31 Postcodes - Poem 10

Exile 

A gloomy dark flat

is just what is needed.

You can hide from the sun,

hug the cool, beige floors.

No one has pelas,

so the days groan by.

She’s gutting sardines.

He’s just exhaling.

The nights are better,

cassettes protesting,

we share weak wine,

forget about days.

Chileans and Basques,

all rebels together,

reading and teaching,

dreaming of home.

RF 2021

Video/audio for this one here.

Quite soon I found a flat share in the Spanish paper Segunda Mano (‘second hand’ – there was no such thing as online listings in 1985, of course). It was in the pretty central Madrid area of Lavapiés which was cheap then (less so now perhaps) and it was sharing a ground floor flat with a couple (she Basque, he Chilean). I had the back/inside room (i.e. looking onto the empty hole of a ‘courtyard’, not the street, so pretty dark) but as I tended to be up much of the night and sleep a lot of the day this was not really an issue. I had some work teaching English but it was in Spanish afternoons (i.e. about 17.30-20.30) so even I could manage to get to that on time.  

My main job was in a very small language ‘school’ (‘academia’ they called it) in a town outside Madrid called Aranjuez (big in the world of asparagus farming). I got the train out there from Atocha station and used that time to dream (rather than prepare classes, sadly). I hadn’t done any TEFL/ESOL training so my teaching was not top grade and the children’s class was particularly terrifying (Spanish kids learn their own grammar quite rigorously so they had tough questions). My English grammar education was patchy to non-existent (I knew more Spanish grammar than English) so one particularly studious young lad in a blazer enjoyed putting me on the spot I think. I had been tough on teachers myself now and then in school so it was payback I deserved.

But back to the flat. The couple I shared with had very little money (pelas was slang for pesetas, Spain didn't have the euro still 1999) but it was a very social home – especially with other Latin Americans – and there was much talk and music late into the night. Most of the Chileans were unofficial refugees so couldn’t earn money legally (or get healthcare). They earned what they could when they could – cleaning bars, running stalls at the weekly Rastro market, or doing some private teaching if they could get it. Two of the Chileans who visited regularly were musicians who earned their crust busking and I loved to accompany them for their evening sessions about the city (I just collected the money in a hat or listened – no obvious musical talent myself). They were great musicians (one played guitar, one charango) and lovely people too. Most of the Latin Americans had interesting stories about resistance to, and escape from, dictatorships but some stories were gruesome. At least one person I knew had been tortured in their home country.

The flat was pretty basic (and cold in winter). Madrid has more of a winter than you might think (particularly in 2021, there was news of a huge snowstorm yesterday in the news). There was no washing machine and we all washed our clothes in the kitchen by hand. The food was cheap ingredients but cooked imaginatively (by the others more than by me – I helped out and picked up tips). As they had more time than money they did things I didn’t even know you could do at this point (like make mayonnaise from scratch). I spent Xmas 1985 there (quite special, an amazing meal on Xmas Eve and it felt like a real celebration which I wasn’t used to) and also my 19th birthday in January 1986. I didn’t spend the whole year in this flat though so my next Madrid home tomorrow…

This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were mostly taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.