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 . .
Well, the Russian economy might be on a war footing but some Russians are doing well enough to be able to buy a property or two in Spain. Notary figures for last year show sales are down for Brits, Germans, Swedes and French folk but 27% up for Ruskis.
From Fascinating Spain, the day Spaniards mistook a polar aurora for the apocalypse.
If you’re a Brit resident still relying on a sheet of green paper to prove your rights, you might need to put in an early application for your TIE, the Olive Press warns here. And the UK government says the same here, ahead of new entry processes.
The UK
Are other countries, I wonder, going through the same post-pandemic crisis described here.
A British member of the House of Lords has proposed a new law under which cat doors would be illegal and cat-owners would be obliged to put a bell on their pets – all aimed at reducing the number of birds killed by felines. A satirist has written: The main problem with His Lordship’s proposals, is not that they’re impractical. It’s that, from an ecological point of view, they’re so hopelessly short-sighted. Cats may kill lots of birds but birds kill lots of worms. And worms, by helping to fertilise our soil, play an irreplaceable role in the natural world. So, if he really cares about protecting defenceless creatures from insatiable predators, he should call for all birds to wear bells, too. Worms may not have ears, but they can sense vibrations. And since his plan for cats will cause the bird population to increase dramatically, we must do all we can to give our poor, vulnerable worms a fighting chance of survival.
I confess I can’t recall if Scousers do the same thing but I can say it grates to hear Mancunians slaughter English past participles. This is today’s example, in the café I patronise: Andrea has already took your coffee to your table. The coffee, by the way, costs 3 quid. Three times what I pay in Spain.
The USA
A very good question . . . Trump’s hush-money case has proved he’s a low-life but can it prove he’s a criminal? Or, indeed, stop him becoming president?
Russia
Putin is preparing for a forever war, claims this columnist. So, thank god he’s not going to live that long.
English
- Offing: A word that only ever appears in the phrase ‘in the offing’. Meaning ‘likely to happen or appear soon’.
- Recency bias: A cognitive bias that causes us to assume that future events will resemble recent experiences. It makes us think that, because something happened recently, it is likely to happen again soon.It can affect investors, who may put too much emphasis on recent market trends and make short-term decisions that deviate from their financial plans.
Spanish
Endiablado: Devilish. As in ‘difficult’.
Did You know
I heard tell yesterday of this incredible (Catholic) belief, which I suspect is no longer current . . The midwife Salome insisted on verifying Mary’s virginity by physically examining her, doubting that she could have given birth while remaining a virgin. When Salome put her hand inside Mary, it became withered. This was seen as divine retribution for doubting the miraculous virgin birth. One version of this has it that Salome’s arm returned to normal after she’d touched the baby Jesus. I suppose it could be true . . .
Finally . . . .
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation, the law that obliges companies to bombard us with the privacy notices no one reads. Or almost no one. Back in February a British company included an offer of a free bottle of excellent wine in the middle of theirs to the first person who said they’d come across it. This took 3 months to happen – highlighting how little we all engage with the reams of legal red tape that have increasingly come to define our digital lives.
Talking of computers . . .Today I paid 42 quid – 50 euros – for the news that my 2.5 year old HP PC has a (one-piece) motherboard that is, in the technical jargon, crap. And, so, needs to be completely replaced, at a cost of another 400 quid. Just like my 3 year old Mac back in Spain, except that that placa de madre will cost twice as much to replace. I’m assured that this is not uncommon, as all today’s laptops are made this way, to save manufacturing costs. And, of course, to make producers good money on replacements. I’ll be putting aside a euro or two a day, to finance future bills. Just as I do for the motoring fines which seem inescapable in Spain. It eases the eventual pain.
Finally, Finally . .
For operational reasons, this was missing at the start of the month . . .
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 evermore
came out by the same door as in I went.
The Usual Links . . .
You can get my posts by email as soon as they’re published. With the added bonus that they’ll contain the typos I’ll discover later. I believe there’s a box for this at the bottom of each post. I guess it’s logical that this doesn’t appear on the version given to me . . .
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.
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. And this is something on the so-called Beckham Rule, which is beneficial – tax-wise – for folk who want to work here.
Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain 