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/Galicia

Lenox Napier writes on ads here.

Something we missed in Salamanca last week . . ’Spain’s Niagara Falls’

I have found an even better way of dealing with chuggers* . . . In stead of saying (in Spanish) ‘I don’t speak Spanish’, I say (in Gallego) ‘I only speak Gallego’. Works a treat in Madrid but it possibly won’t in Pv city.

*Folk with collection tins.

Quote of the Day

I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up: German physicist G.C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799). More of his words of wisdom here.

The Way of the World

Effie Deans writes here about ‘two-tier everything’. Certainly as regards the UK and very possibly elsewhere in the Anglosphere. Maybe even outside it.

Did you know? . . .

Another review of a film – Genie – you might want to miss . . . A film-maker whose movies pivot around acts of altruism has reached into the archives, gussied up a dead dog and flung it into the faces of viewers with something approaching contempt. So no, alas, not a Christmas classic.

Finally . . .

Twice in the last week, I’ve stopped myself bumping into someone else, only to realise it’s actually me in a full-length mirror. My excuse for the first is that it was nighttime and and I was on my way to the bathroom in the dark. The second was in the Monet exhibition in Madrid yesterday, where I actually said ‘You first’, to a chap I met as I turned a corner and who, like me, had been told to wear his backpack on his front. So, I momentarily sympathised with him. And I was grateful that he gestured for me to go first . . . And then smiled at me.

BTW . . . I had a penknife in my backpack and there was no protection for pictures worth millions. So . . . Are they genuine, or facsimiles done in that dedicated factory in China?

The Usual Links . . .

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 – updated a bit in early July 2023.

For those thinking of moving to Spain:- This is an extremely comprehensive and accurate guide to the challenge, written by a Brit who lives in both the North and the South and who’s very involved in helping Camino walkers.

Finally, finally . . .

Some readers, I hope, will know that the verse I cite at the top of my posts is the opening quatrain of Fitzgerald’s wonderful – but very ‘free’ – translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which you can read about here. Some verses are well known, of course, eg:-

The moving finger writes; and, having writ,

moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit

shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

My favourite:-

Myself when young did eagerly frequent

doctor and saint, and heard great argument

about it and about: but ever more

came out by the same door as in I went.