Chapter 10: The Sound of Barcelona - Excerpt

It’s the drilling that wakes you up at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning. The same sputtering, spinning and wheezing that’s been your weekend alarm for the last six years. Where it comes from, who knows? Some days it’s the apartment next door, others the one above or below. What on earth are they doing? It doesn’t matter. You just want it to stop and pound on the wall. It’s the weekend for fuck’s sake! The drilling ceases at the bang of a bored hole. Five seconds of silence for a snooze before the hammering commences. It’s time to get up whether you want to or not.

You’re tired. The garbage trucks collecting the trash, the tricked-out scooters roaring down the street, the shouts and screams of drunks stumbling home make a decent night’s sleep impossible. The morning drilling and hammering make weekend lie-ins rarer than a sunny day in April and a full time job means there’s no sleeping in during the week. Staggering out of bed in a groggy and grumpy mood, you start the count down until naptime like a metro clock: Proper siesta minus six hours, fifty-nine minutes, thirteen seconds and counting.

At the elevator outside the flat, the light by the call buttons glows orange, indicating an open door somewhere in the building. Two minutes pass and still no sign of it. The drill has started again and is accompanied by Freddy Mercury wailing from a stereo at full volume. The stairs seem like the best option. Two flights down, the outside white iron-mesh gate of the elevator is flung open. The two red interior wooden doors are pushed in. There’s no one around so you enter a cab the size of clothes chest and pull the squeaky gate closed. A door to a flat flies open and woman runs out. “What are you doing?” she cries in Spanish, flinging open the gate to stop the elevator from leaving.

If you want to read the whole story, it's available here.