It has been an emotional month, to be sure.  It has been a slightly surreal month as well and it is difficult to know how to get that across in mere words.

I’ll start with my mum.  My mum decided that the time was right for her to have a Stroke.  Possibly even two.  This was despite the inconvenience that this would cause everyone.  She said she woke up feeling “a bit weird” so she decided to drive – yes, drive – to the doctor’s surgery whereupon she was told that she’d most likely had a Stroke and that she would need to go to hospital.

Mum being mum, she drove home, parked the car carefully in the garage and only then went to hospital.    What can you say?

Anyway, she was in hospital for a few weeks.  Luckily for me it was Semana Santa (the week of churchy parades everywhere) and so I was able to bag a last minute flight to go see her.  Dreading the worst, I found her sat upright in a nice chair at the hospital doing a crossword and saying yes to a question of whether she would like a cup of tea or not.

I never got asked.  Not once. 

My friend Ceri, bless her, works at the hospital and went to see her after day one.  Mum was delighted by that.  Being in a hospital and scared but then seeing a familiar face means a lot.   Then my sister and brother-in-law came down and we managed to wheelchair her to the coffee shop so mum could have a change of scene just for an hour or two.

She was, at that point, lucky to be alive since she had, in the middle of the night, decided to go to the bathroom but didn’t want to use the splayed walking stick to help get out of bed.  She fell, just missing her head on the porcelain sink in her room.  That she was able to laugh about it afterwards speaks volumes about my mum.

Mum is now on the mend at home with carers visiting four times a day.  She looks better every  time we videophone and she is determined to get back out in the garden to tackle the scourge of her life – weeds.  Her neighbours have been fantastic as were the NHS staff at the hospital. 

I’m also happy that we are living closer than Asia.  Sonalee was also able to see her mum a few weeks prior after an operation.  This relative closeness means a lot to us and to our families.

During the week of Semana Santa it absolutely chucked it down in Andalusia.  For a whole week.  Parades were cancelled.  Towns and villages were flooded.  Snow fell on the hills around local towns.  It was bonkers.

It has temporarily relieved some of the acute situations in reservoirs and lakes but restrictions will still be in place in many areas.  It has also led to the campo going insane with plants and flowers.  We have never seen it so verdant.  And it’s a really lovely thing to witness. 

There’s a river a short drive away that we haven’t been to for ages because it was just a trickle, almost lifeless.  For the past few weeks it has been flowing the way rivers should be flowing.  It even had fish and turtles in it, which is unheard of. 

As I type this, I am in the middle of a building site.  We are finally getting a new kitchen and a big redesign of the downstairs.  It means I am upstairs all day trying to stay out of the way.  It also means that there is dust in every crevice and surface.  And I have to listen to the bricklayer’s bloody awful Flamenco music all day.   They were due to come over tonight to fit a new window but I think Real Madrid would have been more important. 

This is a good thing because I am rather tired from celebrating Portsmouth’s win last night and their subsequent crowning of Champions of League One.  God, I wish I could have been there, like Ceri was.   But live telly is the best I can do.  It was one Hell of a game.  I went slightly shouty at the end and also a bit teary.

And why not?  Portsmouth are my longest love affair.  They will always be so.  The club has been through some awful times in the recent past, to the point where we nearly folded as a football club.   The long battle to get back to where we belong has been dragging on for some time but that made last night just a bit more special.

Portsmouth (Pompey) are my tribe.  A tribe I have belonged to for 48 years now, with some dalliances along the way in Bristol and Lisbon.  There is a saying amongst supporters of unfashionable and not insanely rich teams – “For life not for glory”.  It makes achievements such as this season’s mean more and I don’t care that no one around here knew who they are. 

My god-daughter and her family have had two reasons to celebrate in the past week – Pompey and the first trophy for 40 years for Athletic Bilbao, a somewhat remarkable club that is in the very soul of the city wherever you look. The devotion to it from all Bilbaoans – without exception – is a remarkable thing to witness.  I was unable to watch the final last weekend because I was ‘hydrating’ with my sister in Berlin.  But my god-daughter did, in Bilbao watching the big screen and by all accounts it was as mental as it can get.  When they did the open bus thing parading the trophy, a million Basques came to the city to see it.    

It makes a nice change from one of the Big Three teams here, who hoover up the majority of fans from places like Fuente Tojar.  Naturally, I wore my Athletic top to training last Friday, which the girls seemed to give kudos to.   Later on, at the village World Food Festival, the girls met Sonalee who agreed that they were, as I have  said to her, cute. 

I did, of course, wear my Pompey top for the half marathon in Berlin.  My brother-in-law Mike is quite astonishing in his running ability and fitness levels.  He tore through the city at a pace I can only vaguely recall from my last half marathon thirty years ago.  My sister was unable to take part due to someone passing on their cold slash chest infection.  I was lucky to be able to do so.

I picked up a foot injury a few months ago, which put paid to training runs.  In order to get some miles in my legs I did a long run three weeks ago but during a Calima, which was really stupid.  A Calima is when Andalusia gets blinded by sand from the Sahara desert and it gets everywhere.  Including, apparently, my lungs.  Luckily the doctors here over prescribe just as they did in Sri Lanka so a mere chest infection stood no chance.

It meant that I joined another tribe for a few hours, that of slower runners determined to finish rather than show off like my bro-in-law.  For the first 15K it was really nice to be a part of it again, the last 6K was a struggle.  And Berlin is a great place to run in, it has to be said.  The only disappointing thing was passing through Checkpoint Charlie and realising just how tacky and crappy it is. 

The crowds were amazing and the bands along the way were wonderful for lifting you up.  Apart from the slow Jazz band.  Not sure they really got the vibe that day.

Anyway, I finished and I was rather chuffed to having done so.  In a time that is not laughable either, which was a bonus.  I might get back into it during this winter – there is no point in trying to do so during the heat of summer.   Doing the Lisbon half would scratch an itch.

The both of us enjoyed Berlin a lot.  It is a place steeped in bad and good history.  The section of the wall that remains was a reminder of some of the bad stuff but also that things can get better should people so choose it to be. 

Naturally we were screwed over by Lufthansa when their late plane got us to Munich just as the gate closed for our flight to Madrid.  It was infuriating – we could see the plane just sitting idly there while staff insisted we weren’t getting on.  There was about 10 of us who were raging.

So we ended up in Madrid at 11.00 at night on a later flight staying in a hastily booked apartment in Lavapies, one of the most diverse parts of the city.  I think I was the only white person I saw as we negotiated the streets full of people and businesses determined to make a life for themselves in Spain.  Whether Spain lets them is open to question given the many instances of racism reported here but that might be a discussion for another day.

For now, my mum is okay.  She is at home.  Bilbao have a trophy safely tucked in their cabinet and Pompey have a new challenge to look forward to next season.  And we have a new kitchen slowly taking shape.  It’s all good.

Ciao.  Hasta Luego, inshallah

Ayubowan

Paul

PS.  Without shame, the moment of victory on Tuesday. And a rather nice video from Marca here in Spain.