Misadventures in Retiro

As I write this, a pair of trainers remain stuck up a tree in Retiro, that great Madrid park where couples take their kids for an early evening stroll and language students hang out after class, batting off regular offers of hash from the black dealers that hang around near the metro station. 

The trainers have been there for a week now, but they won’t be lonely as they’ve got a few other inanimate objects – a stone, a stick and a football – for company.

You can probably guess how they get up there.  It started off when Adam challenged me to kick the ball over a tree. It was a particularly tall tree, one of the biggest in the park I’d say, and there was little prospect of me clearing it with the ball. But I never like to shirk a challenge, and the memory of Adam beating me in a tense closely-fought game of paper scissors stones on the metro the day before still rankled, so I went for it.

The ball got stuck. Nice one. Adam then flung a small rock at the football to dislodge it and, somehow, it got stuck too. Now the idea of losing a football was bad enough, but the thought that a potentially lethal rock was stuck up this tree, a rock which could plummet to the ground at any second and land on someone’s head, was too much to bare. Well, for Adam anyway. So up went his left football trainer. 

When one trainer gets stuck up a very big tree, one that due to its lack of branches near the base is impossible to climb, you might as well throw the other one up as well. After that, we spent about an hour throwing clumps of mud, and the aforementioned stick, in an increasingly desperate attempt to get any sort of return for our pointless endeavours.

Boy am I hungover today. In fact I missed school, because, as they say “tengo puta resaca”. Last night – the monthly Sampere free bar – was fun though. The usual stuff …  drinking, dancing, drinking, smoking, drinking…  Earlier, I went to the opening of a photography exhibition to see my old flatmate, a Frenchman called Yves, whose pictures were on display. His photos, of the natural world, are great. I was just leaving to head for the party when I asked this guy outside the exhibition for the time. He seemed to have something to do with the event.

I got “Englished” – “Where are you from?” he asked me? I told him “Soy de Escocia”, refusing to give up my Spanish chat that easily. “Aye, and which part?” This guy, who turns out to be an actor, is from Leith! (part of Edinburgh, where I normally live). Apparently, speaking Spanish with an Aberdonian accent makes you sound like your are from Barcelona. So I better keep my head down on Sunday when Barca play Real Madrid in what is probably the world’s biggest domestic football match.

Advertisement