Covid 

To put our experience in context, take a look at anything on the Justinian Plague of AD 541-549.

As for the last 2-3  years . . . A lockdown sceptic writes: Yes, it was lonely. But now one of the most senior members of the UK government during that whole lockdown business has finally admitted that the strategy was overdone, badly handled and badly communicated.  A brave few kept the flag of personal freedom alive and they paid heavily for it. On social media the abuse was intense. You don’t care about lives! they snarled. You’re murderers! they claimed. And in the mainstream, things weren’t much better. You’re a “small, disproportionately influential faction,” moaned a Guardian Leader, that “denies the virulence of the virus”. Yes, it was lonely. But now the man who was responsible for running the UK’s finances tells us we were not alone. He now says it was wrong to empower scientists to such a degree; wrong to allow Sage such sway over policy; wrong not to consider the long-term impact of lockdown on people’s health and wellbeing; wrong not to discuss the inevitable huge delays to cancer, heart disease and diabetes diagnoses; wrong to close schools; and wrong to instil such fear.

Next time??.  

Cosas de Spain/Galiza

The number of okupa incidents has risen by 40%. Time for a new article by Mark Stücklin of Property Insight.

Camino News: An association called Liberum is planning to sue the Cathedral Foundation for illegal ‘coercion’ as it’s still obliging the use of face-masks. Liberum says it operates with the purpose of restoring the rights and freedoms that have been usurped in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.

An interesting insight here into how Gaudi designed features of his magnificent/ridiculous cathedral in Barcelona. 

I was reminded me yesterday morning of this comment I’d seen a few days ago: I was almost hit by a bike yesterday. But it was my fault as I  was on the pavement(sidewalk). I’ll leave you to guess why.

And last evening, as I was signalling to leave a roundabout, a car ignored my intention, drove across my bows and then signalled right even though it was going straight on. Nothing unusual in that, you might say. Fair enough, I’d reply. But this car belonged to El Tráfico. You know, the folks who issue guidance on how to negotiate roundabouts. And fine us if we fail to do so properly. 

And then there was the car that stopped just short of me on the crossing at the city end of O Burgo bridge. But at least both the driver and the passenger raised their palms in apology. I remain convinced that I will have my clogs popped on a Spanish crossing. As rather a lot of folk do every year.

Germany

The ‘authorities’ fear that a confluence of disparate grievances presage an “autumn of rage”. The country is said to be facing months of unrest in a perfect storm of economic turbulence, rising energy prices, geopolitical turmoil and apocalyptic currents in public opinion. And the real concern is that extremists and would-be revolutionaries will try to unite the disparate forces of dissent and mobilise them into a broad uprising against the democratic system, above all in east Germany. Oh, dear. It sounds even worse than the UK. 

English

Clever . . .

Finally 

An interesting comment about Africa:-  If you look at a world map and mentally glue Alaska onto California, then turn the USA on its head, it appears as if it would roughly fit into Africa with a few gaps here and there. In fact Africa is 3 times bigger than the USA. Look again at the standard Mercator map and you see that Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, and yet Africa is actually 14 times the size of Greenland! You could fit the USA, Greenland, India, China, Spain, France, Germany and the UK into Africa and still have room for most of Eastern Europe. We know Africa is a massive land mass, but the maps rarely tell us how massive.

To amuse . . .

For new readers: If you’ve landed here looking for info on Galicia or Pontevedra, try here. If you’re passing through Pontevedra on the Camino, you’ll find a guide to the city there.

WordPress tells me I have one reader in both Iceland and Poland. So, a special welcome to them.