One example was last week, when I was introduced to Antonio. He had just retired and was hoping to spend a few months in Cork with his wife, starting in May. A mutual friend thought it would be good if we could meet and I could tell him a few things about Cork, and I wasn't going to decline because practicing Spanish is always a good thing, even if it does mean hanging out with a man in his sixties instead of people my own age. I hadn't met Antonio more than five seconds when he presented me with a gift to thank me for my time, a kind of teach yourself Spanish kit with a phrasebook and a cd. I thought this really was generosity which was pure of heart - I was teaching him about my home, so he wanted to help me learn about his - and I found myself genuinely lost for words.
But what hit me even more had happened a week previous. When Donnacha was visiting recently, we borrowed my flatmate's Bicing card so the two of us could cycle around Barcelona. It worked out in our favour almost all of the time, as we saved a lot on metro tickets as well as enjoying pedalling around with each other, something we had never done before. I adore Bicing, the scheme whereby you flash your card at a scanner at station, it tells you which bike to take, you take it, cycle where you need to go, and drop it off elsewhere. It means I don't have to buy a bike, or pay for huge locks to keep it safe, or replace it when it ultimately gets stolen, as it would in Barcelona. It also means that when I cycle somewhere and it's sunny, and when I'm ready to go home it's raining, I don't have to brave through the elements to get home if I don't want to. But for all its good points, it still means that whatever bike you use isn't yours, and as such people mistreat them. I've got bikes with broken gears, upside-down bells, stuck seat adjustments, punctured tires and a missing pedal, but unfortunately Donnacha was the one who got one with a slipped chain. Not having a huge amount of experience with cycling, he didn't know what to do with it, but luckily (depending on what way you view it I suppose) I have a bike at home that hates me, and slips its chain at every available opportunity. So I got down on all fours and rotated the pedal and hooked the chain back on, fixing the bike but covering my paws in oil in the process. As we were on our way to lunch I thought no problem, I'll just wash my hands in the restaurant, but then I remembered that en route there are a few public fountains, so I decided to give one of them a try. I scrubbed my hands under the freezing cold jet of water to no avail, but then all of a sudden a man came up to me and presented me with a small bar of pink soap wrapped up in a plastic bag. The previous week on my way to college I had seen a homeless man washing himself in the early hours of the morning with soap under one of these public water fountains, and I realised this man was probably in a similar position. It looked as though all his possessions were stacked up on his bike, and he seemed shabby but happy. And I was completely overwhelmed that this man who had so little would be willing to share it. And his soap got all the oil off my hands in one fell swoop.
It can be uplifting to know that the world is full of these random acts of kindness, but unfortunately you have to be aware that it goes both ways. A random act of meanness befell me and my friends on the beach at Sitges last Sunday night, when all of Cataluña was celebrating Carnaval in Spain's gay capital. The parade had finished and we had an hour before the bus was due to take us back to Barcelona, so we thought we'd head down to the beach to chill out under the stars with the rest of the partied-out partiers who weren't on the streets anymore. We were having a nice time talking when a group of six teenagers came over to us and started hassling one of the boys in our group. They started spouting in Spanish about how they were the Francoist police, shoving an identity badge in his face while they tormented him, asking did he have any drugs on him and why he had a Catalán flag on him. They yelled their fascist dogma at us for about five minutes before ripping the flag off him and trying to set it alight. When the flag didn't catch, they cast it into the sea. And they still wouldn't leave us alone. It took one of our number, a native Spanish speaker, to tell us to get the police for them to take fright and run away like the cowards they are. And so the circle is complete, where people can warm your heart with the kindest of gestures one day, others can erase all of that and replace it with anger as they invade your privacy and wreck and ridicule your belongings.
Given the tragedies that mark our planet as it spins on oblivious - from the economy collapsing and so many people tumbling into poverty to earthquakes destroying Japan and New Zealand - I think we could all use a little more kindness from family, from friends, from strangers.
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