MIRAGES

I am a star fish on a high wire; that’s being self-em­ployed for you: two decades and count­ing, flail­ing, edg­ing for­ward cen­time­tre by cen­time­tre, pay­ing my way in Cat­alo­nia, try­ing every­thing to keep my bal­ance.

I can see the end of the wire. We (my part­ner being self-em­ployed too) are get­ting closer, now in our six­ties and flag­ging. But week­end breaks are mi­rages. There is no let up, quite the re­verse, not least be­cause of squalls and eco­nomic storms and the ul­ti­mate brain fart that is Brexit. Yes, stu­pidly, most of our in­come re­mains tied to that sink­ing is­land that is being asset stripped by some un­savoury, cun­ning liars whose wealth is only out­weighed by their greed. They feed off an ar­chaic elec­toral sys­tem, the mis­placed trust of a mi­nor­ity and the cur­rent pen­chant for pop­ulism and a pe­cu­liar jin­go­ism that would be laugh­able if they were not fos­ter­ing prej­u­dice. And they are killing off small busi­nesses left right and cen­tre. Please re­mem­ber, though, that it is only sup­ported by a fast di­min­ish­ing num­ber, a fact that in it­self sums up one na­tion’s ex­is­ten­tial cri­sis.

What a favour the coun­try of my birth has done, though, high­light­ing the risks of this mis­in­for­ma­tion age, while bol­ster­ing so suc­cess­fully mem­ber states’ be­lief and unity within the Eu­ro­pean Union. We need to stick to­gether for a host of rea­sons, not least be­cause of co­op­er­a­tion in the face of cli­matic col­lapse and, of course, neigh­bour Ukraine’s strug­gle and ex­em­plary courage.

Being a writer is pre­car­i­ous at the best of times, but at least I can vent. Then there is the mar­ket­ing of ex­quis­ite olive oil from our val­ley which is worth­while. Wel­com­ing guests to our farm cot­tage was, until Covid, an­other piece of the eco­nomic puz­zle. The mis­take has been to leave for far too long most of our eggs in bas­ket case Britain. So the hunt is on for other places to ped­dle our wares. Weirdly, I have been pre­oc­cu­pied of late with my pre­dom­i­nant Scan­di­na­vian roots and sud­denly we have the chance of ship­ping olive juice to Swe­den. Is there some­thing in the power of thought?

How grate­ful I am to be Cata­lan, if only a res­i­dent. If dual na­tion­al­ity was an op­tion I would take it in a heart­beat, but we all know that may not be in my life-time. Per­haps I need to dwell on it a bit longer. You never know. Will power.

But we are here, thank good­ness, sus­tained by the na­ture, the cul­ture and our dear, un­con­di­tional friend­ships. And I take my hat off to the in­no­v­a­tive Cata­lans, the small busi­nesses and co­op­er­a­tives every­where. May you pros­per. And may not all week­ends be mi­rages.