(Part of) The Bus pays (partial) Homage to Catalonia*
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

*Due acknowledgement and deference to a great Socialist writer, George Orwell.

Sometime during last midseason I engaged in conversation with Mogsy on The Bus en route to an away match. He said, “I’d love to go to Barcelona and see a match,” and I said, “Well, why don’t you just go and book it then? It only costs three-and-six return on easyJet.” He looked as though someone had just shown him the Promised Land. I didn’t think for a second he’d follow it up. It may well be the second millennium but the English are even now a dyed-in-the-wool island people tinged with pisspoor xenophobia or its direct opposite, stick-up-your-arse Political Correctness.

Frankly, I blame Oliver Cromwell, Victorian protestantism and catholicism, the tories, MI5/MI6, the CIA, Auberon Waugh and the Daily Telegraph. Religion, economic loonies and spooks have a lot to answer for in our history.

Anyway, eventually he reserved it – but not before he missed the chance to obtain half the price eventually paid. “We” being Mogsy, myself, Red Geoff and Texyla. Sometimes Mogsy dithers worse than Elmer Fudd. No gainsaying it, though, because he got off his indeterminate arse and also booked the hotel and the match tickets. By Mogsy standards this was a dazzling tour de force of determinism.

Barça were due to play Celta Vigo in a primera liga match the weekend we were there. It was an ideal arrangement for a fine, lazy, ambling weekend with some footy thrown in, the kind most Europeans take for granted as a sign of civilised behaviour. Popular English culture of course even now assumes it is an absolute necessity to get pissed/drugged out of your brains to enjoy yourself. Scarcely anyone questions the absurdity of losing the next day or two of your life to hangover recovery. Of the Europeans, only the Russkies are as bad. I had no intention of falling to those depths of uselessness.

Hence we found ourselves early Saturday morning 21st June at John Lennon International Airport checking in for the first flight to Barcelona. We had only one casualty, Geoff, so the three of us joined a long queue of passengers looking so creased and crumpled they might just have disgorged from an Atlantic flight. Ever since flying got to be easy air passengers have more and more of the look of rail travellers. Odd behaviour prevails, twitching the norm. At the front of the line a group of adolescent girls had a fully inflated male sex doll which drew scarcely a passing comment. The line shuffled forward, seasoned travellers pushing their bag with their foot. Virgin travellers talked self-consciously about arrangements at the other end. Poseurs spoke loudly of When We Were In Florida, or Remember That Time We Had A Laugh In Melbourne.

The new terminal building is a huge improvement on previous bungalows but still manages to look dowdy even though it has only been in service for about a year. Airside, incredibly, you still have to walk out to waiting aircraft. Long haul flights are desperately required to get facilities up to an acceptable standard but there’s no question the airport is a lot better than it used to be. It’s only eight kilometres out of the city and only ten minutes from my place. Landing and take-offs are over the river. It couldn’t be more environmentally friendly if it tried. Location, location, location.

When the airport was built before the Second World War it was the largest new facility in Europe. Alas, the Melledrew Tendency were in control of its long term development and it never achieved the future its founders had hoped for. Determinism and imagination have to fuse or nothing happens. These were in plentiful long term supply at Manchester and that is what led to Ringway replacing Speke as the preferred venue. Still, the pfennig has finally dropped during the 70th birthday of what is now known as JLA. Belated expansion efforts strain at the leash. During the first four months of this year there was an average growth factor of 34.5%. User numbers are expected to double during the next four years, and rise to eight million per annum by 2030 – which may well be a considerable underestimate. We need it and we need it badly. Without a thriving airport we can forget any long term hopes of successful regeneration. Use it or lose it – and end up stuck with a bad road journey to Manchester.

The easyJet check-in is staffed by hard-voiced girls wearing yellow safety jackets instead of comic opera airline uniforms. Somehow the little scripted pantomime (Did You Pack These Bags Yourself?) seems completely humourless because of it. No matter, it was quick and cheap. You can’t have everything.

The aircraft was a Boeing 737. We sat in the very last row next to a toilet door bearing a typed sign saying “This toilet does not function.” Seat rows are ratcheted as close as they can get them without your knees dislodging a couple of molars. I comforted myself with the knowledge the flight is only two hours. Just as well, really. The easyJet cabin staff look as though they get annoyed in identical ratio to Basil Fawlty. We were an hour late taking off. French Air Traffic Control was having its umpteenth attack of the vapours. Damned Frogs. We should have finished the job at Agincourt. See, my xenophobia kicks in like everybody else’s if I get tired and irritated. Not only that, I like annoying PCs.

There are no traffic queues at Speke so the Boeing trundled quickly to the end of the runway and zoomed straight up, banked left over Wirral and scattered assorted cumulus nimbus in its wake. We were on our way. I dozed off.

I awoke to the sound of jet engines and Texyla grilling Mogsy on the booked hotel accommodation. He was being assured it would be okay even though it had been reserved unseen over the internet and the cost was, well, economical. It was just off Las Ramblas. I closed my eyes again and tried to get rid of the images which immediately conjured. My student days returned in a pleasant mellow haze of long forgotten student impecunity. I know (or knew) Barcelona reasonably well. The last time I was there it was a world city with problems which made our own beloved city seem like an urban paradise. Since then of course they’ve had the Olympics and eased their difficulties. None of it mattered to Texyla. St. Helens doesn’t encourage a world view, you know. Mogsy was threatened with misery for the rest of his life if the hotel wasn’t up to scratch. I thought this potentially an unfortunate metaphor. But Mogsy was stoic and admirable in bullied adversity. This, I thought, is going to get interesting.

Two rows in front a gang – it’s the only word – of Scouse girls were giving it the loud mouth bifftas, partly through flying nerves. Their leader was standing in the aisle and basically addressing the entire airplane though she looked pointedly only at her friends. Why do all such girls have dyed, shoulder length reddish-purple hair and circular earrings large enough to accommodate two passing budgerigars? And since she was such a butch dominatrix, why were all her friends so damned pretty? I immediately felt sympathy for whoever ended up splicing HER mainbrace. Which, she made clear, was going to happen just as soon as she could remove any obstacles to orgasm. Christ, giving her one must be the equivalent of an hour in a SAS killing house followed by forced viewing of an omnibus edition of “Brookside.”

The flight took exactly two hours. We arrived over Barcelona and banked in from the north. Up ahead the city was covered in an obligatory urban inversion layer of brown pollution, thickest at the inversion point, an aerial cappuccino of toxins. The near perfect symmetry of the Eixample street grid pattern dominated the view as its creators intended. As always, the Mediterranean glinted in compensation. No question it is a striking approach pattern which dissolves any notion of the results of ground level inhalation. The high peaks of the Collserola Range pushed up against the outlying districts trailing a surprising thick wooded skirt. Oh yes, it makes you feel A-okay.

Barcelona airport is expanding like every other major world airport but the original terminal hangs on in there in all it’s boney International Style. Superstructure skeletons of new termini abound. We were through in no time only to confirm for the umpteenth occasion in my life you are no faster than the baggage handlers allow you to be. Texyla’s had a broken handle because somewhere along the line one of the handlers had obviously slung it in with the kind of attention to service you get from a lazy bastard with no conscience. Outside, the taxi rank was complete chaos. It was made worse by Budgie Rings and co. up front and thick with it. In the end we simply crashed the queue like everybody else and fell into a cab with Mogsy giving directions. For those who don’t know, Widnes, Spanish and Catalan is a baaad if hugely amusing fusion. I’ll give the boy Mogsy this: he wasn’t fazed. I hadn’t the least intention of forcing events unless there was an absolute necessity. Spontaneity is everything. Anyway, the trip wasn’t my idea and I wanted to see how he handled it.

Apart from a couple of new approach flyovers the airport roads have changed little and the journey into the city was much the same apart from an occasional new industrial or office building in shiny cladding materials and primary colours. It took about twenty minutes to get to the hotel. The receptionist was a Frenchman but he wasn’t a Parisian because you didn’t want to punch him the moment he opened his mouth. In fact he was both entente and cordiale. He even smiled a lot, spoke perfect English and offered a lot of sensible advice. The hotel was about as, er, basic as you can get but it was clean and the staff weren’t surly. It was perfectly adequate for purpose though I knew what Texyla’s reaction would be. From my window I had a wonderful view of the kind of housing conditions which led to the Spanish Civil War. But hey! You get what you pay for.

We dumped the bags and reassembled for a quick reconnaissance and raid on Las Ramblas. It was very hot and I reminded my two amigos to stay in the shade and always wear a hat. See, I know about these things, as you will find later. Euros were available from loads of cash points – the sooner we have suitable circumstances for Euro introduction in England, the better. Let’s hope the dopes who run our country handle it better than they did the simultaneous introduction of decimalised dosh and (partially) metricated units. You know, the mess which led directly to double digit inflation because everybody in retailing and industry rounded the new money UP and the new measures DOWN – and then promptly blamed the subsequent furious scramble for parity on the unions. But all this was far from our minds as we settled into chairs at a café in the shade of pyramid brollies and ordered chilled wine, beer and seafood paella. I felt really good about it all. The heat felt familiar and I had assumed my Middle East amble.

Texyla wore his English Food Face and promptly assumed defence mode and claimed the hotel would scar his sensitivity for life, and that Barcelona looked “tired.” The latter was – is – indubitably true. Las Ramblas is of course touristed almost to death. Even organised Catalan nationalism couldn’t prevent the affects of age, Franco’s evil strain of fascism and a deliberate withholding of investment. A bit like our beloved city while the tories and Thatcher set up an extreme right-wing one-party state for the current crew to take over and administer. Nor could the Olympics achieve regeneration on it’s own. Nevertheless, there has been a lot of enthusiastic progress not always apparent to first impressions. Texyla is big on first impressions and not much given to patient retrospect. Mogsy was much more open to the whole thing and offered gallant and vigorous defence to verbal assaults on the hotel. Which word was continually “mistaken” for “hostel.” Grins all round.

While I nursed a pristine glass of tasty white chilled plonk my two companions almost dived into their litre glasses beer. Had I tried the latter they would have had to carry me back to the hotel. The paella was gloriously sharp. I was restored to the human race. Like all good wine I travel badly, even on such a short trip. Mogsy tried the cuttle fish and attempted valiantly to discover some sort of taste in the tentacles but failed and then looked gastronomically despondent. The Cadogan Guide was consulted and Mogsy was appointed Point Man for the evening. Flipping through the pages he picked “A Bar and Tapas Walk” through the Ciutat Vella, the old town. I might have known. By this time the alcohol and food had kicked in and it was time for my siesta. See, I know how to deal with this sort of climate. Yes, I know I have said that before. There is method in my madness.

Post-siesta, showered, shaved, shampood, flunkied and smelling very nice we gathered in reception. Point Man directed us down to Port Vell, the old port area now redeveloped into shopping malls, restaurants and bars similar to the kind of tourist traps you get everywhere in the world, particularly in coastal California. As we passed the Columbus monument, over on our left a group of Englishmen were gathered under ubiquitous café pyramid brollies singing through alcoholic slurry, “Yer can stick yer Barcelona up yer arse……………” We hurried past, shamefaced. It isn’t only the brollies which are ubiquitous. Across the bridge and boardwalk we settled outside a café facing the harbour and it’s deep turquoise water. My behind had hardly touched the seat when I heard a cockney accent say loudly to his group somewhere behind us, “So I told this fackin’ CANT…………” Immediately I thought of Budgie Rings on the airplane and the lot back at the monument. We English have a looong way to go to reclaim our reputation. We dismissed them from our minds and started to consider Barça V Celta Vigo the next day and the evening ahead.

It transpires Barça had a desperate season by their own overblown alleged standards and for the first time had to win to get into Europe. Celta were fourth and already home and dry in the Chumps League. It would be the last match of the season. I decided I would side with Celta on the basis that I have never been impressed with Barça’s big nationalist mouth, deep and misspent pockets and general European footy mediocrity – even The Skunks have beaten them heavily in the past. Then Point Man and Texyla stuck their noses in the guide book and found the starting point for the “walk.” Sensibly, the notes contained this passage “You should be aware of a few things: firstly, Catalans in general don’t drink for the sake of it, and you’ll see very few people reeling from bar to bar……………” So Mogsy got stuck with a huge bill for the beer, guffaws from nonpayers, and we ambled off to the starting point in the old town Barri Gottic area.

Which, swipe me, was called Bar Celta, old, long and quite narrow, and had walls covered in Celta Vigo team photos. A middle aged English couple occupied two seats at the angle of the L shaped bar and spoke quietly and politely to each other. Relief. The top of the bar was fitted with glass covered, delicious looking seafood. Whitebait here, battered squid there, prawns everywhere, all kinds of glorious stuff which would never, not in a month of Sundays, penetrate Texyla’s Food Face. Anyway, it was far too early to eat. The Spanish and the Catalans and most Europeans sensibly eat much later than we do. Afterwards I regretted not having at least a small tapas of whitebait. The beer went down very easily and of course was much better and much stronger than the slop we get back home. We loosened up a bit more, footy chat in full flow. The evening beckoned with a warm glow inside and out. I paid the bill, half Mogsy’s total – more guffaws – and moved on.

Being early evening, the streets were virtually empty of everyone except a scattering of tourists like us. There’s a lot of rehabilitation work required in this part of the city but you can safely say it will be done well and eventually the area is likely to look good and be both expensive and chic. Odd bits already receive attention. If you are a property developer get your behind in gear and get down there NOW. Opportunities abound to help Barcelona’s revival and make some reasonable dosh with a good conscience. For all the vaunted Catalan nationalism they still haven’t directed funds where they are most needed. As always, it will take someone with courage to make the first step. Then, Barcelona being the World City it is, the Big Boy hyenas will flock in. In the meantime it looks a bit the worse for wear and the drainage could do with a couple of bottles of Domestos poured into every manhole.

As the beer took it’s inevitable toll Point Man’s reading of the map faltered in a woozy haze. We missed turnings or went the wrong way, me snuffling happily in the background and Texyla holding his Bus führer inclination impatiently in check. Eventually he couldn’t hide his irritation and began to insert himself into Mogsy’s navigation. Heated sentences gradually surfaced. “It’s down here” mutated into, “LOOK! The fuckn place is DOWN HERE!” sometimes with the addendum, “You soft cunt!” Bars became oases for resting aching feet and escape from the drains potpourri. As the sun went down the beer looked even more golden, the glow ever brighter. I have noticed this phenomenon before. When the glow suffuses and then scatters into a sort of fireworks display on the surface of one’s eyeballs it is usually time to call a halt. A hot climate is not the place to have a hangover, though there’s never any point saying this to an Englishman. Which is why most Latinos drink more sensibly than north Europeans and also why the sanitation system is a challenge to your alcohol-induced sharpened sensuality.

Our progress through the bars began to be a test of Euro money and a debate as to whether Mogsy had been bilked in the first bar at Port Vell. Three beers cost him almost twelve Euros. I managed to get the same beers for 4.8 Euros in one tiny bar. It turns out a reasonable cost is indeed about five Euros. Every time a bill arrived the air around Mogsy turned a suitable shade of purple. Me and Texyla sniggered happily. Eventually of course both geography and perception became so uncertain it was time to play it by ear and then have something to eat. The original plan was abandoned and late at night we sat down to eat al fresco at the poorer end of Las Ramblas. My steak arrived with a boiled potato thoughtfully and neatly sliced in half. It could have been the month old carcass of a rotting burro for all I cared. I was starving. But it was good anyway. Afterwards we strolled up the still thronged Ramblas to the Plaça de Catalunya, which was besieged by strangely dressed Euro kids with drugged glassy eyes, all of them trying to crowd in front of an outdoor stage to hear what passes for popular music. Christ, it was hilarious, as funny as the muck and empty headed drugs of Glastonbury, provided you’re not caked with it. I haven’t laughed so hard since I heard a puce-haired Nippon punk band in New York sing a number called “My Ass Is On Fiiiiire!!!!!!” We weaved back to the hotel pursued all the way by excess decibels. Sid Snot lives.

And so endeth the first night, and so to bed.

Next day at breakfast, Texyla confided he hadn’t been able to sleep and had gone for a walk at 3.00 am. A hundred metres into the amble and he was suddenly joined by a woman expressing undying love and a wish to do intriguing and acrobatic things with various parts of his anatomy. She didn’t say so but doubtless it would have been on a sliding scale of charges, possibly presented afterwards via an interesting piece of very sharp cutlery and some curt words in Catalan. Like a true Englishman he expressed regret, thanked her and moved on gracefully. The experience made certain he got some sleep.

Next day, I was Point Man for the morning. We went to the Picasso Museum, a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. Now, I have been trying all my life to understand the genius of Picasso. Except for “Guernika,” I have failed dismally. Picasso’s work says virtually nothing to me, though it is quite easy to detect his emotional state in most of the work on display. Still, I persist. These days the museum itself is much larger than at its opening. There are many more pieces in exhibition these days. But alas, still I cannot “connect” in the way I can with Goya or even Dali or Bosch. It must be my loss. I suspect I will return again and again and still I will find no common ground. You have to keep trying. Culture demands it, what with 2008 ‘n’ all.

These same demands propelled us toward lunch at Els Quatre Gats restaurant, hidden away down Carrer de Montsio and easily missed if you’re not wide awake. It has held its art nouveau interior design and artistic atmosphere well. But we stayed in the bar area to eat and while Mogsy and I indulged, Texyla’s Food Face wouldn’t let him get beyond an onion soup, and even that defeated him in the end because it was covered with, erm, parmesan cheese. Oh well. It sure beat the hell out of your local chippy or takeaway.

Afternoon, it was Texyla’s turn as führer. We were going on a Barcelona Tours circular route open-top bus tour. They run every fifteen minutes so you can hop on and off at 18 designated stops at major sight-seeing spots. There’s another bus company but they do two routes and it’s longer and relatively more complicated. We didn’t have that much spare time, hence Barcelona Tours and a two day ticket. It was a good decision. The bus conductor was a young lady with perfect English who doled out a mini-set of earphones you plugged into the seat in front of you and then flipped through channels for the right language via a rolling tuner. It was all neat and very pleasant. You had to be sensible and go up top to avoid the non-air conditioned interior. A breeze kept you cool in the hot eighty-ninety degrees sunshine. Both Mogsy and Texyla wore hats as recommended by me. See, I know about these things.

The tour was well thought out and had an interesting if slightly stiff commentary by a Catalan with a Yank accent. It took us to Port Olimpic, around the Old Town, up through the Eixample, past all Gaudi’s greatest architectural works (La Sagrada Familia, La Discordia, Casa Milà and Parc Guell plus a host of smaller masterpieces), and eventually to Barcelona’s ground at Camp Nou. Small minded pedants on drugs will always correct you if you say “Nou Camp” instead but my advice is to tell them to get fucked and pronounce it any way you want. Keep the soup stirred and preferably shaken. So eventually we arrived at the Nou Camp three hours before the kick off and got off for a stroll around to absorb the ambience. Given the importance of the game we expected a near full house. Of course the streets were empty except for a few early stragglers and stalls being set up for souvenirs.

Even with the “new” additional tier it doesn’t look much. It has none of the polished stone cladding or zoomy architectural pastiche added at the Bernabeu, possibly because Barça don’t want any similarity of any kind with the right wing royalist club in Madrid, as opposed to being a right wing nationalist club in Barcelona. The only relatively striking aspect is of course the glazing system to the main admin block and a high level linking bridge to a smaller stadium where the lesser teams play. In fact it is the setting and the site itself which is attractive. It is located in the suburbs, opposite a cemetery and right up against the Collserola Range. Naturally the site slopes dramatically toward the city. As you walk around it, it assumes a lop sided look, higher on the city side, lower on the landward side facing the Range. A boundary mesh fence keeps you well clear of the stadium. The building itself is very simple, ugly even. It consists of exposed grey concrete columns with horizontal slats between to hide the underside of terracing and engineering service runs. No big deal, not much change over the years.

From the bus stop we walked downhill around the stadium. The transformation was surprising, from a pleasant if bucolic aspect around the University into a slightly seedy area. Pyramid brollies loomed and we dived under them for a cold beer. The sun was going down, shadows lengthening, and it was a nine o’clock kick off. We discussed the match. I wanted Celta to win if only to see if it would provoke Barça’s notorious Las Melledrew Tendencios into hysterical reaction. If it happened Mogsy thought it would be enough to unseat the immortally named manager, Raddy Antic. Texyla was ambivalent. Quite soon a couple sat down at the next table, he wearing a Barça shirt. I watched in the interests of European union as Mogsy and Texyla tried to communicate. But they managed rather well, amply demonstrating that everyone of good will CAN make things work. Only selfish curmudgeons stand in the way. We wandered off to get some dosh from a cash point, then back uphill via Rambla del Brasil, and then more cold beer.

Mogsy still had Geoff’s spare ticket to sell, a carnet. We ended up outside the box office, a hut with eighteen windows, only five of which were operating. Michael Dunford can heave a sigh of relief. He’s not the only one to get it wrong. Hundreds milled around in a variety of European clubs’ shirts. The ticket remained unsold so we drifted around to our designated gate and went in. The man who took my ticket spoke English. I wondered how many gatemen at GP, or in Britain, speak Spanish, let alone Catalan. The walls and access stairs were exactly like any other concrete block-insitu concrete-and-metal melange you have seen at any number of sports stadia anywhere, GP included. Our seats were excellent, just to the right of the main stand, front row of the second and middle tier, about fifteen metres behind the goal line. Sadly, the seats were covered in dust and had to be scoured before you could trust your trousers to them. I began to feel uncomfortable. My head was hurting. I had not worn a hat during the bus tour. I felt like, and I am told I resembled, a sun-dried tomato. Shit. I remembered my universal nickname after twenty years in the Middle East. I wasn’t called the Pink Panther for nothing. Henry Mancini’s brilliant composition wouldn’t get out of my head. See, I TOLD you I know about these things.

Inside, essentially the Nou Camp is just a big bowl in three tiers with no columns and thousands of seats. A single fifties/sixties cantilever roof covers the main stand area only, even there driving rain would soak half the speckies. The top of the top tier opposite the main stand curves down in a gentle ellipse toward the main stand roof, probably because they couldn’t be arsed to take the roof off and raise the rest of it. Publicity claims the place holds 120,00 all seated but I don’t believe this figure for a moment – max 90,000 is my guesstimate after a quick calculation of seat numbers. As usual, loonies are contained in two small all-seater pens behind each goal. Nobody stands. Diaphanous nets are raised behind each goal, which leads you to believe, (a) Spanish shooting is woeful, and (b) Loonies still throw things. (Where (b) is concerned, who can forget the porcine bust someone heaved at Figo when he played here for the Madrilenos? But how did the culprit get the fucker IN?)

Of course the stadium relies for its impact on a full house and uninterrupted banks of spectators. On this occasion the ground was virtually empty until kick off and the eventual gate was only 48,000. Which led to me and Texyla giving it two choruses of, “Shit ground, no fans…………Shit ground, no fans.” People were too busy looking at the video ads on two giant scoreboards right up top behind each goal to pay any attention. All we heard was the echo of our own voices, which is no more than we deserved.

The two teams came out for the prematch warm up to scattered cheers and boos. The place was still empty. Celta immediately looked the business, moving in determined, unified groups in perfect synchronicity. By comparison, Barça looked as though they couldn’t give a monkey’s, lazy, anarchistic and sloppy. I said, “Based on this, my money’s on Celta. Barça look like a collection of drugged-up beach bums.”

Before the game there was the ritualist singing of a Catalan nationalist song, followed by a club song which ended, “Barça! BARÇA!! BARÇA!!!” This kind of thing has made me uneasy since I was a child and first saw a Riefenstahl propaganda movie.

So the match started, the ground half full, and Celta attacked the goal nearest to us. Barça instantly commenced wiping the floor with them, mainly through Overmars playing wide right and Saviola at centre left mid. Paddy Kluivert gave them all kinds of trouble in the air and on the ground as target man. Celta could only manage a few discordant attacks through their handy looking number eleven Lopez, who played very like an old fashioned inside left. He’s the kind of player we desperately need at Goodison. Three dangerous crosses from Overmars got missed before Kluivert finally got on the end of one after five minutes, caught it wide left of the goal at an impossible angle, and looped a slow header into the opposite corner. GOL!!!!!

Barça swarmed forward, Celta virtually nowhere and Lopez complaining his front men were too slow for his long passes. Two more clear chances were missed with only the ‘keeper to beat. Mendieta was a liability and looked like he couldn’t care less. De Boer sort of loped around and did as much as he felt like, which wasn’t much. Up behind the goals, the scoreboards advertised the glories of Andalucia and – you’ll like this one – Benidorm. The ads were continuous and merciless in their sheer tackiness.

After the first fifteen minutes the game began to get niggly. Just as an ad appeared to extol the virtues of Granada and the Al Hambra, a Celta player lost it completely and went straight over the ball at Mendieta in the centre circle. I can’t imagine why, the same guy was doing no harm to anyone in any way. He might as well have been an expensive scarecrow. The culprit had to go, no question. No sooner had a red card been waved than for no apparent reason Paddy Kluivert suddenly came charging straight upfield and started belting the living bejaysus out of a Celta player. Naturally, he had to go too. All of which completely did for the game as a spectacle as both sides got cautious, though out of the two Barça created some reasonable chances and promptly blew them. As half time arrived an ad came up for Asturias.

The second half was mostly Barça. Celta could get hardly anything going and when Lopez was taken off it signalled the end of any hopes they might have had. Saviola promptly wriggled through three tackles from left mid and nicked the second over the ‘keeper. It was all over. Mendieta still had time to waste almost every ball he received, unable, it seemed, to concentrate on anything other than his excessive wage packet. Maybe he was looking at the incessant ads.

All told, it was a reasonable game, reasonably refereed. Nothing to get excited about though. And not much more skill than your average English match, except for Saviola and Lopez. As we left, ads were showing for Seat cars. On this form neither team will do much damage in Europe and the scoreboard ads will do nothing for sales of anything.

The crowds streamed away and Texyla suggested we get into a bar, have a few and wait until the crowd dispersed. Nope, I said, let’s walk and catch a taxi further down, it’ll do us good. So we did. Forty minutes later we were still walking and about to collapse in a heap when we finally got a taxi to the top of Las Ramblas. Whereat the night came alive at midnight.

As we crossed over the road, there ahead of us – you had to blink – gathered a chattering collection of twenty gorgeous girls in Playboy Bunny outfits. Yes, that’s right, the whole works, fluffy little white bobtail, legs in black tights up to the armpits, bare arms, white cuffs and collar, low cut black top, and two fluffy tall ears. Of course they were there from England for a bet, to walk down the centre of Las Ramblas. It was sensational and it completely fucked up the traffic, I’m glad to say. Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera with me. But a collection of human statues as Inca Indians did, and they got the girls to pose with them. When you see things like this it gives you hope for the human race – after you shake your head that is. Still, better that than doing drugs or bombing innocent Iraqis. Men everywhere suddenly came alive, even those with their ladies. I’d say it took some balls for the girls to do what they did but it wouldn’t be appropriate. You know what I mean.

Eventually we fell into a restaurant where Texyla assumed his Food Face and we got back to being human beings and not tourists. As usual, ours was fine but Texyla’s had, erm, parmesan cheese on it and it was pushed aside. Oh well. The restaurant had a complement of Barça fans wearing club shirts but none of them looked in the least belligerent and nobody was obscenely drunk. They were there to relax and discuss the game and next season’s prospects. Simple, civilised popular culture. As usual, Las Ramblas was thronged and full of pavement artists and street acts looking for a quick Euro. Boring, tuneless, untalented and inconsequential rock music rumbled down from the Catalunya. Fireworks went off everywhere. It was mid summer festival. Colour, warmth, freedom. You felt real good, a million miles away from Brit style inebriation, media, dead suburbs and useless dissipation. It’s mostly an illusion of course but it is worth indulging yourself for a while. So we did. All you need is all your senses firing on all cylinders without the help of alcohol or drugs. Barcelona is made for such times.

Next morning, a walk up Las Ramblas and aboard the Barcelona Tours bus we headed for La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi’s tour de force. This is the unfinished building described by George Orwell as “the ugliest building I have ever seen,” and now regarded as a masterpiece of imagination and artistic concept. Poor George. Given his background and his times it is easy to see why he said it. He was talking bollocks of course but he was a political writing artist of the first rank so we can forgive him almost anything. In fact La Sagrada Familia is nothing less than magnificent, like almost all of Gaudi’s work. The technical problems alone are staggering and he solved most of them without a computer. Or maybe with the best computer of all, his own brilliant and determined mind. See it and marvel at what it took to get the concept accepted and then built. The same applies to his other work. But when you challenge the familiar, the dead minds of suburbia or the establishment mindset you rarely escape unscathed. When Gaudi died, run over by a street tram, he was mistaken for a tramp. But later they realised what was lost and paid due homage in their tens of thousands at his funeral. We cannot have enough of creative human genius – including Picasso – and we cannot have too little of the miserable mindsets which stand in their way.

Meanwhile, many of the structural problems Gaudi was trying to solve at his death have been eased by the use of prefabricated lightweight sections (mostly decorative elements) to ease load problems. The workshops are on open display in the ground floor interior of the building. The crypt contains many superb original drawings and photographs of construction progress from inception. In photographs Gaudi has the kind of unbending “thousand metres stare” you associate with Moyesy. Given the talent, concentration is the key. Leave flakiness to the flakes of the Melledrew Tendency, bookkeepers and cheap salesmen.

We exited the cathedral and encamped under a café brolly. A trio of bronzed beauties parked their curvaceous behinds next to us. Whichever way we turned we saw the cathedral or three beautiful women. It was, pardon the pun, heavenly. The girls were from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. It was all I could do to refrain from mentioning the rampant progress of England’s all conquering rugby team. All was right with the world. Our biggest problem was explaining to Mogsy that he kept getting a drip on his trousers because of condensation on the outside of his chilled beer glass. The concept took a while to sink in. It had tough competition with how the cathedral towers were constructed in the days before metal scaffolding. Mogsy opined that Gaudi was “mad.” Which, given the so-called “norm,” he was. Likely he wasn’t given to useless argument unless it suited his purpose. I recommended William Golding’s classic, “The Spire” as an aid to understanding.

Back on the tour bus, we completed the circular tour with me on the inside lower deck and Mogsy and Texyla on the exposed upper deck. See, I know about these things, never better illustrated than when Mogsy got lashed by an overhanging tree branch. I might have been sunburned but at least I was conscious.

Early evening we assembled al fresco in a café just around the corner from the hotel. How could we NOT? It was called Rita Blue. Bright orange blossoms drifted down from canoodling trees and landed in our drinks. While I praised the romaticism of this, Texyla claimed it looked more like mushy cornflakes. Aloud, I lamented the death of Wordsworth. Our waitress was a Latino beauty with tied-back black hair tight on her head, a fierce don’t-mess-with-me attitude and the kind of deep voice you associate with Spanish women. I ruminated like an adolescent what a challenge it would be to get HER into bed, only to find she was a female Mantis. Too much alcohol. Time to move on. As always, it increases the desire but reduces the staying power.

Later we ambled casually around Port Olimpic, fireworks and people everywhere, better beach side restaurants at the furthest end, a drink here, a drink there, beautiful women and sideshow characters everywhere. Is there any better hobby than People Watching? Just to prove idiocy knows no international boundary, one local dickhead showed his kids how to light a rocket and hold it in his hand until it took off. But Mogsy’s target was the Can Ros seafood restaurant in La Barceloneta, the remaining run down part of the old port area on reclaimed land. After the usual navigational chaos and dispute we found it in a fairly destitute looking street. The place is owned and run by a family who like preparing and serving food to anyone who appreciates the effort. It was sublime. Even Texyla’s Food Face broke into a smile at one point. The wine was perfect. Mogsy almost disappeared under a pile of decapitated giant prawns and then almost dived into a finger bowl. At first he had prodded them with classic English table manners until I told him to ATTACK them fingers first. He needed no second invitation. By now he was a veteran and didn’t believe me when I told him the finger bowl was soup delivered late.

By the time we got outside the festival was again in full swing at one a.m. The roads were full of people and cars. Rockets soared into the air and exploded like star shells. In the end we got a taxi which promptly got bogged down in the mass of humanity and mobile tin cans. Eventually we made it to Las Ramblas and a few more beers before hitting the sack.

The final morning we checked out and got a taxi to the airport at ten a.m. The streets were deserted, as though an invading army had withdrawn. Litter and fireworks covered the pavements, expended ammunition of human enjoyment. The heat had gone and it was overcast. We wandered through the airport air conditioned shopping malls buying late presents. The flight was delayed again. The departure gate kept changing. Eventually we boarded and the Boeing breached the polluted brown inversion layer and headed home. When we landed the weather was better than what we left behind. There was no brown pollution to penetrate. But we had to walk to the terminal. There was no mechanical ramp hook up to the aircraft. JLA has a lot of work to do to catch up.

I fell into a taxi for the short journey home. The grass was green, the Mersey glinted in the sun. I phoned family and friends. I loved Barcelona. But there’s no place like home, and no people like your own. (13/07/03) t