Save Me…… from, well, I don’t know

It´s been a strange couple of weeks. I could, if I was being overly pretentious, call it a watershed moment for me. It hasn’t so much been the things I’ve been doing during this time, but more the way I’ve been feeling as I’ve done them.

I´m not making much sense, I know. But that`s because I´m still trying to work out the significance of it all.

I´ve been living in Spain a while now. But last Sunday, on a plane back from the briefest of visits to London, I actually felt like I was coming home.

Truth be told, I noticed a change the week before. But I´ll get to that in a minute.

I had had to take a plane to Jerez because I couldn´t get one to Seville that evening as everything was booked up last minute. But as we banked in a steep curve to come into land at the airport, I could see out of the window the winding Guadalquivir River, the fields, the lagoons and the sea along the coastline from Jerez down past Cadiz. The sun was low in the sky as it was about 9pm and it reflected brightly off the water as the plane came into land from the south.

The feeling took me quite by surprise, I have to say. Because while I´ve always liked Spain, I haven´t felt completely at home here. At least, until now, that is.

I don’t know. Perhaps it was down to the beer I´d had on the plane that was making me feel that way.

But even after getting off the plane, grabbing a taxi and heading into town, the feeling remained.

That same evening Spain beat Italy to win football´s European Championships again. Just like last week, the streets were deserted, the roars and the cheers echoing around the town from bars and homes as people crowded round their TVs.

But making my way back to our flat in a taxi on empty streets, for the first time I felt a genuine pride and connection with the team and the people here which I´ve not felt before in Spain. When I got in and switched on the TV, I even got irritated – it is me after all, so how could something not irritate me, even at a time like that – when a couple of the Spanish players from Barcelona tried to unfurl the Catalan flag as they held the cup aloft. The same thing happened in 2010 when Spain won the World Cup. Then, one of the players enthusiastically waved the red and yellow Catalan flag as he held the Cup too.

Don´t get me wrong. I have nothing particularly against Catalan separatism and pride and the growing calls for independence from Spain, but I did find myself thinking that the players achieved their success wearing the Spanish shirt and with the Spanish people´s support and it seemed to me that they were forgetting this in their excitement to express their political feelings.  What strange affinity with the Spanish was I experiencing?  

I don´t know. Perhaps it was the stodgy Chinese takeaway I was eating as I watched the celebrations on the TV that made me feel that way.

The next morning I had to take the early 7am train back at Seville. As I sat at a window seat and watched the sunflower fields roll by outside against a bright sun low in the sky, I found myself having the same feelings again. A strange peace. A calm. It was a beautiful morning and there wasn´t a cloud in the sky. The carriage was quiet; most of the other passengers were sleeping or dozing. But I was happy to sit there and watch the world go by outside, feeling as if I really belonged.

I don’t know. Maybe it was because I was listening to “So What” by Miles Davis on my MP3 player at the time that made me feel that way.

As the train pulled into the station at a small town not far from Seville, I looked through the railings into the adjoining park and saw a man sitting on a mower winding his way serenely around the trees and up and down in perfectly symmetrical lines. He was an old man, with wrinkled, sun-tanned skin and grey, receding hair, covered by a crooked, battered red and blue baseball cap. He was wearing earphones and I imagined him listening to The Blue Danube by Strauss as he wound his way, almost as if he was in a waltz, around the park apparently with not a care in the world.

I don’t know. Maybe it was because I was listening to The Blue Danube by Strauss on my earphones at the time that made me feel that way.

It had all started the week before when me and the wife had gone to a spa in Seville for a dip in their hydro pools and a back massage.

As we sat there in the pool, embraced by dozens of little bubbles blasting out from jets under the water, for the first time in ages I actually felt quite relaxed. I realised too that, for the first time in a long time, my brain wasn’t whizzing along at a million miles an hour thinking of all the things I had to do.

I always did that when I lived in London. I always had a million different thoughts at the same time. That’s what living in London does to you. Everything moves so fast that you have to move with it or you get trampled in the crush.

So when I first moved to Spain, I was still going at full speed, when everything else around me was going at a far more sedate pace.

But as I sat there in the spa, the bubbles rushing through my swimming trunks like a thousand tiny farts, I took a deep breath and let it wash over me. Metaphorically and physically.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because things don’t move as fast here as they do where I used to live. And maybe I’m finally beginning to realise that it’s ok to drop down a gear or two.