Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight.

And, lo, has caught the sultan’s turret In a noose of light!

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable

– Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain’ 

Cosas de España/Galiza

As if we residents didn’t know . . . Spain enjoys more ‘días festivos'(bank holidays) than most countries. This week we had 2 of them – Tuesday and Thursday, with the inevitable ‘bridges’ on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I imagine it wasn’t a particularly productive week here. But, then, I get the impression that no week in December ever is. I could be wrong, of course, as I’ve never worked in an office here.

It’s an ill wind . . . American investor firms are buying up the abandoned villages of España vacía. To sell, I guess, to their countrymen fleeing the US for one reason and another.

The word matador doesn’t mean ‘bullfighter’, but ‘killer’. In one of those coincidences, on the same day that Lenox Napier kindly sent me this interesting page from Matador Network a local paper ran this foto of our latest narco to be caught – nicknamed Matador.

Here’s Impactour on Pv city’s museum. You can get a slide show, with the text in English, here. But the English link on the Visita Virtual page doesn’t seem to work. And I can’t see a Spanish option. The creators obviously live in an ideal world where everyone who visits the site speaks Gallego. Or at least its sister language, Portuguese.

The USA

Enough said . . . Vibes beat facts for Meghan the influencer. The duchess knows that American viewers will fall for the faux-spontaneity and curated candour at which she excels.

The World Cup

As I’m only 1.73cm tall, I’ve always been pleased that some of football’s greats were/are the same height, or even less. So, I liked this comment: We’re seeing the passing of a generation of technically talented, often physically small, players such as Pedro, Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas and Lionel Messi – players with excellent touch, vision and passing, who excel at maintaining possession.

A propos . . A nice article on the little genius, Messi.

The Way of the World

Spot the mistake in this Times headline: Heroics of Emiliano Martínez keep Lionel Messi’s World Cup dream alive as Argentina goad through to semi-finals. Except it might not have been a mistake, as this sentence is in the text: After all that struggle, they could not resist one final act of goading their vanquished opponents.

Spanish

I’m always confused between the word for socks(calcetines) and underpants(calzoncillos *). Which led to a bit of embarrassment at a Pilates class last week.

* Not to be confused with bragas; knickers/pants

English

Niggling: Is it any surprise that Americans – including, of course, Princess Meghan – think this originates in the N-word, whereas it’s Viking Danish in origin.

A shoo-in: The Oxford Dictionary says the term first appeared in print in 1928. It comes from horse-racing – for a horse that’s a guaranteed winner in a rigged competition. it comes from the word ‘shoo‘, used to drive an animal or person away by gestures or noises.

Finally . . .Did You Know?

The Diagram prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year has been won this year by: RuPedagogies of Realness. What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada. Previous winners include:-

Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way

Is Superman Circumcised? 

The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories and 

Cooking with Poo.

For new readers:-

1. 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.

2. Should you want to, the easiest way to to get my post routinely is to sign up for email subscription. As opposed to using a Bookmark or entering the URL in your browser.

If a question appears here, it has nowt to do with me. Source unknown and un-eresable.