Sunday

London Bridge is quietly buzzing. I’m halfway through sandwich two of my Boots meal deal and watching commuters come and go beyond the glass. I can’t see many face masks anymore. The only masks I’ve seen in three minutes were worn by a couple of Asian women who got off the Gatwick train. To look around now, you might be forgiven for thinking the crisis is over. I wonder whether we eventually shrugged off the great plague with the same British phlegm.

Two twenty-somethings on the next aisle crack open a thin-tin of strawberry daiquiri and discuss the “right” way to shake a cocktail. A sweet synthetic hint of something that might once have been strawberry permeates the carriage for a few seconds, somewhere between the strength of a spring flowerbed and a subway urinal. A trendy man in dark glasses phases in and out of sleep a few seats along. A made-up mum scrolls through her Zara app and her daughter waves goodbye to London Town.

Graffiti lines the tracks. It daubs itself on every bridge, every sign and lamp post, every standing stone. Tags and words and call-signs in silver and black that make no sense to me, but mean something to someone, somewhere. Preek. Eo. Prydz. Busta. Cosa. DGMan. Looper. You never see them in the act, but the aerosol artists must work throughout the year, like Reebok-wearing shoemaker-elves.

The conversation shifts. The daiquiri girls discuss their thoughts about their respective partners and the foibles of men. “Don’t forget him, just think of him as, you know, that was a shiny boy you dated for a while,’; “He said that being in love is more important than being right, and that just didn’t sit with me, you know?”; “Mm yeah, that does sound a bit intense,”; “I just want to be in control all the time,”; “Me too!”

A yuppie asked to take the seat next to me on the train up last night. I noticed his face fallen slightly – that slight tightening of the jaw that I think is called emotional leakage in psychological circles. Perhaps I saw in it what I wanted to see, or perhaps I just saw a face I know too well. He was drafting a message in Notes to one “Alissa Bumble”. He struggled with one sentence, writing, erasing and re-writing the same words: “thank you for being honest with me”. His jaw twitched and he stared through his phone to the floor and into the empty space beyond.

In four months of experimenting with Bumble and it’s kin I’m more or less resolved to pull the plug at the end of the month. It was worth a shot, but I feel that yuppie’s frustration on my own level: it’s a soul-sapping task at best. I’ve seen that same quiet exasperation in the faces of many a young Tantalus on the train, now that I recognise that swiping gesture for what it means and read it like a book whenever I see it. Apples bobbing near, but always out of reach.

These social networking sites seem one and the same. One goes into the water like a fisherman and, though you could be sure you felt a tug on the line here or there, when you start to draw in the net you find your hands are empty. Maybe it was a missed encounter, or maybe it was a capricious twist of the algorithm, clamouring for your attention – and your custom. They play you like a lyre; Apollo in Diana’s hands. Even those connections you thought you’d made tend to disappear like so much dust in your hand. Again and again it’s the same hurdle online as it is in truth. Ambition gets in the way. Ambition for work and ambition for looks. It’s a game for the beautiful and the mirror never lies, and for somebody who would rather share stories than photos, the current of the online dating world flows like the Gibraltar Strait: close, tantalisingly so, but vicious and unforgiving. It’s been an interesting experiment, but it’s not for me.

The sun is shining on Crawley Town. A nuthatch twirrups from the canopy and the wind whispers through the alder trees. A robin is singing as the clouds roll in. The bluebells are out at last and a walk home through the woods is the best therapy nature can provide, especially when it rides off the back of a night spent in the company of such honest and kind-hearted friends. The world has been good to me.

Time, I think, for a spring clean. First of the flat, then of the heart. BB x

I think I’m contracting hayfever, which is frankly ridiculous in a place that’s almost as dry as Jordan. Or maybe that’s just my sinuses reacting to an overdose of chorizo in last night’s risotto. Whatever it is, it’s spoiling the atmosphere.

It’s two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon here in the Parque de la Paz in Villafranca de los Barros, which means the town’s finally awake and everybody and their five children are out to enjoy the sunshine for a few minutes and then spend a good three hours in the shade, chatting noisily over a pint or a cafelito, more often than not the other way around to what you might expect. Where the students of the town are is anybody’s guess (I suspect they lead a more nocturnal existence at the weekends), but all the families converge on the park come Sunday morning. Scores of children on roller-skates climbing up and down the ramps by the Bar Atalaya whilst mami and abuela witter away with babi in a pushchair, getting ogled at every other minute or so with cries of ‘ay que linda, ay que linda’ or such like. One or two of the children who aren’t too fond of roller-blading are tottering around in oversized shirts, hands stuffed into crisp-packets and gaping in wonder at everything that moves. Especially the strange individual sitting on the bench on his own. Who even does that?

It’s both the easiest and the hardest thing about village life in Spain. Or village life just about anywhere, come to think of it, but especially in Spain. It’s a big family world, and if you’re not part of the family… well, you get the idea. Little Sunday idylls like this remind me just how much I’ve always wanted little dark-eyed curly-haired toddlers of my own, and whereas in England that kind of remark would probably earn you a wary look if not a second opinion from most people, here in Spain it’s a totally natural thing to be baby-centric. It must be – these Spaniards have giant families. One of the students I’m to be teaching put me in a tight corner when, during an introductory class, she asked ‘why is your family so small?’. My colleague apologised on her behalf and told me I didn’t have to answer that one, but the point had been made. I come from a family of four, including myself. Naturally, then, I’ve always loved the idea of a large family. It was one of the things I treasured most about my first relationship. We all want what we can’t have.

I suppose I ought to tell you that I’ve found somewhere to live for the next eight months. It was almost too easy. The new mechanics teacher from Plasencia made good on his offer and I’m now conveniently based just five minutes’ walk from the centro, and one minute’s walk from the park – which, ironically, is to be my internet hotspot for the rest of the year. I’m not going to complain about that. It’s a wonderful place to be. With any luck, in a couple of weeks I’ll have found the younger generation of this town and this may prove to be their hangout too – albeit at a different time of day, of course. That’s the only thing I envy the Erasmus students for; a ready-made social circle of people their own age. But at least I get the golden kernel in that I am, quite obviously, the only Englishman in town. And I mean that quite literally. There are two other auxiliares to be working here when October rolls around, but they’ll be living in Almendralejo, leaving me as the English-speaking bastion here. That couldn’t suit me any better. Because that means that, apart from when I’m teaching, or when I’m reading or writing my novel, the only language of communication I’ll be using out here will be Spanish. And unlike Andalucia, where (beautiful though it is) I might well miss half of what is said in the slur, I understand everything here. It’s an enchantingly countrified strain of Castilian, and that suits me down to a T.

When the time is right and I’m fully settled in and documented (the latter awaits in the Oficina de Extranjeria in Badajoz tomorrow, or as long as it takes) I’ll head for Olvera, where I’m lucky enough to have a host of old friends waiting to meet me, after I had to leave them behind to return to life in England, now almost nine years ago. I should thank my stars for that much. It may feel like I’m an outsider, watching all these families going about their Sunday paseo, but I’ve got my toe in the door already and I’m working the rest of my foot in as we speak. BB x