NOWHERE TO GO

The neg­a­tive ef­fects of the pan­demic are many and se­ri­ous. Apart from the thou­sands who have died or be­come ill, oth­ers have lost earn­ings or jobs, while en­tire sec­tors have been blighted. Mean­while, the en­tire pop­u­la­tion has seen free­doms cur­tailed due to mo­bil­ity re­stric­tions, face masks are the norm, and so­cial in­ter­ac­tion is at its low­est ebb ever. In fact, it’s hard to find any as­pect of so­ci­ety that hasn’t been touched by the pan­demic, how­ever unim­por­tant, as I found out.

I had two ap­point­ments in Barcelona, one early and the other to be de­ter­mined. I went into the cap­i­tal hop­ing I wouldn’t have to hang around all day wait­ing for the sec­ond per­son I had to meet to let me know when they would be free. The first meet­ing went off with­out a hitch, and I took the op­por­tu­nity to go to the bath­room be­fore leav­ing. With time to kill, I got a cof­fee from a bar that was closed, of course, but was serv­ing take­aways. Al­though I had to wait, I was con­tent sit­ting in the sun, sip­ping my cof­fee and doing some work on my lap­top. Nev­er­the­less, it took an hour for me to get the call I was wait­ing for, and I’d had an­other cof­fee in the mean­time. We were to meet in the city cen­tre at 12, but I de­cided to make my way over there on my mo­tor­bike.

I got there with half an hour spare and re­alised I could do with an­other trip to the bath­room. Then it dawned on me that the bars were closed. Surely they wouldn’t mind me using the toi­let? But the places where I asked had their in­te­ri­ors taped off and I was turned away. I asked a po­lice­man if there were any pub­lic toi­lets nearby and he said there weren’t, adding that I shouldn’t get any ideas about going be­hind a rub­bish bin in the street.

Thanks for your help, of­fi­cer, I thought as, start­ing to get a bit des­per­ate, I wan­dered around look­ing for any­where that might meet my needs. I found noth­ing, and by now my ap­point­ment was due. I com­forted my­self think­ing that I could go in the place where we were to meet, but to my hor­ror the per­son I had to talk to told me they hadn’t brought the keys to the premises, and would it be okay to sit on a bench in the square? I said yes. In fact, I said yes to every­thing, hop­ing to keep the meet­ing as short as pos­si­ble. I’d have given them my credit card pass­word if it had meant I could get away sooner.

After what seemed like hours but was only 15 min­utes, we bumped el­bows and I was left in the mid­dle of the square cal­cu­lat­ing how long it would take to walk to a de­part­ment store up the road com­pared to get­ting on my bike, which was parked right there, and mak­ing it to the mo­tor­way ser­vice sta­tion. I de­cided on the lat­ter, and with no time to waste began putting on my bik­ing gear in what seemed like slow mo­tion. Lift­ing my leg to get on the bike was agony.

I was in a part of Barcelona I knew well, and so I de­cided to take a short­cut that would get me to the mo­tor­way five min­utes quicker. Yet, just me­tres away from it I ran into road­works, the road was closed and the one-way sys­tem forced me all the way around. Every traf­fic light was red, and through weep­ing eyes I scanned my sur­round­ings hop­ing to see a pub­lic toi­let, per­haps a petrol sta­tion, or any­where I could re­lieve my­self with­out get­ting ar­rested.

Even­tu­ally, numb below the waist, I was on the mo­tor­way and going as fast as I could get away with so as to get to the ser­vice sta­tion be­fore suf­fer­ing in­evitable hu­mil­i­a­tion. I must have gone into a trance, be­cause I can’t re­mem­ber the de­tails of the ride, just that I was sud­denly pulling into the car park. Who knows, I may have even left the keys in the ig­ni­tion. I ran to the main build­ing in a sort of half crouch and – thank the heav­ens – was fi­nally able to re­solve my sit­u­a­tion. Af­ter­wards, I re­alised I still had my mo­tor­bike hel­met on.

As I said, the neg­a­tive ef­fects of Covid are ter­ri­ble and make my pan­demic-re­lated prob­lem pale by com­par­i­son. I’d just ask the au­thor­i­ties one thing: next time you force a clo­sure, could you please spend some of my tax money on more pub­lic toi­lets?