spain – Page 41 – don't confuse the narrator

a flock of bird thoughts

A fragment of an old poem to start off with:

Under the apple treee, a prattle
of tabby-feathered sparrows anticipates
the flick and snap of chequered tablecloth
that signals their breadcrumb breakfast.

I was reminded of the image because I had a newspaper clipping sent to me the other day – yes, there are still people who read printed newspapers, albethey freebies, and who cut out things other than coupons to send on accompanied by real letters to specific people, rather than glancing superficially at on-line phrases and sending irrelevant links to everyone in their email address book. It was a cutting about the Spanish sparrow who is causing a furore in a coastal village in Hampsire.
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excuses

It’s been longer than usual since the last blog update and I was wondering what excuse to make. I wasn’t sure whether to say I’d been too busy or just not had any ideas. Then I remembered the notes I made the other morning while I stopped off for breakfast in the hotel bar in the village.

The TV was on – is there a bar in the whole of Spain that doesn’t have a television on all the hours the place is open? – showing some kind of morning magazine programme. Although the sound was on, there were three other people in the place (that includes the barman) and the conversation – jumping back and forth between the farthest corners and behind the bar – was sufficiently loud to drown out most of what was going on, but I managed to gather some of it.
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angels and devils

Staying with churches, but moving down from the belfries that have featured in the last couple of posts, I’ve been looking through some old notes and came across this fragment:

In the village church,
a noseless angel
spreads his wings
above a skull.

I don’t seem to have a photo of the noseless angel, but I did manage to find the rather fine demon on the right on one of my many unlabelled CDs.

I think the demon is from one of the Cathar sites in southern France, while the angel was almost certainly in Spain. Now I come to think of it, though, it was probably in la Sierra de Francia, so they may be distant cousins.

(not) a batting title

blue sky with faint clouds and oak tree buds

Against a spring-blue sky
the twitch and loop of flickering wings
says: pipistrelle!

Of course it’s saying it in Spanish, and I see from the IberiaNature glossary that there are some two dozen species of murciélago in Spain, so I may be mis-hearing what’s being said.
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geological shift

It’s not only the seasons that seem to have shifted here. At this time of year, we should have snow on the mountains; instead it looked more as if we had a volcano out there this morning.