very nice set they were, too.

The pressure was palpable as I tried to get my mind to simmer down, the intrusive thoughts: imagine you slice the ball so badly you hit that kid over there, what if you just snapped the club over your knee lol, don’t forget to call the landlord, remember Barney the Dinosaur?

I pulled back and thrashed my first shot to the right, under the fence and on the fairway of the 11th hole. 

One of the uncles who came to watch me went back to the bar, leaving me with a younger cousin who was sending ball after ball up to the Space Station.

Focus this time. The Championship shot. Just do what Tiger Woods would. But would Tiger Woods? I’m sure Woods would, wouldn’t he?

Determined to hit at least one straight down the practice range, I wound up like a python and unleashed my coiled power down at the ball. 

The club thudded into the astroturf with a wallop and the ball leapt up almost vertically and plopped back down just a few feet away.

The club head, meanwhile, liberated itself from the shaft and smashed into the fence on the left.

There was a collective intake of air through pursed lips from my fellow driving range-goers. The club I was borrowing felt very light all of a sudden.

A prickly heat ran down the back of my neck. 

“Oh lord! I’ve just seen a club head go flying!” came a shout from the bar.

I had sets of eyes on me again as I turned to see family members emerge one by one from around the corner. I had been caught red handed. Colonel Oaf at the driving range with the golf club. My legacy was in tatters, and so too the club that the cousin had kindly but erroneously entrusted me with.

My worries grew exponentially with every ‘don’t worry’ I was told.

Another thing to add to the Big Ones™ list. 

Organ Döner

I was about half a minute into my first run in seven weeks when the smell hit me. 

It was evocative, like blowing the dust off a hazy memory hidden away deep in the brain’s filing cabinet. Unctuous. Almost salacious. Something so wrong but, at the right time, and in the right circumstances, so right. 

I paused my running app — I wouldn’t let this moment interrupt my heavily-falsified times — and floated toward the scent. 

A familiar face poked out of some dishevelled chef whites. Behind him, a great elephant leg waltzed to the tune of a searing orange grill. Beads of sweat oozing from amorphous beige. We meet again, old friend.

The kebab shop had reopened. 

Well, partially reopened.

It was offering window service only, and you had to phone ahead to place your order. I’m fluent in kebab after a couple of shandies but like any language, it fades with neglect. 

“Good evening Sire, or is it good morning? Please shave me some chicken into a wrap, all the trimmings and both sauces, por favor. And fries. And a beer. I shall eat it in my bed once I’ve finally settled on a show to watch on Netflix.”

For me, kebab eating is not a communal activity. I do not like to be watched. It is something private that should be kept between a man and his kebab. 

I unpaused my app and headed down the street. 

It was my New Year’s resolution to start running. It was perhaps the only one I’d ever stuck with and I racked up 150 kilometres by the time the Spanish lockdown came into effect on 14 March.

I’ve since tried to maintain some sort of indoor exercise regime. 

In the first week, I did at least one routine every day. But my discipline dropped as time progressed. I soon went from one a day to one every other day, then to one every three days, to just two days a week pretty quickly. My wine consumption did the exact opposite.

On 2 May, we were allowed back out again, between 6-10am or 8-11pm. 

I bolted out of my house at 7.59pm and the street erupted into applause. It wasn’t for me, it was for the health workers. But I finally felt what it was like to be a marathon runner. 

As it turned out, everyone in my neighbourhood had the same idea as me. 

It was impossible to run more than a couple of meters before having to drop down to a walk again to navigate between the crowds of people on the pavement. 

Thousands of middle-aged men, seemingly vacuum-packed into lycra suits, had invaded the city’s roads atop their noble steeds as though the streets of Madrid were playing host to the heavy-weight edition of the Tour de France. 

After going so long without seeing other humans, the crowds were overwhelming. 

I found myself running up and down the quietest street I could find, sucking my mask into my mouth on the uphill. I managed just 2 kilometres before calling it a day. 

Seven-weeks of strict confinement has undone a lot of my three month’s running progress. 

But nothing can undo my love of kebabs. I’ll be making an order soon. 

Just as soon as I get over my crippling fear of phone calls. 

 

Workshy of the world, unite!

In my freshly-awoken daze this morning I grabbed my phone to check the time, see if I could still get out for a run. 

I got my days mixed up. Tomorrow is the first day in seven weeks that people in Spain are allowed outside for a walk or some other kind of exercise. 

Now, I’m not here to have a lockdown-off, but ours has been pretty gnarly. 

Every time I check Instagram, folk in the UK are sharing photos of them cooped up at home one minute then taking a run through the park the next. But no, I’m not bitter. I’m not here to have a lockdown-off, like I said. But I think if we did — and I’m not saying we are — but if we did, we all know whose lockdown is a real lockdown and whose is a Lockdown Lite. 

Not that a government-enforced policy of being a couch potato is something to brag about. 

Today is not Saturday, but I do have a day off. Happy International Workers Day. 

I’ve never really been cut-out for work. I think the first time I considered retirement was when I was just half-an-hour into my first-ever shift stocking shelves at the village shop. I was 13 at the time.

I’ve done a lot since then. I’ve worked in a fish and chip shop, washed dishes, served tables, pulled pints, made paninis, butchered meat, and teached English. Now I’m a journalist. 

I would still retire right this very moment if I could. Perhaps I’ve just not found my vocation. 

This lockdown has given me time to reflect on that, though my idea of a dream job has changed several times in that period, largely depending on what I’m watching on Netflix. 

When I watched Drive to Survive, I was convinced I would become a Formula One driver. I just have to figure out the tricky business of getting my license first. Then I watched Baby Ballroom and decided — you guessed it — I wanted to be a ballroom dancer. Then I watched Hitler’s Circle of Evil.

But I count myself very lucky to have a job, especially living in Spain, a country that leans on the shoulders of an army underpaid — or totally unpaid — interns. 

Companies have gotten into the habit of plucking students and fresh graduates and expect them to hand over a couple of years of their lives for anything between 0 and 300 euros a month. The average rent for a room in Madrid is 500 euros a month. They rarely offer them a full-time job when the internship is over.

Another hangover from the financial crisis is an unsavoury ethos in the workplace that you should just be grateful to have a job at all. 

And people wonder why so many of Spain’s adults live with their parents. And why so many of Spain’s adults are forced abroad to find work. 

Then came the coronavirus. Spain’s GDP dropped 5.2 percent in the first three months of 2020, a period that only takes the first two weeks of the lockdown into account, so brace yourselves for the second quarterly report. At least 900,000 jobs have been wiped out by the pandemic, although the government has made it illegal for companies to fire people. 

Europe’s northern countries, the Netherlands in particular, have been vocal in their opposition to splitting the debt for Spain’s (and Italy’s) recovery programs. 

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, was recently filmed in an exchange with a random worker. The random worker tells the PM: “Please don’t give the Italians and the Spanish money.”

“No, no, no,” Rutte replies with a thumbs up and a grin. Almost 25,000 people have died from the coronavirus in Spain. And more in Italy.

Cheers, Mark.

Another thing we’ve confirmed during the lockdown is who is a key worker and who is not. 

Medical staff, street cleaners, carers, social workers, shop assistants, post office workers, food deliverers, they are. We clap for them — if only a round of applause could be monetized. 

I’m wary of the term heroes, though. It’s often used by governments in reference to soldiers, to make the death of young men and women palatable. 

The rich, they’re not essential. Branson trying to get a government bailout from his privately-owned Caribbean island. Bezos firing workers for complaining about the health and safety conditions in Amazon warehouses. DeGeneres comparing lockdown in her mansion to prison. 

Perhaps after all this has blown over, we can have a ruddy good revolution. Then we can all retire. 

Anyone else seen the Cuba Libre Story on Netflix?

Happy International Workers Day. 

 

 

One in. One out.

A Saturday after a Friday night in which we failed to ration our supply of wine.

I jolted groggily into the morning as though a member of cabin crew had asked whether I wanted tea or coffee with my breakfast. My organs reorganized themselves like bubbles in a water cooler.  

Cheap red wine. The kind that has no dimple at the bottom of the bottle. The kind whose grandiose label like, I don’t know, Felipe de los Llanos* — Philip of the Plains —  belies its vinegary bouquet. That’s what does it. 

I washed down any memory of Phillip with a glass of water. 

Saturday has become the big shop day under quarantine. The idea being that you only have to leave the flat once a week and you’re sorted. The reality being that Saturday’s big shop is followed by Tuesday and Friday’s mini-shops.

It’s a five-minute jaunt down to the supermarket and a 15-minute hike back.

I took my passport, a gas bill to ward off any prying police officer, some hand gel, a euro for the trolley and three reusable shopping bags the size of parachutes.

Before I even made it to the street the shop is on, I saw a line snaking up and down the pavement. 

It was odd seeing so many people in the same place. It was also odd to feel the sun on my back.

I joined the back of the line. 

Wait. Shuffle. Wait. Shuffle. Wait. Shuffle. 

Don’t lean on the pole. Don’t touch your face. Don’t cough. Don’t sneeze. Don’t rub your nose. Don’t wipe your eyes. For God Sake, do not cough. 

I felt a tickle in my throat and an itch on my face and sweat began to collect on my now overgrown fringe. 

My body was re-familiarizing itself with our nearest star after what is now four-weeks of proving like pale dough in a cupboard.

And by now the glass of water I’d supped in the morning to knock back any remnants of Phil the night before had well and truly worn off. 

As we rounded the corner and edged closer to the entrance, people became increasingly impatient. It was one in one out. 

Shoppers walked back up past the line, bags laden with toilet roll and olive oil. 

There’s going to be nothing left by the time I get in. 

I’ve familiarized myself enough with the layout of the supermarket that I now consider a Spanish Dale Winton, only incredibly less tanned (see: afore-mentioned dough metaphor). 

The only early hiccup I had in my expedition was someone accidentally social-distancing me from the cheese I wanted by leaving their trolly unattended in the dairy aisle. I wouldn’t touch it for fear of germs. 

I ticked off my items faster than a celibate’s to-do list. 

The only thing left on it was booze. I turned the corner and there he was, Plain Old Phil, sitting on the bottom shelf. 

I tried to avoid eye-contact — it’s always awkward bumping into someone you know in a supermarket. 

Not today, Phil. 

In all my confidence rushing around the supermarket with my trolley, I’d forgotten to bear in mind one important fact — I was on my own. 

The rules in Spain state that only one person can go out for errands at any given time. Mind you, I’ve seen people flout the rules all over the place, mainly couples. 

You’ll often see one person passing by apparently talking to themselves, only to see someone two metres behind say: “What?”

Three parachutes full of food lay in wait as I moved the trolley back to what Google reliably tells me is called a stack. 

I slipped one over my right shoulder, one over my left and held another with my right hand and trudged for the door like Scotland’s gangliest World Strongest Man competitor. 

The people at the door stared me down. 

My thighs were already telling me to stop, to re-adjust, to take a break. I’d gone 10 meters. I couldn’t stop now, the crowd watched on, willing me to leave. 

One in. One out. 

*This name has been altered to protect the integrity of the winemakers. And people called Phillip. 

Dream quarantine

The swifts and swallows are back. Those little harbingers of summer. 

The sound of them screeching and sweeping and tumbling down the street reminds me of suffocatingly hot August mornings in Madrid when you wake up in a pool of sweat having only managed to drift off an hour or so ago. 

Everything in Madrid closes in August, with shopkeepers and bar owners shipping out to the coasts or to their villages — everyone has a “pueblo” in Spain — for their holidays. 

They’re closed now, too. I wonder if the swallows think they’ve arrived late. 

I had a strange dream last night. 

I dreamt that I woke up in my bed, got up, put on some jogging bottoms and an old t-shirt, headed to the living room, turned on the computer and started work. 

Then I woke up in my bed, got up, put on some jogging bottoms and an old t-shirt, headed to the living room, turned on the computer and started work, but for real this time. 

It dawned on me that the quarantine had pierced through to my subconscious, and I’m pretty bloody hacked off by that. If it carries on I’m going to have to start filing for overtime.

The bosses changed my shift pattern the other week from 9 to 5 to 12 to 8. 

Now the eruption of applause every evening serves as a reminder that my workday is over, and that I can finally pull myself up from my wobbly plastic Ikea chair and make the two steps to my living room balcony to join in. 

It’s a strange phenomenon, clapping from the balcony. The pessimistic devil on the shoulder asks what the point is. Clapping is great, but after all this is over, are we just going to go back to paying health workers far below what they deserve?

I dedicate at least a minute of the applause to my mum, who works in the NHS. And pessimism aside, I always find I have a lump in my throat at some point.

Since the clocks sprang forward, I am able to see the residents of my street in all their glory. 

There’s the woman who looks like an art teacher, the man with the two black and white barrels masquerading as French bulldogs, and the troop of howler monkeys who live a couple of doors down. 

I’m still waiting to catch a glimpse of the person who lives directly above me, to verify whether or not he is, in fact, a giant with a taste for concrete clogs and jogging on the spot.

I wondered what they thought of me, stood out there at 8pm wearing my pyjamas still and my hair twisted and dry like a swallow’s nest. 

The novelty of wearing pyjamas to work wears off around halfway through the shift when you realize that all your adult actions like firing off important emails signed with “kind regards” and your phone calls to the boss are belittled by the fact you look like a four-year-old boy on Christmas Day.

I’m no stranger to funky work clothes.

One particularly overweight summer at uni, I pulled shifts at a sandwich deli that required me to wear a tiny green apron that dug into the overhang of my belly and a tight black shirt that highlighted my curvaceous upper body. 

I spent most of my shifts self-consciously readjusting my garb like some mad game of head shoulders, knees and toes. 

On Monday, I changed things up on the balcony and wore a crisply ironed white shirt and blue trousers, and I’m pretty sure my neighbours thought I was some well-to-do banker who’d broken quarantine rules to come and check on his motivationally-challenged twin brother. 

Wrong. I just had a zoom meeting that day.

 

Out with the old and in with the young

Although it was the brainchild of the older generation, Brexit has become a youth issue. Even Victorian factory overlord and chief backbench Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said we may not know the economic benefits of Brexit for another 50 years. If so, not even I, at the tender age of 27, let alone him, at the ripe old age of 167, will see that fanciful trough of money slide into our bank accounts once we’ve cut ties with Brussels until is too late.

So, assuming that Mogger’s prediction is accurate (it isn’t), why would the likes of him, spineless Boris Johnson and Michael Gove et al. want to call the Brexit shots? Why not immediately hand over the reins to the generation who will be affected by the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc? To leave a legacy? Doubtful.

It’s the longest game of I told you so in history.

In 50 years, when the last survivors of Britain come across a crackling radio buried deep in the radioactive snow that blankets the rubble where Birmingham once stood and tune in to hear a distant broadcast in Mandarin saying that the pound has risen one percent against the new euro and now equaled 0.002 cents, then, and only then, will Jacob Rees-Mogg ease out his dying breath to his 52nd grandchild: “I knew it would pay off, Etonious Harrowious Plonkerous, I knew it. “

Until then, the blame for everything that goes even slightly awry with Brexit will be laid at the feet of the EU or with those who don’t want it to happen at all.

Who can wait that long for a cash-out? Well, the Brexiteers can. Rees-Mogg has already started shifting some of his investment company’s assets over to Ireland, an EU member state, just to be sure. What a patriot. A good old top-hat wearing pinch of salt of the earth.

I can hear the clicking now as millions of regular working class Britons send their own savings offshore. Take that, EU, there’s a bloody app for that now, I’ve seen it on TV. But, of course, they’re not. They can’t. And that’s one of the many tragic things about Brexit.

The arch-Brexiteers, all from the upper echelons of society, successfully tapped into reserves of working-class rage. Putting the obvious racist contingent of the pro-Brexit electorate to the side for the sake of word count, it’s not that hard to see why someone might have voted to leave.

During the referendum, there was a strong showing from the UK’s forgotten corners. If you wake up in a blind panic every morning trying to figure how you’re going to put food on the table for the rest of the week and then someone comes along saying all that can change with a simple vote, you might just hedge your bets. You’ve got nothing to lose. Except, of course, you do.

Recent research published in the Financial Times suggests that a no-deal Brexit would cost the average UK household a grand. And yet, a no-deal is being championed by Moggers, Johnson and the Male Daily. Rest assured that not one penny will be alleviated from their pockets for the cause. For many, a thousand pounds is the difference between surviving or not.

Our resident I’m not a fascist I’m just a regular bloke Nigel Farage recently had the audacity to claim he was skint, conveniently forgetting about his measly 8,500 euro (pre-tax) monthly salary at the European Parliament, which is just a side job for him. I’ll do it if you want, Nige.

He won’t be there much longer, though, and while that is a cause for celebration, it also rings in a darker era in the UK’s relationship with the bureaucrats in Brussels at a time when the far-right is on the march across the continent.

This is where our knight in shining cardigan ambles in. The absolute Jeremy Corbyn boi.

Ever a eurosceptic, Corbyn seems fairly content letting the Brexit process run its course until May’s government inevitably crumbles and she is forced to live in his allotment shed. He might like that, he could get back to nationalizing his carrots and making sure Liam Fox doesn’t get into his chlorinated chickens.

By that time, UK politicians will not only have reduced their international clout, but they will have absolutely no tools at hand to influence the EU. This is music to the ears of die-hard leavers, but surely not to Jeremy Corbyn? As the messiah of the British progressive left, does he not want to be at the frontlines of the looming political battle with the far-right?

From Italy to Germany, Austria to the Czech Republic, the far-right is hoovering up the vacuum left by the nigh on total collapse of the center-left. Center-right outfits are budging up to make room. In these turbulent times, when controversies are swiftly forgotten with the swipe of a thumb and fascism has put on a fake mustache to sneak back into government, the left-wing needs to put its myriad differences aside and unite.

The battleground has been set for the European Parliament during the elections in May 2019, after officials have clicked Ctrl+Alt+Del on the UK’s seats. Corbyn’s willingness to slide out of the EU recuses him from the task of sticking up to Europe’s far-right bullies on behalf of those without a voice, those will suffer the most with fascists in charge.

At this rate, by the time Corbyn gets into government, he’ll be stood on the white cliffs of Dover with a homemade jam sandwich watching on as the EU’s democratic institutions are slowly dismantled. Steve Bannon wouldn’t miss it for the world, Corbyn would. If he doesn’t feel up for it, maybe it’s time he passed the buck to someone who is going to feel the full brunt of Brexit personally.  

But then again, perhaps this is all a lost cause. We’ve stepped off a political cliff edge already and are venturing into uncharted territory. Politicians are improvising. Everything they learned in their journey to the top became irrelevant on June 23, 2016. This new chapter of global politics is looking fierce and I doubt history will smile kindly on those who asked us to turn the page. I’d like to put the book down now, please.

At least Mogger’s money is safe, I guess.

MAD COOL 2018 (Despair in the departure lounge)

The festival grounds at Mad Cool 2018 were completely surfaced over with verdant astroturf and rose out of Madrid’s city limits like a succulent desert mirage. It looked good enough to eat.

Our desire to graze on fake plastic grass may have stemmed from the fact that we had been stripped of our 1-liter bottle of water at the entrance. It was deemed too large, too thirst-quenching in the 36C heat.

It cost me and my brother, Theo, who had flown out from Edinburgh for the occasion, 90 euros each for the day pass on Friday, which was headlined by our long-time favorites the Arctic Monkeys. We had been too slow out the blocks to grab the three-day pass.

In hindsight, I am grateful for that. Sometimes lack of foresight pays off thanks very much.

The lineup was impressive and the organizers had obviously spent time curating the festival area, which was replete with instagrammable food trucks and boutique merchandise. It was pretty.

However, if, like me, you went through a turd-polishing phase in your teens, then you’ll know it’s not easy. (I’d recommend cream-based polish, rather than liquid.)

This superficiality was compounded by a tangible air of exclusivity. We were ants to the VIP picnic. The first 30 or so rows of space in front of the main stage were reserved for those able to pay more for their tickets. As was the four-story scaffolding tent-come-bar thing plonked squarely adjacent to the main stage.

I’m sure some of the bars were off limits to us, too, but I can’t be certain as my view was blocked by my dothed cap as we shuffled grovelingly by.

It’s no less than insulting to fork out nigh on 100 euros for entry, plus the 60 or so on food and captive-audience beers, only to be told: “here? oh no, you can’t go here, get back over there, sweaty.”

Can’t fault him on the sweaty, though.

We were in dire need of liquids when the card machines in all of the festival bars went offline.

Out of cash, and with no ATM on site, we were forced to move from stall to stall like a bow-legged Mary and Joseph to see if there was room at the inn for our baby VISAs. No, came the reply.

We managed to cobble together our remaining ducats for some #Aperol at the #Aperol Spritz stall.

Despair in the departure lounge. We were trapped, money-less and thirsty.

After the Arctic Monkeys, whose fantastic set we were forced to watch from the safety of the Very Unimportant Person section, we barged out of the crowd in search of the free water dispensary located somewhere in the grounds.

Our bottle languishing somewhere in a bin a three days’ camel ride back through security, we were forced to pick up a couple of used beer cups from the ground but hygiene concerns took a back seat when confronted with the queue for water.

Theo was nominated to take on what could only be described as the writhing hordes of Mordor. The mass of parched souls was dozens wide and dozens deep. Everyone jostled to get a drop of the sacred liquid.

He emerged 20 minutes later with plastic-scented water served in what was essentially someone else’s litter. It was hard to find a reason to stay any longer but Massive Attack were soon to play on one of the smaller stages.

The tent was so overcrowded we couldn’t even get near the door, let alone inside the tent. The Bristol trip-hop lads were late and the air filled with whistles. We left and joined the streams of other heading for the exit with three hours to go until the festival actually came to a close.

I later read on Twitter that Massive Attack had canceled, complaining of noise leaking over from Franz Ferdinand.

Although we are loyal disciples to Pastor Alex Turner, the extremely high quality of the music on display was not quite enough to counteract the overwhelming feeling that we had been completely mugged off.

Take heed.

Mad Cool is neither mad nor cool. Don’t go.

Death of migrant in police raid sparks riots in downtown neighborhood of Madrid

Go Fry Asparagus

Madrid, Mar 16.- A neighborhood in downtown Madrid on Thursday erupted in a flare of collective anger as rioters clashed with hundreds of police officers following the sudden death of a migrant after he had been chased by law enforcement.

The district of Lavapiés was ablaze as dozens of containers were set on fire while protesters lobbed rocks and bottles at police, after Mame Mbaye Ndiaye, a 34-year-old man of Senegalese origin, died of an apparent heart attack when allegedly running from local officers who were pursuing him along with other street vendors peddling their wares illegally.

In the aftermath of Ndiaye’s death, an enraged mob congregated at Lavapiés square and soon began to confront police.

The protests turned into full-blown turmoil when agents from the national police’s riot unit (UIP) rushed to the scene, wearing heavy riot gear and shooting rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

Antifascist groups spread…

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