MR BLACKBURN OF WILBERFOSS THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR

 GOOD NEIGHBOR

BLACKBURN KIND NEIGHBOR Remembering, looking back, while balancing good and bad deeds, triumphs and failures, in the midst of stormy love - I was a naive young newlywed who did not know the inexorable rules of the game. I thought that in England my dreams were all good, according to the title of Graham Greene's novel England Made Me. I have learned two almost non-existent words in the Spanish vocabulary: compassion and comfort. I believe that when the time comes to appear before the Archangel Psikagogo, the one who weighs souls, placing them in the Romans of the Day of Judgment, In accordance with the result of weighing and what the believer notes from the "stater", bowing from the right (flock of lambs; left in a herd of goats) will lead me to hell or heaven according to my deeds. I ask Miguel that he gave me a night pass to heaven for all eternity. Compassion is the prerogative of Anglican Christianity. It consists in putting oneself in the place of another, in order to understand the reasons that led him to a certain way of life. This is the complete opposite of the vicious and envious Spanish inquisitorial temperament. "British compassion" is the result of disillusionment with medieval religious wars: the Hundred Years War, the War of the Two Roses, the social revolution that was Cromwell's Puritanism and the Reformation. One more step - and we find parliamentarism. For this, democracy has always worked in the country, and in Spain it has always been a disaster. Untranslated into Spanish, the concept of "coziness" is associated with comfort, isolation. The British live at home, they live in their own house, my home is my fortress. A small garden and a small plot of land are enough to care for your rhododendrons. They don't like vertical housing, they hate apartments, only in London they live in apartments and penthouses that North Americans call condominiums. The feeling of independence and solitude is a sacred commandment for them. A couple of retirees lived door to door. Her husband, Mr. Blackburn, worked his entire life in a mine in the Midlands, and when they retired, they retired to live in a cottage, putting all their savings into a house. My long hair, my bohemian looks, my sale naval coat, and my student scarf at the University of Hull must have raised suspicions of a rebel as well as a foreigner. I noticed this while hitchhiking in front of the Blackburn house, where once a very Catholic but very cool and whispering Austrian must have been something of a Nazi. However, I had no problems with Blackburns. I told them good morning or good afternoon. And they returned them to me with a smile. ─ Good morning Mr. Blackburn ─ Good morning Mr. Parra ─ Nice day, isn't it? ─Oh yes I felt him go out into the garden to smoke a cigarette so that his wife would not notice how he coughed when she heard him cough. The former miner suffered from silicosis, and the doctor forbade him to smoke. They knew our marriage was a shotgun marriage that was frowned upon in this conservative Yorkshire village. However, when Suzanne needed a loaf of bread or garlic, Mrs. Blackburn generously helped her. The house did not know that I was married. They thought I went to England on a study trip to prepare for the competitive exams in Spain. We didn't have a telephone, we had a rented TV, only a radio that my grandmother gave Suzanne. On the birthday of their daughter Elena, they saw me very excited. I cried with sadness because I got married without the permission of my mother, who had a singing voice, and with joy, because for me that day was the happiest of my life. Mr. Blackburn invited Mary Higherty and me to come to his house. They offered us a cup of tea and I asked my neighbor to call Madrid to tell my parents that they were grandparents. ─ Of course, Tony. Why not The call was ten pounds and poor Mr. Blackburn did not charge me. He was a good neighbor. The man from the parable of the good Samaritan.