I want to live in Spain some day. Not visit. Live.
The only two cities I have considered for living in are Madrid and Barcelona.
Barcelona is my favourite but they don’t speak Spanish.
Madrid is a close second, but they don’t have the sea.
Valencia has both, but it’s not Barcelona or Madrid 🙃
Bad: United didn’t win, at home.
Good: United didn’t lose. At home.
Bad: in laws flinching on realising their favourite Rahman song on the car stereo is in Hindi
Good: they grit their teeth and try to survive, without complaining or commenting about it. (Also, #smallvictory for me after my house’s primary language has been turned into one I don’t get a word of)
Bad: went to a clean beach on a hot day, but I didn’t get to swim, at all!
Good: Chewie got to swim. And he swam, and swam, and swam ☺
Bad: 3+ hours to drive a 90 min drive, thanks to holiday traffic.
Good: The destination.
On train back out from Waterloo. Thames, Westminster, then Vauxhall outside my window. Grey blue skies.
Suddenly, I’m in a train south from Bandra. Mahim bay spread out besides. Grey blue sea. Faint smell of the sea, the fish, the Mithi crawls out of memory, through the nose, into the heart.
I miss you, Bombay.
We all come from the sea, but we’re not all of the sea. Those of us who are, we children of the tides, must return to it again, and again. Until the day we don’t come back, leaving behind only that which we touched along the way.
Frosty, in Chasing Mavericks
