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

Good to see that Spain has the highest number of the ‘best tourist villages in the world’. Which, of course, won’t merit a visit once tourism has worked its reverse miracle on them.

In the central Madrid barrio of Malasaña, there’s a carnecería – butcher’s – called Compasión. It doesn’t look like a traditional butcher’s so I wasn’t totally surprised to see asign assuring us that everything it sells is 100% vegetable-based.

Hats off to the few but enterprising inhabitants of Peña Zafra de Abajo. And almost everything else.

Which reminds me . . . Walking through Malasaña this afternoon, I noticed a queue of around 30 folk in a line outside a clothes shop called NP. There was no indication that there was a sale on, so – as NP seems to stand for ‘Nude Project’ – I was left wondering if the staff serve you naked.

Graffiti is, as I’ve said, pretty bad in Pv city’s old quarter, though it doesn’t compare with that of central Madrid. But you have to be dedicated to your art to place it his high:-

The UK

A heavy price is being paid for the green fantasies of the country’s elites, it says here. 

Russia

Funny how so many important Russian share an affinity with the ground. . . An oligarch who criticised the war in Ukraine has been found dead at a hotel after apparently falling from a 3rd-floor window. He is the latest in a series of wealthy Russian tycoons and energy officials to have died this year.

The Way of the World/Quote of the Day

History shows that violent despotism is not an aberration but the norm. It may be repelled, it may be contained, it may be defeated and replaced but its pull has been humanity’s most powerful force.  . . . It is only through understanding how easily we slide into violence against our fellow man that we can hold it at bay and confront those, like Putin, who use it as a weapon of conquest and subjugation.Those of us belonging to the blessed post-war Western generation have enjoyed a benign hiatus in what have otherwise been centuries of slaughter and privation on a scale we must never forget if we are to avoid repeating them: Philip Johnston, the Daily Telegraph.

Social Media

More than anything else in our society, Twitter speaks to the better angels of our nature. This might be a sarcastic comment, here.

Finally . . .

The Daily Telegraph – a British right-of-centre newspaper uses b —–ks instead of bollocks. I mean, why bother when we all know what it stands for? After a few seconds deliberation, at least.

This is the result of several hours of Lego ‘fun’ with my 3 year old grandson, who can understand a diagram far quicker than I can. Though, in truth, he’s almost 4, so things aren’t quite that bad , , ,

To amuse . . .

Talking of vegan meat . . .

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.