Terrassa was, as usual a festering bed of contagion. I refer of course to The Nephews who seem to harbour disease as naturally as Portsmouth does boats. This time the youngest was reported to have bronchitis and from the woeful appearance of Toni it was obvious that The Nephews has struck again.
Poor old Toni has not slept for three days and has now decided to go the doctor. The journey back from the party which, to be fair, was not quite the presentfest that I expected it to be, was punctuated by Toni’s world weary wracking coughs.
I of course was a point of terminal exhaustion as I had Gone a New Way to Terrassa cutting across various road systems from the school to join up, eventually and thankfully with a stretch of motorway that I recognized. It was however a nerve tightening experience as I passed new buildings and saw new vistas as I drove with that quiet manic determination of the very lost.
There were no comforting signs with Terrassa on them and, as is the usual way with Spanish motorways, many large blue signs which offered me destinations which were in contrary directions and also a way back to my starting point. You have to have a steely determination to press onwards in the fond hope that you are getting nearer to where you want to go.
I was encouraged by a view of the bizarre outline of Montserrat and, as I seemed to be heading for it I knew that the general direction I was taking was OK. While that might have been comforting for some, my experience has told me that you can get tantalizingly close to where you want to be with signs encouraging you to think that you are in the vicinity only to find that you have been directed onto a road whose characteristics are narrowness, windiness and whose tarmac is a haunt of inexplicable lumbering lorries.
Although there were several beguiling looking turn-offs I resisted the impulse to follow a likely looking sign and waited for the motorway to develop into something useful – which it did, so I was right.
Our arrival back in Castelldefels was anti-climactic as I was exhausted and Toni exhausted and ill.
I had made us both a delicious honey and lemon drink when there was a yalwp from our intercom system. This is not what we expect late at night and the mildly threatening nature of the interruption galvanized the shuddering bulk of Toni filled with self pity on the sofa to a dynamic what-the-hell-is-going-on sort of person. He did not deign to answer the importunate call of the intercom but instead looked out of the kitchen window which has an excellent view of the front gate.
What he saw was a scene comprising a police car and three standing policemen with an extra person. They wanted to ask us a few questions!
My normal middle class response to the police calling is of course horror and dread suffused with fundamental feelings of total guilt. Considering where I was these perfectly normal reactions were laced with a level of terror that these policemen were foreign and they had guns.
Toni was in his dressing gown and I still had my school clothes on as we marched out and unlocked the gate to reveal our next door neighbour looking small and vulnerable surrounded by no-nonsense looking policemen illuminated by the flashing blue light of the car.
It appeared that our neighbour (who is French he added irrelevantly) had been stopped by the police and was found not to be carrying any papers. This is the equivalent of spitting on the flag so he was escorted back to where he claimed to live. It turns out that he does not own the house; it belongs to a ‘friend’ and therefore he couldn’t prove that he lived there! The poor man looked wretched as we had to vouch for his actually living next door to us. He was writing his hands and apologising in a manner worth of a Dickensian character!
If I had been feeling less tired and Toni less ill I think that we would have spent the rest of the night in increasingly lurid speculation about the true circumstances of our hapless neighbour’s plight. As it was, I went to bed.
But I’m not quite as tired now and my mind is seething with various scenarios which I would not dare write about here!
I only hope that Toni’s visit to the doctor leaves him capable of coherent story fabrication when I get home for my half day today.
Poor old Toni has not slept for three days and has now decided to go the doctor. The journey back from the party which, to be fair, was not quite the presentfest that I expected it to be, was punctuated by Toni’s world weary wracking coughs.
I of course was a point of terminal exhaustion as I had Gone a New Way to Terrassa cutting across various road systems from the school to join up, eventually and thankfully with a stretch of motorway that I recognized. It was however a nerve tightening experience as I passed new buildings and saw new vistas as I drove with that quiet manic determination of the very lost.
There were no comforting signs with Terrassa on them and, as is the usual way with Spanish motorways, many large blue signs which offered me destinations which were in contrary directions and also a way back to my starting point. You have to have a steely determination to press onwards in the fond hope that you are getting nearer to where you want to go.
I was encouraged by a view of the bizarre outline of Montserrat and, as I seemed to be heading for it I knew that the general direction I was taking was OK. While that might have been comforting for some, my experience has told me that you can get tantalizingly close to where you want to be with signs encouraging you to think that you are in the vicinity only to find that you have been directed onto a road whose characteristics are narrowness, windiness and whose tarmac is a haunt of inexplicable lumbering lorries.
Although there were several beguiling looking turn-offs I resisted the impulse to follow a likely looking sign and waited for the motorway to develop into something useful – which it did, so I was right.
Our arrival back in Castelldefels was anti-climactic as I was exhausted and Toni exhausted and ill.
I had made us both a delicious honey and lemon drink when there was a yalwp from our intercom system. This is not what we expect late at night and the mildly threatening nature of the interruption galvanized the shuddering bulk of Toni filled with self pity on the sofa to a dynamic what-the-hell-is-going-on sort of person. He did not deign to answer the importunate call of the intercom but instead looked out of the kitchen window which has an excellent view of the front gate.
What he saw was a scene comprising a police car and three standing policemen with an extra person. They wanted to ask us a few questions!
My normal middle class response to the police calling is of course horror and dread suffused with fundamental feelings of total guilt. Considering where I was these perfectly normal reactions were laced with a level of terror that these policemen were foreign and they had guns.
Toni was in his dressing gown and I still had my school clothes on as we marched out and unlocked the gate to reveal our next door neighbour looking small and vulnerable surrounded by no-nonsense looking policemen illuminated by the flashing blue light of the car.
It appeared that our neighbour (who is French he added irrelevantly) had been stopped by the police and was found not to be carrying any papers. This is the equivalent of spitting on the flag so he was escorted back to where he claimed to live. It turns out that he does not own the house; it belongs to a ‘friend’ and therefore he couldn’t prove that he lived there! The poor man looked wretched as we had to vouch for his actually living next door to us. He was writing his hands and apologising in a manner worth of a Dickensian character!
If I had been feeling less tired and Toni less ill I think that we would have spent the rest of the night in increasingly lurid speculation about the true circumstances of our hapless neighbour’s plight. As it was, I went to bed.
But I’m not quite as tired now and my mind is seething with various scenarios which I would not dare write about here!
I only hope that Toni’s visit to the doctor leaves him capable of coherent story fabrication when I get home for my half day today.
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