Barcelona - a moment

The air hangs, trapped in its own heavy fug.

It crawls the streets, congealing limbs and clotting drains. Concrete walls seem to throb with heat. I take the Metro. Though it's overcrowded, at least it's air conditioned.

The steps slip from searing heat into a rumbling fuzz of dried air and fluorescent light that turns us all into zombies, shuffling past ticket counters.

A hunched up figure, coddled in her grey rag, eyes to the ground, slowly shakes a few coins in her cup. I pass by, awkwardly, imagining her endless nights, threatened, moved on, searching for a quiet corner where she can pretend she doesn't exist.

The air is tight down here too. But now with electricity, buzzing and clicking everyone into a strange cohesive mulch. How can it feel natural to walk directly into a dark metal conveyor, pressing against some fat, sweating clerk on a mission to get home? But it does.

Finally I am out at the other side at the Arc de Triomf. Triomf of what I'm not quite sure - perhaps a triumph of getting out of the metro in one piece. A few side streets and I'm outside my front door.

A shriek rips through the stale, thick air. Another tourist has had their shoulder bag ripped from them by the shady characters on the placa.

No doubt there's some post-middle-aged American man panting and straining up a cobbled street nearby. He'll be wishing he'd known what was about to happen before he ordered a second helping of calamari half an hour ago.

My guess is confirmed when I see a straining overweight old man in chinos and walking stick return to what must be his shaken wife a few feet away from me. He's empty handed.

Together they try and work out how they're going to ask which way to the police station in Spanish... or should that be Catalan? They're still out of breath, in shock, and half paralysed by this dead air. I pretend I haven't seen them.

I turn the key and push. I expect the stagnant piss at the bottom of the stairs, but somehow it still comes as a surprise. I look up and thankfully she's not there. Another door and I'm into a tiny interior courtyard.

Now I see her. Pug faced, dark rings under her eyes, a shock of white hair, leering down from her window onto my interior terrace, framed by peeling paint, spider-webs and botched masonry.

She spits in my direction and hums to the tune on the TV that's at full volume behind her. I stare at her and her humming stops.

"Que?" She challenges, in her outrageously self-righteous squawk.

I pass up the invitation to this dialogue and turn the key in the third door which will lead finally into my piso.

My wife sits, slumped in tears.

The old witch upstairs left the tap on when she was out and it has flooded down and onto our bed, bringing bits of plaster with it.

Now the mattress is propped against the wall, courted by two plastic buckets and a mop. The water is a curious yellow colour.

Our resident witch entertains herself by bombing us with debris consisting mostly of dog-shit-smeared plastic bags and rags. It wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't recently become parents. And our son loves to crawl around.

I'm so furious I storm upstairs and bang on her door.

She pretends she can't hear me so I shout, and make as much noise as I can. The door next to hers opens to a pissed-off looking young Spanish girl. "Que pasa, hombre?" she asks but what she says with her eyes is "F**K OFF and leave me in peace. I get enough grief from the old witch alone without all the other neighbours joining in."

Finally the hag decides to open the door ajar. She may have lost her marbles and skulks in dire squalor, but she can always tell when there's some interesting altercation going on that doesn't involve her directly.

"Mmee me mua moo me ma ma" she intones, repeating what the neighbour was saying to me in baby language insulting the both of us in one fell swoop. I dig my foot in the gap of her open door and begin to explain that her running tap has caused real damage to our ceiling. She says, innocent as a little girl, how sorry she is, she thought she'd turned it off when she went out this morning.

I get a glimpse of her room over her shoulder. I can see that her floor is covered in water with a few turds, like slugs, luxuriating in the liquid. I also notice the sparseness of her walls apart from a few big dents and not so mysterious smears. Her dogs howl and scratch and scamper behind another door deeper inside this misery of a home.

She assures me again that the tap has been turned off.

There's nothing more I can do. I turn and descend again back to my flat.

Just as I enter my door I hear another great kaaplop and I know intuitively she's just thrown a new bag of dogs excrement onto our terrace.