Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

“It’s not every day you turn 58,” I said to myself in the mirror. And then I had a terrible realisation. My new haircut – the remedial one – has stopped me from looking like Donald Trump. But there has been a terrible price to pay: I think I now look like Elton John. It had been nagging away at me for a while, but there’s no denying it: there is a tint of something in there, combined with a certain pouchiness in the jowls, that could make people think I’m about to burst out into “Sacrifice” or “Crocodile Rock”. I’m really not sure where this is going – or even if it is a normal reaction to staring at yourself for too long in the mirror on your 58th birthday – but I don’t like it and am not sure what to do with it.

So I spent a lot of the day inside, working away on various New Zealand topics. And then I thought to myself, “I’m in Malaga, why am I sitting inside?” and went for another walk. I’m in the Victoria Kent/Sixto “barrio” of the city, and I like it. It is not the Malaga you see on post cards, but it’s real and it’s got a certain something I can’t put my finger on yet. And let me tell you the secret about discovering Malaga. (It’s probably the same secret as to discovering any city, but it seems to be more striking here.) Malaga is, like many cities, built along grand axes: my “barrio” lies between Avenida de Velázquez and Avenida de Europa. These are mainly designed for people to get around. The shops are mostly large and soulless – although not as soulless as in North American cities – of the Mercadona sort. But step back a street – and there is a veritable farrago of streets running higgledy-piggledy in every direction – and you see Spanish life. Ironmongers, cobblers, convenience stores, bars, hairdressers, clothes stores, bakeries, you name it. I spent a happy 90 minutes wandering from street to street, looking into windows and saying “Buendia” to whomever looked at me. Then my legs got sore, so I wandered back.

Toyed with going out for dinner, but I had a hot date with Mrs Ottawacker and Ottawacker Jr at 10:30pm, so it didn’t seem worth it. And very nice it was too - Ottawacker Jr had a cake for me (it might have been a recycled piece of his birthday cake), and while I couldn’t actually eat it, we had a good laugh at me trying to blow the candle out from over here. And then I went to bed: exhausted.