Right then, I know you’ve probably
been unable to sleep for worrying about where I was going to end up going
today. Well, fear not. All will be revealed. But not right this second.
Firstly, though, today’s shoutout. This episode is dedicated to my grandchildren,
Ollie, Mimi and Alfie. Grampy misses you loads.
So, today’s lucky winner was . . .
Murcia! Yes, I could easily have gone to Alicante or Elche again, today, but in
the end Murcia was the clear winner. Why? Well, you may remember that I visited
Murcia last year, and it was only after I’d been that I realised I’d missed out
on something while I was there. What’s that? I hear you say. (Go on then, say
it.) Well, what do Prague, Berlin, Budapest, Alicante, Birmingham, Amsterdam
and Stockholm all have, that Ieper, Kaunas and Madrid don’t? Yes, you’ve got
it, trams. I’m not saying that you can’t have a good holiday without going on a
tram, since I’ve done it several times. However the tram is usually the icing
on the cake.
I set off from the Casa Me Duck at
just after 9. I didn’t borrow the Smart this time, because it’s only a ten
minute walk to the station. Bearing in mind how likely I am to burn, I borrowed
John’s hat. Which was the cue for the sky to cloud over, and the sun to
disappear, never to seriously threaten to break through until I returned back
to the casa. All in all, though, it made for a very pleasant walking day. At
one point the temperature was down to a bracing 25 degrees. And me without my
scarf and gloves.
Unbeknownst to me, the new timetable
for the Cercania line between Alicate and Murcia starts on the last day of the
month rather than the first. My first clue that I could be in for a long wait
was when I noticed that the Spanish for Waiting Room is Sala de Espera. From
Latin and French I know that Espera is derived from the word for hope as well.
Be fair, even in the 70s, British Rail never tried to get away with having a
Hoping Room instead of a waiting room. Might have been a bit more honest, however,
I digress. Still, at least the 50 minute wait at the station gave me the
opportunity to make the first sketch of the day.
It takes slightly more than half an
hour to Murcia by the train, but it’s a very pleasant journey, passing close by
the mountains between Callosa de Segura and Orihuela. I was somewhat distracted
by the lady who got on and plonked herself opposite me at Callosa de Segura.
Judging from her somewhat homely appearance, her headscarf and her age, she
might well have been called Senora Norabatti. She kept trying to engage me in
conversation, despite the fact that I assured her “No hablo Espanol” at regular
intervals. Actually, I say she tried to engage me in conversation, but actually
no. She just wanted me to be an audience to her monologue, and didn’t seem to
care in the slightest whether I could understand what she was saying. Come to
think of it, I’ve taken part in Parents Evenings like that.
Having visited Murcia last year, I
had a pretty good idea where to go when I left the station. Luckily the route
took me over the River, then past the Cathedral, to the southernmost point of
the Murcia tram network, the Plaza Circular – so named after the 19th
century dramatist Juan Pablo Circular, best known for his riotous farce,
“Toreador, Don’t Spit Upon the Floor” I believe. The Plaza itself is round,
which is a bit of a coincidence, too, I suppose. The tram stop just around the
corner thankfully had some benches, so it wasn’t really a hardship to sit and
work on the tram sketch you can see as three trams went by. Time was getting
on, though, and so I did photograph the actual tram I got on, in order to help
me cheat to finish the sketch later on. I’ll come back to that.
So, having ridden on a tram network
that I’d never used before, the day had already become a huge success for me.
So the big question was what to do for a lap of honour. Now, on the Gran Via
leading off from the Plaza Circular there’s a tourist information booth. If you
know me, then you know I love tourist information booths and offices, because I
love free maps. The one I had from this booth had, I noticed, numbers between
one and the high 40s in blue circles liberally sprinkled across it, with the
majority clustered between the Plaza and the cathedral. Each of these was
supposedly a place of interest. So I set off to find as many as I could. To be
fair, some of them are fantastic. If you’re in the centre of Murcia, you need a
church and you don’t fancy the Cathedral, well, I can guarantee that you won’t
be far from another church which might be more to your taste. On the other
hand, though, some of them are, well, I’m not saying they’re not worth looking
at, but I did walk past them three or four times before I realised they were
there. So alright, I am saying that some of them aren’t worth looking at.
I stopped briefly in the Plaza Santo
Domingo, where I made one of my favourite sketches last year, and almost
immediately wished that I hadn’t. I was called over by a group with a little
stand with the words Testivos de Jehova. You’re probably reacting to that word
Jehova the same way that I did, and you’d be right. They were in fact Jehovah’s
Witnesses. Now look, I have no quarrel with and would make no criticism of any
religious group or religion, and I certainly haven’t got anything better to
offer anyone. But I don’t wish to discuss it in detail in public when I could
be sketching. The thing is, though, my Spanish just isn’t good enough to convey
all of that, so I resorted to the universal language of scarper.
I shan’t lie to you, Dearly Beloved.
I’ve had a terrific day, but my head is hurting. I’ve taken some tablets, but I
think it would be best if I shut this down for tonight, and then took up the
story again in the morning, when I’ll also post the rest of the sketches.
See you then.
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