Gibraltar: A wedding, a swimming pool and forty cannon

Part I

The bar of old men

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I am in a bar in Gibraltar. The requirement for entry is that you must be an old man. The denizens are watching a black and white movie that looks like footage from the WW1 Russian Front: gaunt figures in fraying greatcoats, stumble in deep snow; cracked, wrinkled faces smile for an unsteady camera. Every one of the clientele in this bar – me included – could easily slide out of here and into that black and white footage, with hardly a change of clothing required. The café sells three things: coffee, cans of pop and water bottles. Only coffee is being drunk by the men who sit in chairs that have deep sags in their seats and rock unsteadily; no two chairs have the same upholstery. I am magnetised to the place. It is an old-man network like I’ve never seen in England. The loving dilapidation is the old men, the furniture is our mirror image. They are attentive in their conversations: hands clasp, old arms rest on each other’s bowed backs as stories are told. My creased skin is black, and everyone else’s is white. Yet they throw me no shade. This is the place for creased old men. You are one of us. Rest. You are at home here, pull up a chair.

I drink up and leave. Gibraltar is strewn with cannon. From the Crimea war. From the twelfth siege, the thirteenth siege, the great siege, the Napoleonic wars — from umpteen battles fought about, within and around this lonely outpost of the decaying British/Spanish/Moorish/French/Turkish Empire. Like some medieval warp in the timeline, Gibraltar still has two huge fort doors in its middle. Back in the 18^th century, those doors barred entrance into Gibraltar, held back the hordes of Turkish pirates, Spanish villains, French marauders — so many invaders, so many sieges.

Gibraltar’s main street is called Main Street. Its main square is plus royaliste que le roi and bristles with Britishness – Roy’s Fish and Chips. Full Monty English Breakfast. Pigeons. A shirtless white man stumbles around muttering something or other, as all around patiently and kindly ignore him. The Square shouts, British colony (or more technically British Overseas Territory) and proud of it!

I wander off into a back street café. The Indian chef asks where I’m from. England, I answer. No, where your parents? I give the answer he is seeking. Nigeria. Ah. I thought you were from India. There is a kindness in his voice, an outsider solidarity. I can relax here and eat. The menu is fusion foods, he proudly tells me. He specialises in Indian-Chinese fusion foods. Spanish Bhajia, Chicken pakora. I order and sit. Glancing at myself through the smudges in one of the café’s wall mirrors, I think, Yes, I can pass for Indian here, now that age has flattened the kinks of my Afro hair. I eat too much and have a drowsy-queasy feeling on leaving.

The Gibraltar Wedding.

In this meandering way, I arrive at my hotel, the Walsingham, located on the atmospherically named Canon House Lane. A wedding party has arrived at the same time as me, — or are they leaving? Whichever, they are in great spirits, frolicking around a white van taxi, phones out, doing group poses, shimmering with frou-frou gaiety ­ — the determined bliss that wedding entourages adopt. They bustle into reception in finely pressed slacks and frocks, one holding a posy. Among them, somewhat at sea, is a young man in a tightly fitting white wedding suit. He looks uncomfortable but game, and smiles broadly and indiscriminately at one and all. He’s Pakistani -Asian, and the women around him are white. I look for a bride the same age as him but see none — perhaps she’s on a toilet break.

They’ve sallied up to the hotel reception desk now and the receptionist, a sleep-deprived, doughnut-faced man whose first language is Spanish, accepts my suggestion in Spanish that I step aside —decency dictates that the wedding celebrants should have priority. I turn to the ladies who are now milling around me at the desk. ‘It looks like someone’s getting married. And it’s not me - unless I’ve been set up!’ The ladies laugh — I have caught their spirit of rhubarb jollity. One pinches my cheek, to more laughter. I slide my passport and booking form to one side of the desk and the wedding entourage fills forms and collects their keys. They scatter up the slim stairs to their rooms in gales of laughter.

My own hotel forms are complete. I make payment and accept my Old Skool brass-fobbed door key for Room 3.09, on the third floor. The receptionist gives a succession of intricate directions. I decline to follow the first instruction – to use the lift. I set off on the corridors less travelled.

The Walsingham corridor décor is burnt orange and royal blue Axminster carpets, wood veneer walls and doors, bevelled mirrors, and a panelled, false ceiling. I keep walking. The sweet, decaying smell of it all is redolent of something from my childhood that escapes me but I’m in love with this decor. I keep along. I am soon lost but unbothered. This interior aches to be filmed in black and white. Dirk Bogarde should be sleuthing through its corridors. Somehow a small street appears underneath one of the corridor walkways. I have fleeting vertigo. I pass a hotel bar somehow up here, with no customers; a vaguely interested barmaid points to an empty postage-stamp size swimming pool — la piscina — that looks mildly inviting in the way a petri dish might look alluring to a mould spore. I have no towel in my luggage. I retrace my steps and this time concentrate on the labyrinth. I am King Minos, inspecting his Works. Each floor is on several levels stitched together by small runs of steps that turn sometimes clockwise, sometimes anti-. A succession of completed jigsaw puzzles in frames teases from the walls. I refuse to be distracted by a superb Piccaso-esque mini-frieze that appears randomly. Nor by the purple soapstone cat statue on a wood plinth in a sunlit corridor alcove. I reach the door of my third-floor room. It is in a secluded corner position. My key turns tumblers that squeak compliantly but the door does not open. I give it a Glaswegian heave. It yields. Where are you now, Dirk Bogarde?

to be continued…