Star Wars Day - Paseo de Castellana

May the fourth be with you.  I was reminded of it by Facebook, who wanted me to share a photo from three years ago.  It was my Harley Sportster, freshly collected from a teacher in Lymington and parked outside the in-laws en-route home.  It looks nice shining in the sun.

In the photo I can see that the front tyre pressure's low.  You can’t tell from the photo that it badly needed a service.  The former was fixed a little further down the road, the latter by the following weekend.  I never realised just how easy it would be to work on. 

With the tyre pumped-up, the ride home over the hills forming the Dorset and Somerset border was brilliant.  Not the fastest bike in the world by a very long way, but it stomped up those hills while making the most gorgeous sound.  It just felt like it should.  Best of all, it gave me my Found Summer of a Motorcycle Hermit while N was away doing great things.  The bike’s been gone nearly a year.  I lived on the cash it raised from September to January.  I doubt there’ll be another.  But who knows?

May the fourth 2016 and I’m sitting on a park bench in Paseo de Castellana, killing time between lessons.  The sun is shining, just like in the photo, and I’ve just finished a café con leche and jamon y queso caliente sandwich (same word).  It seemed wrong to stay inside with the sun shining out here and, if I’m honest, I got a little tired of listening to some kid reading the tech news from the Financial Times.  He was entertaining an entourage.

I’m not sure what the situation is, but I suspect there’s a big American firm around here somewhere paying the local kids peanuts.  Or I could be wrong and it might be the college a few hundred metres north along the Paseo.  The café is the lunch venue for groups of young Spaniards speaking English with American accents and seemingly in the tow of American kids slightly older than themselves.  Except the one reading the stories from the FT seemed to be German or Nordic at a guess.  Speaking with a noticeably North American accent.

He was regaling his posse (who seemed to be in some kind of reluctant thrall) with a report on driverless cars.  It seems the world, including me I suppose, is getting it all wrong with driverless cars.  Millions of test miles have been covered with the only accidents being caused by driven cars, i.e. people.  There ya go, then! He looked up from the paper and proffered his opinion that there was no reason why any car should have a steering wheel or pedals anymore.  No one really wants to drive, apparently.  Why would you when you could be doing something else in the back?

Like having sex?  No.  Like working on your laptop.  I called at the banio on the way out.  Someone had pissed all over the seat.

The park bench is across from a building site.  It’s been going on for months.  Nothing seems to change much.  There’s a huge gap like a missing tooth.  I sat here last week practicing harmonica.  People walk by, but they don’t seem to notice.  Most seem to be students from the college.  It’s an aesthetically pleasing park bench.

I watched a large bulk-tipper truck being loaded with rubble and soil from the site.  They must be excavating.  They loaded it by swinging skips in using a large crane.  The lorry rocked under the weight as a skip was dropped in, then a ladder appeared and a man in a white hard-hat jumped in with the skip and loosened the chains attached to the crane.  The crane was raised (the man had climbed back out) and I wondered what was happening as the skip suddenly flipped and spilled most of its contents into the trailer – the rest went over the side. 

I’d seen the driver of the lorry mooching around keeping an eye on things.  I used to drive trucks and I was empathising heavily as the skip began careening into one side of the trailer then the other.  The man on the spot didn’t seem too fazed. The crane operator and his accomplice repeated the trick.  I watched as they cleared the spillage from around the truck and parked the crane jib.  The driver swung his door open and climbed the steps into the cab.  I know that feeling.  Start the engine, check the paperwork, the mirrors, into gear and away.  It’s always good to get back out on the road. 

Last week, some of my students explained the term “guiri” to me.  It means foreigner.  At this time of year, we foreigners become more easily identifiable as faces become reddened by the sun.  When you come from the colder ends of the planet, why wouldn’t you head for the park as soon as the sun comes out?  I noticed in the mirror of the café’s toilet that my forehead and nose are looking burned and veiny.  I’ve been using Factor 50 when I know I'll be spending time in parks and plazas.  The rest of it is just being here. 

Look, my dad spent years out in the Middle East and India…  Hell, I don’t know.  I suppose at fifty-four the old tissue isn’t what it was – kind of falling apart.  Pues (well), what can you do?  Enjoy the sun, I suppose.

Every few minutes a Harley comes rumbling by.  I can pick out the Sportsters.  You can always hear your own baby cry.