Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Pay Homage To George Orwell

April 25, 2008 by Mike

Barcelona

Still here;-)

But this will be my last night: every room at the inn is taken tomorrow ahead of the Grand Prix on Sunday. I looked at prices to go to the circuit.. not really my thing but I'm here and it could be interesting.. and nearly choked. *Hundreds* of Euros to get in! And there'll be over 100,000 people there. Sadly, I won't be one of them.

I read most of 'Homage To Catalonia' today, sitting on a bench down by the waterfront, shoes off, in the sun. Highly recommended, especially if, like me, you can then stroll up La Rambla and find the very spot that George Orwell writes about during the street-fighting in Barcelona in May 1937:

"Next door [to us] was a cafe with an hotel above it, called the Cafe Moka. The day before twenty or thirty armed Assault Guards had entered the cafe and then, when the fighting started, had suddenly seized the building and barricaded themselves in."

Well, there's the Cafe Moka. And.. yes.. right across the street: "a cinematograph, called the Poliorama, with a museum above it, and at the very top, high above the general level of the roofs, a small observatory with twin domes.. a few men posted up there with rifles could prevent any attack.."

This is one of the most vivid passages of the book. Orwell spends several days and nights on that roof, armed and.. bored out of his mind. Nobody to shoot at, you see. It was a different world.

It was both easy and difficult to picture the events he was describing.

Easy, because he writes so bloody well -- and standing here I could see the buildings and trees and Metro station and kiosks just as they were over 70 years ago.

And difficult, because the performance artists, card-sharps, prostitutes, policemen, and wave after wave after sunburnt wave of tourists flooding the street weren't diving for cover as Orwell does when he believes "somebody must be firing at us with a field-gun. Actually it was only hand-grenades, which make double their usual noise when they burst among stone buildings."

I could go on quoting and quoting but, well, read the book for yourself.

Some things haven't changed. "I was in a ghastly frame of mind," writes Orwell, "dog-tired after about sixty hours without much sleep."

There's a few people in ManYoo shirts wandering the Rambla today who could probably say the same.

I'm trying to work out if I'm more in love with the north side of La Rambla.. El Born, the fantabulous Picasso Museum (the best Picasso Museum of the trip so far.. with more to come in France, I suspect), quietly hep bars and a slightly scuzzy arty-media-adland feel to it.

Or the southside.. a bit younger, record shops and secondhand clothes (one panel shirt, which I resisted, and a knitted tie, which I didn't.. and which I can squeeze onto the bike, more's the point); food shops from assorted cultures; the same warren of sagging apartment buildings soaring over narrow alleyways.

Luckily I don't have to choose: I can enjoy them both.

I may have discovered the secret of why the people here are all so gorgeous. You spend so much time looking up at the stunning buildings, you develop great posture.

To the Olympic basketball hall in the suburb of Badalona this evening. I don't normally do suburbs, because what's the point?, but when Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds are playing, it's a different story.

They were brilliant. Tore the place down. They rocked and they rolled. Dangerous music -- just as it should be.

Cave was morbidly fascinating. I've never seen him on stage before, only close up on the street or in cafes (the price you pay for living in Ladbroke Grove) so I enjoyed kicking back and taking it all in.

This is a band that's hugely comfortable with itself, each member knowing what the others are doing or thinking.. and yet still enjoys living dangerously.. taking risks.. the unexpected.. or at least, making it look that way. If I saw every gig on the tour I've no doubt I'd be dispirited by the monotony of the music and the regular appearance of all Cave's best 'spontaneous' one-liners.

But you know what? I'm not going to see them again for a while, so let me sit back and enjoy the entertainment. Entertainment with spike and spirit. Hats off to the Bad Seeds.

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Pay Homage To George Orwell

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