got to go again

Come Rain or Come Shine

Come Rain or Come Shine

Well, rain or no rain, there is no rest for the wicked. The day of the rotten weather turned out pretty good, actually. At least I can guarantee there is one pigeon who definitely would back me up on this. The rain seized enough for a Norwegian to go sunbathing (take it as you want). A short and more or less aimless stroll (well, one Geocache found, and you can’t really call anything GPS-assisted aimless, can you?) around Calafell brought us to a tiny town square. The fountain was there, so I could easily imagine couples kissing there on warm evenings full of the salty sea breeze and something else equally romantic. This was a cold afternoon though, so besides us only a couple of mothers were watching their children run around and a random guy was talking on the phone.

Soon though did we detect a distress in the atmosphere. A pigeon of the commonest flavor was flapping its wings somewhere around the top of a brutally trimmed acacia, one of many surrounding the place. Since every once in a while it would hang upside down, something was definitely wrong with the bird, and soon we saw that it was trapped on something that looked like fishing line. Well, even for Max who can climb anything like a monkey the trunk was unscalable. No chance of getting up there: no ladders, no trash fixtures to stand on, nothing. In fact, after a while we were quite ready to leave the unfortunate bird to its ugly fate when we realized the man on the phone was just as concerned and also made a couple of attempts on climbing the tree. Even though by features and complexion of skin he could pass as Moroccan, the contact was established in Russian – very decent from his side, I should add. God bless his light weight, as I had to let him step on my complaining feeble shoulders and up he went, to the rescue of the birdie.

He parted the pigeon with the tree, but one of the bird’s paws? legs? whatever the birds have, anyway – one of those was completely entangled in a bunch of old fishing line. There occurred some  tossing of my Leatherman tool up and down for a bit – and seriously – all language exams should contain a section when you try to explain how to close the knife blade and open the little scissors on the inside of the handle – the pigeon-saver passed with flying colors. Anyway, it wasn’t possible to do anything with the nylon mess while clinging to the top of a thin tree, so the bird was transported down to us in a plastic bag (I am normally annoyed at Lydia carrying around a stash of little plastic baggies, but now I’m afraid I have to give her a lifetime carte blanché). We did the rest of the fine work and were in fact able to remove – no, not the pigeon’s foot – all of the line that got him in trouble. Off he went on his pigeon business, as did the Russian-speaking fellow, unfortunately before we could make closer acquaintance. But really, how much closer can you get than letting someone stand on you?

The evening was crowned by chatting with some nice ladies from Stavanger who were thoroughly enjoying each others’ company and the fruits of Spanish wine-making in one of the little places facing the beach, where we happened to eat the modest dinner. Yes, they thought Calafell was the best place in the whole world, yes, one of them owned a flat to which they all travelled every year on the 18th of May (yes, after celebrating May 17th – Norwegian national day – at home, as decent people do – added our consciences).



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