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

As dictators do, Franco and his wife made a few dubious property acquisitions here in Galicia during his reign as Generalisimo and the state has been trying to get them back into public ownership. The current family members – nothing if not both indignant and greedy – have used their inherited fortune to try to prevent this. Here’s an account of the latest saga, around Casa Cornide in La Coruña.

Life in Spain

• 1. I did an AI search on what advice Spaniards are given about tackling a roundabout in the UK. Not much it seems. Just ‘Be aware you go left’. But a Google search threw up a video on how to do this here in Spain and I was pleased to hear that – as I’ve rpeatedly said – the driving schools are still teaching errors and that the [vast] majority of Spanish drivers take roundabouts wrongly, always using the outside lane regardless of their planned exit. As if I didn’t know, seeing this several times every day!
• 2. My daughter is organising an event at home to which I invited all my Spanish and foreign friends and asked them to RSVP. Only one of the several Spaniards did. My daughter laughed when I told her and pointed out that Spaniards never plan 2 weeks ahead. She’s right, of course. Which means that, if you do get an acceptance, it’ll have in (unstated) brackets ‘Unless I get a better offer’. Everyone knows and accepts this, my daughter added. In something of a mocking tone . . . Well, I did too, of course, but one lives in hope that some Britishness has rubbed off . . .

This put me in mind of the bastard seagull in our Plaza de Leña . . . I’ve always thought seagulls were potentially dangerous on account of being numerous, fearless, perpetually hungry and, most of all, huge. The first time you see one close up, you go, “Crikey! That’s enormous!” You sort of picture a seagull as pigeon-sized, then it turns out they’re closer to an albatross.

The Camino de Santiago . . . Below, there’s some advice for pilgrims leaving Pv city across O Burgo bridge.

The UK

This is an amusing BA video, which has gone viral. I suspect it contains famous TV actors who are unknown to me . .

France

Still without a swimmable Seine. Thanks to heavy rain. More cosmic jokes from the weather gods. Maybe they don’t like the French either.

Venezuela

Things are hotting up. Meanwhile, Maduro has been congratulated by Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and . . . Spain.

The USA

It’s the turn of a male columnist . . . .The emptiness of Kamala Harris.

A startling fact . . .There’ve been more gun suicides than gun homicides every year for the past 25 years. 2022 saw 27,000 gun suicides to 19,500 gun homicides. Powerful things, guns.

A less startling fact . . . . The North American ‘hillbillies’ are named after Protestant Irish settlers – the ‘Billy Boys’ from Ulster, whose hero was and remains King Billy, or William of Orange. 

AI

Really useful in tracing the meaning of obsolete English words. Witness . . .

English

Yesterday’s obsolete words defined:-

• Bodger – Originally just someone who made something. Became someone who makes a mess of doing something.
• Reachless – Unreachable or unattainable
• Wot – Knows. As in ‘God wot’.
• Certes – Certainly, For sure
• Chapman. A peddler, dealer or merchant
• Howbeit – However that is, however
• Retchless – Careless, reckless
• Carsies – Low-lying, marshy land[​​​???]
• Mockado – A material similar to velvet
• Sith – Since

Today’s

• Divers – Several, various, sundry
• Geson/Geason – Rare, uncommon, scarce
• Ravelled –‘A kind of cheap bread’
• Cheat – ‘Wheaten bread’
• Manchet – Fine white bread made from the highest quality wheat flour
• Cupshotten – Drunk. Needs to be brought back.

Did you know?

In 2022, more fish were farmed than caught inthe wild, an apparent first.

Finally . .

John O’Farrell . . .

• Anglo-Saxon England had emerged from the chaos of the Dark Ages and two centuries of Viking wars to become one of the most advanced and well-organized societies in Europe. It had a well-developed legal system, effective regional government, good trade networks, strong coinage and thriving churches and monasteries. But, in 1066, this society was about to be shattered. Everything Anglo-Saxon would become persecuted or suppressed for evermore – well, at least up until the 1970s when Saxon imagery became briefly fashionable with the designers of heavy metal album covers.
• There isn’t a single person left in Britain who is a result of marrying and remarrying within the same tiny gene pool of the original Neolithic Britons (though there’s a village in Norfolk where I have my suspicions). Since 1066 our society has been continually enriched by thousands upon thousands of Dutch weavers, German bakers, Russian Jews, West Indians, Ugandan Asians, Bengali waiters and Premiership goalkeepers; all of them regarded with a certain amount of suspicion and disdain by the people who had got here a generation or two before them.

And his speciality . . . A time-warped chat:

‘I see some Huguenots have moved in at number 36.’

‘Well, there goes the neighbourhood. Once you get one lot move in, another family takes over the house next door and before you know it the whole street is full of them, smelling of garlic and moaning about the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.’

Advice for pilgrims leaving Pv city via O Burgo bridge.

At the moment, the main route up through the barrio of Lérez is closed and you’re advised to turn left and take the first right, just after the petrol/gas station. My advice is not to do this but to keep walking a minute or two until you arrive at a zebra crossing, where you’ll see a path to your right, alongside a tributary of the main river. This is flat and far more shaded. After a few hundred metres, you’ll arrive at a tarmac road, with a small, narrow bridge to your left. Here you can either carry straight on across the road or turn right onto the road and then join the main route after 200m. If you take the first option – my recommendation – you’ll follow a path as it bends to the right and comes out on the main route, further along than with the 2nd option.

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. Finally, some advice on getting a mortgage. And this article ‘debunks claims re wealth and residency taxes’. Probably only relevant if you’re a HNWI. In which case, you’ll surely know what that stands for.