Bilbao

Mornings, smell of the strong detergent sprayed by the street cleaning machines. Doorsteps liberally splashed over with Don Limpio. Women shaking out rugs from upstairs windows and hanging out washing. Is there even a word in Spanish for tumble dryer?

Caged songbirds on the windowledges and balconies trilling. Scents of dark tobacco, frying, burnt milk. Out of town there was the tang of something industrial in the air, familiar but unplaceable, then I saw, mountains of scrap metal: the odour of rust in the noon sun.

Saturday evening in the Casco Viejo and the kids are everywhere, decanting cheap rum and juice concentrate into empty Fuensanta bottles, vodka into Fanta, whiskey into Coke. Acrid whiff of spirits and perfume and synthetic fruit. I'm in Barnsley!

I got there before The Now Show, but could not be arsed: Tiocfaidh Allah!

Following the exhumation of homicidal hasbeens the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, expect further splintering into absurdly branded factions as they struggle to come to terms with their own irrelevance:

• IRA Plus; IRA Plus HD.
• IRA Lites; IRA Regular; IRA Super; IRA Superplus; IRA SuperAdvance; IRA Apex; IRA Offpeak; IRA Weekend Unlimited.
• IRA Online; IRA Direct; EasyIRA.
• IRA Classic; IRA Unplugged.
• IRA Gold; IRA Gold Top; IRA Skimmed; IRA Semi-skimmed; IRA One-Cal; IRA Sport; IRA Energy; I Can't Believe It's Not IRA; IRA Be Good To Yourself.
• IRA Organic; Free Range IRA; Dolphin-Friendly IRA.
• Southern Fried IRA; Dixie IRA; IRA Shack; IRA Cottage
• Wheat and Gluten Free (may contain traces of nut) IRA; Lemon Zesty Fresh IRA.

Finally all the above varieties will eat each other up in a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions until only three Republican paramilitary entities remain, re-branded by their communications agencies and image consultants as:

"Provisionally Yours",
"We Haven't Gone Away You Know",
and a jumble of punctuation characters that no-one can understand, still less pronounce as a spoken phrase, but is intended to be reminiscent of peat and Semtex.

'The Longest Journey', E.M. Forster, 1907

 

'Oh, Tilliard!' said Ansell, with much irritation. 'But what can you expect from a person who's eternally beautiful? The other night we had been discussing a long time, and suddenly the light was turned on. Every one else looked a sight, as they ought. But there was Tilliard sitting neatly on a little chair, like an undersized god, with not a curl crooked. I should say he will get into the Foreign Office.'