Letter from my Terrace in Palma 20 The Life of the City

                                                                             28 December, 2018

Good morning,

When I used to drive into Palma to start my day’s work, I would see a man setting out the tables and chairs on the pavement outside his restaurant in a wide and busy street called the Avenidas.  Each day I had to wait at the red light there, and I always looked over to watch him.  But it was a pleasant wait.  The man swung the chairs into place quickly and efficiently but without hurrying.  Each movement was effective and wasted no energy. He had a day’s work ahead of him and he was pacing himself.  He had a look of calm enthusiasm for the task and for the business of the day ahead. How much happier he was than someone who was still sleeping and had not yet breathed the morning.

Seeing this man, I shared his feeling for the new day. I too felt the privilege of going to work and being part of the life of the city. I taught English to as many people as I could. I was a small cog in the wheel but then even the smallest of cogs matters.

Part of the horror of being unemployed is having no income at the end of the month, but surely it is also the loss of that sense of contributing to the buzz and hum of the life of the city.

This is also what makes it so hard for some people to accept retirement.  For the retired, every day is the weekend.  This sounds a permanent blessing but permanent blessings are sometimes hard to live with.  There is no feeling of expectant content when Friday evening arrives.  All days are Friday too. All too often pensioners are no longer a moving part of city life.  They are spectators.

They can remedy this of course and be busy in many ways and they have the luxury of deciding how to share their time and who to help and when.

On Spanish TV whenever there is a report on the retired, with some statistic about pensions or health, the pictures that go with the report always show a group of four old men playing dominoes in a bar. Why not show some voluntary work that so many older people take up? Or show a man in his seventies collecting his grandchildren from school or taking up oil painting or learning German in evening classes? Why always the dominoes?

I once had a nightmare in which I saw a city in which there was no life on a Monday morning. It was a horrific vision. Not a soul was in the streets. Every shop was shut and every office was closed. There must have been a monstrous coincidence by which every single worker had overslept. Quite simply everyone had forgotten to go to work.  It was frightening to walk along the Avenidas which was void of life.  Nothing was happening.  No one was having a quick coffee in a bar before rushing off to the office.  There were no friends to greet as you passed in the street.  ‘I must run. You see, I’m going to the dentist.’ The dentist would be closed anyway.  Banks were closed, insurance offices were closed, petrol stations were closed. Nothing was happening.

How we take for granted the bustle of a Monday morning or the happy rush of Friday evening.  We should appreciate the bar with its door wide open, the newspaper there to be read and the cinema ready and waiting to show us a film.  We are lucky to be part of the rhythm.

So, here’s to the man in the restaurant setting out his chairs!  Here’s to all who move the city forward day by day! Here’s to all pensioners who are not playing dominoes in a bar! Here’s to everyone of whatever age who helps to keep things ticking over normally.   Here’s to you all!