The Thirteenth Blog Of Trig - The Barcelona Diaries (Part 4 - 03/07/2011)

Finally, my first Barcelona beach day! Sunday the third of July, CELTA-1.

I woke up leisurely after my long walk and party-watching day Saturday, and went out early to go shopping. I had not had the opportunity to buy any groceries yet. I kept it simple; cereal, yoghurts, bread, cheese, ham, pasta, and of course a couple of large bottles of water. When I got home I made myself two large sandwiches with ham, lettuce, tomato, and avocado, and packed them into my bag with some English teaching books and my notes, before saying goodbye to Alan and setting off to the beach.

It must have been lunchtime by the time I got off the Metro at the bottom of La Ramblas, and I was feeling quite hungry. The sandwiches in my bag were calling me, but I decided to wait until I made it to the beach before I tucked in. I headed past Columbus' Column by the port and walked down towards Barcelonetta, occasionally looking up to smile happily at the sun above me. This was partly to distract me from the multitude of lovely bronzed legs that surrounded me on the route to the beach, not one fake-tan in sight. Gotta love summertime.

I arrived at Barcelonetta Beach and sat on a bench facing the shore. Barcelonetta is a long stretch of beach with bars dotted along the back, each with a public shower/changing area for beach-goers. Volleyball nets are all taken by lovely bikini-clad ladies and lads straight out of the gym. Behind the beach there is a foot-and-cycle path that covers the entire length. Here, as with most of Barcelona, rollerskaters pass constantly like a Malibu cliche. The female skaters catch my attention; wonderful thighs. I eat my sandwiches and watch the world go by before moving onto the beach to enjoy my last day before the course starts.

I chose a spot near the back of the beach and before I've sat down an oriental lady approaches, calling "Massaja? Massa-he?". I say no initially, but she is persistent and it's only 5 Euros, plus I have a bad back, so I accept. I try to tell her to be gentle with my back but she doesn't understand. It takes a minute or so of acting to explain that I am injured, and that she must be careful around my spine. I wrap my arm around my bag and lie on my front and she begins.

The massage is good. She works my back, bum, arms, neck and head for a good ten-to-fifteen minutes before asking if I want my legs and feet done for another 5. I accept. When she is done I am very relaxed. She tries to get more out of me but I am happy. I give her ten and another Euro tip and she says goodbye. I lay back and enjoy the sun on my body.

It is very warm. I consider going in the sea, but I hadn't brought any swimming shorts with me, hoping to buy some here. In any case I couldn't leave my bag here what with all the thief stories I'd heard, so I made myself a sand-pillow, got out an English teaching book and did a little last-minute revision, while enjoying the view of theose ladies who were confident enough to go topless, and the others too. It's hard to concentrate under these circumstances, but I somehow managed it in between cheeky peeks.

While on the beach I listen to the voices around me. I hear lots of Australian girls, a few loud American guys, a few Brits, and a few Spanish. I start getting pain in my back from the way I am sitting, so I remake my sand-pillow a few times to keep my posture straight. I've not written about this yet, but a few weeks previously I fell something like 15 foot off a ledge in a forest in France and landed on my back, breaking a log that I fell on. I was very lucky to walk away, or hobble as the case was. My back has not been the same since, and might not ever be. I'll have to write about that trip sometime.

As the sun moved slowly behind the city I got my stuff together and moved off. On the way back past the port I encountered a salsa-style band playing well-known songs in their own style. I sat down amongst a sizeable crowd of people to listen a while. They danced as they played, jumping around each other with so much energy I wanted to get up and join in, but I didn't. I filmed them a while, enjoyed their music a little longer and then headed off, dropping my change into their hat at the front.

When I arrived back at the house Alan offered to take me out for dinner again since it was my last evening of freedom before the course started. We went out for pizza. As we eat and drink a couple of beers we discuss 'demons', those insecurities which can whisper in our minds and drain our confidence with their patronising self-criticism. We discuss ways of defeating these demons, and whether they actually need to be defeated, or just understood and satisfied. Alan says that he tries to imagine them as having some positive purpose hidden in our subconscious, and through discovering this purpose and giving attention to these subconscious monsters we can satisfy them. Of course, any subconscious demon is simply an aspect of its' host's personality, and for a person to be whole and complete they must acknowledge their own subconscious and not do battle with it.

We discuss the demons of worry. When I have things to do and I put them off, I worry about them. Subconscious demons whisper words of discontent to me, making me uncomfortable and causing me stress. This is remedied simply by acknowledging the demon, by either doing the task I am putting off or making solid plans to complete it. The 'demons' are a call for unity from my subconscious. A part of me separates from the 'active me' and attempts to influence the active me. It should be my aim to eliminate the distinction between these parts and myself. These nagging thoughts I am referring to are just like any other thought; an integrated part of myself. To allow for internal conflict creates them. When I eliminate my internal conflicts my subconscious will have nothing to say. Rather than my intentions materialising as thoughts trying to initiate actions, they will manifest as actions first time around, removing the need for internal nagging.

Anyway, got a bit lost there. I talked to Alan about Krishnamurti and his views on the thoughts of man, how thoughts are time, and time is an illusion that can be escaped by the cessation of thought. How we try to observe ourselves in our lives, but in doing so split ourselves into an observer and an observed, where we are only one person who should embrace our unity within infinity. I could go on and on about that but I won't. It's quarter to four in the morning and I need to get some sleep.

Alan and I finished our food and went home. I got to bed straight away to get up early for the beginning of my CELTA course in the morning. I was a little sad that my free time in Barcelona had ended, but excited to be starting the course. It was going to be one hell of a ride.

This is 'The Thirteenth Blog Of Trig', signing off.

The Fourteenth Blog Of Trig - My Dad

"In the face of so much anger, greed and violence, we must all guard against the danger of those emotions manifesting within ourselves as a response, not to mention the emotional cancers of cynicism, apathy and despair. The world is in a constant state of evolution and if we remember that in order to be part of the solution and not the problem, we have to look inside ourselves as well as at those we perceive to be the perpetrators, then there will be, as there always has been, the chance of a better future." 


- Stephen Broughton

The Twelfth Blog Of Trig - The Barcelona Diaries (Part 3 - 02/07/2011)

Okay, I'm catching slowly up with the present, day by day. It's the fourth of August now, and I am about to write up my notes from my third day in Barcelona, 32 days ago. I might have to do a brief summary of the course itself when I finally get around to it, otherwise I worry that my backlog will get worse and I'll spend the rest of my life writing about the past, which is just a horrible idea. So anyway, Saturday it is...

I woke up fairly early as always, a bit of the 'morning glory' keeping me face down and smiling for a while before I noticed the light in the room, and my mind ascended into reality. I opened my eyes slightly and then quickly shut them tight, pulled a sheet over my head, put my arm over the sheet blocking my eyes and went back to sleep. Very soon the sound of the birds outside had gotten the better of me and I was up.

I went downstairs and had some cereal and then a cup of tea, which I took up to the roof terrace with me to smoke a cigarette. Once I smoked I did a couple of exercises, couple of press-ups, then went downstairs to my room and surfed the net a while.

I heard Alan call my name and I answered. He asked if I fancied going out to grab some food and get a little orientation round the area. I gladly accepted and we left soon after, heading up to the local food market, then on to the local shopping centre. Now, I hate shopping centres. I walk into Brent Cross and a migraine appears and I want to break shop windows, but this was a nice place. Expensive, but nice.

We sat down at a sushi counter and Alan ordered two glasses of Cava. Very nice. We sat there and chatted, and, almost inevitably when you are talking to me, we got onto discussing the banking system and how corrupt and detrimental to society it is. I somehow got onto conspiracies of all kinds such as 9-11 and 7-7, telling him about all the evidence that points to conspiracy and my theories on it all. We talked of various issues in the world for some time, before we finished our glasses and left to get some food. We wandered the Barcelona streets for a while before stopping at a cafe. I had a very mediocre chicken and chips and then paid for lunch since Alan had bought me dinner the first night. Then we headed back to the house.

After we got back I decided I was going to go and see the 'Neucamp' Stadium a couple of miles away, and I set off with my map and not much else. I bought some beer on my way, thinking it would be nice to have a couple somewhere. It took me a while to get there, but it was one road all the way so no risk of getting lost...and I actually didn't.

I arrived at the Neucamp stadium and was a little disappointed. It is a hideous building of grey stone from the outside. Still, took a couple of pictures and carried on round to the far side of the stadium where I found some cool graffiti. I took a few pictures and then walked on to find a large concrete playing ground the size of a medium sized football field, with a number of Asian guys playing cricket and sitting around.  A high wall went around the perimeter of the playing ground, saturated with what from a distance seemed to be very nice graffiti. I wandered in as a group of them were leaving, saying 'ola' to one who seemed to want a stare battle with me, took a couple of photos, and left straight after, feeling slightly out of place.

Looking at my map I saw that I could walk down one main road and be a couple of blocks from where I was staying, and there was also a park on the way that I could check out, and maybe stop for a beer.

I set off, eyes all around me soaking up the noises of the city. As I approached the park I noticed a couple in wedding dress outside the park, looking like they had just been married. I knew I had seen something appropriate in my little Spanish book so I pulled it out and flicked through until I found the right page. "Felicitaciones!" I said with a smile as I passed them. "Gracias senor."

I walked into the park and wasn't too impressed. There was some nice fountains but the water in the pools was very dirty and the park looked un-maintained in general. It was nice, but could have been much nicer with a little work. I did not spend long in there.

As I approached Les Corts a little further down the road I recognised the shopping centre I had visited earlier with Alan. I knew my way home! I was deciding to go and have a beer or two on the balcony back home when I suddenly heard drums coming from the side roads. I had to stop and investigate and was fascinated to find children running down the road in fireproof demon costumes, with catherine wheels on sticks, stopping running when the wheels stopped spinning as they exploded above their heads. I later learned this is called 'Corre Foc' by the Catalan people, or 'fire running'. They were being led through the side-streets slowly by the drummers, cycling back to their group leader to have new fireworks attached to their sticks. I got my camera out and started filming. I had to avoid the white-hot sparks as they ran past, and as I was crouching filming one runner, his firework flew off, and without me noticing, landed next to me. It then exploded a couple of feet from my head, sending my head spinning and my ears ringing (see video at the top).

After an hour or more watching the show it finished, and everyone watching cheered and clapped. I did likewise and then left to make my way home. As I passed another road I heard more drumming, this time more accurate and professional sounding, so once again I followed my ears to the source and found another two groups of older, more experienced drummers hammering out great rhythms. There was a crowd surrounding them as they marched through the streets to their beats, with older, more adventurous fire-runners ahead of them. These guys did not shy away from the sparks and the fire, they attacked each other with it. They ran at each other with lances like 'Roman Candles', covering each other in sparks. After following them for twenty minutes or so we came to a busy square full of many more drummers, locals, a stage and a bar. I sat down to watch the party.

The drummers and fire-runners performed for a long while on-and-off, stopping at around 11pm (a guess), when a band started playing on the stage. I had already had a couple of my beers at this point, and I cracked open a few more and just sat on a bench watching the festivities around me.

A photographer documenting the party sat down next to me and spoke in Spanish. He looked about 55 at a guess. "Ingles", I said, pointing to myself. He acknowledged me but his silence told me that he did not speak any English. We both sat there checking out the scene in front of us silently, when I caught a whiff of rotten eggs. He tapped me on the shoulder and made a smoking motion while saying something I did not understand, pointing at the group of people sitting on the floor near us. I did not understand him, and motioned this to him. He made like he was injecting something into his arm and then the smoking motion again. I understood. He was telling me that the egg smell was heroin and that they were smoking it.

The party went on as I finished my beers, soaking up the atmosphere happily, smoking far too many cigarettes. I looked up at the clock tower above me and it was midnight! I had been following the fire-runners, drummers, and sitting watching the party for almost five hours! I was a little tired and decided it was time to leave. The photographer had left a while back so I left the party without a goodbye and vanished into the side streets. Within ten minutes I was in bed.

Saturday over. One more day until I start my CELTA course, and really, it would have been stupid not to make it a beach day.

This is "The Twelfth Blog Of Trig", signing off.

The Ninth Blog Of Trig - Distr-Inter-Actions

We are all so wrapped up in our daily lives that we rarely stop to investigate it all. We accept the definitions and explanations provided to us without question, and this acceptance accompanied by familiarity breeds contempt and complacency.

I often try to visualise everything through the mind I had before I learnt language, inevitably taking me back into the experience of a person that was still trying to establish spacial awareness. As a mobile being this is mandatory, or we would bounce off walls like flies off a light bulb. And we do, for a short while.

Before I learned to discern between a small, close object and a large, distant object, my perception of the world must have been very pure. I would have initially had no technical distinction between what we call 'objects', with growing familiarity giving rise to what could almost be described as contempt for the familiar; 'I know this'.

The initial influx of senses into an untainted mind must be amazing. Imagine opening your eyes for the first time to see the world without any definition of it. Un-named colours, shapes, lights, shadows, hots, colds, all these and everything in between, with no description except that moment as you perceive it. Trees stop being 'trees' and return to their amazing fractal forms, without familiarity and description. The earth becomes another fractal, with infinite complexity and repetition at magnification. The beauty of the Earth reveals itself to you, and you are amazed, until you are told that it is nothing, that the important things in life are ideas made by man. You fight this, you scream, shout, but you are lucky if all you get in response is a smack on the bum.

"Ignore your amazement at this amazing experience that has been thrust upon you. Listen to us and learn these words and forget about experiencing this amazing life in its purity. There is no profit there...we'll tell you about 'profit' later, when we have conditioned this fascination with the world out of you completely, and you have gotten over the shock and settled into a comfortable state of placid acceptance."

We occasionally glimpse fleeting moments of the beauty that we have been distracted from. This is sometimes when the sun shines, when we are at leisure to relax and enjoy it. The brilliant beams of light bounce off of the world and hit us with such force we have to squint and hide until we have accustomed to it again. We breathe deeply and smile and look, absorping every moment of, well, the moment we are in, which of course, if you have read any of my writing, or any of the writing of the many people who have influenced me, is all that really exists.

That's all for now. Writing this is distracting me from the beauty of experiencing this moment : )

This is "The Ninth Blog Of Trig", signing off.

The Eleventh Blog Of Trig - Footsteps on the Moon

I walk out of class on Wednesday the 20^th July, after what I consider to be the best lesson I have taught so far, and find that while I have been teaching, the people of Barcelona have converged in the streets to protest the ‘financial crisis’; the greatest theft in the history of mankind. I can't go home as I intended. I have to join the procession. 

I march through the streets looking around me with a smile. After a while I try to take some photos but my phone is dead, so I sit down for a coffee and plug it into my laptop. This is where I write from now. I don’t know how many people are marching past me now as I write this, but the street has been flowing full of people since well before I sat down. As with the London protests, I can not see the beginning or the end of the procession of people. I can only see the flow, which is steady and unceasing, reminding me of the rivers that washed through the streets during the heavy rainfall this week.

The noise of whistles fills the air like the screech of a football stadium, but this is different. These whistles have purpose. They are blown to the rhythm of the chanting that accompanies them. They synchronise with the drums that beat out the indignation of the Spanish people, of Earth’s people, at having their lives spat on with such disregard by those with power. A banner waves a giant hand with it’s middle finger clearly raised. The Spanish and Catalan people chant words which I recognise from Youtube videos: they sing, “They don’t, they don’t, they don’t rep-re-sent us! They don’t, they don’t, they don’t rep-re-sent us!” They speak of the politicians, and they are right, they don’t.

After twenty minutes or so I am half way through my small 4 Euro(!) coffee, and a largely built man in plain clothes with an earpiece hovers around me. It is obvious he is undercover police, wondering what I am doing on my laptop in the middle of this rabble of smiling 'terrorists', typing away so frantically. He isn’t very inconspicuous. The crowds start to thin out and I consider packing up and moving off after them, but then a new wave floods through the area and the chanting is renewed. Then, slowly, the streets return to their usual shopper + tourist bustle. Behind the protesters heavily armoured police vans crawl slowly and menacingly. Their drivers have balaclavas on…time for me to leave my coffee and catch up with the people.

By the time I catch up with the crowds they have been stopped outside Estacio De Franca (where I type now) by rows of heavily armoured, handgun-armed police. For a hundred metres in front of the barricade the protesters all sit down in the middle of the street. A car up front with a megaphone shouts messages to the crowd and they cheer and whistle in approval. I move up to the front and check out the riot police. A pretty girl walks up their lines smiling at them and offering her lollipop. They shake their heads without a word. I get the feeling many of them would love to take her up on her offer, and would jump at the chance in any other circumstances. What a sad world. I am reminded of the soldiers in world war 1 ceasing fire to play football and exchange presents on Christmas day, before going back to their lines to kill each other.

Fuck the police. I want the police to chant that with us, “FUCK THE POLICE”, and join the people, as people they themselves are.

I have been desperately trying to charge my phone off of my laptop at every safe opportunity I get to sit down, plug it in and type, but it is not easy. I move into the station and see seats. I am very aware of how I appear. There are security men walking round the station with sniffer dogs, eyeing me suspiciously as I sit down, get my laptop out, plug it into my mobile phone, and start typing frantically. I wonder if they are thinking, “is this some kind of hacker here to tap into our station and cause havoc? Is he setting bombs to go off? What is he doing?” I get my notes out, stick my pen in my mouth and get on with what I am doing. When I think my phone is charged enough to take some photos I’ll move back to my notepad and go back out, but for now this is perfect. I can still hear the crowds outside. I can still hear the lady with the megaphone talking in Spanish about how we have all been ripped off. I wish I could speak Spanish so I could tell them my angle on it all; ‘the biggest ‘Ponzi scheme’ in the world’; 'the biggest theft in the history of the world'; 'the biggest load of bullshit believed by the biggest number of people in the world, ever'. The protests are here to show people where they might find truth.

I check the clock and it is 21.34. Suddenly the crowd outside erupts into applause and cheering. I feel I am missing out, but I must wait a little longer so I have enough battery to take some photos. I feel a little bit uncomfortable, knowing that I have lots of work to do, but there is always time. It’s amazing what little sleep you can survive on when you need to, and I have plenty of experience of that, more than I can remember. I check my phone but it still doesn’t look very charged. Time to give it a try. I’ll be back soon.

My mobile works long enough to get some video footage of the riot police and some shots of the protesters, and then it's time for me to go home, cook dinner, maybe get some work done, and then to bed for some much needed sleep. As I walk back along the route that I took with the protesters earlier, I see that the signs they taped to the buildings on their way down are already gone. The banks seemed to have had men at the ready with soap and water to remove the graffiti daubed on their walls and windows. The physical evidence of the protest has been erased in the blink of an eye, but the footprints find no disturbance in my memory, or the memory of those who witnessed it, participated in it. Soap and water cannot remove this. These footprints remain, like a trail through a dark forest, reminding us that others have come this way before, smiling and fearless, passing through unscathed to look back and find the path behind them a little bit more defined, a little more pronounced, and as more and more people tread the path, encouraged by those brave feet that have cleared the way, the wider it becomes. As it widens it accommodates and encourages more travellers. They look down the path, venture down it, reassured by the parties of brave smiling people returning from hacking their way through the forest of the unknown, uncovering the path of truth as they go.


This is "The Eleventh Blog Of Trig", signing off.


(P.S. My phone and laptop got stolen a few days later, with all the pictures and footage of the event...)

The Eighth Blog Of Trig - The Barcelona Diaries (Part 2 - 01/07/2011)

Okay, Barcelona blog part two! As I write this I am sitting on the roof terrace of International House Barcelona, the school I am studying at. There are students all around me chatting, smoking, drinking coffee and eating. I have drowned out the background with headphones pumping Beck's album 'Odelay' into my ears (special thanks to Davey Bee for the great times we had trying to decifer the lyrics). I think I left off on Thursday night after meeting my host Alan. So I guess Friday morning is a good place to continue...


So, I wake up Friday morning and have a shower, hot then cold, taking care to pick all my failing hairs out of the bath afterwards (yes, I meant 'failing', not falling). I go downstairs and say hello to Alan and he offers me breakfast. We have Bran Flakes with a sliced banana, OJ on  the side. I'm out of cigarettes so I decide to go out and find a shop. Should be simple, but it doesn't work out to be. I head out into the streets and wander in what seems to be a promising direction, but the promise turns out to be broken. I didn't take my map out with me, assuming I wouldn't need it, forgetting of course, that all of Miss Assumption's children are named 'Fuckup'.


I failed to find a shop that sold cigarettes for some time, and by the time I did, I had no idea where I was. I wandered the streets for over an hour, sweating like a pig on a spit, pumping my legs faster and faster in frustration until I finally found my bearings again, realising that I had pretty much been walking circles round the block I was staying on. I also did not feel I had any better idea of the surrounding area. Lesson learnt - always take a map.


Alan greeted me when I arrived back, laughing as I told him my survival story, in  the manner of a man who has just crawled his way out of the desert. We had a sandwich for lunch and then I grabbed my bag and set out towards the Metro station. I was on my way to the language school to say hello, and then have a wander round the town and maybe the beach. At the Metro station I bought a ticket which gave me 50 journeys on Metro or buses, within 30 days, for 31 Euros. That's three days' travel in London, if you're lucky.


The underground Metro reminds me of the one in Budapest, but more modern. They both have similar '80s-computer-game' sounds on the train to announce arrival, departure, and doors opening. I prefer it to the aural torture inflicted on London commuters. I have on many occasions been very close to unleashing my fury upon the speakers on the London trains. I have envisioned myself running at the things with a biro-bayonet, sending the little beeping bastards straight to silicon heaven with a calculated stab through the tweeter, while commuters drop dead from shock upon hearing my horrific war-cry.


The Metro stations are all absolutely sweltering, being too large an area to effectively air condition, but the trains are nice and cool. I left the train and walked into the heat outside with a smile. It was bright outside, and I didn't have to look in the direction of the sun to be forced into squinting.

Getting off at Catalunya station, I found myself in Placa De Catalunya, a big square with water-featured monuments dotted about. I walked around taking a couple of photos and soaking up the atmosphere, trying to recognise the different accents around me. I heard lots of American, lots of Australian, and of course lots of Spanish. I gazed around me for a while, being reminded of Trafalgar Square a little (Spanish style, without Nelson), then I headed for the far corner of the square, which my map told me was where I had to go to begin the short walk to the school.

I arrived at the school 5 minutes later, and was directed to the first floor where I met Gloria, the Head of Administration. She had a bright smile which made me feel comfortable immediately. I was hoping for a tour, but her assistant was at lunch and she had to stay at her desk. She told me to arrive at 8.30am Monday and she would introduce me to my fellow students and show me to my class. Before I left she introduced me to another Sam, who holds a senior teaching position. He was also smiling and friendly, making me feel very positive about things.

 

I came out of international house and I walked towards the 'Ramblas', but I got distracted by the interesting alleyways cutting off of the main roads, and decided to investigate. A part of me echoed the warnings I had heard about the crime in Barcelona, but I wanted to see as much as the city as possible, not just the busy tourist areas, so I headed off the beaten track into the side passages, which were made slightly ominous by the tall buildings that created them. Some looked less inviting than others, with sombre faces staring out from the shadows, and the smell of urine and sweat wofting through the channels. I chose my alleyways carefully using the criteria of piss saturation and ominiscity. Is that a word? It is now. 'Ominiscity'. You heard it here first.

After wandering through the passages a while I came across the cathedral. I guess it was one of Gaudi's creations by its beautiful architecture. In front was a market with all kinds of antique curiosities, which I expected to be expensive by the looks of them. I browsed a while and then headed up the side of the cathedral where I found a couple of guys playing Indian music. I stopped a while, took a video (at the top of this page), and then headed off in some random direction. Maps are useless in these maze-like streets.

I had decided earlier to visit the port and the beach, so I headed down the Ramblas (once I found it by complete fluke) towards the ocean. At the bottom of the Ramblas is Columbus' column, very much like Nelson's, but for CC. Behind this is the port. I headed over and watched as two enormous Scottish guys were told off by police for jumping into the water in the port half-clothed for a swim. Then I sat on a bench and read my Spanish phrase book a while, then my English teaching book. I decided to walk round the port to see how far the beach was, but it was pretty far and I had already walked a long way so I decided to head back in the direction of home.

Shortly after leaving the port area I came across a small park by the main road with some amazing graffiti art. I stopped and took some photos, and then for the next few minutes, every corner I turned I found more (graffiti blog shows more pics). Then I came to the foot of Montjuïc (translated in Catalan as 'Jew Hill), a hill which begins the 'Port Vell Aerial Tramway', a 1300m long carriage journey on a 45mm rope across the harbour to Barceloneta Beach. I started walking up the hill to get a view from the top, passing a man painting the scenery on the way (below), before making it up to the top fifteen minutes later, covered with sweat.

At the top of the hill I found a lovely bar with a cliff-terrace overlooking the ocean, the whole of Barcelona, and even the mountains to the north-west. I ordered a beer and sat down to admire what I guess to be a 270 degree panoramic view of the city and surroundings, got out my laptop and started typing. I finished off a piece of writing about my history teacher, Mr Oulton, and what he taught me about analysing information to find truth.

I had a couple of beers looking out over Barcelona, feeling very comfortable about where I was (or WHEN I was - the one and only real moment of time - now) and the course I was about to embark on. I thought about light rays and the false wave-particle duality of reality. I read my English Language Teaching book. I read my book, 'Dope International', about the international heroin trade and how it was run after WW2 by the the Sicilian/Italian MAFIA, Corsican gangsters, and others. I read how the author suspected the 'Big Boss' to be in Britain. I looked out and smiled.

As the sun started to go down I left the bar and headed back to the house. It was a long walk, through busy pedestrianised streets, filled with tables and chairs occupied by the customers of the many bars and restaurants either side. Children kicked footballs around. Skateboarders tried their tricks out in front of their friends. The bustling noise of the people was comforting and friendly. 

When I got home I had some food and then went to bed fairly soon after. I had walked a lot of miles that day. Bring on Saturday!

This is "The Eighth Blog Of Trig", signing off.