dates & time – Page 30 – don't confuse the narrator

midsummer madness

The last two posts have mentioned the noche de San Juan, when celebratory bonfires are lit, but I had rather thought that that would be enough of the subject for this year. After all, the hogueras are lit on the evening of June 23rd, and today they should all be over.

Sadly, though, someone seems to have got the dates mixed and started un incendio in the middle of the day today.

The whole afternoon has been accompanied by the screaming sirens of the police and fire brigade, and the thrumming of the helicopters called out to deal with it.
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midsummer day

Today is midsummer’s day, a fact that always confused me as a child: if June 21st was the first day of summer and the 24th was midsummer, did that mean it was all over on the 27th?

Actually, given British summers, it wasn’t that really all that confusing. Perhaps if I’d known then about the St John’s bonfires, I’d have thought it quite reasonable that you might need to light a fire to keep warm even in late June.

cat’ku

Looking for something summery to post for San Juan, I found this:

sunny verandah
a scattering
of kittens and kibble

The photo appears to have been taken on June 24th, two years ago. The blog post for that day is a proper Midsummer Night poem: noche de san juan.

no stone unturned

To everything there is a season, a time and a place for everything. If this scene is anything to go by, it seems that in Tenerife it is a time to gather stones together:

piles of stones, Playa del Duque, Tenerife

it’s complicated

It’s May 29th, and apparently that means it’s Royal Oak Day. That in itself is simple enough, but for an angloparlante, discussing oaks trees and acorns with a Spaniard is complicated.
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