After a night or rain, weak
sunshine at lunchtime. I’ll settle for
that! Travelling along a busy motorway,
early morning, in the dark, in the rain, is a truly depressing experience. And a frightening one. I am always amazed by how little Spanish/Catalan
motorists modify their driving to suit the conditions, and, in spite of myself,
I find myself drawn into their lunatic dicing with death manoeuvres until a
more sensible me takes control again and argues that the gain of a few seconds
is not worth the risk.
I have actually measured the
advantage semi-scientifically by observing the behaviour of car drivers along
certain stretches of the urban and urban motorway roads around us during peak
traffic times. In urban situations,
traffic lights and zebra crossings stop traffic, so any gains made are usually
wiped out within a few hundred metres of road.
On motorways, slow travelling lorries overtaking each other and
entrances and exits from the motorways are the major causes of traffic
slowing. If the motorway is being used
as a way of skirting a short stretch of urban congestions then the traffic
gains of the death-welcomers is usually marginal.
St Boi is, and has been for
years, a bottleneck and place of frustration for traffic trying to change from
one motorway to another. I sometimes
think that I can hear the deep rumbling sounds of hundreds of motorists’ teeth
being ground simultaneously as they wait in seemingly never-ending queues!
One of the links that we take
every day goes from a three-lane major motorway to a single lane turn-off link
road with consequent slowing. In
theory. In practice the speed that
motorists take the curvaceous, unlighted road is terrifying.
Added to all this is the
Spanish/Catalan use of the indicator.
Here a flashing light means that the driver is executing the turn or
movement, not that he intends to. If you
are driving along a road and there is a junction with another road joining
yours with broken white lines, that is just an indication to you of where the
other cars will join your part of the
road, there is none of that namby-pamby waiting for a safe space to make the
move. As these two things happen all the
time, there is a sort of safety in continuity.
As you know that it is going to take place you make allowances, and
therefore no deaths occur. What happens
when, say an unsuspecting Brit drives along the road expecting the courtesy and
safety standards at home, I do not know.
Though I would point out that the number of RTAs in Catalonia are
astonishing and would occasion questions in parliament if they occurred in Britain.
Still, I have been driving on
Catalan roads for a decade now, so, while I am still constantly astonished, I
am also fatalistic and make sure that I allow for what I know is going to
happen.
But still, none of this driving
gains anything. The most that criminally
reckless drivers can hope for is a couple of car lengths advantage before they
are slowed down by the built-in limitations to carefree driving!
I am obviously typing all this to
reinforce my own (perceived) considerate driving and to make me feel morally
superior as some cretin overtakes on the inside and veers across a couple of
other lanes.
-oOo-
I have just finished reading “Fear
and Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid” by Sid Lowe (2013) London, Yellow
Jersey Press It was actually recommended by the Local an English language internet
magazine that concentrates on Spain. I
had already taken out a subscription before I realized just how right wing the
political content of the thing was, but it is useful for recipes and
inconsequential information about my adopted country. “Fear and Loathing” was one of the books
suggested as “essential” reading to get a flavour of what it is to live in the
country.
I am no real fan of football but
I am a Barça fan. I can name more
members of the team than I was ever able to do for any of the British national
teams up to and including the World Cup winning team of 1966 – where the
broadcast of the match I heard on a school trip aboard the Nevasa somewhere in
the Baltic!
Living in Catalonia and
surrounded by a family who are ostentatiously Catalan, my interest in Barça is
as much self-defence as anything else.
My interest is of course increased by the fact that Barça’s motto is
famously “mes que un club” – more than a club.
This can be taken in a number of ways, but it has also been, and is now,
a focus for nationalism and Catalan independence. Politics is inseparable from the games,
especially los clássicos, the games between Barça and Real Madrid.
This book, all 432 pages of it,
takes what I think is a balanced view of the “loathing” and attempts to put it
in a social, political and historical context.
Sid Lowe attempts to take many of the myths surrounding the game and
especially these two teams and find evidence to assess them.
Although I am not interested in
football, you might say the same thing about piloting a Mississippi Steam Boat
or whale fishing, but it did not stop me enjoying the work of Melville or
Twain. There is something exhilarating about
entering a world about which you know little relying on the competence of an
expert who wants to communicate – and Sid Lowe is definitely an expert!
In his ‘Author’s Note’ at the
start of the book, Lowe writes, “Part of me wanted to include footnotes
throughout” in the event he did not do so, but the book reads as though he
could have and the reader feels that he has documented evidence to back up
everything he says. The book also passes
my ‘academic’ test by having a proper ‘contents’ page together with a
bibliography and index and it has two sets of photographs in the middle!
The rivalry as revealed in this
book is much more nuanced than fans on either side would have you believe. Real Madrid was founded by two Catalans, and
Barça by a Swiss (in the official history) or and Englishman in another book I’ve
read, but by a foreigner at any rate.
The rise and fall and rise and fall of the clubs is more complex than I
had ever realised and iconic points of conflict between the two, for example
the notorious signing of Di Stéfano, are explained with new information making
the final assessment much more interesting.
I read this book like a novel and
when you think about it the two clubs combine money, power, glamour, politics,
nationality, language and virtually anything else that you can think of in
melange in which there is a fair amount of sport as well.
I recommend this book without hesitation
even, or perhaps especially, for those who think that they have little interest
in two over-paid bunches of kick-ballers pretending to do something important
with their time!
A lot has happened in the five
years between the publication of this book and the present. I for one, look forward to Lowe’s next book
with some eagerness.
-oOo-
The sun has now been shining
brightly for longer than five minutes so I will go for a short bike ride (to
show willing) and also to see a new sundial that has been set in place ten or
so streets away from where I am typing this.
If I find it, I will include a
photo of it in the next blog.
-oOo-
Please feel free to visit my
poetry blog at:
https://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com/2018/11/daily-run.html
