Madrid

After Milly was put down I felt a really strong need to see Sue, so I booked a flight to Madrid and agreed to meet her here this weekend. She got the train up from Cordoba and we spent a really good couple of days together before I saw her off from Atocha station a few hours ago. I am now back in our hotel room getting ready to return to Italy tomorrow. We’ve seen a lot of art and done a lot of shopping. We’ve also wandered around the flea market and had paella under a strong winter sun in the Plaza Mayor. It’s been fun, despite feeling sad about the death of our little dog. We both understand that if the death of a pet is the worst thing you have to face and you can afford to have a weekend holiday in a beautiful city to talk about it, then actually you can count yourself very, very lucky.

Sue has never been here before, but for me this is the third time. I first came in 1987 with my ex-wife Rosemary when the memory of Franco’s dictatorship was still strong and fast jets flew low over the city every lunchtime, as a reminder that the armed forces were still here. I came again with my friend Rob in 1992 or 1993 for a competitively drunken weekend terminating in a karaoke bar, where I was so smashed I selected a song only to stare blankly at the Spanish lyrics that flashed at me from the teleprompt. That friendship ended amid the wreckage of a car crash on the A68 near Hexham a few months later. This time the memories will be happier and less nuanced.

One thing that has not changed with the years or the seasons is the light in this high up southern city, where on a clear day you can see so far that everything feels unreal and the shade is like how I imagine the light in hell to be.