Desperately seeking a techsavvy someone

TENYEAROLD wanted for technological help as a result of last week’s column!

No sooner had that column been published, a column about listening to music in the car, than my inbox was flooded by a torrent of emails. Both said welcome to the wonderful world of music, Joe, may you find great pleasure in its limitless meadows. And if you go to Youtube.com you can get it for free.

I went to Youtube.com. And all the music I could think of — though admittedly that isn’t much — did indeed seem to be there, and on the advice of a Mr Loughnan I am currently scouring Lyttelton for a 10yearold to teach me how to transfer it on to one of those frightfully modern CD things that my car can play. So thank you.

But then, behold and caramba, I came across something that made my thorax leap. Could it be? Had I remembered it right? I clicked on the link. There was a pause, a bit of applause for a conductor or soloist, another pause dotted with audience coughs and then whammo. And on the instant I was hurled backwards down time’s supposedly oneway corridor, back to 1979 and Calle de Gascon de Gotor in Zaragoza. You know it? I lived there.

I was 22, fresh out of university, teaching English to Spanish housewives, naive, happy and broke. I had a room in a thirdfloor flat, a room that had been advertised in the paper with three words — grande cama buena; big good bed. It was a just description. The room was small, the bed vast. There was barely room to edge round it. There was no other furniture. I took it because it was cheap.

I shared a bathroom and a kitchen with two girls, a pretty boy and a spaniel. When the sun was shining the pretty boy would follow it around the building, going from the kitchen to his own room to the girls’ room, sitting on window sills and tanning himself. He rarely spoke. The girls owned the spaniel which was fat. Neither they nor it ever seemed to go outside. The girls lived in their housecoats and contrived between them to occupy both the kitchen and bathroom for as many hours of the day as possible.

When I was in I sat on the big bed and smoked Fortuna cigarettes and wrote poetry I’m glad I no longer have. But most of the time I was out, either working or playing. My main job at El Centro Ingles paid enough to keep me housed and fed, but if I wanted to drink and smoke I needed to teach private classes. One of these was at a factory outside town. I took a bus there every Wednesday afternoon to sit at a canteen table with a bunch of middle managers whose absolute belief in their own linguistic talent was matched only by their absolute inability to recall what I had taught them the week before. They were affable but dispiriting.

So before catching the bus on a Wednesday afternoon I would treat myself in the little bar on the shady side of Gascon de Gotor, treat myself to a fortifying lunch of a cold potato omelette and a couple of beers. The radio was always on.

And one Wednesday, as the time to leave for the bus approached and I was mooching into the second beer, a snatch of music came on, the start of something, a thumping crash of notes that went together in a way that stirred and thrilled the heart of me, as an anthem sometimes can, something huge and heroic.

‘‘Hear that,’’ I said to the barman, ‘‘did you hear that?’’ but the music had stopped already.

‘‘It’s an ad,’’ said the barman. ‘‘But the music, where’s the music from? Who wrote it?’’

The barman shrugged, and asked the other drinkers at the bar. They shrugged.

On the bus I hummed the tune to myself to preserve it. At the factory canteen I sang it to the middle managers. They shrugged.

In my classes that evening the housewives shrugged. My colleagues shrugged too, even Worried Jim who had once suspected me of being a spy sent by the Leeds Permanent Building Society to whom he owed £30.

It was six months later and in a different country that Polly, big cheerful Polly, teacher of music, finally didn’t shrug.

‘‘Tchaikowshi,’’ she said unhesitatingly, ‘‘first piano concerto.’’ And there it was again last week on Youtube.com. and I was back in Gascon de Gotor with hair and a big good bed. And if in the coming weeks you notice a 60yearold man overwhelmed with nostalgia at the wheel of a grey Mitsubishi Airtrek, you’ll know that I’ve found my 10yearold.

❛ On the instant I was hurled backwards down time’s supposedly oneway corridor, back to 1979 and Calle de Gascon de Gotor in

Zaragoza ❜