Sunday coffee ....13 Dec. 2009

Madrid. It is before 8 AM and the sky is cloudy. It is a Sunday morning in early September. We are in the barrio of Salamanca, the most expensive area in the center of the city. I can see a woman in high heels perched on the window ledge of a brick building, some four floors above a courtyard. The building is modern compared to its neighbors, built in the 1950’s; those that abut it date from the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

The woman is blond and even at a distance I can tell she is dressed fashionably. She is holding on to the bricks around the window. She is edging her way along the ledge to an open landing, about a meter away from the window. If she stretches, she can just reach the edge of the wall and pull herself into the open stairwell.

I am standing on my roof terrace, peering over the edge, watching the woman.

She is a thief.

A handbag is strung over her shoulder. I am certain that it contains the jewelry that she has stolen from the apartment whose window she has just climbed out of.

I think about yelling at her, about calling the police. I am afraid, though, that if I do the first, it may startle her and she could lose her footing – the high heels she is wearing are far from suitable for second story work. I think about the risk of her falling. Her life would be forfeit if she did lose her balance, the courtyard below is paved with limestone slabs and it is a drop of 30 or 40 feet. If I elect the second course of action, without startling her by calling out, and I just call the police, by the time they come she will be long gone. I muse that the purpose of their response will change radically to an investigation of death by misadventure from presumed thievery if I do yell and she loses her grip and crashes onto the stones below.

A few seconds only have passed and the woman climbs safely onto the landing. She straightens her dress, I notice that she is tall and slender; whether she is pretty I can’t determine, her features are too vague at this distance. I am certain she is Eastern European, probably a Romanian. Or perhaps I am wrong? I have deducted her ethnicity from my experience of the city. It is full of economic migrants; many of them work – as plumbers, carpenters, electricians, maids, waitresses – but many are criminal, pick-pockets, muggers and, more daringly, robbers who climb into carelessly open windows, left so by their tenants, seemingly secure because they are several floors above the street.

In an instant the blond thief moves off down the stairs and I know that within a few seconds more she will be at street level and out of the building. She will make her way down Ayala, which is empty at this hour, to Serrano where there are already a few pedestrians on their way to early Mass or to buy a loaf of bread or a newspaper. She will blend in and vanish.

There is no time for me to go down from our seventh floor roof terrace and around the corner to pursue her; among other things, I am in my bath-robe and I would surely lose her trail if I stopped to change. The alternative, scurrying down the street in my bathrobe and slippers, is embarrassing and I discount the option. I ask myself if my behavior is actually cowardice and am I just looking for excuses for my inaction?

My early morning coffee on the roof, usually a time of inchoate, multi-directional musing, has turned into a period of singular reflection. How have I behaved during this drama? What did I see? Why have I chosen to interpret it the way that I did? Have I witnessed a crime? I saw a woman leave an apartment in an unorthodox manner; she climbed along a ledge and I concluded that she was a jewelry robber, a second-story woman if you will. But, was she? Could she have simply been the resident of the apartment and lost her key which in this case was required for both opening and closing the door, inside or out?

That line of speculation is spurious, I move back from the edge of existentialism. I know that she is a thief and that I witnessed the last moments of her crime – the escape. I have never seen her before. No one would take the risk of death like she had if they weren’t up to no good. There remain a couple of scant possibilities: Perhaps she was leaving a lover? Perhaps she murdered someone inside the apartment and by climbing out of the window she supposed that suspicion would be directed towards someone other than her?

The sun has risen higher and the chilly temperature of the dawn has given way to a pleasant warmth that I can feel through the terry cloth of my robe. My shoulders are relaxed as I lean on the wall that encloses our roof-top garden. I take my coffee and turn away from the scene of the crime and move back to my chair. I sit and look up. The sky this morning is calm. There are a few cirrus clouds scudding about, propelled by winds several thousand feet above the calm at ground level, diverting me by their shape-shifting. I can no longer see the neighboring building, the open window that has been violated is now a mental picture only and what I’ve just witnessed is already fading into a mind imprint that seems unreal. It will be a memory that one morning, this morning, months later, will, without conscious thought, float to the surface of my ruminations.

Bette Jane Turney: September 2nd, 1924 to November 5th, 2009

Madrid

6 November 2009

My Mother died yesterday. She was 85 years old. She died in Tucson, Arizona where she’d lived for the past 30-some years. My Dad died in Tucson about 18 years ago.

I last saw Mom in August when I visited her twice, one evening and the following morning. She knew it was me but when I went back to see her the next morning, she had forgotten that I’d seen her the night before.

During her last year or two Mom mellowed into a sweet old lady – my nieces and nephew confirmed this. Certainly the last time I saw her she was exactly that, mellow and sweet with a smile plastered onto her face. Perhaps she’d found some peace, I hope that was the case.

I had a good childhood. My Mom was loving, protective and smothering. It took me many years to get over the last but I did. It wasn’t easy and there was a lot of broken china. Yesterday, soon after I got the news of Mom’s passing I wrote a bit about that broken china. It’s not the time to put that into the blog; it needs to steep a bit. Now is the time to simply record her passing, to be grateful that it was peaceful and that she had her daughter and two of her grandchildren with her when she went.

We were all prepared for this. I knew Mom was going, the doctors told us it was only a matter of time. I’d said my goodbyes but, still, when Meghan, my niece, called to give me the news, I stopped and sat and stared at nothing. There was a hole in the universe as she passed out. Whatever it is that life is made of soon washed over the hole and you would have had no notion that it had ever been there but, for a bit, that hole was palpable and there. It doesn’t mean she won’t be remembered or that she won’t have influence beyond death but the pattern of living was quickly restored. I suspect this happens however many times a day someone dies.

I can’t talk much about how I felt yesterday because I’m still not sure. I can report that I felt her passing and there was regret – about things that I will write about another time – but the feeling was really a combination of gratitude for the ease of it all for her and the emptiness that she left in me. Both for good and bad my Mother was a big part of my existence, more in earlier years than recently, but still a substantial percentage of whatever influences went into making me. That influence is now physically gone but it will never be entirely absent, both the good and the bad; I like to think that the good is more than the bad. I know that my Dad, whose passing I genuinely mourned and still do, still has a big influence, a positive one. My Mom will retain an influence as well; as I noted, not all for the good, but still there.

So, Mom, thank you for loving me all your life and for my childhood. There is much that we could have said and much that we could have done differently but there is no ‘do-over’. I pray that you ultimately had no shadow over the memories, no aching regrets. I have regrets but they are soft and indistinct as I hope yours were, having no greater weight on the scale than the warm memories of Christmases, picnics, rides in the country, family dinners and vacations at Kino. On balance its okay! Be at peace!

Financial Crisis? Nope, not here, it's more like Armageddon!

Madrid

28 October 2009

I'm finally beginning to realise how very close to disaster we came a year ago. We are still experiencing the after-shocks of the Lehman failure. Bank lending was very tight this past February and I was anecdotally telling people in the City of London that the banking houses in Madrid had been very lonely places, there wasn't anything going on.

Well, my friends, the truth is that there is still not all that much going on. Here in Spain we are at about 20% unemployment, highest in the EU. In my business, renewable energy, the price of assets is softening and the number of them on the market (for re-sale or for sale after construction) is growing. Owners who six months back were willing to sit on an investment, expecting that prices would begin to rise and that terms would evolve in their favour if only they held out, are now needier, they haven't seen many serious buyers and they haven't closed many deals. The terms are becoming more favourable for buyers and prices are, at a minimum, not rising.

This is not just a shift in my perception of what's happening, it's an important augury of what's really developing out there; there's a realisation taking hold that this is going to take a while to work out. The physical evidence supports this belief; the answer to what actually is going on in the economy is 'not much'. We are seeing a continuation of 'life support' activities, which you'd expect: groceries, fuel, agriculture. What we aren't seeing is what we did expect would be happening by now: a return to some form of normality in the rest of the economy. Naturally, we expected construction to lag; well, actually, to remain comatose for at least another 12 to 18 months. What we didn't expect was that everything else would be hurting. Deals just aren't happening and I think that's for two reasons: banks are not lending (at least they aren't lending easily and without extensive questioning of the deal) and buyers are very much more conservative than they were (and than we expected them to be at this point). The buyers are running scared. The due diligence is longer and more exhaustive. The desire to reduce the number of unknowns combined with a bull market in risk aversion has slowed the pace of business to a dangerously slow speed.

Sclerotic banks, needy sellers, conservative buyers: the way it stands now, we are going nowhere quickly. You cannot make buyers less conservative or quicker unless they've got some confidence in the economy as a whole. Banks are the only part of the dysfunctional algorithm that can be artificially stimulated. The upshot is clear, Governments have got to stimulate credit, they have to get banks to open the taps. Sellers will move enough in price and on terms to stimulate the buyers if they think the banks have enough confidence to lend.

So, are banks the bad guys in this picture? Yep, you betcha! There is no ambiguity; they got us into this mess and they are doing very little to get us out.

The photo-voltaic industry in Spain benefits from a feed-in tariff that is guaranteed by the Spanish Government for 25 years. What that means is that if you can get your solar cells producing correctly and the power you generate is evacuated into the grid, you will get paid. Unless it's got what they call trackers (little machines that turn the solar cell modules so that they get more sun), a photo-voltaic plant has, essentially, no moving parts and is undoubtedly the least risky way to produce power that there is. In other words, if you get your modules in place, there is not much that is going to stop you generating power and if you do, the Spanish Government guarantees you'll get paid. For a lender it doesn't get any better -- the deal is transparent, tick some technical and legal boxes and you've got a nice, steady income.

With these pluses, you'd expect that the photo-voltaic business, along with other renewable energies, would be one of those that would go through the crisis without much damage. Of course the industry isn't immune, a lot of sellers are construction companies that were battered by the residential bubble and have to liquidate assets to improve the balance sheet so, what do they sell, the assets they think will realise the most value, their renewable projects. Still, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the business (except maybe some over-enthusiasm on the part of Government when they first thought up these rich tariffs). Why can't we get things going then?

The answer is, again, simply that the banks aren't moving. Like deer in the headlights they are simply watching Armageddon hurtling towards them. They think that by strengthening their balance sheets they will survive and any loans they make now apparently do nothing towards that end. But, the fact is that theories about what percentages you need to be safe are all simply calculated risk assessments. The presume that we won't go over some financial cliff where all of those guesses (for that, in the end, is all they are) about bad loan reserves and so on are just so much statistical nonsense.

So, how do we get things going? Really simple, in my view; make some loans, prudent ones, but make them and make them soon! We've got to get money moving or we're really going to face some serious troubles.

Baby Einsteins?

27 October 2009

Madrid

To our horror, we've just learned that the 'Baby Einstein' videos from Disney (actually, I've been fairly busy recently and this is the first I've heard of them) do not work. Nope, you cannot put your baby down in front of the television, turn on the video while you have a beer, cook dinner or read pornography and have your baby come out at the end of half-an-hour a budding genius. Apparently the American Pediatric Society (or Association?) doesn't think you ought to have baby in front of a screen at all during the first two years of life. I believe, technically, that the Pediatric Society has actually contacted the American Association of Podiatrists on the matter because of a serious concern about Disney having put their foot in it.

So, what was happening in Baby Fido's mind as he sat in front of the screen? From the very little I've read (and I mean the very little I scanned, this is an issue I'm milking because it strikes me as silly), it appears that the infant viewers were simply overwhelmed by the colors, noises and movement on the screen. They do not 'get' much or any of it; they are, seemingly, mesmerized by the videos and sit there, just like adults, their minds turned into some sort of flickering screen-induced mush, staring gape-mouthed until their parents recall their existence and turn off the machine.

Too bad there is no such protection for adults; I've been known to sit there stupidly watching one repeat of Friends after another, completely bereft of any indication of sentience, letting the noise and the color and the movement on the screen wash over me, just like junior.

Gordon Brown likes Nick Griffin .....

24 October 2009, Madrid

Nick Griffin appeared on 'Question Time' because Gordon Brown and other Labourites wanted to encourage interest in the BNP. Every vote for the far-right is a vote that the Conservatives lose. Gordon will lose this coming June unless he pulls every sneaky, underhanded, low-down political trick he can think of. Even then, though, I think the disgust level across the country may just be high enough that he'll be looking for something else to do this coming summer.

Ups and Downs of a Broken Leg

24 October 2009

Saturday, Madrid

Most of what goes on when you have a broken leg is not all that positive. I broke my left leg ingloriously in four places, managing to twist myself into a knot on a flat piece of sidewalk outside my office. It took two hours of surgery and enough screws to open a hardware store to put me back together. I then had a week on my back in the hospital, another week at home, still on my back and, finally, a trip back to the hospital to put on a semi-permanent cast of fiberglass. I now make my way around on crutches, I'm not allowed to put any weight on the broken leg for another three weeks or so.

I've learned that Madrid is not very friendly for disabled people. I suspect this is a fact about much of the world of which I was, heretofore, blithely ignorant. It's even hard to get into the hospital – I had to wait outside for an orderly to come and get me with a wheel chair, the steps are not friendly and the ramp is a marathon without a rail to hang on to. I cannot go to my favourite cafe near the office because the steps in and out are very steep. Getting into the office itself is a chore – there are two very short flights of steps before you get to the lift but neither has a rail for support so I have to call a colleague to come down and lend me his arm so I can hop up the stairs without risking another broken leg.

Our apartment is called an 'atico' and, in local usage here in Madrid, that means it occupies more than one floor on the top level of the building. After the first two times of hopping perilously up and down from the main to the bedroom floor and, simultaneously, scaring the hell out of myself, I figured out that discretion called for me to sit on my butt and scoot up and down, step by step. It looks undignified but it has taken most of the risk out of getting to my desk, to my bed and to the living room.

Bathing is a very long and involved process – I yearn for the luxury of just standing under a shower and letting the hot water just run and run (not very 'green' of me but I promise to do it only once).

I get up early, no one told me that there would an irritating amount of relatively minor pain that would affect my sleep. I put on my robe and have figured out how to make coffee and take a cup of it to my desk (I fill a big glass half full with coffee, put it in the pocket of my robe and try to hop smoothly back to the desk where I then pour the coffee into a smaller, more convenient vessel for drinking).

Everything takes a long time and I get tired. I weighed about 220 pounds when this began. I've probably lost about 15 or so pounds but its still quite a work-out to use my crutches to go any distance – I can certainly feel my shoulders and upper body getting stronger. And, that's one of the upsides of all this – I'm actually getting in better shape! I do, however, need more naps!

I just went for a brief walk – out the door of our building, down to the end of the block, a few minutes rest on the edge of a planter and back. I think it's time for another nap.

Nihilism redux

Dirdam
22 July 2009

It's truly fortunate that in these times of economic crisis, rising unemployment, social disorder, terrorism and plain, pathetic pessimism, we still have that old reliable, nihilism, to fall back on. Without pillars of order and stability like nihilism, I believe, truly, that we'd be trying to hug smoke, to nail jello to the wall, to base our profundities on marshmallows......

Nihilism speaks to our poetic core. If you combine it with a healthy irony, the mixture is a truly potent one; a union in which bleakness plays no role; there is no room for delusional optimism in ironic nihilism -- the truth is what is not and what is not is false!

8 February 2008, Madrid ...

Boy am I pissed off ...

We have been given an opportunity to re-centre our civilisation. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that opportunity has been thrust upon us. It’s cant to talk about getting back to basics but it isn’t to talk about getting back to Aristotle. Is it actually possible that someone can speak to us from several thousand years previously and have something important and relevant to say? I suspect that a lot of evangelical Christians would answer the question with a defiant YES. Only a few would think of some bearded Greek (if, indeed, he did sport one).

On 11 September 2001 I lost my faith in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. I realised that day that those faiths are built on emotion and it’s emotion that makes people drive planes filled with innocent people in buildings filled with even more innocent people. It’s emotion that makes people believe in the words of some crazed lunatic who feeds them poisoned cool-aid or ends up leading them to fiery deaths in a compound outside Waco, Texas.

Aristotle does not talk to my emotions, he reasons with me. He is the foundation of the civilisation of which I want to be a part and of which I hope I am the child. Democracy is a work of reason. Justice is a work of reason. I believe that happiness – true happiness – is a work of reason.

We have been assaulted by terrible events these past 10 years. We have had leaders who did not understand the full magnitude of what happened and whose reaction was emotional rather than reasonable. We have encouraged and permitted greed to rule our economies and passion our politics. It is time to put a stop to this and let our finances and our politics be ruled by more human values. You see, as human beings, we are the inheritors of reason and logic and we ought to adhere to those superior values and not let ourselves be pulled down by the same emotions that appear to characterise the behaviour of jackals.

Actually, I may have overstated that last bit about jackals and, for that, I apologise to all jackals. In the end, their behaviour is rational.

Sarah???

A short thought, borrowed from that wonderful conservative writer, P.J. O'Rourke: if, God forbid, McCain wins and then, God forbid, he dies, we end up with this incredibly unprepared, frighteningly ignorant person as President, it will be like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenager. God help us! Vote for Obama!

Guerrillas seize Gorilla Park in Congo

from CNN just now ...

It's finally happened! This is the headline I've been waiting for. Guerrillas have seized a Gorilla Park in the Congo. The refuge will now be called a Guerrilla Park. What the peaceful current residents will do does not bear thinking about. If there is Justice, they will eventually turn into the keepers of the Guerrillas. That just seems right, they are far more civilized!

Nope, she's in disguise: She IS a pit bull with lipstick!

5 October 2008
Madrid

There is this thoughtful and passionate guy in Chicago. He's not perfect and his passion blinded him when he was younger. He's white, his name is Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground. He opposed the Vietnam War and he felt America was an unjust society. He advocated radical and even violent solutions to the problems that our society faced. So did the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

This guy moderated as he grew older. He was still passionate and committed and and he spoke and wrote against injustice (including his own demon-ization). He crossed paths with a brilliant young Harvard lawyer who had opted not for a career of wealth and position in the private sector but had followed a path in politics, beginning with community service. They were acquaintances, not friends. I can't help think, though, that each must have understood, if not shared, the views of the other.

So, did the young, brilliant lawyer consort with a terrorist? Is there no redemption and is there no maturity? Did George Bush take drugs and drink as a young man?

The young Harvard lawyer was of mixed race parentage and raised by a single Mother and his mid-American, white grandparents. What he became and the opportunities he had must be credited to profound social changes that were partly the in reaction to passionate activism, acts of civil disobedience, and, yes, absolutely wrongly, occasional violence by people like the older white man and his ilk (black and white). Both constitutional left and right also fought against an unjust system and we evolved into a society that, still far from perfect, accepts now as a fundamental value that every citizen, every citizen! has the right to life, to liberty and to happiness. And happiness is the result of living in a nation where we are free from fear and where each of us can pursue her or his dream limited only by our individual capacities and the rightful human boundaries that come from a mutual commitment to justice and opportunity for all.

The acquaintance between the older white man and the committed young lawyer was transient, no more than the passing of two ships. Perhaps the memory of seeing and hearing the other did have a benefit. Maybe the older man got some satisfaction in recognising that the younger was evidence that change does indeed happen and things can get better. Could it be that the younger recognised in the older a man who believed in justice but advocated a flawed and illogical path to it? Maybe the younger was made wiser. He now speaks richly and convincingly of a national commitment to a political life whose objective is right and proper: a just and happy society.

Aristotle would be proud.

Sarah Palin attacks this? This act of desperation paints her not as a hockey mom but as that pit bull with lipstick - an unreflective attack machine. I am so disappointed that John McCain's campaign has moved in this direction. If you go down to defeat, do so honorably.

I wrote the Senator that I can no longer support him. I question his judgement in selecting Palin. I initially welcomed her nomination -- a breath of fresh political air but, having listened to her, listened to the debate and reflected on it, I believe the nomination devalues the office and insults the American people. We deserve a better, wiser and more experienced Vice President. Joe Lieberman would have been a good choice. I do not know that it would have swayed me to McCain in the end but I am positive that his ticket will not receive my support!

South Africa ... into the future?

20 Sep. 08

Jacob Zuma scares the hell out of me. Although Mbeki had a bit of a bad start with some of his public statements, the place has been moving on; it’s been way too slow for the people in the townships – who have shown the patience of stones – but progress nonetheless. Mbeki had a tough act to follow.

South Africa had bright prospects yesterday. They will be hosting the World Cup in 2010, there has been more investment and the knowledge base – key to success and still largely white – has mostly stayed in place. Apparently this bully boy, and that is the way they paint him, doesn’t just have a closet of skeletons, the rumours suggest he needs a shipping container to hold them.

I worry that Zuma could be another evil-minded populist like Mr. Mugabe in Zimbabwe. What I hold on to is that the hope of progress in the townships, the patience of its people and the roots of democracy and justice are deep enough in the fertile soil of that beautiful land that it can survive what looks like just another demagogue.

International sport is politics. Maybe the 2010 World Cup will help to preserve the best chance for the conversion of that continent, the victim of a millennium of exploitation, into all that it should be.

Madrid, 13 September 2008

Maria ...

Her name is Maria. She’s about 200 years old with a gold rimmed tooth, leathery skin, a serious limp, horny old hands, dressed in a representative sample of rag-picker’s discards. Some tell me she’s ‘Romana’ but she’s ‘gitana’ – maybe the same thing but she is, to my mind, Romany.

She stands outside the Majorca, Madrid’s most upmarket delicatessen, at the corner of Don Ramon de la Cruz and Velazquez. As you leave that old hand is stretched up as high as she can reach, right into you face and the cadence is high and plaintive – ‘una moneda, por favor, una moneda’.

Sometimes I meet Maria and that intrusive hand on my street, a couple of blocks from her normal stand in front of the Majorca, sometimes on Ortega y Gasset, lined with tony shops like Chanel, Hermes, Tods and Lora Piano, that hand still up and in my face.

A few weeks ago Maria and I reached an accord, for 2 euros a week she would be happy and I would be free of that hand. If she could convince a hundred of us to do that, she’d be okay.

This arrangement worked well, for the first several weeks we ran into each other and I gave her my protection money. One week she wasn’t at her usual spot for a day or two and I felt a bit guilty until I saw her one day across the street. For some reason I had to walk her down and give her my 2 euros. I felt better. Damn, Maria is good at this.

One morning, walking the dog, I saw a 10 euro bill on the street outside Chanel. I picked it up and looked around, maybe the owner had just dropped it. There was no one on my side of the street and across the road there was only another dog walker, this one being pulled determinedly up the sidewalk by an 80 pound German Shepherd. I stuck the bill into my pocket and went back home.

On Friday I was peckish around 2 PM. Too lazy to fix myself something, I strolled over the Majorca, greeting Maria on my way in, picking up a couple of their exquisite ‘ingleses’ – Jamon iberico, queso de Burgos, a slice of tomato all stuffed into a soft, golden-brown roll.

I passed Maria again on my way out. She smiled through a mass of brown wrinkles. Something tweaked and I stopped and asked her if she had a relative in the area? Yes, her sister Anna worked in front of Corte Ingles (the department store) on Serrano. Since I’d put a name to that hand and her creased old face, I had finally noted the similarity.

We spoke for a minute or two and I recall asking her how she was feeling. In answer she pulled open her bag and pulled out a handful of prescriptions from the government clinic, explaining they were for her leg, pulling up her long skirt to the knee and showing me an ugly, swollen joint.

I gave Maria that 10 euro note which wasn’t mine. Before I could protest, she had grabbed my hand and ...she kissed it.

I’m embarrassed and moved and saddened. We were players in a Dickensian drama but it’s the third millennium!

Next time I think I’ll find out more about that leg and see if I can give some of my money rather than just return a 10 euro note I found on the street, which is hers.

CERN?

Madrid, 10 September 2008

This ought to be an interesting day. The stock market on Tuesday took back all that it had given on Monday. I have a blinking screen which shows how things are going in my portfolio -- an emaciated thing in the best of times -- and yesterday it was a grim red (ie, down) for most the day. Last night we had a terrific storm here in Madrid. I was awakened to the booming echoes of thunder and the rat-a-tat of a hard rain. I dragged myself down the hall to Alex's room. She normally sleeps with the door to her bedroom open so I wanted to make sure that she'd closed it. With the amazing capacity of teenagers to sleep through alarms, wars and, this time, acts of nature, she was happily unconscious of the rain and, I discovered, the hail which was bouncing off the balcony, through the door and around her room. I closed the doors, turned off the lights that she'd left on and made my way back to bed where I read myself to sleep, ignoring the second augury of the day.

So, with these indications that both nature and the human world are in some state of turmoil, I look to today with some trepidation and we try to mix the natural and the human at CERN. We are going to turn that thing on today for the first time. If all goes well, a huge step forward, human knowledge and ingenuity working with nature to discover the secrets of the univers. If it doesn't go so well, I guess Alex will not have to worry about her homework today and I actually wont have to pay taxes ...

There is always a bright side.

Cafe Comercial -- Madrid ...

Cafe Comercial is well over a hundred and twenty years old. It opens towards the Glorieta de Bilbao. In the morning there is breakfast and they cook lunch and dinner as well. Their tapas are good and the white wine is crispy cold. The coffee is that over-cooked, torrefacto stuff that you seem to encounter everywhere in Spain. The granizados, though, are cool and lemon-y.

There are black and white marble tables inside. They have been there for decades. The wooden chairs are functional but also comfortable. You can sit in one for several hours, reading a book or writing a poem or an essay.

For twelve decades middle-aged men, eccentrically but comfortably dressed, have wandered into the Cafe Comercial in the afternoon. They have taken individual tables and sipped sparingly at a coffee or a fizzy water, sometimes an ice-cold white wine or a beer with ‘limon’, making the beverage last for two hours or more. They have read books, serious literature, poetry, philosophy or history. Some have written things, good things.

The marble table-tops somehow cool the air and in the low afternoon light of a summer day, there can be few better places on earth to companionably be alone than in the Cafe Comercial on the Glorieta de Bilbao.

The Greek National Tourism Office

I watch a lot of CNN -- somehow I've grown disenchanted with the BBC (except for parts of Radio 4 which, living in Spain now, I miss very much) -- but CNN International can also be both boring and repetitive. From time to time the advertisements are more compelling than the regular programming. For instance, in the wake of the Olympics the Chinese have launched a semi-tourism/awareness campaign which is wonderful, compelling, colourful and inviting. I spent five years travelling to China and since have not had much desire to go back for any extended time -- these spots are changing my mind.

On the other hand -- and there's always another one! -- the Greeks have dropped a clanger. What they ought to drop is their advertising agency. I'm not sure of the theme of the campaign, run by the Tourism Ministry, but it seems to be something like 'highlights of an amazing waste of money and time in Greece'. It is visually washed out and and out of focus and every character in it seems to suffer from a serious case of ennui! The scenes of Greece, completely pedestrian city-scapes, unattractive beaches, shallow and callow young people you wouldn't want to spend more than a few milli-seconds with, leave me more than cold, they repel me!

I promise never to go to Greece if you continue this awfulness, Greek Tourist Office/Ministry, but I promise to think about going if you will please take these things off the air and put the actors in them out of their misery! Remember what brought you here -- the Parthenon, islands, crystal seas, history, Zorba ...

Wow! Sarah Palin ...

Madrid, 30 August 2008 ...cool (ish) and partly cloudy (for a change!)

McCain has pulled this one out of his hat! What a choice! I've been reading and researching about this woman for the past several hours -- her story is as compelling as Barak Obama's, if not more! She ticks the boxes that McCain can't tick. I hope that she can stand up to the microscope that is about to be put to every chapter of her life. Glad I don't have to explain everything I was doing 20 or 30 years ago!

I wonder, too, if there is a connection to Michael Palin here somewhere? Monty Python takes Washington!

Madrid, 23 August 2008, lives ripped from us ....

... that mark our place and in the sky ...
...the planes still bravely winging fly ...

It was warm and quiet on Wednesday afternoon. Madrid in August is, in my view, at its best. There is no traffic, the boiling July heat has given way to a milder warmth and for those restaurants that are open, no reservations are required. A great place to be.

Still, some people still work and that involves travel; others drive off to holiday homes in the sierras or fly to island retreats.

So, three days ago I drove out to pick up a colleague who was flying in from Switzerland. The traffic was light so that I noticed the ambulance behind me, surely one of the first, earlier than on a busy day and scooted over a lane to let him pass, siren screaming and lights flashing.

On the horizon the black smoke was just starting to boil up. The plane cannot have gone down more than a minute or two before. There was something terribly wrong. In my gut I knew that this was not just a normal fire, a warehouse or burning brush. Something very bad had happened. I picked up my colleague and we left the airport before chaos set in.

And today, another perfect August day in Madrid, there is a picture in ‘El Pais’ of the interior of one of the huge exhibition halls at the Feria Madrid, very near Barajas. It is one of those very functional buildings, with the framing visible on the interior and the floor an easy to maintain granite or marble – ochre, shiny, cold. It is so enormous that the line of people passing by on the far side occupies just a fraction of the photo. In the foreground are rows of sheet-covered bodies, stretching the length of the hall.

It must be very cold in there. The technicians have turned the air-conditioning to maximum, the living are wearing dark colours, heavy coats.

This is the same place that the bodies were laid out in the wake of the terrorist bombings at the Atocha station, a similar number of victims, a similar feeling of numbness.

This time the deaths are not the result of insane fanaticism but the result is the same. It feels as though lives have been ripped from us out of time. You should die old and surrounded by your loved ones, shouldn’t you?