In these days.

In these days I couldn’t read or write anything. I have been working six days per week and now I’m recovering from a good cold. Money is nice but health is more important (and even more important is love, isn’t it?). And I didn’t know anything about the problems in Elgaine (fans, I am sorry about that… hahahaha).

In these days we have a “boy” 35 years old from Malaga. Jesús (a blasphemy name for the Irish people) arrived to the house on Saturday (from another house) and he went to the city centre (to a hostel) on Tuesday. Only four days but what four days. Why? He was a very special person and I don’t want to say anything more because he can appears in my dreams and kill me (do you know what I mean?). He had three suitcases and it was very suspicious for me in the first moment but well, there are people that likes have enough clothes for all occasions. But the next strange thing was that he had more than twenty soccer T-shirts (he was a supporter of Malaga and had sympathy for Barça). Next strange: his favourite genders were philosophy (well, pseudo-philosophy), meditation (he needed more books of this subject) and esotericism (the first thing that he answered me when I told him that I was in San Francisco was that I had been in the Church of Satan). Well, these first clues put us in alarm. And besides, he had a knife (and he wasn’t so skilled with timber to make wooden sculptures of Buda). The children were afraid of him (and me too, of course). Next strange thing: he had dinner with pink sunglasses (oh my God, this was worse than the knife). Next strange thing: it was pouring a lot rain and he wanted to do jogging. He told me that he was doing time series of 18 minutes each but it was so funny when Juju told us that she was spying him from her bedroom and that he was only running in from of the house. When he appeared in the kitchen I told him that I couldn’t run like him and that I could only run 1 minute and 17 walking and we couldn’t almost resist laughing). And the last funny thing was when he started to play his harmonica (he could play like me, I mean, nothing coherent). Well, I was trying to avoid him during the weekend but it wasn’t easy. But the inflexion point of the story came on Monday. He had the job interview in Intel for kitchen porter at 7 o’clock. He got a cab but the driver understood Imbel instead of Intel and he went to another place very far. It was hard luck because when he arrived to Intel, they didn’t know anything and he lost the job. He came back to the house, he was crying like a baby. I could understand him, because he was alone and he told us that he hadn’t more money. That was embarrassing for us but Séan Kavanagh got another interview for him (that was the good new of the day). That day I went to Porter House with Agnés, Goshia and him. We were listening good live music (and the singer was very skilled with harmonicas) and drinking strange beers from the World, and I tried to speak to him about his critical situation. It was impossible to establish an intelligible conversation, to but he knew that I was right (it was elemental, my dear Jesús). Next day, he went to the job interview with Séan and finally he got the job as kitchen porter in the Architecture School Cafeteria but he had to move to the city centre (well, that was agreed among the family and Séan, because we didn’t feel safe with him). The last day told us more things about his life, his family, his life targets … I felt a bit bad because he needed help and perhaps I didn’t do enough for him (we gave him the meals and indications but not money). The last day I found a suspicious small piece of paper when he used the shower. I was scaring but when I told it to Agnés, she started laughing because it was made by Juju (she likes to do a lot of things to play with). But the real thing is that Agnés asked him about drugs and he answered that he took drugs (the last time was a month ago) and we suspected that he smoked hash in his bedroom, because there was an intolerable smell of incense.

The same day in the late night two guys from Italy appeared to install in the room. I didn’t see them this night but the next day in the morning, when I went down to the kitchen to have breakfast, Agnés said to me that they hadn’t good looking. They had filthy clothes and one of them had injuries in the face. He told Agnés that he had a car accident (oh yes!) but it seemed from a fight. One of them, Cristiano, speaks English but the other (Fulbio) speaks Italian and Portuguese (not so much useful here). The next day they went to the job interview for kitchen porter but they didn’t obtain the job. In the next chance, Cristiano obtained it but not Fulbio (I think because his suspicious aspect). Anyway, they only sleep in the house because they know Italian people in the city centre, so we’re happy because they scare to the children, particularly to Juju. We think that they will go to the city centre in few weeks so it is possible that more people can arrive to the house.

That is very funny because I was going to be the next person in sign in the Black Book. The Black Book is not an esoteric or politic book. They call Black Book because it’s black and it’s the book where appear the people that has lived in the house. They write briefly their experiences here (in Ireland and in the house) or in some cases, Agnés did for them. She takes photographs and sticks them in it. Now we are 46 people or something like that in ten years, and there are a lot Spanish people from a lot of places (Ciudad Real, Barcelona, Madrid, Calahorra, Basque Country ...) but a lot of people from other countries.

Well, it was long but it was worth it, wasn’t it?

See you soon,

Elgaine.

PS: sorry for my English.