Goodbye Summer

Our first Granollian Summer has been and gone and Autumn is pushing in with rain and a cool breeze. These moments of transition, when the familiar one is still with us, but the entrance of the new can not be denied, bring me into a state of contemplation.

August was a barren month! There were hardly any cars on the roads and the Porxarda was quiet except for pigeons and a grandfather dozing under a tree. The shops closed, people left for their summer vacations and even the famous chips shop locked its doors. 

Granollers was like a baking oven. Sun beating down from above and the hot concrete cooking us from below.  Someone said there would be the blessings of rain, but I didn’t see much of it. I drank my first claro. I ordered ‘clara’ accidentally, but we managed to fix that naughty vowel. We call the drink a shandy in Australian English.

I had a busy summer with visitors from Norway and Italy coming to visit famous ‘Barcelona’ and I had started a beginners intensive Catalan course. I complained that it was too difficult, and the teacher explained that’s why it’s called ‘intensive’, with an expressive shrug of the shoulders. So much for sympathy.

It was my first festa major also. Wow. I hardly slept and it seems nobody who stayed in the town did either. You knew what to expect, but I! How innocent! People had said there would be activities all day, but I had no idea that there would be so many people. The town did an excellent job in cleaning everything up every day to start the new festivities all over again. Granollers was well organised and  had people coming from all over the place to see what the ‘fok’ was about.

Goodbye Summer. See you again next year.

 Originally posted in Revista del Valles