The collective noun for a succession of buskers is an ear-worm. In Retiro park it’s the Saxophonists who lead the table followed by guitarist and accordion, violin and wineglasses. For the latter, one family sit cross-legged as if at the front of the stalls, for a performance of The Sugar Plum Fairy. Most stick to a seasonal score of carols; however one Galician piper plays ‘Flower o’ Scotland’ as a slow lament, one verging on a dirge. The Murrayfield crowd would have finished, the game kicked off before he got to Edward having to think again. A magician stabs playing cards, a cartoonist draws caricatures, whilst break dancers attract the larger crowd. All have the begging bowl out.
But which of the following odes that float through the park is the odd one out? ‘Silent Night’, ‘Feliz Navidad’, ‘Joy to the World’, or ‘Jingle Bells’?
*Answers on a postcard to: brainrot.com
Waiting on the platform of the circular line, the train rumbles out of the tunnel and a ticker-tape of carriages scrolls past. On offer is a trumpeter in the first, a charango player around the middle and as our chosen door slides open, Peruvian pipes.
Poster at the bus stop: ’The Titanic Immersive Experience’.
We never attempt to understand the vagaries of the television, I never master the microwave and as for the central heating controls, we never entertain any intention of touching them for fear of an upsetting their countenance. They’re all part of the ‘house-sitting’ rituals. The introduction to each home’s unique personality and its idiosyncratic quirks. But the true ‘bête noire’ is always the keys. I thought I might have encountered every possible permutation, only for a new one to turn up. Three locked entrances to get to the front door. To gain entry, turn anti-clock twice then clockwise a few degrees to release the parrot beaks, what on any other assemblage would be the latch or deadbolt. Which is interesting, but the killer instruction is to not lock from the outside if there’s anybody inside; there will be no escape from within.
TheNavigator maintains that Madrid’s public loos have the coldest seats in Christendom. They’re also the cleanest coldest seats.
Having fulfilled the dictionary definition of ‘serendipity’, the chanced-upon encounter with one great, and one good, sonido y luz, light and sound show, we make plans for Madrid’s production. Climbing the stairs out from the metro into a plaza that’s thronged. Clots of populace attract clots of populace to form bigger clots of populace. Families pose in front of the city’s iconic motif of Bear and Tree. (It’s reproduced on every municipal van, drain cover and litter bin). Selfieists and Instagramists do what they do, whilst Santa jingles for alms. Corrals of encircled prams restrain toddlers, and we defend our stance, backs to the wall. All the ingredients are in place, and there’s a general air of happening. But plans kill spontaneity. The thought ‘why did they bother?’ is closely followed by ‘oversell, then underdeliver’. A three minute anthem on a seasonal theme, with some pastel coloured lighting illuminating the municipality’s palace window frames that flicker from off to on and back again. That’s it. Missed it? Don’t worry, it’s repeated in quarter of an hour. Every quarter hour all the way up to twelfth night.
You win some…. you lose some.
Navigating the sandstone’d depths of Salamanca, the windowless slabbed cliffs of academia’s high blank walls, passing the Casa de Concha, now the central library, and its three hundred carved stone shells, we round a corner to chance upon three children playing. She has a draped kerchief in hand whilst her brother tries to grab it, another is counting the seconds. Three kids just mucking around. That is, until walking through the Plaza de Campillo we chance upon two sculptures. One is a bronzed Leap-frog and the other a stasis rendition of what we had seen earlier.
Pañuelito; the handkerchief game.
Icebergs floating in the fountain, sparrow tracks in a hoar frost, the last star retreating out of a clear sky. Threw a double six to escape from the labyrinthine multi-modal transport hub and into the Spanish capital’s vast green lung. Casa del Campo. We wander around the lake, watched cormorants hung out to dry, dodged the pelotons of analog road cyclists and electric mono-wheelers, wondered at the sanity of the rowing sculls, then noted the empty canoe polo pools. Gave thought to the fact that it would be interesting to watch a match, assuming we would need to return in a few months. Continued our peregrinations which eventually returned to that lake and a polo match. With another just warming up, as a third team float a set of goals into place. Still there’s a grunge of ice tucked into one corner.
‘Tis supremely gratifying to know that other nations can conjure up such improbably, garishly, sticky baked goods as any Scots bakery. “Whars yer fancy scran, yer Mediterranean diet noo?”
“I’m sorry sir but I think you have a knife”.
We’re on the third leg of a short journey into the city, required to pass through security at the railway station. The x-ray machine has picked up on a pair of scissors that have acquired more travel-miles than a politician’s campaign trail. Wasn’t aware, nor can we see any prohibition notices against the transportation of dangerous goods on the high-speed railway service. It transpires that their crime is to be longer than 6cm and presumably have a point, as the serrated knife with its bull-nose, that travels in the same cutlery roll, which will happily hack the top of your finger when slicing a tomato, passes muster. Not to worry, it makes for a quirky story, that and they were blunt anyway.
He’s standing guarding the Mexican embassy, in full view of the national parliament across the road, cradling his Heckler & Koch in one hand and a surreptitious cigarette in the other. Again.
How do you spot the local from the visitor? Stand at the street crossing and observe. The former steps off from the kerb as the semaphore for cars turns to amber. Which seems somewhat problematic, as the car considers a yellow to be an advisory and the red light to be negotiable. Why contemplate an imminent demise? Just in a hurry, or to have more time to greet your friend coming towards you, to exchange kisses and Christmas greetings? In the middle of the road. So how does the local acquire this plus one sense, the ability to second guess a driver’s intention? As the visitor I don’t hold with Darwinism and remain rooted to the kerb until a suitable sacrificial local makes the first move.
TheNavigator has interrogated the net, consulted Atlas Obscura for some ideas and plotted a wandering path that, with luck, should join up some dropped pins. A sculpture park underneath an autopista’s flyover, a relocated lucky frog, an artisanal market and an animatronic installation . Four waypoints that in themselves are not overly important, oft’ it’s what lies in between that has the interest. The first two could be flagged as “aye… right” ticks, the third has ‘alternative motive’ written all over it and as for the installation, I wasn’t even sure if we had found it.
One hundred and thirty-two stalls sell the creations of creatives. All of it is inspiring, if in no part because you know there is absolutely no question that any of it has come out of a container from China. Eleven dozen stalls and TheNavigator has found her way, inevitably back to just one. A homing instinct for an earring habit. An unerring ability to find the exquisite, individualistic, syncretic pieces. An incurable condition that needs little encouragement.
An animatronic timepiece translates into a string of eighteen bells hung on a wall. Not what I had anticipated, erroneously envisioning the possibility of an animated character hammer striking a bell, like those we’ve seen elsewhere. The clock strikes twelve and then nothing, not even a mouse that ran down. I had already started to wander off, muttering incantations along the lines of ‘overselling and underdelivering’, when that carillon launches into ‘Jingle Bells’, a window opens and a cast of caricatures come out to grace the balcony. They gyrate and the flamenco dancer wafts her abanico, her fan, wafting away the cloud of stone dust billowing up from the mason who’s cutting a slab for the dug-up plaza.
*Odd carol out: ‘jingle bells’, not just because French supermarkets have a predilection for playing it in the middle of June, but because its original outing was either in Mitford (Mass) or Savannah (Ga) for a US Thanksgiving service.
