dates & time – Page 27 – don't confuse the narrator

moon magnetism

Is there a poet in the land
who can resist that moon, those stars,
who is not sitting, pen in hand
recounting how love leaves her scars?

[…]

Enraptured by the moon’s bright light,
I, too, am writing poems tonight.

(Well, I was, some 15 years ago, which is when those lines originated as part of a tetrameter sonnet with heavy end stopping and extraordinarily unimaginative rhymes. The worst thing about learning more about poetry is that I try and write fewer bad poems and end up just writing less.)

summery II

Another summery picture to mark the fact that although yesterday was the longest day, today the sun will actually set later.**

As Rimbaud said in his poem Roman: Les tilleuls sentent bon dans les bons soirs de juin! – lindens smell sweet on fine June evenings. What he didn’t say is that they smell sweet all day long.
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summery

Well, I managed to miss the solstice sunrise, but it does look quite summery outside the window.

There again, my idea of what summer looks like has been changed by years of living in Spain.

Forgetting for a moment about the rain and the cold that is more often the reality, I think of British summer as pale and hazy, delicate and frilled, in pastel shades of strawberries and cream.

It’s honeysuckle, gypsophila and sweet peas; strappy sandals, pretty print frocks and matching cardigans.

In Spain, though, summer is brash and solid and in-your-face.
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tempus fugit

I had an email from Google recently reminding me that they had offered me an AdWords voucher. This sentence caught my eye:

Nos complace comunicarle que hemos ampliado la promoción hasta el 27 junio 2013, lo que significa que aún puede canjear esta oferta y empezar a anunciarse justo a tiempo para la época navideña y el nuevo año.

Translated, that’s:

We are pleased to be able to tell you that we have extended the promotion until 27 June, 2013, which means that you are still in time to take advantage of this offer and start to advertise just in time for the Christmas season and the New Year.

Is that how time works in the information age? Maybe I should install a calendar app and stop relying on dandelion clocks.

royal oak day

A message in my inbox tells me:

It’s the 29th of May, Royal Oak Day:
if you don’t give us a holiday, we’ll all run away !

Strange how even the most ardent socialists are willing to consider becoming monarchists when there’s a holiday involved.

Still, I’ve talked in the past about the complications of political labelling as well as about the difficulties in talking about oaks and acorns in Spanish. So, since I seem already to have dealt with the obvious follow ons, and it isn’t actually a holiday, perhaps I’d better get on with some work!