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

Lenox Napier writes here of the all-too-common modern Almerian scenery. And of local working conditions, in which Brussels seems somewhat uninterested. Cheap produce for EU members. I guess. And no need to have good relations with Morocco.

A bit more on Borrow . . .The GB Society remains alive and has a FB page. Where I found this: The life of George Borrow and his passion for bringing the Bible to Spain fascinated the politician and Republican president Manuel Azaña, who wrote about Borrow’s time in Spain and, indeed, translated his book.

A narcosubmarine was recently intercepted off the coast of South America, with 2 dead and 2 dying smugglers on board. Here in Galicia this week, the prow of one of these emerged yesterday – Excalibur-like – from the waters off Vilaxoán, after the crew had tried to sink it during a chase last week. It’s reported that these dangerous craft have been making the Atlantic trip for 15 years now. And presumably are usually undetected.

I was privileged last night to attend a piano performance of quite astonishing virtuosity from a chap called Ilia Papoian, whose 2nd encore brought the enraptured audience to its feet in deafening applause. And this was despite the fact he’s Russian . . . A young man of massive intensity at the keyboard, it took the reception to his final piece to bring just the flicker of a smile to his face. Until then, the closest he’d got to non-performance emotion was placing his hand over his heart when he stood to acknowledge earlier applause. I confess to wondering if he’s – very high-performing! -autistic. Anyway, you can see him perform here and here . . .

And doing justice to Rach 3 here . .

Back down on earth, I came into town this morning with 5 things on my To Do list. But, after achieving 4, I postponed the 5th, as this success is totally unprecedented in 22 years and I didn’t want to risk losing the 100% record. Should I now go against all advice I give to newcomers and raise my expectations?? Possibly premature.

La Pauvre France

Headline: Transgender culture war grips France: Le Figaro columnist lashes out at gender theories spreading from US and UK. And the article below it.

The EU

In a wider frame, it’s claimed some sort of civil war is taking place within this superstate. No prizes for guess whom my money’s on.

The USA

Trump is now blaming Pence for the attack on the Capitol, apparently. Doubtless some folk will believe him. Even without the measures Putin takes to make Russians believe him.

Russia

Essential reading . . . The 4m wide board detailing the entire Russian military chain of command in Ukraine . . .

The Way of the World

Microsoft has been quietly briefing advertisers on how it plans to integrate ads into its A1- boosted search engine, with the promise that businesses will be able to bid to ensure that their products or specific keywords will be inserted into natural language search responses. What this means is that rather than ads in search results being links to specific web pages and labelled as “adds”, users will instead see answers to questions appear as prose, with the content depending in part on which companies have paid enough to see their products, services or messages included.

Quote of The Day/Social Media

Just as social media first allowed the presenter of a football highlights show – [Gary Lineker, salary £1.4m pa] – to be taken seriously as a political rent-a-quote, it has now aggrandised him as some brave defender of democracy. 

It seems that the rot began back in 2007 with the launch of Tumblr. About which I know nothing other than it’s a misspelled word. But I will now check it out and see if I can post my blog there . . .

Did you know?

I read that the 3rd wave of feminism is also called ‘raunch feminism’. I’m regularly reminded of this by the (silent) TV screen behind the bar in my morning tiffin place. See here. For the latest, 4th wave – key words empowerment and intersectionality see here.

Finally . . .

You can see a gallery of Bill Tidy cartoons here. And even buy some. Lenox Napier has reminded me I posted several of these a while back, but I’d forgotten that, of course.

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. And there’s the Thoughts from Galicia FB group.