Beer o’clock kicked off the other day just shy of six pm and about two and a half hours early; no prior swimming, no running, no cycling, “no nothing!” I sat down at “Marcel” and told the waiter I might be there for a while. So I sat outside and sipped one beer after another as I looked up the hill wondering when it was that Cristina might arrive.

Years ago, on the occasion of my 30th or 31st birthday, Laurence came round to pick me up at my parent’s place in Estoril and suggested we go off to Jonas’ bar on the Paredao and have a few beers. A grand idea and down we went, me on a breakfast of freshly squeezed orange juice and a yoghurt. It must have been about twelve. Blissfully unaware that Laurence was in league with my sister Sacha who had asked him to get me out of the house for a few hours, I thought we were just going to be there for a quick, quiet drink in the sun. We just kept ordering one beer after another! Now I can hold my drink and I’ve yet to ask Laurence – if he remembers – whether he was ordering a ginger ale to everyone of my beers but at a certain point I remember saying I’d had about enough and that perhaps I should go home. “Nahhhh….let’s have another round!!!” And so on…. The sun was really starting to beat on my mushy head and after another round or three I said firmly that I had to get back. At which point he told me he had just received a text message from my sister to say that we were all having lunch back at my parent’s place. We drove back up the hill and as I opened the gate I found myself confronted with about thirty friends in the garden who were there to wish me a surprise happy birthday. And I was rat-arsed! I don’t recall much of the rest of the afternoon except at one point finding myself mumbling through a very bad speech of thanks that was received with slow claps.

Speaking of slow claps – or rather slaps – my ritual before leaving the house involves checking that I have all my essentials in their right place. It is a “slap-slap-smack-smack” that starts at my left front pocket and works around clockwise if you are looking at your feet; cellphone, keys and change, wallet, pen and paper. I’ve done this for years. Last Thursday I opened the front door and walked out on to the landing with a plastic shopping bag full of dirty cat litter in my left hand and a bin bag full of domestic organic rubbish in my right and as it dawned on me that I hadn’t checked I had my bare minimum kit of keys and mobile phone I turned around to face the front door and watched it slam in my face. I put the bags down and patted myself down; I had nothing on me but a handful of small change that added up to three euros and ten cents and a lighter. On my face my sunglasses were slipping down my nose and I had a half-burnt rolly in my mouth drooping Lucky Luke style. It was two thirty pm, bloody hot and I hadn’t had lunch. I swore loudly in Portuguese, picked my bags up, turned around and started down the stairs, my flip-flops slapping loudly in turn with every step I dropped.

At first instance my situation seemed more of an inconvenience than anything. My parents-in-law live just around the corner and they have a set of keys to our flat. He is retired and should I not find him at home I pretty much know where to look for him at given times of the day and she, at this time of year, works intensive mornings and gets home at about three. I went to the end of the street and threw what I was carrying into the bins and then hung a left down Calvet towards “La Campana” where I spent one euro and five cents on a coffee, lighting what was left of my soggy fag. I sat outside casually watching the passers-by and drawing on my rolly, telling myself how stupid I had been to walk out of the flat without my keys. An espresso only goes so far and by the time my fag had been reduced to its filter I still had forty minutes or so to kill before I judged I’d find both the in-laws at home.

When I rang their door-bell, Modest let me in after the third attempt; the intercom crackles and he had not immediately understood who I was. I found him alone in their flat – Roser had still not got back from work – and he had no idea where our spare set of keys were. I should call Carles (his son, Cristina’s twin brother) he said, as no doubt he must have kept the keys after we asked him to check on our cats the last time we had been to Lisbon less than a week ago. Did I have his number? Yes, I replied truthful, but what I didn’t say was that my phone was in my flat along with my keys. Perhaps I was being over polite, not wanting to disturb him anymore, so I bade him goodbye and thought of my next options.

I do not think I am alone in this so it is interesting to note that the only two phone numbers I retain these days are my parent’s numbers. They live in Lisbon and I live in Barcelona. I have not committed  Cristina’s number to memory as I’ve never had to, nor do I know the numbers of any other of my friends or relations with whom I habitually speak. There is just no need; you reply to a call or search in your contacts. I can honestly say that thirty years ago I retained a good dozen numbers in my memory – at the tip of my tongue – and I could probably retrieve another half-dozen or more if the need arose. We also had address books that we carried around with us. We had our memory – that we used – and failing that we could refer to a back-up on paper if need be. Twenty years ago, when mobile phones started to become common and affordable amongst us – the Hoi Polloi – I resisted getting one for a long time until it dawned on me that less and less people were calling my land line. I was becoming out of touch. What happened to me the other day, however, felt rather liberating.

My options were to loaf around in the heat for a number of hours and then sit on the door-step of our building as of about eight thirty and wait for Cristina to show up any time between then and ten or else to try and track down the two other sets of keys we have with friends at opposite ends of the city. It was a long shot as I suspected I’d find no-one home in either case but nonetheless I set off on my mission, feeling quite relaxed about it all, and proceeded to trace a number of very sweaty odd zig-zags around Barcelona to ring one doorbell an then the other, both without success, whilst I worked on my farmer’s tan. So I implemented Plan C.

This required I call one of my parents with my meagre resources and ask them to call Cristina, informing her of my situation and asking her to head home sooner rather than later. Very hot and dehydrated, I slunk around the centre of town, walking on the shady side of the street, trying to find a payphone. Last time I needed one, years ago, I remember them being everywhere. This time round no-one I asked seemed to know where the closest one was. When I did find one it wouldn’t take anything but a credit card. It took me another half hour to find one that would take coins off me and when I finally got through to my mother I garbled my instructions down the line to her before it gobbled my two euro credit in about twenty seconds. Cristina would find me at the café on the corner near our flat; she’d know the one. I had five cents to my name.

The waiter at that café knows me and after I explained my situation he told me not to worry about the bill. It could be settled later. As I sipped beers over a number of hours he was kind enough to bring me nibbles and tapas every so often. Cristina showed up at about nine thirty and found me waving my arms about and having a very lively conversation with Alex the architect. I grinned sheepishly at her as she walked up to our table, kissed her hand and asked her if she’d like a beer.