Notes from Barcelona: my bus ride

When I first met you, I didn't understand the game.
Now I don't have to, cuz you've given me a name.

The prostitute who waited by the side of the road each evening on my bus route home on a pathetic little stool by the entrance to some sort of brick depot went missing around the beginning of September. I don't know that she's actually a missing person but she was there, waiting on her little stool most evenings as we whizzed past towards Cerdanyola and suddenly, she wasn't. I was used to her not being there some evenings: the stool being left behind the side barrier on the Carretera obviously meant that she'd been picked up... but she was always back there the next day, or the day after that.

Why you gonna raise your hand to make the pickup?
When you're gonna get sent down alone.

This time, it looked like she was gone for good. For a week or two, I found that I was worried about her. This young, pretty almost certainly eastern European girl must have been kidnapped or attacked, I thought. It was only when I realised how much earlier it was getting dark each evening that I started to think that she might still be around, just getting off the unlit road sooner each evening. I've noticed that the stool still alternates between its position in front of and behind the barrier: either she's fine or someone else, as yet unseen, has taken her spot.

I'm exhausted now
Too burnt to sleep
I'll be burnt tomorrow

My bus journey home is generally quick and uneventful. The traffic's not too bad and it's nicer than being stuck in a train where you don't see much for the first half of the journey. I catch the bus just accross Meridiana from where Avinguda de Rio de Janeiro starts, about eight minutes' brisk walk from my office. The bus follows Meridiana out of Barcelona and then bears right along the Carretera Cerdanyola-Barcelona through the rather ugly towns of Montcada i Reixach and Ripollet.

All year you've been hanging around like you wuz waiting for the forty bus
Holding fifteen hundred in cash, trying to move in on us

The bit of Montcada I see from the bus consists of about three landmarks, namely the Bar Gran Casino, a bridge named FC Barcelona - Zaragoza (theories about the name are welcome - I suspect a local lad played in the Barça squad), and a large-looking brothel called La Mezquita De Oro (once mentioned by Guirilandia), whose red lamps are lit by around seven each evening.

Thirty trucks from seventeen states
Move out staggered through the night
It's a tough job but temporary

I'm not one of those people who can stroll up to the bus stop and see the bus arrive twenty seconds later. This is partly because I live where I do, and the buses here seem to have quite random schedules. It's also because I'm just not that good at remembering schedules. One of my first memories of primary school is a feeling of total confusion caused by the fact that other children seemed to know intuitively that there was a correct time to get their maths books out, or have lunch. I was totally oblivious to the timetable and even now, I often forget regular events, even ones I look forward to like Easter and Barça games.

It's a case, it's a case, it's a case
Of over against

So it is that I inevitably wait for quite some time at the bus stop, or turn up to see the A3 or A4 cruising away, its doors firmly shut. This isn't too bad, though, because I always have a self-inflicted ear damage machine with me.

Lyrics from the album Sweet Sixteen by Royal Trux.

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