With emails running alongside, barking for attention, we beat a retreat from London. The clamour of work was soon swamped by the heat and light and sights and sounds and smells of Barcelona, and by the newness and oldness of it all. In the evening as we wandered the narrow streets in a desultory Google search for a restaurant, the continental warmth seeped into our bodies like a muscle relaxant.
All that night and all the next day the city wrapped us in its hot bright charms. We let ourselves be taken away by the saturated colours of the Mercado de La Bouqueria, the vertiginous splendour of La Sagrada Familia, and Picasso’s singular view of our misshapen world.
And then we were gone, swept by the train to Cadaqués and to the sea to be with friends and family, to laugh and eat and swim and sit, and to try to remember why it is we go to work so much of the time…
…when there is all this.
