En todas partes

There are no daffodils in Barcelona.

When you're living in a climate that sustains palm trees on most corners and paving slabs at every turn, crocuses too are a bit of a rarity. Even the parks (of which there is the grand total of one in the city centre) are a gathering of sand with tinges of moss. Football here is a street game and grass is indeed abundant in the public squares but it tends to be of the smoking variety - something you smell and not see, lie down because of and not on.

(There's also an odd by-law that dictates that possession of small amounts of el hashs is fine and the police can't do anything about it. Openly smoking isn't really a problem too, as long as you're quiet about it. And you know what they call a quarterpounder with cheese?)

Barca is such a concrete-filled city that the council has taken to marking the pedestrian areas on maps in green in a futile attempt to make the people feel more oxygenated. Springtime is therefore forced to manifest itself in a different way.

I noticed it first in January. The weather was unusually warm. People were trying to gauge if winter had finished or no. Birds nervously hung around in dark doorways, pretending that they were still away on migration. Lovers peeked from behind closed shutters, checking for the first signs of Springtime's frolics. Trees strained to hold in their excitable leaves while evergreens chuckled with pine-scented Schadenfreude. The city held its breath and waited for the groundhog's first sunbathe.

And then, suddenly it happened. It was rumoured, reported and then finally confirmed: the first four foot by three foot sheet of cardboard had been sighted. Everyone whooped in relief and within a day Spring and spliffs were firmly in the air.

I've got one word for you, Benjamin. Partworks.

In the time it takes to say "free binder with part one", the streetside newsagents were overflowing with them and the city knew that Spring had well and truly begun.

There was a brief period in the UK when partworks were in ascendance and Marshall Cavendish ruled the shelves. The nation went mad for them in a hype-filled need for self, child or home improvement. And then, as swiftly as they arrived, they had all but disappeared.

People realised that they hated the cheap stencils and chintz, and that they had missed part 17: how to cure the plague - and the rest of the series now seemed pointless. People yawned, stretched, rubbed their eyes and suddenly understood that going to a library or even buying a book would be cheaper and wouldn't involve waiting three months for what they really needed to know. The spell had been broken.

But not here. Oh no, not here. If you arrive here now, you're just in time to start collecting.

Partworks here vary from the sublime (Woody Allen films) to the ridiculous (Disney-themed snow globes). All come with a free magazine and are attached to enough cardboard to build a battleship (which is, inevitably, itself a collectable set).

Enthusiasm is such that no-one would care if the Spanish Government decided to simplify things by abandoning the idea of shops and building one huge newsagent instead.

Things that I have genuinely seen available in weekly collectable segments:

Perfume, watches, toy locomotives, Dragonball Z, the Titanic, an Egyptian-themed chess set, films containing war, a miniature crystal tea set, a three-foot long remote controlled biplane, novelty clocks, Royal Shakespeare Company-endorsed plays, books on ethnology, Robin Cook thrillers, straight-to-video action movies starring Tom Berenger, scary-looking dolls, herbs, classical music, Operacion Triumfo karaoke, wicker.

I can't pretend to understand it but I have to confess that there's something quite compulsive buying something piece by piece in the knowledge that, unlike with lad mags or newspapers, one day, the expense will end. That the day will dawn when I don't need the newsagent any more. That I can open the curtains and bask in the glory of my finished Titanic, my first games of chess using the god Ra, my crap selection of weekly watches.

By which point you know it's probably Springtime.

Posted by Andrew Losowsky at February 14, 2003 05:23 PM | TrackBack