I’ve now driven on six of the seven continents (all except Antarctica which doesn’t even have roads, so shouldn’t count).

I learned to drive in busy, aggressive, central London, which doesn’t necessarily make me a good driver but does, certainly, instil a certain amount of mettle. Side note: I do think the moment civilization took a downturn can be traced back to the point in the early eighties when nanny-state traffic lights were installed at London’s Hyde Park Corner, quashing all enterprise, creativity, and ambition.

I don’t think of myself as either a good or bad driver, nor am I interested in fancy cars or driving fast. Never have been. I’m an A to B man. In fact, my wife Cass gave me a talking to a few years ago (like whacking a puppy on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper), and since then, I don’t have any trouble keeping a lid on my frustrations in heavy traffic or with dickhead drivers. It’s just not worth it. And since we recently bought a plug-in hybrid, I’ve become even more of a numpty: on any given outing my highest goal is to stay within the free charge supplied by our domestic solar panels. The sun is my petrol pump!

Nor have I ever had any interest in what goes on under a car bonnet (yes ‘bonnet’, Americans, deal with it!). Aged seventeen, a few months after I passed my test, I ignored an oil warning light (and accompanying, red-lining temperature gauge) and ended up writing off my parents’s mini.

Man from the AA: “You know how a car engine consists of thousands of small, intricate, moving parts?”

Me: “Er... yes.”

Man from the AA: “Well yours is now a single, solid lump of metal.”

And although I’ve had a few fender-benders (and one major accident), I shouldn’t have thought that’s more than anyone else.

Broadly speaking, that’s me and cars.

So, my first experience driving abroad was in the USA. A girlfriend and I bought a big, lumbering, Dodge station wagon in Long Island, New York, and drove across the continent. In conversations with fellow travellers at camp sites, I learned that it was a ‘straight six’ (the engine comprised six cylinders in a row), which meant it was both smooth and something called ‘torquey’. Not that I cared. The bits I liked best were that it was bottle green and automatic, with a gear lever that came out of the steering column (like I’d seen in movies), and that it had a tailgate that was as solid as a safe door and double-hinged, so it could open either outwards or downwards.

Leaving New York City was a white-knuckle ride - we got a telling off from a cop for encroaching onto an intersection (he shouted something at us about “box junctions” and “gridlock”) - but from then on, outside all but the biggest cities, driving was as easy as pie. It was hardly even driving; it was more just point the bonnet (move on, Americans!) and press the pedal. The highways were relatively empty, the lanes were wide, and the 55mph speed limit was sedate. Admittedly, you were sharing the road with big rigs and RV’s (Recreational Vehicles), which could be a little intimidating, but they also provided great entertainment over the CB radio that we’d bought for exactly that purpose.

The alert: “Heading west on I-10 just outside of Stockton... Bear on the roll.” (Bears were State Troopers.)

The response: “Why thank you, pardner, I just can’t afford no high-speed driving award.”

Then, when you did drive into a city, all the streets and avenues were clearly numbered and marked, and the parking spots were big enough to berth a yacht. No parallel parking skills required.

On the Ease of Driving scale, I’m giving North America an 8/10.

If you want to know how long ago that was: there were no such thing as electric cars, or Just Stop Oil, and gas (sigh! Happy now, Americans?) cost just under $1 a gallon.

Many years later, I also drove in Argentina. South America is not, I’ve recently discovered, part of the American continent, but a continent on its own (the seven continents are: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australasia/Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America). I only drove a few hours from the city of Mendoza out to the wine country, but I’ve decided it still counts. The roads were ramrod-straight, and deserted, and backdropped by the Andes, consequently, on my ‘soon-to-be-patented’ Ease of Driving scale I’m giving the whole continent of South America a 9/10 (disputes in the comments section, please).

In the meantime, I’d driven in Tahiti, New Zealand, Vanuatu, and Australia, so that’s Australasia/Oceania covered. Overall, driving in Australasia is like driving in the USA but with even less traffic, though a much higher risk of hitting a kangaroo or emu.

My favourite memory of Australian drivers was the two mine workers discussing their commute to Kalgoorlie, the town at the other end of a gun-barrel-straight highway that runs through the red dirt of the outback directly east of Perth. Kalgoorlie is a gold rush town: tough, hard-drinking, and, if not lawless, at least ‘law-light’. When I asked how long it took to drive from Perth to Kalgoorlie, the reply I got from one was:

“About a slab.” A slab is a pack of twenty-four cans of beer.

“Just one?!” said the other. “Jeez, you drive fast!”

Most recently, my wife Cass and I went back to Australia on holiday and decided to treat ourselves by upgrading our rental to a Tesla; time to give one a try. The worst three days of our lives. They call it ‘range anxiety’, but that doesn’t begin to describe it. This was Australia, where it could be hundreds of kilometres between charging stations; charging stations that rely on unreliable, rural wi-fi connections, by the way. And with the Tesla constantly recalculating our range depending on whether we had the aircon on (it was forty degrees – that’s over a hundred for our American friends) or how loudly we were listening to Crowded House on the stereo. For those three days we barely communicated; we were too busy obsessing.

As a result, and despite those empty roads, I can only award Australasia/Oceania an 8/10. 9 if you’re not in a Tesla.

Like most Brits, one way or another I’ve probably done most of my overseas driving in Europe. In fact, nowadays, every spring we drive the 1,200 miles from London to our place in Spain, then back again in the autumn. Which means that in England I now drive a left-hand-drive car. I don’t think it makes too much of a difference (I guess you’d have to ask fellow road users), except I probably give things a wider berth on the passenger side than I need to.

Apart from that, it’s never bothered me changing from left side to right side driving; you are, after all, always on the side of the car that’s nearest the middle of the road (right side of the car when you drive on the left side of the road, and vice versa). I’m now picturing readers trying to figure out how much of that made sense, maybe tipping your heads slightly, squinting, leaning...

One last thing on the left/right issue... Left is the original side - not to say historically ‘correct’ side (still listening, Americans?). Most people are right-handed, so swords (and scabbards) were traditionally worn on the left hip, which meant mounting from the right-hand side of the horse was impossible. So you climbed on from the left. It was that that influenced the rule of the road. Which means Ha! We’re right and you’re wrong!

Anyway… Here are the things about European driving (France, Spain, Portugal, Italy): they all have expensive toll roads (France top of the list); they all have medieval cities with narrow, cobbled streets; and tailgating is more common than in the UK (in Spain we live on a mountain, with a single road in and out, and are regularly scooted along it by boy racers).

Europe’s Ease of Driving score: 6/7.

Meanwhile, If the idea of driving on the right is still sending you a bit doolally, then I recommend South Africa, Eswatini, and Zimbabwe – all left- (ahem! ‘correct-’) sided. Many years ago, I visited my friend (later best man) Steve who was working in South Africa, and we made a road trip through all three countries. In those days, Eswatini was called Swaziland. We covered thousands of miles in his crappy, beat-up, old VW Beetle. As he later mentioned in his speech, it’s funny how best men always drive crappy, beat-up, old VW Beetles. However, I have to say, beat-up though it was, it also had an improbable amount of headroom - handy for a couple of six-footers.

It was all fun and games until we got to Swaziland. The fun and games generally involving wildlife: a buffalo standing apathetically in the middle of the road watching us approach, seemingly not caring that we were actually driving towards him and not just magically getting bigger; waiting for a python to clear the tarmac; deliberately driving through elephant dung to lend our car what we called ‘bush cred’.

We eventually crossed into Swaziland at dusk, heading for the capital Mbabane, only to discover that the road had been destroyed. Tropical Storm Domoina had been through a couple of months before us and caused the worst flooding the country had seen in decades, washing away over 100 bridges and closing twenty major roads. Including ours. But it was now the middle of the night, with no moon, no streetlights or human habitation, and the Beetle’s headlights were like feeble torches in the blackness. We were as lost as I’ve ever been in my life. We inched our way blindly through the bush, into ditches, along riverbeds, up escarpments, until eventually, after midnight, we came across a section of undamaged blacktop on the outskirts of town. Equally shattered and relieved, we took the owner of our guest house’s advice and went for a drink at the only place that was still open at that hour, the Why Not disco, that turned out to be crowded with sleazy, white South African men and Swazi prostitutes, the walls lined with multiple screens half of which were showing porn, half showing Match of the Day. The Why Not disco was, apparently, infamous. But - hey! - a beer was a beer.

Africa’s Ease of Driving score (excluding Swaziland): 8.

Which brings us to Asia... And this is where I reveal that I lied: I have, in fact, never driven in Asia (apart from hiring a motorbike in northern Thailand for an afternoon), but I figure if you’ve followed me this far, you’ll be interested to hear my Indian driving story (even if I wasn’t behind the wheel). It’s a doozy!

My first experience of Indian driving was leaving Delhi airport in a taxi. Clearly not expecting a gap to appear, my driver simply barged his way through the stream of pedestrians who were paying no attention at all to his horn, or to the horns of competing traffic. We didn’t run any of them over, but we definitely nudged a couple. Even in downtown Delhi, it was hard to tell if you were supposed to drive on the left or the right; traffic came from everywhere. Lanes meant nothing. There were traffic lights, but their function seemed to be more to stop cars (but not motorbikes) from cutting corners than to regulate the flow of traffic.

The next morning, my host Mr Rana collected me from my hotel in an Ambassador, a tiny car based on the Morris Oxford from the late 50’s, then manufactured by Hindustan Motors. I squeezed myself (six foot plus, remember) into the back seat, my chin resting on my knees, and braced for the ride ahead. Rana sat in the passenger seat next to the chauffeur, who looked exhilarated to be behind the wheel. Exhilaration, it turns out, is not, in fact, what you want from a chauffeur.

We were heading to Jalandhar, an industrial city near the Pakistan border. If you’ve ever played any sport at all, chances are you’ll have kicked, bounced, or handled a ball manufactured in Jalandhar. It’s known as Sports City: hockey sticks, cricket balls, boxing gloves... It was located about 240 miles along Grand Trunk Road northwest of Delhi. The journey usually takes around six hours (you do the maths!) but took us eight. And this is why...

The first reason is that the Grand Trunk Road is not Grand, or a Trunk, and is barely a road. It’s a bunfight: an immersive kaleidoscope of trucks and cars and buses and motorbikes, loosely bounded by streams of people and bicycles, and food stands, and shops, and broken-down trucks in the process of being repaired.

The second reason was that we wore out two horns and had to get them replaced. Two! Wore them out! In eight hours! The fact that both times we were able to haggle between roadside horn suppliers told me this was not an unusual occurrence.

But the final reason was an unscheduled stop in Chandigarh – a green and modern city, conceived by India’s first Prime Minister Nehru, and designed by Le Corbusier, no less. Chandigarh was known, among other things, for its grand, landscaped roundabouts, and it was at one of these that we experienced our most significant delay.

The chauffeur took the same approach with the circling traffic as my taxi driver had taken with the pedestrians at the airport: keep moving, sound your horn, and don’t give way. Eventually, the inevitable happened and we clunked into a man on a motorbike. Or he clunked into us. It was hard to tell. Either way, he ended up sprawled on the road, his motorbike next to him. We stopped and Rana jumped out, and instructed the chauffeur and me to stay put. It soon became clear that the man wasn’t seriously hurt - no blood or fractures - but he was shaken and bruised and groaning, and his motorbike was mangled. From nowhere, a crowd began to form. Dozens and dozens of Indian faces leaning in, checking out the accident, peering into our car, and at me, the only white face in sight. We became an island in the swirl of traffic circling the roundabout. And in the middle of the roundabout was a machine gun emplacement (that part of the Punjab was under a curfew at the time), and the bored soldiers had decided to point the machine gun straight at us.

All this time I sat quietly in the back of the Ambassador, wondering if there’d be more room in a Chandigarh prison cell. I couldn’t see a way out of this. The casualty still hadn’t got to his feet and was gesticulating angrily at his stricken motorbike, while the crowd was starting to turn hostile. It was at this point that Rana leaned back into our car, popped open his briefcase, and pulled out a fat wad of rupees. In the sights of the machine-gunners, in front of the baying crowd, and encouraged by the victim’s head wobbles, Rana started to peel off notes. The more Rana peeled off, the more the man seemed to recover. First he raised himself onto an arm, then into a half-kneeling position, then he stood, and, by the time Rana handed him the final wodge, he was ready to wheel his bent, squeaking motorbike away. Rana folded himself back into the car, and off we continued to Jalandhar as if nothing had happened.

Years later I was driving Mr Rana along a straight, empty road on the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia, and noticed he seemed nervous. I asked him why and he explained that “In Australia there are rules, I’m sure, but I don’t know them. In India there are no rules.” He was right about that.

Asia’s Ease of Driving score (excluding Chandigarh): 3; including Chandigarh: 2.

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I don’t even want to say what this post is about. I’m tempted to blank out the offending word throughout. I certainly can’t use it in the title.

You might be thinking “How bad can it be? What could be that controversial? Is it... pervy?”

Anyway, here goes...

So, I first fell in love with cricket as a young boy—

Wait, wait, wait! Come BACK! I swear I’m not going to try to convert you. The idea is that you don’t need to know a single thing about cricket, or care a single jot about it, to enjoy this post. I’m not going to try to explain what LBW is, or reminisce about some golden era, or rhapsodise about the thwack of leather on willow (I’m going to have to try really hard not to do that). There will be no explanations, no justifications and no pleading. This is about me asking for a moment of your time and a smidge of your attention. Think of it as a test of your open mindedness: you’re Obama making an effort to listen to Trump, to actually hear what he has to say. In case he’s, y’know, not actually mad.

So, where was I? Oh, yes... I first fell in love with cricket as a young boy, and I really don’t know why. I played a bit at school, and, although I was never going to be good enough to be a professional, nonetheless cricket drew me in. Maybe it was the way a cricket ball whiffled (made-up word) and curved through the air when I bowled it. Maybe it was the sound the ball made when I hit it with the bat: like the clop of a horse’s hoof on cobbles. And when I listened to cricket on the radio or watched it on the telly, maybe I was seduced by the sedate pace, the understated, British formality, the cherry-red ball, the white flannel trousers and cable-knot woollen sweaters, the expanse of striped, emerald-green grass...

And I’m not alone: Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Trevor McDonald, Lily Allen, Sir Stephen Fry... none of them cricketers, but all passionate enthusiasts.

Nevertheless, despite my own enthusiasm for the game, I’ve always understood cricket’s detractors. In fact, more than that, I sympathise with them. To non-cricket fans (let’s call them ‘strangers’, in the spirit of strangers being “only friends you haven’t yet met”), cricket gives the impression of being as boring, and rigid, and staid as snooker or lawn bowls, but with the added flaws that it lasts for days, ends in draws, and is impossible to understand. True, true, and false.

One of cricket’s problems is that it’s inaccessible. Things that make an enormous difference to the outcome of a match aren’t obvious unless you’ve actually played: the condition of the ball (as it gets older, it loses its shine and behaves very differently); overhead conditions (cloud cover can makes the ball swing dramatically in the air, and thus make it harder to hit); the condition of the pitch (as it wears, it can make the ball misbehave: jump up, spin, stop, dart); the coin toss to decide who bats first, etc. To cricket fans, it’s these very variables and nuances that are so fascinating. Americans seem, ideally, to want to play their sports on artificial surfaces, and indoors, thus excluding every element of luck and circumstance that they can. I, on the other hand, prefer a sport that embraces them, that cocks a snook at sterility.

Strangers are put off by all the distractions around cricket: distractions like the rules (or laws, as cricket pedants called them), or the scoring system (a hundred and eighty-four for seven / three for a pound / buy-one-get-one-free). Have you ever seen a cricket scorebook? It looks like computer code scrawled onto someone else’s maths homework. Also, the language associated with cricket is distracting: silly mid-on, long off, short leg... arcane and comical (though beautiful and precise to cricketers).

In truth, as sports go, cricket is fairly basic. It has, in fact, a caveman simplicity: “stick hit rock”. Your tribe stands there and throws the rock, and my tribe stands here and tries to hit the rock with a stick; then we change over and add up how many times you hit the rock versus how many times we hit it, and - voilà - there’s your winner. There’s a misconception with cricket that you have to understand all of it to understand any of it. It therefore has a low effort : reward ratio; like learning to speak Esperanto or completing a Rubik’s cube.

But cricket isn’t just boring and inaccessible, it also has an extra layer of silliness that makes it laughable. Strangers (particularly, and I hate to bring them up again, Americans) find it ridiculous that cricketers apparently wear yachting outfits and stop for tea. The umpires, dressed as lab technicians and performing a strange sort of semaphore, are Pythonesque figures of fun. And once dinner party conversation moves into ‘bowling a maiden over’ and ‘sticky wickets’, and the girls start sniggering about the protective boxes (cups, to our American friends) that the batsmen wear, and the funny way the bowlers polish the ball on the front of their trousers, I sense they’re not really looking for explanations. To strangers, cricket seems to display all the frivolity of sport without any of the magnificence.

There! Reading all that wasn’t so hard, was it? As a first step, I mean. Next, maybe try to watch a little on TV. With an open mind. Not the stuff they play under lights in pyjamas, the old-fashioned stuff, the good sort. Remember... What would Obama do?

If you want one last proof that there’s unexpected beauty to be found in cricket, I’ll leave you with Tom Stoppard’s description of a cricket bat: “Although it looks like a wooden club, it’s actually several pieces of particular wood, cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout.”

Do you have a ‘dare not speak its name’ passion? Let me know in the comments.

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When I speak, I sound like Lord La-dee-dah of Fotheringhamshire: posh and snottable. I was brought up speaking with received pronunciation (RP), also known as the ‘King’s English’ (‘Queen’s’ when I was growing up) or ‘BBC English’. Nowadays, it serves more to exclude me than include me; the precise opposite of my parents’s intention.

RP, according to the dictionary (who am I kidding: according to Google) is characterized by clear, precise, and standardised pronunciation. It’s associated with the South of England but has no specific regional roots. It was contrived to convey that you were upper class (I’m not) and well-educated (good schools, poor student), but not, precisely, where you were from (London, as it happens).

Dad was first-generation posh: his dad (my grandpa) was a very famous BBC bandleader in the 30’s (Henry Hall), but his dad (my great-grandpa) had been a blacksmith. Mum, meanwhile, was thoroughly working class: her dad was a builder and she was born in Liverpool. But - and here’s the thing - mum left her humble, northern home aged 16 to go onto the stage, and completely reinvented herself. Although as a little girl she must have had a Liverpool accent, as soon as she left, she taught herself to sound like a duchess (she still does). My RP comes from her. Funny thing is, she now can’t do any kind of accent, least of all Scouse. Another funny thing, she made her name (Anne Rogers) playing Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane – a play about a young woman ‘improving’ herself through her speech.

However, here in our little village, halfway up a mountain in Spain, where all the other British ex-pats seem to have regional accents, sounding ‘posh’ just gives the wrong impression. And when I speak Spanish with the locals, I have a related problem: the best part of my spoken Spanish is my accent. Which means, after an initial exchange, people often assume I’m fluent. I’m not. But what can I do? In the same way that I can’t start ‘geezering it up’ when I’m speaking English, nor can I start “grassy arse”-ing it up when I’m speaking Spanish.

And there’s another layer of complexity: in our village, Spanish isn’t the first language; Valenciano is. While Valenciano (thanks again, Google) isn’t actually a language in its own right, it’s a dialect of Catalan, which is. Either way, Valenciano isn’t Spanish (or Castilian, as they call Spanish here), and I can barely understand a word of it. There’s a whole political history with Valenciano and Castilian, most of it stretching back to the Franco dictatorship and his determination to stamp out regionalism. Spain was to have one language, one history, and one cultural identity (bullfights, flamenco, and beaches). However, where sometimes the regional capitals around Spain yielded to Franco’s vision of a unified Spain, the villages not so much. Consequently, even today, Valenciano is more spoken in the countryside than in Valencia itself (Spain’s third largest city).

I remember coming to Spain as a teenager, and Valenciano was kind of a joke. The crew I ran with used it to swear, or to poke fun at each other, or to do impressions of yokels. But soon afterwards, everyone suddenly started to take it seriously. In 1982 (by then Franco had been dead for seven years), it became a compulsory school subject, Valencia province officially became bi-lingual, and Valencianos started to show pride in their language, and culture, and history.

Although everyone here in our village is Castilian/Valenciano bi-lingual, there is still some language schizophrenia. A good friend of mine, Juan Carlos, speaks to one of his brothers in Valenciano and one in Castilian. He once attended a meeting with me and the village mayor and I asked that we conduct it in Castilian, for my sake, which was fine, but Juan Carlos had to look at me whenever he spoke, because he and the mayor had known each other since school and if he looked him, he’d automatically speak in Valenciano rather than Castilian.

By the same token, so charming and hospitable are the locals here, that when I go into the butchers, knowing I don’t speak Valenciano, the inevitable queue will stop gossiping in Valenciano and switch to Castilian - for my sake.

So, here in our Spanish mountain village I have three options: I can say “hello, good morning” in posh English to fellow ex-pats; I can say “buenos días” in great-sounding Spanish to the locals; or I can say “bon dia” in Valenciano, and risk a barrage of cheery, well-intentioned, and incomprehensible follow-ups.

Or, I suppose, there’s always option four (the joker in the pack): a cockney shuffle and knee-slap, and a Dick Van Dyke-style: “Watchya’, guvnor, ‘ow’s yer day dawnin’?”

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A los dieciocho años, con toda la primavera y el verano por delante antes de empezar la universidad, decidí espontáneamente irme a Córdoba, una ciudad que había visitado una vez en un viaje escolar cinco años antes, y que me había hechizado.

En aquellos días, ir a Córdoba desde Londres implicaba viajar cuarenta horas en tren, con dos transbordos: uno en París y otro, en mitad de la noche, en la frontera franco-española. Me di cuenta de que por fin habíamos llegado a Andalucía porque los pueblos se volvían más blancos y los castillos que se alzaban sobre ellos adquirían un color cada vez más miel, en contraste con el gris de Francia y del norte de España. Y entonces, de repente, llegamos a Córdoba. Y yo no conocía a nadie.

En aquel momento no me di cuenta - nunca se me ha dado bien reconocer las tendencias y los cambios de las épocascuando me encuentro inmerso en ellas (soy más un pez que una garza) - pero España se encontraba en plena transicióntras la muerte de Franco. Mientras que Gran Bretaña había disfrutado de los ‘swinging sixties’, y luego del glam rock, de la música disco y el punk en los setenta; España había estado sometida a cuarenta años de dictadura. Pero con la reciente muerte del dictador, los españoles habían empezado por fin a liberarse enérgicamente de sus cadenas; una revolución social: la Movida.

Sin embargo, lo que más me llamó la atención mientras caminaba hacia el centro de la ciudad no fue la gente, sino las propias calles: empedradas, sinuosas y con paredes blancas. Parecía que todas las ventanas tenían rejas de hierro forjado, geranios o ambos.

Cuanto más caminaba, más detalles notaba: los tejados de tejas de terracota con musgo que crecía en ellos; los cables y alambres blancos y retorcidos que colgaban de casa en casa; las aceras con textura de gofre; las pequeñas plazas del barrio, cada una con una estatua, una cruz de piedra o una fuente. Y parecía que en cada fuente flotaba un limón o una naranja del árbol más cercano.

Las casas típicas de Córdoba tenían enormes puertas de madera, tachonadas de hierro, que daban directamente a la calle y se abrían a pequeños vestíbulos, normalmente amueblados con un catre. Más allá había una verja de hierro forjado, con una puerta en su interior, que daba a un patio fresco, oscuro y embaldosado, y decorado con macetas; más geranios.

A veces, estos patios tenían su propia fuente central, alrededor de la cual los residentes podían sentarse y charlar. Mientras yo recorría la ciudad, me atreví a curiosear. Como ya señalaban los poetas, Córdoba era una ciudad de destellos. Finalmente, me lancé a charlar con un anciano sentado junto a la puerta de su casa, y así fue cómo descubrí la Fonda Andrea de la calle Rey Heredia.

Aunque el día en que me marché, muchas semanas después, hacía cuarenta y cuatro grados, el día que llegué a la ciudad era un día templado de primavera. Solía empezar el día temprano, comprando primero El País antes de irme a buscar un rincón en uno de mis bares favoritos. Yo todavía no dominaba el castellano, pero me encantaba ese ritual matutino de leer el periódico mientras saboreaba mi primer café de la mañana. Compré una cartera y un cuaderno de cuero – como Córdoba era famosa por su artesanía de cuero, me pareció de lo más apropiado - y, una vez que terminaba de leer el periódico, garabateaba sin pensar algunas reflexiones aleatorias, frases y palabras poéticas, observaciones, ideas para cuentos, etc.

Luego, durante una o dos horas, deambulaba por la ciudad, siempre por la sombra, como los lugareños. Por lo generalpaseando por el mercado de la Plaza de la Corredera, inundado con docenas de puestos en los que se vendían la misma clase de calcetines, pantalones, ropa de poliéster y sujetadores baratos.

Había una señora detrás de una mesa con caballetes que vendía cucharadas de remedios herbales en bolsas abiertas y marcadas con una simple anotación: Estómago, Intestinos, Energía, Circulación de la sangre, etc. En una esquina de la plaza, una gitana carismática, robusta y seria manejaba una enorme jeringa metálica para echar espirales de masa en una sartén con grasa hirviendo: ¡churros! Una vez que estaban crujientes y dorados, los sacaba con un colador, los envolvía en papel, les añadía azúcar con canela y los vendía por unas pocas pesetas. A menudo compraba algunos, no solo porque estaban deliciosos, sino también porque me permitía observar la dinámica de la familia gitana: los hombres corpulentos, con su larga melena engrasada y patillas enormes, sus barrigas colgando sobre unos ajustados pantalones negros, una sola bota apoyada en el reposapiés de la barra más cercana, y fumando y bebiendo mientras fingían que no estaban a las órdenes de aquella impresionante matriarca.

Paseando por las calles, vi tiendas de cuchillos, tiendas de sombreros (miraba los escaparates y me preguntaba si me quedaría bien una boina o una gorra tradicional cordobesa), tiendas exclusivas de ropa de flamenco (definitivamente a mí nunca me quedaría bien una chaqueta bolero ni un sombrero), tiendas de abanicos y tiendas especializadas en ornamentos religiosos, efigies y biblias.

Las mujeres policía, en faldas y con botas, y con pintalabios rojo carmesí y gafas de sol modernas, dirigían el tráfico en los cruces principales. A mí me parecían más unas secuaces salidas de una película de Bond que agentes de tráfico. Mientras sus compañeras se ocupaban del tráfico, los policías se apoyaban en las barras como los gitanos, tomándosecafés solos y chupitos de brandy delante de ellos, y siempre armados con pistolas a la cadera. Y había tantos bares: ruidosos, con el suelo lleno de cáscaras de cacahuetes, colillas y servilletas, con jamones colgando y carteles de toros. Y, siempre, con flamenco sonando en la radio.

El flamenco estaba por todas partes. Y era emocionante saberse rodeado de lo que parecía una cultura popular viva. Lo que yo todavía no sabía (como dije: soy un pez, no una garza) era que en aquella época el flamenco estaba viviendo un «momento». En los años sesenta y setenta, había formado parte del plan de Franco para presentar una España unida, con una única cultura nacional, personificada por el flamenco y las corridas de toros. Con la desaparición de Franco, el flamenco se había convertido en un campo de batalla entre lo tradicional y lo moderno, entre la derecha y la izquierda, entre el flamenco anticuado (franquista) y el flamenco novedoso que empezaba a fusionarase con el rock, el blues y la música latina.

Cuando digo que el flamenco estaba por todas partes, me refiero a todas partes: grupos de niños que salían del colegio daban palmas y cantaban flamenco mientras volvían a casa; cada dos fuentes había un guitarrista sentado marcándose unoritmos flamencos; un músico callejero en las Tendillas atraía regularmente a multitudes cantando canciones flamencas satíricas sobre políticos y famosos del lugar; los bebés en sus cochecitos imitaban los movimientos giratorios de las manos del flamenco que, presuntamente, plagiaban la recolección de aceitunas imaginarias.

Compré un radiocasete - sí, ¡estamos en 1980! - y durante la siesta me ponía a escuchar, a bajo volumen, el «nuevo» y más accesible flamenco. Cuando yo salía por la noche, estaba ya preparado y listo para irme de fiesta. Pero, por desgracia, seguía sin tener a nadie en particular con quien hablar.

Hasta que una noche...

En Córdoba, valía la penar fumar, así que lo intenté. Aunque era lógico que uno no podía acercarse a cualquier grupo de desconocidos y echarse a charlar como si los conociera de toda la vida, siempre podía aproximarse a ellos para pedirlesfuego, o incluso un cigarrillo: «¿Tienes tabaco?». Y, antes de que te dieras cuenta, ya estabas charlando. En fin, esa noche me encontré sentado en un bar, mirando - espero que no de forma demasiado inquietante - a un grupo de personas colocadas alrededor de una mesa que parecían un poco mayores que yo, una mezcla de ingleses y españoles. Cuando vi que yo ya había reunido el valor suficiente para usar el truco del cigarrillo y, así, poder colarme en el grupo, me fijé en una de esas personas, una chica que miraba atentamente a otro chico que se encontraba un poco más lejos de mí en la barra: un mozo que tocaba una guitarra imaginaria al ritmo de la canción LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH (Ama a la persona con la que estás) de Stephen Stills, que en ese momento sonaba en los altavoces del bar. Parecía un tipo discreto, y como perdido en su propio mundo, mas parecía muy profesional de lo que hacía.

Esa muchacha del grupo que miraba tan fijamente era demasiado guapa como para intentar pedirle un cigarrillo, así que, en su lugar, decidí añadirle al tema un enfoque tangencial, y me acerqué al guitarrista imaginario para comentarle que me parecía que tocaba muy bien la guitarra (¡¿qué sabía yo?!). Él era muy modesto y amable, y de los EE. UU., y los dosacabamos entablando una especie de conversación. Fue entonces cuando levanté la vista y vi a la chica sonriéndonos. A mí. Ella había descubierto mi estrategia.

Le devolví la sonrisa y, antes de pensarlo demasiado y de echarme atrás, me acerqué y me presenté. Se llamaba Stella, y ella y su grupo eran profesores de inglés que habían salido por la noche con algunos de sus alumnos adultos. Y, al final, resultó que ella solo fumaba cigarrillos liados a mano (y muy de vez en cuando); así que, de todos modos, la artimaña del cigarrillo habría fracasado. Aunque le debía un favor a ese guitarrista imaginario, nunca volví a verlo. Tío, gracias. Espero que estés con la persona que amas y que ames a la persona con la que estás.

No tardé mucho en enamorarme. Quizás no fue esa primera noche, ni la siguiente, mas al final de aquella semana yo estaba perdidamente enamorado. Para ser sincero, no solo amaba a Stella, también amaba a sus amigos, a sus alumnos, los lugares a los que iban, su forma de vida, su pasión por Córdoba. Descubrí que yo no solo amaba España, hablar español y Córdoba, sino que también amaba a las personas a las que también les encantaban las mismas cosas que a mí.

Stella tenía el pelo castaño claro y ondulado, un poco revuelto, y ojos marrones que escondía detrás de unas gafas redondas con montura metálica al estilo John Lennon. Tenía un cuello largo y precioso, y olía bien. Siempre. Y tenía una forma de fruncir los labios que la hacía parecer perspicaz y ligeramente crítica (¿recuerdas esa sonrisa burlona que tededicó esa primera noche en la que ella claramente te había calado?).

También era política. Eran los años ochenta, la Gran Bretaña de Margaret Thatcher y todo lo que concernía, así que se hablaba mucho de ese tema... ¡y de política sexual!, faltaría más. Una vez me habló con entusiasmo sobre un libro titulado THE PERFUMED GARDEN, una obra de literatura erótica del siglo XV con la que ella se había topado cuando tenía doce años, y que la había marcado profundamente. La describió como un himno a las mujeres. No entendí nada de esa frase. Stella cocinaba, tenía una estantería con especias, una cafetera espresso vieja y manchada, y varias botellas de licores en la cocina. Ponía discos de vinilo (sí, discos de vinilo) de un músico nigeriano llamado Fela Kuti (en una escala del 1 al 10 de ‘cool’, eso era un 10 fijo). Tejía para relajarse (9/10 cuando lo hacía ella; 4/10 cuando lo hacía cualquier otra persona). Se hacía sus propios pendientes (8/10). Había tenido una aventura lésbica con otra profesora, solo para comprobar si le gustaba o no. «¡Las mujeres son mucho más tiernas que los hombres!» (Para mí un 9 de 10, aunque seguro que hay hombres que le darían un 11). Era el tipo de persona que te hacía desear su aprobación. Yo sigo deseándolo.

No había tenido una vida familiar fácil; sus padres eran académicos y distantes, y más tarde se convirtieron en acumuladores compulsivos. Después del colegio, estudió inglés en Nottingham, luego encuadernación en el London College of Printing (8/10) y, por las tardes, un curso llamado Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), un ingenioso método para enseñar inglés que no requería hablar ni una sola palabra del idioma extranjero. Así fue como su vida empezó en Córdoba.

Y ella entendía Córdoba exactamente de la misma manera que yo. Quizás incluso más. Al fin y al cabo, ella trabajaba allí. Y se tomaba su trabajo muy en serio. Por las tardes tenía que preparar las clases y, a pesar de mis encantadores esfuerzos, no se dejaba distraer. Así que, mientras ella preparaba sus clases, yo empecé a escribir una novela. Todavía no habían salido los ordenadores portátiles, por lo que me tocaba escribir a mano, lo que de alguna manera me hacía sentir como un escritor más auténtico. En realidad, ella se ganaba la vida y yo seguía fingiendo. O tal vez ella también fingía. Quizás ese momento dorado fue aún más intenso de lo normal, como suele ocurrir, porque ambos nos encontrábamos al borde de la vida real, balanceándonos, como girando los brazos para no perder el equilibrio y caer hacia delante.

En cualquier caso, los fines de semana nos soltábamos y disfrutábamos al máximo de la ciudad y de sus amigos. No teníamos móviles, por supuesto, pero tampoco es que se echasen en falta; sabíamos quién estaría en cual bar y a que hora. Elegíamos los locales a los que íbamos para tomar su tapa especial: salmorejo en Bar Pepe; tortillitas de camarón en el Burlaero; riñones al jerez en Rafaé. Y en cada parada tomábamos fino o cerveza helados (una novedad, ésta, en el Reino Unido). Y en cada bar nos encontrábamos con otro grupo de gente y pasábamos cinco minutos estrechándonos la mano, besándonos en ambas mejillas y pidiendo más consumiciones. Los profesores de inglés parecían conocer a todo el mundo. Hablábamos en inglés entre nosotros, salpicando nuestras conversaciones con palabras y frases castellanas, y los estudiantes españoles siempre estaban encantados de unirse a nuestro grupo. Algunos de los profesores hablaban bien el español, aprendido en el colegio o en la universidad, mientras que Stella lo había aprendido allí mismo, en Córdoba, por lo que lo hablaba con un fuerte acento Cordobés. A los cordobeses les encantaba el español de Stella porque la hacía aún más de los suyos.

La mayoría de los sábados por la noche acabábamos en un bar de flamenco, viendo bailar a nuestros jóvenes amigos Luisa y Juanito. Luisa era una de las alumnas de Stella y Juanito era un gitano auténtico, demasiado indómito para las aulas escolares. Bailaban por dinero y, tras sus brillantes presentaciones formales, las veladas solían terminar en una fiesta. Stella, que no era ninguna experta, había conseguido enseñarme los rudimentos del baile flamenco más sencillo, la sevillana: un baile coqueto, que siempre se baila en pareja y se caracteriza por un sencillo ritmo de uno, dos, tres. Hasta el momento final, claro está, cuando las palmas se detienen en dos, pillando desprevenidos a los no iniciados. ¡Bah, turistas! En el baile, el hombre y la mujer se insinúan el uno al otro sin llegar a tocarse o a mirarse directamente, hasta ese último compás, cuando el hombre la agarra por la cintura y la mira profundamente a los ojos.

Al final de la noche, Stella y yo solíamos encontrarnos a solas, sentados en alguna losa de piedra antigua y desgastada fuera de la Mezquita (esa maravilla, mitad catedral, mitad mezquita, que es el corazón y el alma de la ciudad), o en el borde de la fuente de la Plaza del Potro (la misma en la que se dice que se sentaba Cervantes), o sentados en el suelo, con la espalda apoyada en uno de los contrafuertes de las murallas romanas que rodean la ciudad vieja. Nos sentábamos allí para, finalmente, charlar sobre cosas importantes, hasta que, a las tres de la madrugada, los barrenderos doblaban la esquina y limpiaban los adoquines con mangueras. Tenían un trabajo que hacer y lo habían visto todo antes: peleas, amor, sexo... No te metías con ellos.

Al final del verano, mi fecha de partida se me echó encima. Había comprado un billete de vuelta hacía semanas y me había olvidado de él. En mi última salida del sábado por la noche, un grupo de músicos del bar tocó una sevillana llamada El Adiós, que contiene las siguientes estrofas:

No te vayas todavía, no te vayas, por favor.

No te vayas todavía.

Que hasta la guitarra mía llora cuando dice adiós.

Stella me susurró las palabras desde la otra esquina de la mesa. Entonces yo no lo intuía, pero esos versos podíamos haberlos cantado nosotros para conmemorar aquel montón de semanas magistrales. Volví unas semanas más tarde y fui y vine unas cuantas veces más durante los meses siguientes, pero lo que había entre nosotros ya no era como antes. Nuestrasguitarras habían llorado al decir adiós.

Pasaron los años y Stella se casó y se divorció; y ahora vive en Margate, Inglaterra (8/10). Tiene una hija - ¡que no es mía! - llamada Poppy, que parece tan inteligente, fascinante y genial como su madre (así que eso es un 10 + 10 = 20). Y seguimos siendo amigos.

Mientras escribo ahora estas líneas, tantos años más tarde, me encuentro de nuevo en Córdoba. Y he estado intercambiando mensajes de texto, fotos y vídeos con Stella en Inglaterra (¡vídeos con solo pulsar un botón del móvil! Ni siquiera hubiéramos podído imaginar algo así décadas atrás). Ella me preguntó si me seguía gustando y si la ciudad era todavía como antes. «Ambas cosas» fue la única respuesta que supe darle. Agridulce, como siempre resulta ser todo lo nostálgico. Ah, pero en aquellos tiempos...

Si te ha gustado lo que acabas de leer, por favor, SUSCRÍBETE. ¡Si no te gusta el siguiente artículo, siempre puedes darte de baja con un solo clic! (¡Pero seguro que te gustará!)

Gracias.

My name’s Jonathan (“Hi, Jonathan!”) and I’m a multi-award-winning screenwriter/producer with over twenty years’ experience in films and TV. My musical feature film SOLO! was made in 2018, won awards around the world, and is now available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, etc.

In earlier life, I founded cult cricket brand Millichamp & Hall, before, with my wife Cassandra, founding the renowned La Montaña home fragrance company.

I’m still screenwriting (see here), but more recently I’ve also started working on a ‘fictionalised memoir’ (hence ‘sorta-biography’). Here on substack I’ll be posting some self-contained, bite-sized snippets from my life and travels and adventures. They’re all stand-alone stories, always fun and interesting, sometimes funny and even, occasionally (if you kind-of squint and don’t look too closely) wise.

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