Personal Reflections

Welcome! Fancy a Vermut?

~ Kate Wilson ~ 9 Comments

This is my first post on the new look blog.  I have been so busy planning and preparing for the changeover that I forgot to write a post to welcome you over here.

So, let’s sit down and share a virtual vermut, which is my way of saying there is no one theme to this post, it is more like a chat between friends, dancing from one subject to another. With a virtual vermut in hand!

1. Independence Day

Last Sunday we had the independence vote in Catalunya. It was a success in spite of many legal attempts to stop it happening. It is good to know I was there and I took part.

We went to our voting station, my stepsons old school in fact. There was a long queue winding down the street and around the corner and down the main road. People of all ages were there and many arrived with the whole family, and the dog.   We met friends. I saw the elderly couple who own my parking space, and the lady who runs the local gym.  People arrived in wheel chairs and supported on walking frames.

The best thing for me was how happy everyone was. Even though it was not an officially approved vote, the Spanish government even called it ‘sterile and useless’, in spite of all this, people were deeply moved to be voting at last on something so close to their hearts. It was well organised, calm, determined and community based. Inside at the ballot box almost everyone had their photo taken at the important moment of dropping the envelope into the slot.

2. Brrrrrrrr

The weather changed this week. As always it surprised me with the speed of the change. Only a couple of weeks ago I was swimming with my sister at Llafranc on the Costa Brava and then suddenly I was putting on coats and boots and even wearing socks to bed at night.  When I complain that the summer is too hot and the winter too cold and there is not enough time in between with just sunny mild days, my partner replies, ‘This is the Mediterranean and that is the nature of it. Sudden changes, extremes of weather, not so much of the inbetweens’  Does this say something about the Mediterranean personality too? After five years living here I find I am more like this too.

3. Family

I am pleased to tell you there seems to be a mellowing in the relationship between my stepson and myself. He is 19 now and although he’s still not much of a helper or a chatter at home and has to be reminded almost every time to wash his dishes or clean the hairs from the bathroom sink, I still notice a softening of the walls that keep us apart.  Is it his age?  Is it because I have spent a lot of time sending him love and peace as I stride along the streets, flicking through my prayer beads?  Is it because I have changed?

I practise speaking to him as he whizzes past me in the house and maybe even these few words that show I am interested have opened up  little gaps in the wall. I hope so as sometimes it feels impossible to continue living with someone who ignores me so totally. It has been almost  five years!

4. Five Years

Five years ago in December 2009 I started writing this blog. I was sitting at my desk in a chilly flat in Carrer Valencia, Barcelona.  I felt lonely and a bit lost in the middle of my new life in Catalunya. I had a new and still fragile relationship, several new friendships which were as yet untested , two languages to learn, a  beloved yet strange city to explore, and I felt myself to be vulnerable and anxious.  People kept questioning my ways of thinking and doing things. Even walking down the street was challenging as I hadn’t yet discovered that people in Catalunya walk on the right side and British people walk on the left!

I decided to write a blog and the name came to me almost immediately. The Catalan Way – it was like my private joke reminding myself that while I was here I must do things in the Catalan way.  I had decided to be open to change and I didn’t want to be a typical foreigner who insisted on doing things their way. I had come to learn and to expand my possibilities so now I must educate myself about the Catalan way and try to follow it.

The blog became my friend and my guide. From writing it I made new friends and I learned more about myself as I tried to understand what was going on around and inside me. I hope I also have shared some of this in a way that is interesting for others even if you have never been to Catalunya or met me.

Now here is my new version of The Catalan Way. I am very excited about this new stage of the journey and  I hope you will come along with me to see what happens next. I know of course that it is as much about me as it is about Catalunya.  I often struggle with decisions about what to write – more on Catalunya and less on my life here?  Or the other way around?   But Kate’s way seems to be a mix of both.

Welcome to Kate’s journey on the Catalan way.

I am still here

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

I was eating supper this evening at home and suddenly thought,

“here I am sitting around a table with four men, one Catalan, two Basque and one Indian, all speaking Spanish and eating mushroom risotto made by me with fresh chantarelles picked in the mountains yesterday. Isn’t life amazing and interesting and surprising and good?”

I sometimes have to pinch myself to check that it is all real. Just over five years ago I was living restlessly alone in Cornwall and dreaming of how to create a new life. And almost exactly 10 years ago I was in Barcelona for the very first time and wondering how I could manage to come back as soon as possible as I had fallen in love with the city.

Here I am, back after a long gap in my writing and yet still travelling along the catalan way. So much to explain and to tell you. So many stories to tell that I didn’t know where to begin, until now.

Suddenly tonight I decided to plunge in, right here and now.
Tomorrow Amma starts her three day visit to Granollers. This is the first stage of her European tour and the only place she is visiting in Spain. They say she is here in Barcelona but actually, she is here in Granollers and three of the men we shared supper with are Amma volunteers who have been preparing the sports centre for her and for us.  They are working all day and sleeping in the other part of our house, the abandonned part, the part that I feel is full of ghosts.
They said they are sleeping well and I feel sure that their preesence along with the Amma energy they carry, is helping us heal our strange home.

To be continued…

Glasgow School of Art

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

We were exploring a cemetery with family graves up on a hill above Glasgow  near the Gallowgate when we saw the smoke. 
In the town centre.
‘I hope its not my house’ said my sister

Later we drove into town to do some shopping on Sauchiehall Street and discovered that the Glasgow School of Art was on fire.


It is a stunning building, a centre piece of the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and a working building where many people I know did their art degrees. I visited it over 12 years ago and took the tour around the famous library. I always remember seeing students using beautiful Mackintosh chairs to stand on while hanging works on a wall.  I wasnt a museum but somewhere living and vibrant but also a work of art in its own right.

It seems the fire started in the basement and that the building is mostly saved. But the damage inside must be massive. A couple of hours later when we passed again it was still burning and the firemen were still on ladders soaking it from giant hoses.  I don’t think the library has survived.

Delicious Scottish food

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

When I arrived in Glasgow I got a message from an old friend who spends most of the year in Brazil. She said she would be passing through Glasgow Queen Street station and could we meet?
I was so excited at the idea of seeing her after about 4 years absence that I went down there and waited, and waited,  only after half an hour realising that the ‘ thu’ in her message meant Thursday!
So I am off there again today!
But I had a good time in the town centre anyway, shopping and looking at all the amazing buildings

Headed straight for Greggs the baker for an empire biscuit – the ones with cherries on top

Watched a handsome highland piper

Here is the street scene…..as you see the sun does shine in Glasgow and people sit outside drinking in cafes

There was a chill wind so I had on a borrowed coat from my niece but there were plenty of brave Scottish biddies in tee shirts or vests.

Came home on the wee shoogle….. the Glasgow metro which is small and intimate and cosy

The sky was intense blue and it was quite hard to see in front of me as the light in Scotland is so bright and clear

Later in the evening we went for a wonderful curry in Akbar’s, a famous restaurant which started in Bradford

I have never seen a Naan mountain before. That is my gorgeous niece hiding behind it – hope she doesn’t mind appearing here!   Thank you both for such a fabulous dinner. I dream of curry when I am in Catalunya.

Arrival in Scotland

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

The Catalan Way is on the road for the next couple of months.

I am travelling around the UK visiting family and friends before arriving in Cornwall and celebrating The Feast of Saint John in Penzance. Otherwise known as Golowan!  Midsummer is  a big celebration in Catalunya too and also centres on the  feast day of Sant Joan but I thought it would be lovely this year to have it in the UK. And there will be several Catalans coming over too. But more on that later!

I have slipped behind with posting – not from lack of ideas but time has suddenly speeded up and I don’t like the feeling of trying to catch up so I am going to just start where I am, right now.

Which, today is Glasgow


 I arrived yesterday at Prestwick airport and as always was surprised by the emotional impact of landing in Scotland. I haven’t lived here since 1980 – 34 years – but I still get a feeling of fullness in my chest when I arrive whether by train, car or plane.  I worked in the airport cafe when I was 16 but it is totally unrecognisable now.  I like this feeling of things changing – when you stay in one place it happens slowly but as soon as you move away it seems to speed up.  I say I like it but sometimes I am not so sure – change means excitement but also loss and I need to feel the balance is right between change and stability otherwise I start to lose my footing.  This visit there will be a lot of change to take in – including storm damage in Penzance, my friends new home in Norfolk and my Cornish cabin with no animals beside me

There is always a feeling of coming home when I arrive in Scotland.

Home.  What does that mean?   There are so many off pat answers but I am still exploring it.  Wouldn’t it be nice to really feel that home is wherever you put your hat?  

I always enjoy the first moments of speaking English and not having to think before I open my mouth. When the man at the sweetie counter said “See you later” I felt something different than when people call out “Hasta luego”  but I don’t really understand why.

Troon station with its new translation into Gaelic which seems odd as noone there speaks it. We are not in the Highlands – it’s Ayrshire!

 Glasgow Central station is impressive as always.  A metallic palace.  Opened in 1879 and now a listed building.

You don’t see so many women wearing headscarves as you used to when I was young

These tiles are a little reminder of Barcelona, as you walk out of the station

There was a chill wind out on the street while I waited for my sister to come and pick me up. Weather and where to live – that is yet another interesting line of thought.   How much does the weather really matter and why was it fine for me when I lived here and now I seem to be all soft and weak and want sunshine? 

I am in the afterweek of my birthday and as always it makes me think too much about age, time and change

Add to that the strong sensations of returning to my birth country and also that I am to travel for a month and you will see that I need perhaps a large whisky, a hot curry and an evening of playing cards with my niece. which is exactly what I have to look forward to this evening! 

See you later!