Autobiographical Fragment: Off to Sunny Spain (October 1985)

¿Qué pasó con Ana y Asun?

Although I remember the journey vividly and in detail, it's almost 35 years ago that I left London for Madrid carrying a case containing everything I owned (mostly books) and an envelope stuffed with £1000 in cash on the day after Broadwater Farm erupted (following riots the previous month in Brixton and Handsworth).

The plan - if you can call it that - was to teach English as a foreign language and write a novel. But the hope was to meet señoritas by the score and, actually, I got off to a good start by meeting Ana and Asun at Victoria coach station and then travelling with them all the way until they got off the bus in Burgos.

That's me pictured with them aboard the ferry to France. I loved being up on deck in the autumnal sunshine, watching with Lawrentian eyes as England, like a long, ash-grey coffin, slowly submerged beneath the waves (not that the French coast looked any less dismal to be honest).

Ana, I recall, wanted to be a policewoman. But it was Asun, curled up against me like a cat on the back seat of the coach, who taught me my first words of Castilian: Me llamo Jazz ... Yo soy inglés ... Tengo hambre. Perhaps rather shamefully, that still pretty much constitutes the extent of my Spanish language skills.      

Although I was happy to be out of England, things did not go well in Madrid, which seemed to me a madhouse; everybody smoked and drank black coffee in order to stay awake (nobody seemed to sleep); everybody shouted and drove like a lunatic; armed police pointed guns in my direction, whilst the children followed me along the street shouting Olé! Olé! 

Even in late November, it was hot by day. But it was so desert-cold at night that I collapsed with hypothermia (the rented ground floor flat that I shared with the Polecat had no heating, just bars on the window; something which, like the beggars on every street corner, I had not experienced whilst living in Chiswick).   

Eventually, as the money and my patience ran out - and having failed as a teacher and failed as a novelist - I returned to England. Although I didn't know it then, my life-long love affair with Spain would only really begin two years later ...


Musical bonus: Sylvia Vrethammar, 'Y Viva España' (1974): click here. 

That Voodoo That You Do

Image: Santeria Church of the Orishas

When you see a lurid and salacious news headline containing the words black magic and Brazilian transsexuals, it's difficult not to have one's curiosity piqued; especially when the story unfolds not in Haiti or South America, but in Spain, and provides further evidence of how global migration (or Völkerchaos) is bringing unexpected forms of cultural diversity onto the streets of our towns and cities.       

According to reports, Spanish police arrested 13 members of a multi-national trafficking ring on suspicion of using Santería - a voodoo-like religion infused with elements of Catholicism - along with more mundane methods to coerce fifteen young transwomen into prostitution and drug dealing. 

It sounds uniquely bizarre. But, as a matter of fact, this is not the first time that migrants have been smuggled into Europe and then forced into a life of crime by gang leaders claiming to possess occult powers. And, sadly, I don't suppose it'll be the last ...

Welcome, then, to the new normal of sex slaves and raw chicken hearts; a reality that also incorporates grooming gangs, child brides, bushmeat, and halal slaughter. And I think to myself ...      

Say Hello Then!

Portrait of the Artist Aged 3

(pris juste après une coupe de cheveux)

When I was very young, one of my favourite things to do was stand on the wall at the front of my house and say hello to adult passers-by, be they next-door-neighbours or complete strangers.

In those days, very few people had a car and so there was ample opportunity to initiate contact, even if it was just with the postman, milkman, or the rag-and-bone man, who used to come round on a horse and cart, ringing a bell.

(In those days too, of course, there was no pathological fear of paedophiles and no neurotic concern with health and safety and children of all ages - shocking as it now seems - played outside, unsupervised and without protective clothing.)

One might read my attempt to engage with the world as an innocent sign of friendliness; tinged perhaps with a degree of childhood cheekiness.

But, looking back, I think it betrayed a certain provocative aggression; for if the passer-by failed to respond to my initial greeting, I would quickly issue a second demand that they do so: Say hello then!

Ultimately, it was more a challenge than a greeting ... I didn't want to destroy the passer-by - as I did as an anarchic teenage punk - but I did want to put them on the spot, thus causing a degree of discomfort or irritation.

It wasn't so much that I cared about having my presence acknowledged; but I wanted to remind them that they existed in a world with others and had therefore an ethical obligation to be polite and friendly; that no one had the right to pass by in silence on the other side of the road.

Even today, if I'm honest, I find it shockingly rude when someone sits next to me on a plane, for example, and doesn't nod, smile, or say hello. I understand there's an issue of reserve amongst the English, but, sadly, this is often just used as an excuse to cover up bad manners and social ineptitude.

One of the things I really miss about living in Spain is the fact that everyone says hola!


Afterthought

It might be argued, I suppose, that Torpedo the Ark is just another platform from which to address strangers and that I'm still essentially playing the same childhood game of ethical provocation. And I have to confess that I quite like this idea of continuity with - and loyalty to - my very young self. 

On Blasphemy (amb referència al cas de Dolors Miquel)

Photo of Dolors Miquel by Gianluca Battista

El Pais Catalunya (Feb 2016)

Blasphemy, as Richard Dawkins is fond of reminding us, is a victimless crime: for whilst God is obviously a real object of reference (and reverence) within human history and culture, he is not, of course, an actual entity.

And so, whilst you can certainly injure the feelings of his often hypersensitive followers, nothing that is said about or addressed directly to God makes the slightest difference to him. The most devout and beautiful of prayers as well as the most irreverent of insults, all fall on ears that are not even deaf.

Despite this being the case, there's a depressingly large number of countries that still retain - and vigorously enforce - blasphemy laws; including, of course, all the usual suspects in the Muslim world.

Shamefully, however, there are still Europeans who would also like nothing more than the opportunity to prosecute and punish those whom they accuse of bad-mouthing God; Christian reactionaries who envy Islamic militants and yearn for the good old days of Inquisition when they too could torture and murder blasphemers, heretics, atheists, witches, etc. in the name of Love and Divine Justice.

And so it doesn't really surprise to hear of the case of the poet Dolors Miquel being prosecuted - presumably under Article 525 of Spanish penal law - after publicly reciting her feminist version of the Lord's Prayer on stage in Barcelona, in which she redirects worship away from the figure of a bearded male towards that of a female deity: "Our Mother, who art in heaven / Hallowed be thy cunt."

The head of the Church in Catalonia immediately branded the verse as blasphemous and angrily dismissed the idea that it might better be understood as an ode to womanhood that celebrates fertility and life - just as he also quickly brushed aside arguments in defence of free speech.

My view - if it isn't already pretty clear - is that whist Dolors Miquel may not be the greatest poet in the world, she has every right to promote her vulva activism and gynaecological pride. The cunt isn't sacred, but neither is it blasphemous or obscene. And if phallocentric misogynists like to deny their maternal origin and wish to mutilate female genitalia rather than find happiness therein, well, that's something I find offensive ...