¿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.
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.
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