“I’m going to go from London to Barcelona and if it’s bad, then it’s a connecting flight to somewhere, and isn’t that how life goes?”
(Overheard, Barceloneta)
I was so lost.
A sweaty man with a Danish accent came up beside me and started waving a map, like with a little red bus in the corner, and asking where we were now.
I tried to help, but I didn’t quite know. I just arrived in the city that afternoon and had been walking and walking and walking. I didn’t have a map myself, but as the sun lowered in the sky, I followed the streets it still seemed to shine through to stay out of the shadows.
And now, I was still in Barcelona, exactly at the Bar Berlin, behind half a plate of olives and a half a plate of pits, and one Tanqueray-Flor-de-Sevilla and tonic.
I didn’t have a friend in the world I hadn’t made in the last 5 minutes. I didn’t have any battery left on my phone, and I definitely didn’t have warm enough clothes for the cooling seasonal weather.
But after a while, I felt like myself. I felt myself receding into the place, a piece of decor like this plain directive:
And the full bottles of Tanqueray lining the window sill.
I was still lost, but I kept my wits about me. So as it always is when you’re in a new city and someone starts waving a map in your face, I was wary, and found a natural ally with the other girl around, Charlotte, who had flown in for the weekend, like me, but from Manchester city.
And did you know, she had just ran her first marathon, was traveling to every new place she possibly could this year, and was a writer, blogger and a fast friend?
What luck! We were laughing so hard the dignified Spanish octogenarian eating beside us was perturbed. I felt a little bad. Someone else asked, “How long have you known each other?”, as if we were old friends reuniting this weekend.
But truthfully, it had taken my brain a lag time of about 5 minutes to differentiate between Manchester English and Danish to be able to have a conversation. And then we got on like house on fire! And yes, we should run the London Marathon together!
Why I was in Barcelona I can’t even tell you precisely. All my so-called plans had been going to shit since I arrived, actually for a few months now, but at the same time, life was totally flowing.
When I arrived and felt the glow of the afternoon sun slogging my overstuffed carry-on through the Placa Espana, something it my soul smiled for the first time in a while. I cried, I laughed, I slept like a baby. I lost my laptop, I left my make up. I talked to everyone, I talked in Spanish, I talked to Spanish cab drivers about talking Catalan. I drank coffee. I drank in the air of Barceloneta beach as it rolled off the ocean then bounced off some guy’s heel in a game of foot volley. I ripped my long silk dress at the hem dancing, I ripped down the highway at 7am when the club closed to make my flight back home. I met writers, I started to write again. Something reached me in the peeling blackness of Opium. **
And now, almost exactly 2 years after I ran my last last marathon, I know I will go for the distance at least one more time.
There were more 400,000 applicants to the London Marathon, of which about 40,000 will run in April, including me and Charlotte, in support of VICTA, a national charity that supports blind children and young adults through programs that foster connectedness.
And I think that’s why I was in Barcelona after all.
——
DONATE TO VICTA UK via my London Marathon page
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage?pageId=1120258
** it’s a proper noun- the name of long-standing establishment where you can pay $17 for a drink while you watch the sun set over the beach