Driver

posted by ElDiablo at 02:21

We never had a car in my family. To this day neither my dad nor my mum hold a driving license. I never really needed it myself to go through my time in high school and university, luckily both were located in central Madrid, a mere 15min tube ride from home. I grew up completely uninterested in driving. My feelings towards cars where of detached ambivalence: I was able to appreciate the line of say a Porsche Carrera but wasn't curious about what it would be like driving that one or any other motor vehicle. As a result I never got my driving license. With time your circumstances and your mindset change. I started to realise that although owning and maintaining a car can be expensive, at time pointless an more often than not a pain in the backside, it also gives you freedom of movement to travel around, visit places and widen your options when deciding where to live or how to commute to work. My sister figured this out quicker than me and became a driver ten years ago. 

So, I promised myself that getting my license was the first thing I was going to do once I moved back to Madrid. True to my word I joined a driving school by the end of May, went to theory classes for a month and passed the written test at the traffic agency a couple of weeks ago. After that I had to wait for about a week for the school to find me a gap in their driving instruction schedule, but finally, at last, I was going to sit behind a steering wheel (with the intention to use it) for the first time in my life. I was excited, really up for it. They had booked me for a 45min mid-morning driving instruction session, daily, starting on Friday 27 July. 

That day I turned up early at the pick up place and waited in the blazing heat for the liveried school car with the number plate I had been given. After a while, on time, a spankingly new antracite-grey Renault Clio matching the description passed by and pulled over a few meters down the road. The driver, a young woman got out, so did the passenger, a wizened old man, probably already over sixty, with a buzz cut and and boxer's nose. The woman left and I crossed the street and introduced myself to my new instructor. He squinted at me, with an annoyed expression in his face: "Did they book you with me? For now? Pfff, sure, why not, maybe I'll be able to rest once I'm dead." I thought "either the idiots at the driving school didn't tell him or this guy is a bit peculiar." He beckoned me into the car. We got in, I fastened my seatbelt and adjusted the seat and the mirrors while he noted down my details. Still writing and without taking his eyes from his notebook he went: "Don't believe you are very clever and can do this, you can't, you are nothing, you are zero, less than zero, zero to the left - but you might eventually learn how, if you abandon that pride." WTF?? Baffled, I nevertheless nodded in agreement, then he continued: "Driving a car is not easy. Easy is to use a pen, but then you can't kill someone with a pen." Obviously he hadn't seen Casino. But it was a fair point so again I agreed visibly. Also informed him this was the very first time I was going to handle a motor vehicle: "This is your first time ever? Really? But do you know the controls of a car, at least?" I said I knew the theory, what they were for and so on. "Good, then start it, put first gear and off we go." That was all in the way of preparation/explanation/anything, I must have looked as if I wanted a baptism of fire. As I stalled the car twice trying to join the traffic he chuckled: "You were not lying when you said you had never done this before, my God!" Luckily he decided he'd better give me a clue about how to get out of there: "Ease off the clutch slowly! And don't accelerate that much!" Finally we managed to be off and running. As we slowly approached General Perón my feeling was of absolute lack of control over the car, the accelerator too sensitive, not to mention the brake, and the clutch a device designed by a madman who obviously wanted to make learning to drive a car as easy as chewing your own elbow. We turned right onto Dulcinea, at which point I realised I had no idea how to switch on the indicators, thought for an instant about looking for the switch on the dashboard but gave up immediately for fear the distraction made me drive the car into the back of the van in front. In the meantime, my instructor kindly passed on his first impressions about my potential: "Forget about taking the exam before September, no way". As the car stuttered forward at the green light and into the scarily busy Raimundo Fernandez Villaverde I got the first earful from the less than sympathetic drivers behind me. We followed towards Reina Victoria and the less busy streets near Ciudad Universitaria. I relaxed a bit and tried to concentrate more on using the pedals correctly. Not that my instructor would let me: "What do we do when, like now, we are approaching a pedestrian walking on the road? In this case, being blonde and with legs like those we look at her - I know at my age I shouldn't but what the hell...", then he continued in a more philosophical vein: "It is very difficult to find a good woman, so if you happen to run into one, don't let her go." Which is great advice but I'd have rather have him giving me some constructive tips about car handling. After that I kind of mentally shut him away but some of his gems about nothing in particular still reached me, things like "People don't kill other people because they are communists. They do it because they try to impose their beliefs on others" or "Boy, do I not like homosexual behaviour" (don't ask me). This lasted for twenty minutes or so, during which I gingerly negotiated my way through several traffic lights, roundabouts and intersections without much help coming from the passenger seat apart from the one you could find in a motivational essay written by Travis Bickle. Actually I'm being a bit harsh, he probably saved us from having several accidents by correcting my leaden-footed action on the pedals without me noticing. Eventually we managed to get back to the school, and once home and dry he offered his verdict: "You might let yourself be guided but you are not that malleable, it would be different if you were younger, sadly at your age the clay has started to set." 

Which I guess I should take he means I am not completely hopeless but will have to work looong and hard - and endure many, many more sessions with this my new pontificating companion

Yuyatwi

posted by ElDiablo at 20:45

I know some of you guys are both into seeing the world and photography - or at least into buying cameras - so I thought you might enjoy having a look at the work of this fella, a friend of a very special person to me, who has been doing exactly that, travelling the globe and snapping his camera at it with some truly awesome results. I reckon he is very talented, and I admit I know nothing about photography but then again as John "I'm the bloody Pope" Cleese said I know what I like. See what you think, you are encouraged to leave your comments on the website - but if you do then write something meaty for God's sake, don't embarrass me with some "very nice photo" kind of blandness, c'mon let the beauty of the images touch you and tell all about it - or at least get into photo-geek mode and discuss really really hardcore stuff like light levels, exposure time or whatever.

More here and here (both in Spanish).

Thumbnail of Antelope Canyon composition reproduced with the author's permission. © Roberto Carlos Fernandez Gonzalez, all rights reserved.

Bands And Tracks

posted by Jaitu at 21:35

Last night ElDiablo and I met up with TechMaster and a few other friends to see Womble692's new band play at a local venue. We all had a good time and I took a couple of hundred photos, many of which fall into the category of 'artistic' by which I mean blurry. I'll let Womble692 go into more detail of the evening from the stage-front perspective if he wishes to. Suffice to say it constantly amazes me how he manages to make such wonderful sounds from what is really nothing more than a plank and some elastic bands.
Before heading out to the gig ElDiablo and I thrashed a couple of Aston Martin DB9s around the famous or maybe infamous Nordschleife circuit at the Nurburgring. Needless to say this was done from the comfort of a sofa and made possible by Forza Motorsport on the XBox. Anyway that little story, truth though it is, was really only an excuse to embed this clip. Imagine our racing skills to be like this only stretched over 24 miles.

RTDL2 Does Retail

posted by Jaitu at 23:13

For a little while now ElDiablo and myself have been working on a new side project. Using my pitiful web design skills and our combined imaginations we have begun an RTDL2 associated store. See the link up there on the new nav bar?
The shop is open and ready to take orders so please take a look at what's on offer. Even if you don't like anything you see just yet, tell your friends that the place exists and keep an eye on it as there are plenty more designs in the works. For now we are concentrating on (we think) simple reasonably priced products although we have the capacity to provide other more divers product lines. There will also be more in the way of lady-centric goods appearing over time.

Tignes

posted by ElDiablo at 23:30

I returned on Sunday from a week-long ski holiday in the French Alps. I had a fantastic time and I'm still struggling to readjust to normal life, my mind constantly going back to last week and how good it all was so I thought maybe posting about it here could help to draw a line under the whole thing and (sigh) get on with every day's boring routine.

Before this trip I had only been to the snow in three different occasions, just for the day, and couldn't ski at all. But I had always meant to take a proper ski holiday where I could have lessons and learn. I have some friends that are keen skiers and they had always asked me to go with them in one of their trips but for one reason or other I hadn't been able to make it until now. The original idea was to go somewhere in Spain but the lack of snow this winter forced us to change plans and look higher and further North. In the end we settled for Tignes because being one of the highest resorts in Europe we reckoned we should almost certainly find snow there. We ended up being eight people: three lovely girls, Cristina, ski-mad Sandra and spunky Angeles; and five boys, Antonio, Fernando, Ricardo, Fernando's nephew Jose and myself. The whole party except me set off in two cars from Madrid, they had to go via Grenoble so I flew there to join them and we continued by road to Tignes.

The Tignes resort is split in five small villages at different altitudes: Val Claret, Le Lac, Le Lavachet, Les Boisses and Les Brevieres. The place where we stayed is the UCPA auberge in Val Claret which at 2300m is the highest of the five. The UCPA is a government-sponsored non-profit French organisation whose aim is to facilitate the practice of outdoor sporting activities. We had booked a week-long ski program with them which included full-boarded accommodation, ski-pass for the entire Espace Killy (Tignes and Val d'Isere resorts) for the whole week, third-party civil insurance, ski equipment and five hours of ski instruction per day, all that for less than 600euro. The program starts on a Sunday and finishes the following Saturday after lunch. You check in before 5:30pm and can collect your equipment from their ski shop until 6:30pm. You can ski then from that very first day although by the time we arrived to the auberge on Sunday afternoon and finished all the formalities at the reception the ski shop was already closed so we got our bags up to the rooms and went straight down to check out the place.

The UCPA auberge is a hostel-like establishment where all bedrooms are modules comprising two connected 4-person cabins: each cabin has independent heating, four bunks and a sink and each lodger has its own individual closet; the module has a shared shower and a toilet. You have to bring your own towels but bedding is provided (pillow cases, sheets and a duvet). The common area in the ground floor near the reception comprises the restaurant and kitchens; the bar and adjacent rest area with tables, chairs and beanie bags; a recreation zone with two pool tables, satellite TV and PlayStation and table games; a small stage/dance-floor area; and the common toilets. There are also additional rooms for after-ski activities such as stretching and aerobic. WiFi internet access is available in all areas. The place is not a hotel so they don't offer anything like bedroom or cleaning services: you are expected to keep the premises tidy and before you leave the cleaning lady checks your room and stamps your personal card to give the OK. On arrival you are given a key to your cabin, the ski pass and you personal lodger and equipment cards (which you have to present to collect you ski gear). You also have to leave a deposit (I think it was 50euro each) which is returned to you at check out time and covers any damage to the equipment or premises. Personal insurance is not included though: if you haven't got any the UCPA offers basic accident coverage for an extra 15euro, this includes first aid and airlift service from the slopes but not any further medical treatment. We all signed for this and as it turned out we were glad we did. You are also assigned to one of the instruction groups depending on your skiing ability. Our bunch was spread out across pretty much the whole spectrum: Sandra and Jose are top-level, extremely good skiers; Angeles and Antonio while not as good are fully competent and experienced ones; Cristina and Fernando fall more into an intermediate level; which left Ricardo and myself together in the same group of absolutely wet-behind-the-ears beginners.

The usual day went by as follows: you wake up early, between 7:30 and 8:00am, freshen up and go down to the restaurant for breakfast. You then go back up to your cabin, dress up in your ski clothes and get down to the storage room where your ski gear is kept (you are assigned one of the storage rooms in the basement when you pick your equipment, access is code-restricted) put on your boots and carry your skis out to your group's meeting point where you join your ski instructor and the rest of your group mates. Morning instruction starts at 9:00am and lasts for two and a half hours. Then is back to the auberge for lunch, which is served at 12:00pm. At 13:30pm is back to the slopes for the afternoon session, another two and a half hours of instruction until 5:00pm; then back to the auberge for a shower and free time for the rest of the day. Tea and pastries are served at 5:30pm, dinner at 7:30pm. The bar is open throughout and there are organised 'après-ski' events every day, like stretching sessions, 'Gym Tonic' work outs, French stand up comedy (funnier than it sounds) or themed night disco-parties. The atmosphere at the auberge is pretty much a collegiate one, most of the lodgers are young people in their twenties but there were also groups of thirtysomethings and even older. Of course you don't have to participate of any of this if you don't feel like it, most of the evenings we just sat down to chill-out with a couple of bottles of wine or headed off to Val Claret centre for a drink and check out the shops.

As a beginner the two first days of ski instruction are hard. At least I found them hard. To the physical exhaustion add the difficulty to understand and execute what the instructor is telling you which generally involves completely different groups of muscles to the ones you normally use while balance-wise going against everything your instinct tells you to do when standing on a steep slope. Then there is the fear factor, when you lack control you pick up speed pretty quickly and if panic sets in you'll almost certain to loose it completely making the fall inevitable. It didn't help that on Tuesday morning, barely ten minutes into the first descent (and in what would be the only negative incident of the whole trip) my group mate Ricardo had to pull out. We had descended a quite steep green (cat.: easy) piste up to the 'arret-net' (safety net) placed before a busy intersection. Ricardo, who was lagging behind, started loosing control and realising he was never going to make the turn made a dumb decision: instead of dropping to the ground he continued at speed and let the chest-high safety net stop him. Which it did, but also sent him over in a somersault, his right ski getting caught under the net and not releasing the bonding. He landed violently on the other side but by then the damage had been done. He lay on the snow writhing in agony, clutching his right knee. I took off my skis and hurried towards him. Nicolas, the ski instructor, was already there calming him down, making him check if he could move his toes inside the boot and trying to get an idea of the extent of the injury. Ricardo couldn't stand up on his right leg so Nicolas called the piste emergency service on his mobile. About four minutes later a nurse with the Red-Cross logo on his yellow ski jacket came skiing down the slope dragging a sledge-mounted stretcher. The first thing she did is ask if Ricardo had personal insurance; he did have it (we had all signed for it) but had forgotten to take with him the small ID card that certified it. I explained that to her and showed my own card, that seemed to convince her and she started examining his knee but it wasn't until Nicolas called the UCPA centre and confirmed that Ricardo was effectively covered that she agreed to take him down to the medical centre. In five minutes she had immobilised his knee and loaded and secured him (and his skis) on the stretcher. I offered to go down with them in case I could be of any help but she said there was no need since as soon as he had been examined by the doctor he would be transferred by ambulance to the UCPA. And so we wished Ricardo good luck and there she disappeared down the slope at incredible speed pulling the stretcher with my struck down mate on it behind her. After that the mood of the group remained sombre the whole morning, everyone was worried for Ricardo but also scared to realise that something like that could very well happen to any of us. Fortunately when we returned to the auberge for lunch Ricardo was already there and in relatively good shape: the doctor had ruled out any serious injury and what looked initially like something nasty ended up being just a sprained knee. Ski was over for him for at least a couple of weeks though. He also had to pay the doctor for the treatment, about 100euro; and again not having his insurance ID card on him resulted in the ambulance crew temporarily taking his skis as deposit.

The fun begins when what you're being taught starts making a difference. It's like something clicks somewhere and suddenly things fall into place: you manage to keep your body and the skis at the right angle, you finally shift your weight effectively and to the correct foot in the turns, your timing improves and you start getting into something resembling a rhythm. That moment of epiphany occurred to me on Wednesday. It was rest morning and we didn't have instruction but instead of sleeping in we took advantage to go and ski all the friends together for the first time. The plan was to take the chairlift up to the Col de Fresse and do some blue (cat.: medium) pistes on the way down. At last it had been snowing heavily on Tuesday which guaranteed some great snow the following morning. I was nervous at the prospect of going down my first blue and didn't sleep well that night. The day started grey and overcast but once we got on the chairlift it opened up and a glorious sun rose over the top of La Grande Motte showing the beauty of the immaculate white valley in all its magnificence. We got off the lift at the top and headed down Prariond. There were very few people at that time so we had the ample, almost untouched piste for ourselves. I started tentatively, trying to familiarise myself with a slope more steep that anything I had done before, to remember every advice Nicolas had given me so far. Suddenly I realised I was trailing Angeles comfortably; admittedly she was minding me and therefore wasn't going as fast as she normally would in those conditions, but she kept a reasonable speed and I was following on her tracks, matching her on every turn; I could notice I was still leaning backwards a bit too much, keeping my arms to my sides and my upper body wasn't as loose at it should but I was aware of it and trying to correct it. I grew confident and started to really enjoy the descent. The high lasted almost the whole morning, until the moment when due to overconfidence and (if I was to be unfair) the advice information overload well-meaning Sandra was showering on me at the time I had a lapse in concentration and fell hard in a fast section, slamming my left shoulder into the ground. I was OK (although my shoulder is still a bit sore today) but it had the effect of sapping all the energy I had left; so from then on I just concentrated on trying to make it back to the auberge in one piece.

For the rest of the week we explored as much as we could of the awesome Espace Killy: on Wednesday afternoon Nicolas gave us our first taste of 'off-piste' skiing; on Thursday we skied through snow covered trees all the way down to Les Brevieres (1550m) where we had lunch at a restaurant, then took the lift up to L'Aiguille Percee and skied back down to Val Claret; on Friday morning we took the funicular up to La Grande Motte glacier and descended Genepy, and in the afternoon went up to the Col de Fresse and crossed to Val d'Isere; Nicolas even taught us the basics of carving that same afternoon. And every day after the ski we all got together for a drink, some games and some banter well into the evening. I enjoyed it immensely.

Saturday morning was the last chance to put on the skis since we had to check out of the UCPA that same day at 2:00pm. Friday had been the last day of instruction so we had the morning free to do as we pleased; it was again a gorgeous day so we all took the funicular and then the cable car to the very top of the Col de La Grande Motte and skied down the bed of the glacier in the morning sun (well not all of us, Ricardo, accompanied by Cris, took the funicular back down for obvious reasons). After that we rode the chairlift to the Col de Ves where the girls convinced us to follow them down a not-groomed black (cat.: very difficult) slope. I couldn't believe it but there I was, less than a week after all started going down the most difficult kind of piste there is! (In all honesty I have to thank Antonio who minded me all the way down for being still alive). After that there was just time to go back to the auberge, have a last lunch, pack our stuff, clean our cabins, check out and reluctantly, leave.

It has been said that skiing and the mountains are addictive: once the bug bites you, you are in for life. I for one couldn't agree more. I'm already looking for my next fix.

Andrei Rublev

posted by ElDiablo at 23:15

From the 13th to the 25th of January The London French Institute is doing a retrospective on Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and on Saturday I went there to see his film Andrei Rublev. It is considered his best movie and I had missed it when (amazingly, given the unspeakable kind of crap that usually populates the TV schedules) it was shown last year on one of the terrestrial channels, so now I jumped at the chance. Although I was aware of his reputation as one of the great directors of the 20th century, before this I hadn't seen any of Tarkovsky's movies so in a sense I didn't know what to expect: I knew that the movie was roughly about the 15th century Russian monk and master painter Andrei Rublev, that it was long (just over three hours), mostly in black and white and in Russian with English subtitles; so it could prove to be a test of endurance. Fortunately in the end that wasn't the case.

Apparently the print we saw is the only existing copy of the film with subtitles in English. The subtitles are difficult to read when the background to the scene is predominatly white, which is often the case as quite a few of them are set in snowed landscapes. This sometimes makes the dialogs hard to follow. The movie hasn't got a clearly defined storyline but works as a series of episodes connected by the presence of Rublev, mainly as witness to events of which other people are the real protagonists. These include the punishment of a jester that refuses to entertain the ruler of the land, the struggle of envious fellow monk Cyril to accept his (in comparison to Rublev's) lack of artistic talent, a witches rave, the raid on the city of Vladimir by the Russian-Tartar army and the casting of a bell. Throughout the movie we also get an insight into the troubled spirit of Rublev by means of a series of conversations he has with his mentor Theophanes the Greek and his soulmate Danila. It is clear that he's at pains to reconcile his faith with his art: he gets commisioned to decorate a church with a fresco of the Last Judgement which he doesn't have the courage to turn down but then is also unable to complete because as he puts to Danila "he doesn't want to use his art to frighten people". It is only at the end of the movie, when a repentant Cyril opens his heart and urges him not to waste away his God-given talent that Rublev fully embraces his art as his mission in life.

Historically, little is actually known of Rublev's life, just records of his presence in Moscow and other locations during different periods of time so Tarkovsky and his co-writer Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky had licence to basically make it up as they went about writing the script. They used the characters to convey their feelings about human nature and the situation in Russia at the time: during the raid episode, after the church congregation gets massacred by the Russian-Tartar army, the Tartar commander asks the Russian chief about a fresco depicting the Nativity: "Who is that?", "The Virgin Mary" comes the answer; "And the one in the box?", "That's her son Jesus Christ"; the Tartar then replies "How can it be her son if she is a Virgin? But then anything is possibly in your Russia, isn't it?".

Visually the movie is breathtaking, Tarkovsky conjures images of stunning beauty: long tracking shots of rained-down taiga; close-ups of paint from brushes being cleaned creating hypnotic patterns when floating away on a stream; a recreation of the Crucifixion on a barren snowed landscape, the Cross towering over rows of kneeling peasants covering the hills. As if he himself was trying to paint, Tarkovsky seems to apply several visual layers on each scene: we can see Cyril scurrying in the rain to tell the soldiers where to find the jester through a small window in the hut where Rublev is sitting out the storm in the foreground. And he pulls no punches either, some scenes are as brutal as they are compelling: masons whose work didn't please the Grand Duke get circled in a forest and their eyes gouged at knifepoint; also during the raid episode a horseman being chased by Tartar cavalrymen tries to escape by riding up a staircase but is intercepted at the top landing, dismounted and slain, his horse then tries to back down the stairs but loses its balance and ends up falling spectaculary from a great height. I can't read Russian but I bet the closing credits didn't include the usual 'No animals were harmed during the making of this movie'.

The film was introduced by writer Sean Martin, author of a biography of Tarkovsky. He told an anecdote about British director John Boorman admiting during an inteview that he found Tarkovsky movies heavy going but that he "didn't dare to fall sleep because he was aware he could miss the meaning of life". When the reporter asked if he really wanted to say that, Boorman replied "Yes, absolutely." I'm not so sure about the meaning of life, but if you were to fall sleep during Andrei Rublev you'd be missing a truly intense and rewarding cinematic experience.

Related Products:

Magico

posted by ElDiablo at 20:21

On the YouTube website I stumbled upon this video [also at the end of this post - Jaitu] with stuff I last saw twenty years ago and I felt I had to share with you guys, because if you like football you must watch it: ten minutes long (the picture quality is not very good but even so) it is a cracking compilation of goals and plays by a player from the 80's who may be an absolute unknown to the football world outside Spain (where he played for most of his career) or his native El Salvador; but I can assure you, in those two countries the guy is regarded as an absolute legend, a ridiculously gifted player equal to Diego Maradona at his best. His name is Jorge Gonzalez (great surname if there is one) nicknamed 'Magico' ('the Magic one').

Magico Gonzalez played with El Salvador's national team in the '82 World Cup in Spain, where he was spotted by La Liga minnows Cadiz CF. Incredibly, no other team seemed to notice this outrageous talent, despite being named in the tournament's best 11. He signed and needed just a couple of games to become a god-like figure to the fans. He would play for Cadiz until 1984, move to Real Valladolid for a couple of years, then back to Cadiz for a second spell until the end of the decade.

Physically Magico was far from imposing: not very tall, skinny, ugly, with a big nose and unkempt curly black hair. But he was unique on and off the pitch: as a person he was as laid back as anyone can possibly be. He had no agent and seemingly no interest in money, being unable to remember the exact figure Cadiz should be paying him and publicly admitting he would be just content to make enough to buy a taxi, then retire. He would turn up for a training session (when he actually bothered to) barefoot after giving his shoes to a beggar. He had a tendency to fall sleep, although this probably was a consequence of his love of the night: David Vidal, his coach at Cadiz at the time, used to go looking for him in Cadiz's nightclubs, Magico would spot him coming through the door and run to hide in the space under the DJ's decks or behind a curtain. More often than not he would fall sleep there and be found in the morning by the cleaning lady. He was allergic to training: Cadiz would accomodate training to the afternoons to make it easier for him to turn up but even then he would ask Vidal at the end of a session "What are we doing tomorrow?"; if the answer was physical workout he would just tell him "I'm not coming" and that was it.

Nevertheless people loved him, he fit in so perfectly with the offensive, running-is-for-cowards style of the team and the chilled-out vibe of the place: Cadiz is a sunny Andalusian coastal town in the southern-most tip of Spain, known for its beautiful bay and beaches, its carnival and the locals' relaxed attitude to life. Magico enjoyed himself off the pitch but still thrived on it: his performances didn't go unnoticed but his antics were putting off big teams from making a move. At some point FC Barcelona asked Cadiz permission to take him on loan for a summer tour to the USA, with a view to a permanent move. Cadiz agreed and Magico was told to be at the airport next day at 7am to catch the flight to Barcelona. Knowing him, David Vidal turned up at Magico's flat at five in the morning to take him to the airport and make sure he didn't miss the flight. He rang the bell and surprisingly Magico answered the door immediately: "Because I had to be up early, I didn't go to bed last night" he explained. Once they got to the airport he asked Vidal for some money because he only had 2500 Spanish pesetas on him for the whole trip (that's about £10). Barca in the end didn't sign him. During the stage in Los Angeles, the fire alarm went off early one morning at the hotel where the squad were staying, all the players and staff made it quickly to the outside of the building - all except Magico; someone got up to his room to check on him: they found him in bed with a Californian woman, he kept protesting "it wasn't me, it wasn't me".

I used to have a video tape with a 'best of' compilation from La Liga in the 80's, with Magico featuring heavily. But my sister destroyed it by taping some New Kids On The Block crap on top. It was good to find this and be able to see again the genius in action.