Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts
the stars to flight.

And, lo, the hunter of the east 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/Galiza

Mark Stücklin writes here on Spain’ increasing housing deficit. Decidedly not good news.

The Camino is now such a draw that people are willing walk through Galicia during the month(s) when they are almost certain to be drenched for days on end. If not weeks. I would say this is stupid but, then, I don’t have a religious faith to fortify me against the elements. As an albergue employee says here There’s an almost spiritual resignation among those who walk now, along the muddy paths: if it’s sunny, you walk; if it rains, you get muddy.

Portugal

Kristin is now being recognised as the worst storm ever to have hit Portugal. And: The bad weather will stretch right through next week. The worst may be over but a lot of bad weather is still on the way – particularly in the regions of the north and centre already hammered by Kristin. Just below us in southern Galicia

The UK

There’s grade creep and grade creep . . . In my Laws faculty – a few decades ago – only 1-2% of students got first class degrees. Most recently, it was above 25%. Nationwide, for all degrees, it’s now 30%. All about attracting students and their fees, say some. Bugger academic integrity.

Venezuela

Since too many members of the US media exhibit the memory of goldfish, it’s important to keep tabs on Trump bluster and promises versus actual or predictable results. At the time of the Trump raid on Caracas, many pointed out it would take considerable time and investment merely to get Venezuela oil production back to the level of the 1990s, and vastly more to exceed that. This post provides more detail on the sorry state of Venezuela oil infrastructure and what that implies for increasing output.

The USA

See my earlier Trumplandia post.

Spanish

• Persecución: Chase, pursuit.
• Calcinado: Burnt out. As with a car after a crash.
• Rayo: Lightning bolt.

Did you know?

I’m not sure that many people know that, during the 1950s decade – los años de hambre (the hunger years) – an estimated 200,000 Spaniards died from famine and disease. This was the result of Franco implementing autarkic economic policies – a system of limited trade designed to isolate Spain and to protect it from anti Spanish influences, utilising high tariffs, strict quotas, border controls and currency manipulation. This effectively impoverished the nation but vastly enriched Franco and his cronies. Sound familiar?

You Have to Laugh

I do not object to being bored, if I am paid for it. But I never am paid for it. So many people have run up such long scores with me in this respect, and never paid me, that I will give no more credit. I must have cash down before I will be bored at all, but my figure is very low; so long as I get paid at all I will give people as much fun for their money, by way of letting them bore me, as anyone is likely to do: Samuel Butler, an English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon (Nowhere) and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh.

My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts.

Finally . . .

Finally . . . Finally . . .

As it’s 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