I was going to write about the joy of the drop in temperatures as it implies the end – at least until next summer – of the unfortunate use of bermuda shorts. Never has a garment achieved such equality of opportunity for absurdity. The bermuda short is the perfect aesthetic socialism. Under its domain, social classes disappear and a single detestable human category emerges: a guy with his knees exposed. It unites the rich and the stiff, the tacky and the bumpkin. The last sighting in a completely inappropriate place – all of them are, from the street to churches, including bullrings – occurred at the M-30 Funeral Home. A lady of golden age entered the wake room followed by a man she introduced as her son, a drone over forty, with a dark beard showing, black hair flushed like Zipi, and dressed like a TBO character. They offered their condolences to María, who kindly responded to the introduction with a joke: “Ah!, he’s your son. I thought he was your boyfriend.” It could have been worse.
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I was going to write about the mornings that already bring a fresh air that heralds the imminent autumn. Children wait again on the sidewalks for the school bus route and the bar counters take on the hustle and bustle of rush hour. The coffee of the hurried office worker; the sun and shade of the laborer. Ferraz Street still maintains a neighborhood rhythm.
I was going to write about the old man who got up from a bench on the street to ask me a wonderful question for all it meant: “Please, do you have the time?” That man with a white beard and thinning hair, with a freshly bought loaf of bread and a lit cigarette, had no watch, but also no mobile phone. I did not remember the last time someone had asked me the time on the street. I remembered Andrés Fagalde when a scruffy young man stopped him to ask the time: “There are ten minutes left before the barbershop closes.”
I was going to write about any of these trivial things until the image of Vinicius, Mbappé, and Konaté in Elche covering the message on the support shirt for Ceuta awakened a terrible anger in me. Whatever Barcelona does, the anti-Spanish club that supplies players to the Spanish national team, I couldn’t care less. But that three Real Madrid players commit such treachery is unforgivable. There are no different sensitivities in a club of Madrid’s stature. There is only one: Ceuta and Spain. Anything else is betrayal. Or sanchismo in the vein. I sense another shitty season, which will spoil my 50th anniversary as a member and the total disaffection of the Bernabéu stands with these clowns. They shouldn’t be in Real Madrid for one more minute.
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