Janey Godley’s Blog

I thought I couldn’t possibly get any hotter in UK, but yes, Barcelona is fucking furnace like. I am staying in a really old apartment and the architecture is just awesome. The old entry to the apartments looks like my old tenement in Glasgow’s East End. It had marble flooring, wooden staircase banister and ceramic tiles adorning the walls. The old doors are so carved and ornate, with small gilt panels- it really does hark back to some old time era. I like to imagine that some other wee Glaswegian found this place and sat on these stairs back in the days when many Scottish people came to Barcelona to fight fascism. I still find it incredible to imagine that ordinary Scottish men AND women left their homes (many from the Calton, where I lived in Glasgow) and despite the hardships they faced in Glasgow, they made their way to Catalonia to fight against a regime!

I cannot even begin to imagine the scenario where some Glasgow wife was hanging out a washing and trying to feed her kids then at some point decided to get a boat to a foreign country, to a language she doesn’t speak, to a terrain she doesn’t know to fight people she has never met. Un-fucking-believable…but they did do it.

So Catalonia has a place in my heart because of this.

The gigs are cool, strange but cool and I have decided that due to the heat, all primping and beauty regimes are out the window, it is of no use applying make up (it slide off your face) it is no use fussing with my hair (it is soaked in ten minutes of going out) so I am a sweaty blob and don’t care who knows it.

I am missing husband and Ashley like you cannot believe, but awaking in this room this morning with my wooden shutters open wide, and staring at the ochre aged wallpaper with fake bamboo pattern is wonderful. My tiny balcony is facing the sun, my original ceiling cornice with yellow lamp gives me a strange Victorian feeling, and I like it. I am off to the beach today and will try and film some stuff for a live blog, talk soon.