Jornada hasta el despegue de la señorita ejecutiva londinense en su lightning business trip.

20.5.11, 6.15am, GMT +1

Salgo de casa a las 2.40am y voy andando a Vauxhall. Está bien esto de ir a Vauxhall, tardo 15 minutos y es relativamente seguro sea la hora que sea, siempre te cruzas con alguien, parece mentira que me haya costado un año descubrirlo, aparte de que tengo muchas más conexiones, como por ejemplo en este caso 3 posibles buses nocturnos a Victoria. Perfectamente podía haber pasado por alguien que volvía de fiesta, a esto ayudan el llevar sólo mi bolso como equipaje -me encanta hacer viajes de un solo día- así como el maquillaje corrido y los ojos rojos por el frío y la falta de sueño. Me habría venido genial el colirio que llevo siempre en mi neceser, pero esta vez me lo he dejado en casa para no tener líos con los del control en el aeropuerto. El bus pasa enseguida y en menos de 5 minutos estoy en Victoria, me va a tocar esperar hasta que salga el bus (nota mental: a las 3 de la mañana I just need to allow 30min to get to Victoria). Tras esperar en la parada del bus a Stansted varios minutos, de casualidad me doy cuenta de que el bus en el que he reservado mi plaza sale de otra parada porque tiene parada intermedia en Liverpool St, ¡no me sorprende que hasta los locales se pierdan en Londres! Trato de dormir durante el trayecto a Stansted, que va lleno de españoles, mientras me voy alejando del barullo de la City, al menos por unas horas. 20 minutos de cola en Security y pienso en los aeropuertos como sitios atemporales. 5am y la gente espabilada como si fueran las 4 de la tarde. Qué locura, ¿no? Después pillo furtivamente un euro que se le ha caído a un guiri y no se ha percatado (Ana-Punk strikes again) y vistazo de rigor en el espejo de los aseos nada más pasar el control. Compruebo que ya han anunciado mi puerta de embarque (18ºC en Alicante, dice el Capitán, not bad!) a falta de 45min para el despegue, así que voy corriendo al Pret a pillarme un Soya Chocolate (guiño del cajero) y una botella de agua, tras asegurarme de que en Starbucks es 15p más caro (sigo con mi boicot a Starbucks). Tratando de no quemarme la lengua al sorber por la take-away lid, vuelo hacia el shuttle que me va a llevar a la puerta de embarque. Abrigo y bufanda en un brazo, vaso en la mano y agua al bolso. Pillo un asiento mientras me bebo mi chocolate, piernas cruzadas en posición glamurosa y miro con recelo a un gupo que van a Benidorm de stag party (jodido cliché, reafirma mi ninguna intención de casarme), que supongo irán en el avión conmigo. Ya van animados a las 5.30am, espero que no me den el vuelo. En la cola para embarcar escarbo en mi bolso hasta dar con la funda con mi boarding pass y mi DNI, vaso aún en mano. Al cruzar la puerta escondo por si acaso el vaso tras la funda. La azafata me guiña un ojo. Un poco más de cola (believe it or not, siempre respiro aliviada en el momento en el que me abrocho el cinturón y anuncian el inminente despegue, al menos una hora de paz tras todo el ajetreo de colas y meter y sacar cosas del bolso) durante la cual me termino mi chocolate, y subo al avión por la puerta de atrás, con la esperanza de encontrar más fácilmente un grupo de asientos vacíos. Lo consigo y me acomodo en el asiento de la ventanilla, en el lado del avión por el que intuyo que no me pegará el sol en la cara durante el trayecto. Preparo todas las cosas que necesitaré a lo largo del vuelo, apago los móviles y aprovecho para escribir mientras espero a que despeguemos, ya que de cualquier modo no podré dormir ni escuchar música hasta entonces. Acabamos de despegar y enseguida veremos la ciudad inacabable extenderse muchos metros por debajo de nosotros. Bye bye London, see you in a few hours. Ahora habla un auxiliar de vuelo en inglés con un claro acento español. En dos horas y media llego a Alicante y durante 12h, aunque apenas voy a tener tiempo de parar (a pesar de que con las menos de 4h de sueño que llevo en el cuerpo me iré cayendo por los sofás), todo va a llevar un ritmo más tranquilo. Se acaba de apagar la señal luminosa del cinturón, así que voy a encender mi móvil inglés en modo offline para escuchar música y tratar de dormir un poco, con mi bufanda tailandesa a modo de manta. Ya le echaré un vistazo a mi libro de fotografía a lo largo del día, y quizás en el avión de vuelta, si no caigo frita… Ay Anita, cosmopolita, ¿de verdad te ves capaz de abandonar la civilización durante 9 meses?

destino_esperanza

De cría me encantaba el cercanías porque suponía una visita a la capital, siempre tan llena de vida. Ahora, me repito cada día, es lo único que me va a permitir superar este infierno.

Siempre pensé que para que a una chica le quede bien la cabeza rapada tiene que ser muy guapa. Ella lo es. Aunque lo primero que me llamó la atención fueron sus ojos, verdes. Tienen algo particular, pero no acertaba qué era. Tras observarla durante semanas, he dado con ello. Acabo de entender por qué el verde es el color de la esperanza.

Dear bi-curious or so-called bisexual friend...

You perfectly have the right to want to experiment with girls. Fair enough, I understand it, I was at that same stage not so long ago (though it seems like ages). But, I don’t like the idea of being your guinea-pig, so you’d better look for someone who does. I know some friends who admit enjoying challenges, but myself I’m a declared enemy of impossible missions. Because I know how these things usually work out: you will like it –or not, though you usually do, you will probably have listened to Katy Perry’s opinion on this matter- but then you will stay with your boyfriend. Or you will find one soon, or go back with him, in case you were having a break, break that you used to satisfy your curiosity. Yeah, I’ve seen you all in this time. You’re not as original as you may think. And I don’t know why you all tend to see me as your lesbian guru. Maybe because my image doesn’t correspond with the stereotype most people have of lesbians (I’m tired of that statement too) so you see me as your equal and you may think in this way your transition will be smoother. Probably I look less scary than those dykes with half-head shaved and bleached quiffs and checked flannel sleeveless shirts…

A wish granted

Barcelona, Friday, 7^th February, 9pm. Joanna is getting ready for a night out at the Raval, while Pere waits for her reading a book in the living room. They are up for an experimental music event, led by one of Pere’s best friends, and then they’ll check out the new cocktail bar off Las Ramblas.

Rome, Friday, 7^th February, 8pm. After a romantic dinner with a glass or two of red wine, Joanna and Alessandro are holding hands while they walk along the river Tevere. The night is chilly but nice, that kind of coolness that stays in the air after a rain shower. They are meeting now some friends of him at a wine bar in San Lorenzo.

London, Saturday, 11^th January, 1am. Joanna is dancing the night away at a quite mainstream bar in Old Street. She really hates the music, but she finds it fun counting how many guys hit on her in just one night. She keeps a blog with the funniest pick-up sentences she is told every time she is out. Tonight there’s this guy that has been looking at her all night but hasn’t taken any step. She thinks he’s very cute and has something different. She can’t let him go, so she makes a move, to find that he’s Italian and that night is his last night in London. After that bar they go to a club and then they end up at hers. They really seem to connect, so they exchange numbers.

Stansted Airport, Saturday, 4^th January, 7am. Joanna’s Spanish flatmate has held a house party because some friends of hers from Barcelona are visiting. Joanna had felt chemistry with one of them. They are still staying until Tuesday, but she is going to Dublin for a few days to see her family. When everyone was too drunk to notice, they disappeared in her room. She finds it amazing that he has volunteered to go with her all the way to the airport, especially since her flatmate has told her that Catalan men are not particularly courteous. They kiss each other good-bye and promise to keep in touch.

Barcelona, Friday, 14^th February, 11pm. Pere is mad at Joanna. They’ve just known each other for a bit more than one month, but he had got so excited about her. All his friends have been advising him not to expect too much from her. They agree that she is gorgeous, intelligent and good fun, but you have always to be careful with long-distance things. He has been doing a lot of research in order to plan the coolest St. Valentine’s night she would ever have. He thinks Barcelona’s nightlife is at least as good as London’s, and with the night he had in mind she would be ultimately convinced of it. And all for nothing, because she hasn’t showed up. He has tried to call her many times, but her phone has been off all day. He tries to calm down and tells himself there must be a logical explanation for all this, but tonight he just can’t be rational. This sort of things makes him think of all the disappointments he’s had with other girls in the past, and he can feel nothing but frustration.

Rome, Friday, 14^th February, 10pm. Alessandro has been waiting for hours at the airport with the most beautiful bunch of red roses. Well, probably not the most beautiful, but to find a nice rose in Rome on St. Valentine’s is quite a challenge. The flowers are starting to wilt, the same as his spirits. There are no more flights coming from London tonight, and her phone is off. The most terrible things have started to cross his mind. Probably she has just realised she is too good for him. He honestly believes she is, and every minute he has spent with her he has been wondering how such an amazing girl could have picked a guy like him…

London, Monday, 13^th January, 2pm. Joanna is back to reality after some very crazy days. She tries to concentrate on her classes, but she keeps trying to put all the pieces together of what has happened and figure out what to do next. Isn’t it ironic?, she thinks. She hasn’t met any interesting guys for so many months and now there are two of them that she is really starting to fancy. And guess what, both of them are thousands of miles away! ‘You really hit the ground running this time, Joanna’, she tells herself. She has always had this soft spot for foreigners and this inconvenient tendency to fall for people who don’t live where she does. She is starting to be a bit fed up with this little nasty habit of hers…

Dublin, Friday, 25^th April, 10pm. Joanna has come home for the weekend. She has been doing it almost every week for the last two months. It really affected her, so she feels that going away from London chaos, even if it’s just for a couple of days, is helping her getting over it. She felt too embarrassed after having let both of them down that day to call giving explanations. None of them had got back in touch again. Some weeks later she had really been tempted to call them, but then she gave it a second thought and realised that maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Things happen for a reason, she thought. Probably she deserved what happened. She had never believed in karma before, but she hadn’t believed in magic either until that morning the week after meeting Pere, when she started her computer and found an shortcut on the desktop called ‘Person multiplier’. But that St. Valentine’s day she had got home from work extremely excited about the weekend ahead, only to find that the application had disappeared from her desktop. She searched for it all over the computer, but there was no trace of it. Vanished forever in the limbo of data. After that, she had to come to terms with the fact that she couldn’t handle two long-distance relationships at the same time. ‘I learned my lesson’, she tells herself. ‘Next time I will fall for someone who lives in the same place as I do’. Also, just in case, she upgraded her anti-virus so she didn’t get any more nasty wish-granter software.

Sakura

A man is celebrating his 80^th birthday. He watches an eight-year old girl play under the cherry tree in his garden. Sakura looks quite western (his dad is American), but still keeps the straight black hair and slanting eyes. She is wearing a white dress and a white petal falls on her lovely tiny nose. She rubs it, then looks up and waves at him. He smiles back, and recalls the day when he saw her grandmother for the first time.

He was ten and she was five. His father had taken him to the garden and pointed at the little girl that was playing under the white blooming cherry tree. She was the most precious creature he had ever seen. In her white dress, her whitest skin contrasting with her jet-black hair, he thought that was what angels must have looked like. He instantly fell in love with her and knew he would never love any other woman in his life.

She died some years ago, and he buried her under the cherry tree that he planted when they first arrived in London, to remind them of their native country. When they came they had nothing but one another and had to work really hard to get through.

Sakura is the flower of the cherry trees. For Japanese people, cherry trees blooming means spring has arrived. For him, after so many years, it still brings back memories of that innocent pure girl playing under the white petals as if anything else mattered.

N87

Lambeth Bridge. N87, to Kingston.

1.30 am, Friday night.

I look at my reflection on the windscreen.

Then I see that girl. She’s playing with her phone.

And that couple seems to be having an argument.

Oh, well.

The tide is quite high.

And this fog is quite unusual for this time of year.

That group of people is speaking in a language that sounds familiar.

I think it might be her native language…

“Anyway, I can try anything, it’s the same circle leading to nowhere”.

And it reminds me of that time when I was on this bus with her.

She said something like ‘I’m pretty bad at keeping in touch with people.’

But, as usual, you thought it had nothing to do with you…

Until it did.

believing in magic

‘I wouldn’t go in there if I were you. You know what people from the village said,’ Jackie warned her friend.

‘What do you care what a bunch of uneducated villagers say? I thought you were intelligent enough not to believe in ghost stories. Besides, it’s daytime. Your ghosts will be sleeping now, so nothing to worry about,’ replied Diana.

The two girls had decided to rent a car and make a weekend road trip around the Highlands. It was starting to be a bit shameful to have grown up in Scotland and never have visited Loch Ness.

They stopped at a small village for the night, after having driven for several hours. The only place to stay in the village was a two storey house run by a family, with no more than four bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and the local pub on the ground floor. Since there was not much to do, the girls decided to hang out with the locals. They had seen a castle on their way there and had thought it might be a good idea to visit it in the morning.

‘They say it belonged to some Prince from the XVIII century… After his second wife died in strange circumstances, he went out of his mind and started to get rid of all his servants until he was left alone. He let himself go until he passed away as well, but rumour has it that his ghost still inhabits the castle,’ finished the villager in a sombre voice. Then he had the remaining half of his drink in one drop, and burped loudly. The girls looked at one another in disgust.

‘You win, Diana. But promise me we’ll head back immediately if things start getting creepy.’

But, as usual, Diana wasn’t listening to her friend. As Jackie finished her last sentence, Diana was already going through the arch that led to the main courtyard of the castle. They crossed the courtyard and Diana pushed the door that would take them inside the castle. They found it quite surprising that it wasn’t even locked. As the door opened, a cold wind blew from the inside.

‘Oh my goodness,’ said Jackie in astonishment.

The villager had told them that no one had lived in that castle for more than two hundred years. Nonetheless, the main hall that opened up before them was preserved in a perfect state, as if someone had held a party there the night before: half burnt candles at the chandelier that hung from the high wooden ceiling with mouldings, thick dark blue curtains before the windows, tapestries at the walls and even a very long red carpet that started at the door and went up the steps of the magnificent staircase that rose in front of them. The same happened in every room that they went through.

‘Do you know what I think?’ Jackie said ‘Probably that drunkard was just teasing us and someone is actually living here.’

‘You may be right. Still, I have an awkward feeling. There’s something that doesn’t quite fit here. It’s just as if time had been frozen inside the castle.’

Eventually, they got to a room that they thought could have been the wife’s, since there was a very big wardrobe with lots of woman dresses like the ones depicted on the portraits from the late XVIII century. There was also a bed with a silk canopy with embroideries in gold, and a boudoir. The decoration of this chamber was notably more luxurious than the one in the rest of the rooms in the castle, so it could have perfectly belonged to a princess or a queen.

But what attracted Diana’s attention was a full-length mirror that stood on one corner of the room. It was quite plain, the only remarkable thing about it being some butterfly and flower motifs on its top. And you couldn’t even see your reflection, as a layer of dirt covered the glass. Even so, she was drawn to it by some strange force, and she immediately knew that she had to take that mirror home with her…

Just a start...

Hello everyone. I'm back, after exactly one year! So much has happened since... I wanted to let you know that from now on, this blog will be updated in English. And also that hopefully I will have more stuff to share with you, since I'm retaking my hobby of creative writing, mostly in English. Here I leave you one of my first excerpts, I know it's not the best, but I'm still finding my style in a language that is not my native one...


Alex had been postponing introducing me to his parents for almost one year.

‘They are a bit too… unconventional,’ he would say to justify himself.

One Friday afternoon he came to pick me up after work with his car.

‘How very nice of you,’ I said, with a hint of sarcasm. ‘What are we celebrating?’ But he wouldn’t reply. So many times his ways drove me crazy.

So we left the city, heading for the countryside. At first we would see a cottage every now and then, but after an hour or so it started getting dark (or maybe it was just the clouds that were getting thicker) and the only thing I could see were bare trees at both sides of the pebble road.

‘Are you taking me to a witchcraft session in the woods or something like that?’ I said, in an attempt of breaking the awkward silence that accompanied this mystery journey. As a reply, I just got more silence. I promised myself that my next boyfriend would be a bit more normal.

Finally I got a glimpse of lights behind the trees. They were definitely coming from a house, but there was something odd about them. They were reddish and it looked as if they were trembling, probably coming from candlelight.

He kept driving through the trees towards the lights and, at some point the trees cleared and a masonry building appeared in front of us. It was already dark so I couldn’t get a very precise impression of it, and the mist that had just started floating around us, as if we were on the stage of a cheesy horror play, wouldn’t help either. It looked more like a fortress, with a tower on top of each end of the main façade. I reckoned it would be some centuries old; however, someone must have been taking care of it all this time since, in spite of being covered in ivy, all the walls, roofs and windows were in their place.

‘It dates back from the XVII century,’ said Alex, as if he could read my mind, opening his mouth for the first time that evening, ‘and it has belonged to my family since 1792.’

As he said this, we stopped in front of the main door. He pushed it gently and it yielded open. Behind it turned up an old man with white, longish, thin hair, and hairy ears, covered by a ragged dark cloak. I was startled by this unexpected apparition. He was carrying a candlestick.

‘Welcome, young master. Good to see you again. I shall go and tell the Earls that you have arrived. And I shall as well get two bedrooms ready for you and the young lady. May I assume you’ll be staying with us for the weekend?’ said the old man, closing the door behind us, apparently effortless. I would have expected such a big old door to be heavier and harder to move. ‘Oh well’ I thought, ‘maybe they just greased the hinges really well’.

‘Thanks, Ivan’ said Alex, ‘but you may take the lady to the sitting room. I’ll go and have a talk with parents myself’.

So he grabbed another candlestick from a table nearby the door, lit its candles with one of the old man’s ones and climbed up the stairs that rose in front of us. The old man turned to the right and made his way towards a door with not a single word. Apparently everyone in Alex’s family was a huge fan of silence.

I followed him, supposing that was what I was to do. It was a bit unsettling to see how, despite his quirky appearance, he walked so smoothly, as if he was floating. Nevertheless, with every step I took along that dark, wooden floor, the whole house seemed to creak.

‘The Earls and the young master shall be with you in a minute’ said the old man, before shutting the door after him. He had mentioned that before, but until that moment I hadn’t realised: so my boyfriend’s parents were aristocrats, and they lived in a castle! This could explain many things, such as why he would disappear for days without a reason, or why he disclosed so little information about his background, if he was trying to have a life as normal as possible.

The room I was left in had been set before we came in. It was well lit by candles (if that makes sense for someone that has grown up with artificial lighting) and there was a fire in the fireplace. The windows were concealed by thick, velvet, blood-red curtains. A row of pictures hung from the walls. They depicted portraits of men, and I could tell from their clothes and hairstyles that they were arranged in chronological order, starting from roughly the XVIII century until the beginning of the XX century. All of them looked quite alike and also I could see a hint of a resemblance with Alex. They were unusually pale –same as Alex-, their lips being quite red, though. A shiver went down my spine and my breath became heavier.

I went to take a seat by the fire, sinking in a worn, dark brown, leather armchair. The fire was nice and warm and still I could feel how my hair was standing on end. I stood up to check whether there was a draught coming from an open window. As I was drawing one of the heavy curtains, something made me jump on my feet and made my heart beat so fast I thought I could hear it pumping.

‘At last we meet, young madam’ a soft, deep manly voice whispered in my ear, while a cold breath caressed my neck…