spain – Page 22 – don't confuse the narrator

travelling

When I was a teenager we had fairly regular bomb scares at school. I was too politically naïve to know if it was the IRA or the PLO who were intent on disrupting my education, but I do remember that we spent many happy hours out on the playing fields waiting while sniffer dogs and their handlers searched the building.

We were always told to take our bags with us when we evacuated the building as it left fewer things to be searched. And I learned to be wary of bags and packages left unattended at airports, railway stations and shopping centres.
Continue reading

exits and entrances

It’s Noche Vieja – New Year’s Eve – and I am in Spain; so, as the Spanish would have it:

“Feliz salida y entrada”

And if you feel you are making your exit from 2013 “pursued by a bear”, I hope you discover that it’s really nothing more threatening than a teddy-bear.

autumn wings II

For years I have been sure that there’s a poem in the woodshed. Today, I seem to have found another fragment:

on holiday

Last weekend, the pueblo celebrated the fiestas of the local Virgin. (Not the summer fiestas – those were at the end of August, and not the fiestas for the patron saint – that’s next month: the Spanish are always happy to take days off work and chase bulls through the streets or set off firecrackers.)

Fireworks, Arenas de San Pedro, fiestas de la Virgen del Pilar

Now there is a lull in the village as the locals close up their shops to go and join the vendimia or take advantage of end-of-season offers to take their own holidays.
Continue reading

(cat) food for thought

Cats have been an integral part of my life for the last 20 years. The ones around now are quite fussy about the tinned food they’ll eat, but less so about the kibble, so I don’t tend to pay a lot of attention to which brand I buy.

This morning, though, I paused to wonder: if cats are happiest when they can snack on and off all day, why am I feeding them something called “Brekkies”? Why isn’t it brunchies, din-dins or snaxes?

Looking closer at the Spanish label, I find that the little yellow flash boasts +sabor / +sapore which sounds worryingly as if it has “more taste : more toads”.

As for this post title, since the Spanish for kibble is pienso, maybe I should have called it “thought for food”.