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

Who’s going to be surprised at the claim that some leading Majorcan politicians are hypocrites? Don’t you have to have this quality on your CV?

If I were the Spanish PM. I’d be rather more interested in getting shut of Ceuta and Melilla than in retrieving Gibraltar. Though this would surely give me a spot of bother from the Vox Spanish nationalists. Witness.

By pure coincidence, here’s the estimable Lenox Napier on the theme of wanted and unwanted territories. Well, the former, at least.

The UK

Can things really get much worse under the new Labour government.?Plenty of folk think so, on the basis of a few months’ experience.

The EU

This British columnist claims that: The EU policy on maritime interventions is at best inconsistent, and at worst disingenuous.  And asks: Is the EU pushing its own mass migration problem in our direction. He certainly thinks so. But he might be a bit paranoid.

The USA

• I’ve been forecasting for a while now that the Republican establishment will assassinate Trump, should it become clear that he’ll lose in November. So, I’m less than surprised to see that there’s been a 2nd attempt to kill him and that the perpetrator is again an (ex?)Republican.
• BTW . . .The correct pronunciation for Kamela is as for Pamela. But everyone in the UK seems to do what Trump does, putting the stress on the 2nd, not the 1st, syllable. She has explained that a helpful way to remember it is to think of the word “comma” followed by “la” at the end

The Way of the World

• A very unholy alliance – The Islamists and the (Far)Left.
• Is this very much an Anglosphere problem? . . . Something has gone very wrong with how we bring up our young.
• Transgenderism: A nice quote from that article: The lesson of the trans craze is that many professionals are not nearly mature enough to diagnose the mental health of children and some doctors might themselves be insane. I myself have no doubt about the latter. Though I never thought so before this madness.

Social Media/Quote of the Day

We might all be better off without social media . . . We should all be troubled by this – Social media is not designed to prioritise accurate information. It is not set up to separate truth from lies, information from propaganda. 

Net Zero

Some info on the holy grail of blue hydrogen

Covid

These Covid variants really don’t like each other. The latest one – XEC – is said to have a winning advantage over previous strains, as it’s a recombination of the KS.1.1 and KP.3.3 variants. These had previously ousted the FLiRT, FLuQU and DEFLuQE strains. Or maybe the other way round.

English

Indian influence again . . Several scholars say that the word ‘orange’ (naranja in Spanish) comes not from Arabic (actually alburtuqaliu) but from from the Sanskrit word term narang, via the Persian word narensh.

Did you know?

A friend of mine here who’s trying to make a living as an (honest) estate agent/realtor has had 2 bad experiences with nasty people this week and is a tad disheartened. As I listened to her, I recalled what I’d decided years ago was the best definition of success in business – Success is getting back up one more time than you’ve been knocked down. But I’m not sure she was much comforted by my passing this pearl of wisdom onto her . . .

Finally . . .

I’ll be doing a road trip in SE Spain in late October/early November. After Chinchón and Cuenca – en route to the Valencia region – there’s the possibility of Albacete. My research hasn’t been encouraging and, worse, there’s a Spanish expression which really does make me wonder whether it’s worth visiting – Albacete, caga y vete! Anyone got any advice on this?

Finally, Finally . .

MY YEAR IN THE SEYCHELLES
• Part 1: 12 August 2024: Why VSO?
• Part 2: 13 August 2024: The Leaving of Liverpool
• Part 3: 14 August 2024: An interlude: The Seychelles back then
• Part 4: Departure, Nairobi and Arrival
• Part 5: Arriving in Mombasa

Part 6: The YCWA in Mombasa

As we arrived, we were approached by a tall, thin-faced woman whose notoriety, we later learned, was global.

Could she put us up for the night, we asked. She didn’t think so, as the hostel was already overcrowded. But we had nowhere to go and were willing to pay cash. What about the empty room we could see across the passageway. She was sorry but this was too close to the women’s quarters. But we’d only just arrived in Africa and didn’t know anyone in the entire continent, never mind the YWCA in Mombasa. That was irrelevant. Well, could she see her way to finding us a room for twice the normal price? She’d see what she could do.

We were eventually told there was only one bunk available but, out of the kindness of her heart, she’d allow one of us to sleep in the corridor. She told us where to find mattresses and clearly delineated the limits of the men’s quarters. Then she departed with a final warning not to go there via the flower beds and the shrubbery.

We found the mattresses and the bed bits and duly dragged them over the flower beds and through the shrubbery. Martin won the toss and went in search of the sole unoccupied bunk bed. I put up my bed in the only place it would fit – at the end of a corridor under a very un-English-looking tree. Then I went in search of Martin. I found him in a room not much larger than a railway compartment in an old-fashioned train but containing evidence of at least 10 or 12 occupants. Martin had made up his bunk and was vainly searching for a bit of floor space for his luggage. This he achieved by shoving someone else’s stuff into the corridor.

About this time, it occurred to us that we hadn’t eaten since the Irish Stew at midday in Nairobi. So, having rung our American friend and determined the time of our departure next morning, we approached hatchet-face to ask for some food. We couldn’t help noticing that the other inmates were sitting down to what looked like a decent meal. Diplomacy, I reckoned, would achieve the best results . . .

“Could you tell us where to find a good place to eat?”, I asked, intimating – I thought – that an invitation to dine wouldn’t go amiss. After all, we’d paid twice the going rate and would be leaving before breakfast. Surely me merited an evening meal.
“Certainly” she replied. And gave us the directions.
“Thank-you!” we replied in unison. And then stalked off for another tramp through the flower beds and the shrubbery.

Tired, hungry and annoyed, we retired to bed.

Out in the first-floor corridor, under that strange and threatening tree, I felt distinctly uncomfortable. I was grateful for the cut-throat razor under the pillow, feeling I might well need it before the night was out. Female cackling of the ground floor did little to dispel my fears and I lay awake for what seemed like hours, with my hand clasping the razor under my head. Eventually, fatigue overcame me and I succumbed to sleep.

Suddenly I was wide awake, my nostrils quivering under an assault from a nearby foul smell. My ears rang with a strange but somehow familiar smell rasping noise and my right hand unconsciously raised the blade to the defensive position. Then it dawned on me that I was only two yards from the toilets and that both the noise and the smell were the results of overindulgence with the bottle.

I lay down again, only to be woken several times during the night by repeat performances from the poor unfortunate who was getting even less sleep than I was. His last trip was acutely embarrassing since, on his approach, I sprang half-asleep from the bed with the razor in my hand and a snarl on my lips. Not surprisingly, he stopped in his tracks, his hand to this mouth, as it slowly dawned on me how I was standing. Sheepishly, I muttered something about a nightmare and returned once more to my bed. My sick friend walked sideways past me to the toilet, never once taking his eyes off my right hand, and retched once again. I doubt he’d have cared too much if I’d dragged the razor across his throat.

At seven o’clock, I went to wake Martin. The entrance to the cubicle in which he and eleven others were noisily sleeping was blocked by a huge red-haired Yeti in a sleeping bag. Cautiously, I stepped over his body and moved inside. Martin was already packing. It seemed his night had not been without incident either. As he explained, the creature blocking the entrance to the room was only sleeping there because Martin had taken his bunk.

We crept out as quietly as we could but, but as Martin stepped over the Yeti, its ginger face let out a loud groan and somewhere amidst the mass of hair a pair of eyes opened and stared out. In two seconds flat, we were on the porch and waiting for our transport to the airport.

We were joined by a couple of American girls who, we found, shared our opinion of the warden.

The latter obligingly rounded off our stay by storming onto the porch and demanding to know the ownership of the apple core on the floor. Only the arrival of a Pan Am truck saved us from further third degree.

My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts, either after reading on line or in my FB group Thoughts from Galicia. Here’s the fascinating blog of one of these. I wish I had time to do it justice . . .

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. If you do this but don’t read the posts, I will delete your subscription. So perhaps don’t bother if you have other reasons for subscribing . . .
• 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.