spain – Page 30 – don't confuse the narrator

Boxing Day

on a foreign shore: icing-tipped waves
toss tinsel into the clear air. We play
at Wenceslas in the sand, taking it in turns
to be the page. We look for sea holly and sing
carols under the curious gaze
of a parrot in a palm tree.

(Like the last couple of posts it’s not new. It’s also a repost, but I think the blog has different readers now. Incidentally, don’t waste time trying to find the parrot in the photo: it wasn’t actually that palm tree!)

no joke

One more post prompted by my trip to Madrid this week: at metro Bilbao, my attention was caught by this advert:

There has to be a joke there somewhere, but “Yo momma is una auténtica terapeuta tailandesa – a real Thai masseuse” just doesn’t seem to work.
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musings on the metro

My trip to Madrid this week involved a lot of rushing around, and a lot of trips on the Metro.

At Gran Vía, the whole of the station is currently plastered with posters advertising The Hobbit – due out in Spain today. As I scurried up and down escalators and along dank tunnels, I remembered the book’s opening: Continue reading

taxing times

This glorious building is the former Palacio de Comunicaciones in Madrid.

It used to house the headquarters of Correos – the Spanish postal service – and in my early days in the city the arrival of a parcel would involve the added joy of a chance to roam around the vast interior, tracking down the right delivery point, maybe climbing the spiral stairs of one the turrets, whose walls were decorated with ancient ceramic tiles, or venturing upstairs in the central building where you had a marvellous view down into the great hall.
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seasons

I’ve mentioned bonfires a couple of times in the last week, and I reckon half the village have been out in their gardens, taking advantage of the sunshine and what, for many, is a long weekend. They haven’t all been busy at the same task, though: