The turning of the year

Most of my life has followed the rhythms of the academic year, which has always meant a new beginning in September. In Dubai, we'd be back at work in the final days of August, but the kids didn't come back til September, and that was what mattered.


I remember being in England one summer, as August rolled into September, staying I think with my brother and his family when they lived near Walthamstow Marshes in London. The summer leaf fall was just changing into something different: the air cooler, the sky paler, and the trees brightening up for their final fling before winter. London in early Autumn - gorgeous. I hated leaving at that precise all-to-come moment, even though back in Dubai it would soon be the long soothing growing season, all greenery and flowers, and days when you could walk and sit out, and sociable evenings with friends.


Here, my academic year runs from October to late June, and I elected to teach July and August Summer courses and have September off this year: to go WWOOFing certainly, but also simply for the pleasure of having time to enjoy the gentler weather. Spain is big enough to have three distinct climates: Mediterranean along the south and east coasts, Atlantic up north, and Continental here in the middle. Here within the protective environs of the city, I can't seriously say we've had the proverbial "tres meses de invierno y nueve de infierno" (three months of winter and nine months of hell) this year, but though winter was mild (after a frighteningly cold November) and we only had two weeks of 40C right at the start of August, it's still too hot for me, and I've spent almost as much time indoors wilting as I did in Dubai: not what I returned to Europe for!



Oh, but the terrace....... all the summer evenings, and nights, and early mornings up here with the sky, the greenery (and whitery and reddery and bluery and yellery) and some protection from the noise of the .22/7 joy-of-living party down in the square...... For some, play finishes shortly after 7.30, or 8.30. I'm not jealous - more bemused.

For others, work started in time for them to deliver newspapers to the kiosk at 6, and fruit and veg to half the barrio from 7. Definitely not jealous......

........but summer's nearly over, and my terrace nights are numbered - 3, 2, 1, to be precise, before I head off for a fortnight.

While I was one of the few people who was still able to sleep most nights once summer kicked in in late June (very late June), up here with a sheet and any hint of breeze that could be bothered to stir; in the last couple of weeks it's been summer pyjamas, then a duvet for the small hours, then winter pyjamas and a duvet all night; and a week ago I woke up because my hands and feet felt like blocks of ice! I definitely ain't doing this in the last week of the month!

Also, we have a new neighbour, so it's time to come inside!

While Hurricane Gustav has been doing its worst in the American South, and Dad says its been blowing a gale in northern England (Could I hear it when we were talking on Skype the other day?) it's also been gusting up here. Is it possible for it to be windy everywhere at once? I notice because - well - the willow flails , the canopy flaps, everything rattles and I'm not looking forward to having something come down on my head - and because there's a whopping great crane swinging about, mounted in the next street where they're building a new mercado, and there's a man up there in that little tin box......

The clouds have been moving in as well. At first there were just a few bits of fluff on the morning horizon, that turned into dirty reddish curds when the sun poked them, then disappeared in a huff for the rest of the day. But every day there are more, massing in layers and swathes and heaps of grey and white and purple, and all the in-between colours that clouds do so well. This morning, everything behind me was gilded and rosy, but opposite, where the sun was supposed to be putting in an appearance, there was only a streak of molten red peering out from under a thick wad of grey.

The days are cooler - they must be, given that we're now watering every two days instead of twice a day - something you notice when you've got four 5L plastic bottles, and two of 2L, and it usually takes a complete set, carried from bathroom to terrace, twice, to keep everything in the garden lovely. Of course it was worth it (except for the sodding prima donna tomatoes!). But I don't think we'll be sorry to lose that little routine for a while! Wherever we eventually settle, the availability and proper management of water is going to be paramount.

In the meantime, we're advised that it will rain tomorrow, and I believe it.

So, we've done all right in our first year here,

but it would be really nice if I could work out where I go wrong with herbs........



I'm feeling quite melancholy. I don't know why. Probably because change is coming - a whole new set of students, classes and colleagues in a few weeks; a new and bigger flat in a few months - and as the years go by, I find I am less and less enthusiastic about change, even when I know it's for the better.


I expect a need a holiday, and some dirt under my fingernails.

Down time

It's been a long and tiring week, but it's the weekend now, and tomorrow I get to LIE IN. So that's ok. I had planned to go back to Parque de Peñalara tomorrow, and walk to the Laguna de los Pájaros and back, about 4.5km each way, compared with last week's 5km round trip. But not this weekend. Even though I think it's going to be perfect weather. Uh uh. Pooped, cream crackered, and more than a little sorry for myself.

Nope. Tomorrow morning will be devoted to waking up, turning over, and going back to sleep again, just as often as I can manage it. Then I've got geraniums to re-pot, and a garden to re-visit. As long as the weather holds.

The forecast is for moderate temperatures and maybe some cloud, but tonight, up here on the 7th floor, the canopy's showing nautical ambitions, and may have me in mid-Atlantic by morning - oh - and that was lightning. Forked, horizontal, and slightly closer to my right elbow than I'd like. I hope it doesn't rain.

Inspired by an Iranian friend's nostalgic memories of summer nights in Shiraz, when the whole family used to sleep up on the roof under the stars, I've been sleeping on the terrace since the middle of June. (Actually, on a sofabed on the terrace. Intrepid I ain't.) (..............and that was more lightning. No thunder though.) I love it. Of course, living above one of Madrid's most happening plazas can make it a little difficult to get to sleep,

especially when some really good buskers show up at 1.30 a.m. But if they're that good, you might as well get up and hang over the wall (This also goes for firework displays.). And if they aren't, well that's why we have earplugs.

And in the meantime, you can enjoy the cool nights, the wild moons,

even the occasional eclipse (last Saturday, but no batteries left for the camera).

At night, there are little black bats and big white moths. In the morning, there's a sky full of squeaking swallows (or there used to be, for months - not anymore, at least since mid-July).

And who needs an alarm clock, when you've got the sun rise?

Climbing back into bed with a cup of tea was never so satisfying.

I hope it doesn't rain tonight.

Friday Hedonist

One of the chief pleasures of Fridays is waking at my normal Pavlovian hour, but on my terms.

During the week I often stir restively in the small hours, surfacing and resurfacing at 3.30, 4.10, 5.40: the side effect of too much mental activity and hardly any physical activity. At 6 o’clock I am asleep, body and psyche utterly defenceless against the deceptively understated bibibibibiiiip bibibibibiiip of the alarm clock. Aural acupuncture.

I extend a claw to switch the damn thing off, and having decided, against the evidence, that I am not in fact dead and beginning eternity in one of the less spectacular circles of hell, emerge from my pit with all the zest for life of a crone in a Russian fairy tale. My centre of gravity is somewhere around the soles of my feet, and I’ve got about as much vertical hold as a stack of paint cans in a Laurel & Hardy movie. Body buckling under the unbearable heaviness of being, I shuffle towards the kitchen.

On Fridays I wake to the silence where the alarm clock isn’t. Ah. Bliss. A/C hums. Habibi snores. Birds twitter. (Saw Failure to Launch yesterday, arf arf. Go see.) I don’t move, savouring the feeling of spine stretched on cotton sheets and firm wide mattress, appreciative of sunlight filtering through curtains and closed eyelids, waiting to see if I feel like getting up or going back to sleep.

Sometimes I stay put just for the pleasure of being horizontal, cocooned, motionless except for the slow rise and fall of my chest as I breathe (always reassuring) letting thoughts drift until sleep washes over and I sink in quiet rapture.

If I decide I want to be up, then I might slither sideways in a satisfyingly silly private game of escaping unnoticed by mattress or duvet. Or just get up and go see what the day looks like. Sometimes I whip the duvet to one side and feel the cool air replacing the warm over me, give it half a minute – there’s no rush after all – and pootle off in search of tea to the rhythm of whatever happens to be playing in my head.

I think it’s a major misconception that music is something we appreciate exclusively through our ears – music is how we harness energy and spirit; soar, pivot, tumble and sweep onward inside without necessarily moving, at least on the outside; how we express what is otherwise inexpressible in all of us, and share the feelings and experiences of others. It’s right up there with love, food, drink and shelter as a fundamental human necessity.

How marvellous it is that there are people with extraordinary gifts as singers, musicians, composers and dancers; and a recording industry that enables us to see and hear over and over again artists we might never see live. But at the same time, the truly gifted only have in abundance what the rest of us have in moderation. We need to make music too, all of us, and if we’re too inhibited to dance, wiggle, sing, hum, whistle, snap our fingers, tap our feet, at least nod our heads for heaven’s sake, then something vital has been suppressed.

Bring on the live bands of local kids, and the folk clubs, the singalongs, the choirs, the school orchestras, the amateur operatics, the karaoke, the ceilidhs, the barndances and the dance classes. Bring on the superstar in the shower! Bring on the boogie-woogie bed-maker and sweeper-upper!

(I generally do housework while jigging along to Shania Twain, adding harmonies when the mood takes me, because that's where the fun lies, and also because it means that only a quarter of my brain has to engage with the tedious inevitability of dust everywhere - especially after this week's shamals blew half the desert into our apartment. The Empty Quarter must be very empty indeed today. (OK I exaggerate.) Habibi is very brave about the harmonies, which of course drown out the melody and the rest of the arrangement. It was very good of Habibibaba to leave his good headphones behind when he left home.)

OK, so it’s Friday morning, I’m out of bed, with a tune in my head, and the kettle’s over there. I think that different rhythms pour energy into different parts of the body – and in many different ways! Some the shoulders and upper chest (Peter Gabriel’s Salisbury Hill, Chopin’s sorry, Debussy's Clair de Lune - Thanks Pater!, or a quickstep) others the hips (rumba, reggae, rock’n’roll) others the head - both senses and intellect – (Mozart voice, clarinet, strings – you name it). So while I’m not dancing down the hall (It’s still only just gone 6 a.m. remember.) I am lifted and propelled without any real effort on my part – a serious improvement on Wednesday at this hour.

And later, after I’ve had my tea, and an hour or so on the sofa with my book, or BBC World, or some film I’ve caught the latter half of, I may decide to go back to bed. Just for the hell of it.

Today of course, I’ve been writing this, and now I’m taking the temple of my soul to the gym. Once again, it’s been over a week because of work and weariness, so I’m stiff, but I love doing it, I love the steam room afterwards, and weekdays at 6 a.m. are much better when I’ve been to the gym the day before. Begone ancient crone!