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’

Covid

It’s clear Sweden performed better than many lockdown nations. This isn’t what modelers predicted. But the NYT is a bit sniffy about it.

Cosas de España/Galiza

It very much looks like the disgraced ex king’s rehabilitation is proceeding at pace.

A Virgin Mary statue burst into flames during an Easter parade in Vélez-Málaga last Friday, injuring 2 people and damaging a good portion of the statue. If only there were some evil being who could be blamed for this.

I might have under-estimated the number of ‘pilgrims’ passing through Pv city this year. The total claiming their Compostela in SdC to date is said to be double last year’s. As almost 50% of them did the last 100km from Sarria on the French Way, this must be a nightmare these days. A veritable human conveyor belt.

Just in case anyone wants to see it, here’s the new dossing down place of the Pv city riff-raff, in the portal of the ‘temporarily’ closed San Francisco café in the main square:-

As I say, they might still be using it in 10 or even 20 years’ time.

A nicer foto . . . Of something confusing a the Lérez end of O Burgo bridge . . .

I was pretty sure it wasn’t an Easter Bunny and, indeed, the DvP says it’s Orbil the Wolf, advertising a kids’ books fair.

The UK

This foto shows that Boris Johnson and I have at least one thing in common – we both cut our own hair. But I fancy I do a much better job of it than he does. Perhaps because I use hairdressers’ scissors, not garden shears:-

The USA

Something I’ve long thought . . . Britain needs to stop fawning over the one-sided ‘special relationship’

The Way of the World

A group of people – all men, I suspect – who prefer to call themselves MAPs – or minor attracted people – insist they have a valid sexual orientation and – naturally – would like to be included under the LBGTQ etc. banner. Equally inevitably, they’re supported in this by some academics and columnists. Most of the rest of us – like this columnist – would think it more accurate to still call MAPs paedophiles and prefer to deny them their wishes. All of them.

In case you missed it, according to a Guardian columnist: Last year was all about curating your earlobes.

Quote of The Day

I’ve always held that self-deprecation — the accurate and self-knowing kind, not phoney humblebragging — is the most sophisticated form of humour because it contradicts the blind animal instincts to dominate and compete.

Spanish

Un baípas: Guess. And so . . . Baípsear. Yes, it’s in the RAE dictionary.

English

My bad: Have our inventive American cousins ever introduced a more ugly phrase into the language?

Did you know?

Spotting fakes is about to get a lot harder. Witness the image of Pope Francis in a white Balenciaga puffer jacket. I confess I was fooled.

Finally . . .

One of the pluses – and minuses – of living in a warm temperate climate is that things grow really well, on the whole. Though I seem to have a talent for killing trees. Anyway, one minus is that my lawns have a prolific new flower/weed every year. Two years ago it was daisies but I managed to reduce these to only one or two this spring. Whereas my neighbours’ lawn is now a carpet of white and yellow flowers, crowding out the green of the grass. In the place of daisies, I now have a profusion of tiny things with pretty blue flowers which might well be ‘early forget-me-nots’, or Myosotis_ramosissima.

I object to paying for bits of broccoli and cauliflower that I’m never going to use, so I cut them off before they’re weighed. I calculated last night that doing this once a week to a cauliflower will save me at least €30 a year, enough for lunch at the Moroccan restaurant. The supermarket, of course, benefits twice from the practice of not cutting off the excess leaves and stems: 1. They don’t have to pay for the work, and 2. The income from the excess weight adds millions of euros to their profits.

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.