In the film about Catalan writer Mercè Rodoreda, Un Berenar a Ginebra,Afternoon Tea in Geneva, there is a moment where Mercè, exiled because of the civil war in Geneva Switzerland talks about how, for her, Catalonia has become the four walls of her flat. This made me weep in recognition. Sometimes I think that Barcelona, Catalonia, the whole of Spain, is a pot on an induction hob in a tiny studio flat in East London. On a hot sunny day I become so engrossed in the smells and what I am doing that I get a shock when I realise that my neighbours outside are sitting on the grass in their garden having a picnic and speaking English rather than walking up dusty streets speaking Spanish or Catalan.
Sometimes, when the never ending damp grey of a London Spring threatens to overwhelm this city, or the morning after I'm reminded that I have re adopted that unfortunate British habit of drinking entire bottles of wine with no food, I have such a strong desire to return.
Galicians have a word called "morrinha" to describe that longing for home that stops you in your tracks, morrinha makes you drop whatever you are doing, makes you stand and breathe in an imaginary air that is far away, totally different to the one you are actually inhaling and may possibly only exist in your imagination. I breathe in morrinha far too often. I know that I am only an expensive train and cheap flight away but sometimes, even when I am in Barcelona nowadays I get morrinha. I want to be chatting in the market with the people who have now retired while their children have become middle aged, I want to go and see Maria and Julian, but the old organic herb and cheese place is now a trendy urban surfer type clothes shop. Pablo's still there but his hair is greyer, his wine is more expensive and he has only a vague memory of who I am. I see my upstairs neighbour from 17 years ago and she doesn't remember me living underneath her flat listening to her fight with her daughter on a daily basis and she turns back inside slightly disconcerted that this foreign lady has called her name from the street as she was looking out from her balcony. I wonder if my present career, one that I fell into entirely by accident in my late thirties, is actually one long exercise in trying to be twenty five again - if each calçotada I organise merely a desire to take everyone in the restaurant to the park opposite Carrer Alzina where we can have calçots with all the old ladies and their husbands, visit one of their houses when we need the loo, and dance bad paso doble at the after calçotada mobile disco.
Sometimes, when the never ending damp grey of a London Spring threatens to overwhelm this city, or the morning after I'm reminded that I have re adopted that unfortunate British habit of drinking entire bottles of wine with no food, I have such a strong desire to return.
Galicians have a word called "morrinha" to describe that longing for home that stops you in your tracks, morrinha makes you drop whatever you are doing, makes you stand and breathe in an imaginary air that is far away, totally different to the one you are actually inhaling and may possibly only exist in your imagination. I breathe in morrinha far too often. I know that I am only an expensive train and cheap flight away but sometimes, even when I am in Barcelona nowadays I get morrinha. I want to be chatting in the market with the people who have now retired while their children have become middle aged, I want to go and see Maria and Julian, but the old organic herb and cheese place is now a trendy urban surfer type clothes shop. Pablo's still there but his hair is greyer, his wine is more expensive and he has only a vague memory of who I am. I see my upstairs neighbour from 17 years ago and she doesn't remember me living underneath her flat listening to her fight with her daughter on a daily basis and she turns back inside slightly disconcerted that this foreign lady has called her name from the street as she was looking out from her balcony. I wonder if my present career, one that I fell into entirely by accident in my late thirties, is actually one long exercise in trying to be twenty five again - if each calçotada I organise merely a desire to take everyone in the restaurant to the park opposite Carrer Alzina where we can have calçots with all the old ladies and their husbands, visit one of their houses when we need the loo, and dance bad paso doble at the after calçotada mobile disco.
