In the early 1980s, my grandfather got “something.” In those days, we didn’t talk about strokes or aneurysms, you simply had “something,” an abstract disease that screwed up your life to a greater or lesser degree. Despite his struggle to maintain his independence, my mother brought him to our home, a two-bedroom apartment in an Asturian mining district 400 kilometers from his beloved Galician village.
For someone whose idea of happiness was drinking mulled wine, dancing with his arms around himself and blowing kisses in the air — I have never doubted which person in the family I most resemble — to be under the yoke of a daughter who rationed his cigarettes and his cheap plonk was, he said, almost worse than death. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was going to be the main victim of that move. I slept in the living room and although I played the martyr for months, I was radiant as that unprecedented situation allowed me to enjoy unlimited access to the television, my greatest passion.
Needless to say, the living room did not become a proper bedroom and no one else changed their habits. At an indeterminate hour the sofa bed was opened, but the TV was not turned off; my mother would just turn down the volume and order me to sleep as if she were Tony Kamo. Thus, I learned to watch with my eyes closed and so saw without seeing a myriad of “inappropriate” content: 79 Park Avenue , Captains and the Kings or Brideshead Revisited .
How in love I was with Di.
