Not quite my scene

Our evening meal was taken outside a bar in the centre of town just by the railway station.  Considering its central position, as Laura noted, it was airy and tranquil, with the pots of sturdy greenery giving an illusion of a stunted dell.  Perhaps Laura’s comment was a hostage to fortune as almost immediately a deranged looking man staggering along the street with a plastic beaker full of what looked like liquid mud, lurched up to the entrance of the bar and asked the Chinese waiter if he could have a fill up of water.

The good-natured waiter complied with the request and the man went on his way muttering to himself and spilling quantities of his evil looking concoction and lurched his way into the open square space in front of the station.

Then the dogs started barking.  And went on barking.  And then there were sounds of an altercation with raised voices above the threnody of yelps.

Like the aristos in ‘Dr Zhivago’ looking out at the protesters in the snow from their warm and secure privileged position behind falsely secure windows, we, in our leafy bower watched developments, while I sipped my end of meal cup of tea.

Sirens heralded the arrival of the first police car and as the ‘trouble’ veered towards the pedestrian underpass through to the station car

parks someone shouted out to the emerging policemen, “He’s got a knife.”  From behind the safety of a couple of pot plants, we felt the thrill of proximity to danger and were determined to make our post-prandial beverages last the distance!

More police cars arrived, their flashing lights giving not only a suitably lurid setting for the excitement, but also marking a similarity to the ‘festa major’ fair that had been established at the far end of the car park - I do like an element of the serendipitous in my evenings out!

An ambulance then arrived, shortly followed by a second.  And we settled in for a suitably gory finale to the evening’s entertainment.

As we were finishing our meal it had the temerity to start raining, not convincingly admittedly, but still water falling from on high in August!

This soon stopped, as indeed did the drama as, one by one the police cars and ambulances drove off with nary a corpse or villain in sight.

The rest of the family were frankly sceptical about my explanation of the whole event being part of a street happening as part of the ‘festa major’ of our town – though Toni’s sister did applaud me politely at the end of the little drama and congratulate me (because surely I had something to do with it?) for finding a way to pass the time to the next event on the horizon.

This was a free concert.   

Now I have been to a totally memorable free concert next to the beach here in Castelldefels that featured the student orchestra of the University of Southampton playing a spirited performance of Sibelius’s second symphony, this concert, however, was not like that.

The entertainment, that had started by the time we got there, was of a Catalan group who sang, very loudly, in Catalan.  There were no seats.  But I soon discovered a fringe group of the elderly and infirm and the opportunistic who had found a limited number of metal chairs from somewhere.  I soon found the somewhere and Carmen and I were soon part of the group.

The disadvantage of our position (seated, with the rest of the audience standing) did mean that our view was, to put it mildly, limited.  But the very professional light show that accompanied the singing, together with a liberal amount of stage smoke, did ensure that the lighting effects were clearly visible ell beyond the confines of the stage.

I did attempt to take some photographs, where my mobile phone (disconcertingly) recognized that I was taking pictures of a ‘musical event’!  How did it know?  [I really wanted to use an interrobang at the end of the last sentence, but I don’t know how to print one.]  The end results were patchy, but taking pictures at night at x5 zoom on a handheld phone, I am not sure what I expected to get!

A long (for me) walk back to the car, bidding ‘bye’ to our second set of visitors and bed.  I slept as though drugged and snoozed more on the beach this morning!

It’s a hard old life, but someone has to live it!

Tomorrow Barcelona, and the start of my serious research in the library of MNAC to find out more, much more about the life and times of Adam Elsheimer.

Questing continues!