Writing it All Down

I haven't really publicised this page yet, as I have no idea what it is going to be for. My initial thoughts already reflect this, and I still don't feel moved to write about EFL as yet, though I did have a significant experience in that department yesterday. Maybe later in the week.

Monday night for me and a number of colleagues from the Centre (name I will use to denote my place of work, a British language school) is Pub Quiz Night, at one of the many Irish pubs in the centre of the city. We more or less take turns to act as question masters, although there is one official QM who performs more often than the rest of us. My team-mates Hugh and John were acting as joint QMs for the first time ever last night, so I had been going round trying to shore up my depleted team. As often happens, other people had been doing the same, and in the end there were nine of us, so we split five and four. This meant of course that we had little chance of winning, but anyway, we enjoyed what turned out to be a very good quiz.

Although Irish in ethos, the pub, as we refer to it, as if there were no other, though perhaps for us, there isn't, is in fact owned by a Spanish guy and his wife, who hails from Birmingham, and who is a great friend to all of us. The quiz starts around 10.15 and is usually over by 12.30, and as the pub doesn't close until 3.30, it is frequently a long night out for many of us.

The post-quiz conversations often turn onto serious matters, and last night we moved from the sending-off of Beckham, via the death of Jesús Gil, to me putting in a paean of praise for Charlton and the season just past.

Later, there were fewer of us, and the talk turned back to Spain, and how people like Jesús Gil were allowed by the old Franco regime to rise to eminence, through legal corruption. It was agreed that the regime is still very much there in the background, and of course in the mentality of many people, too. Franco was still in power when I arrived in Madrid as a very young man in the early seventies, and I lived through the day, and the aftermath, of his death, as well as the night of the uprising of 23 February 1981. These things have been part of my life's furniture, if you will, but I don't always think of them, and just, like most people, try to get on with my life.

My Irish team-mate, Rory, thinks I should write down as much as I can recall about the last days of Franco and the transition, so maybe this is where that night happen. After all, Charlton won't be in action again for a couple of months.