I took this photo today; elsewhere in garden, the violets have been in flower for a couple of weeks. 
I don’t doubt that for everything there is a season. It just isn’t always the one you’d expect it to be.
Category: spain
children of all ages
On my way back from the village early yesterday evening, I met a neighbour who asked wasn’t I staying around for the Kings’ Day cavalcade.
The usual conversation resulted, about the Kings as gift-bearers not being part of my culture. (“We do things differently en mi tierra,” is a useful gambit which usually puts paid to criticism of my unorthodox behaviours. After all, I can’t help being foreign.)
Then I asked whether he was intending to watch the parade. “Oh no; es para niños.”
Continue reading “children of all ages”
of pigs and poetry
It’s a piece that I’ve been intending to write ever since we bought the house in the village and were told the guy couldn’t come to prune the trees on the long December puente as he’d be busy with la matanza.
In most parts of Spain, a cada cerdo le llega su San Martín – pigs get what’s coming to them on November 11th – but it seems that in our village it’s more traditional for the pig slaughter to take place on the feast of la Inmaculada.
That juxtaposition of the innocence and virginal white of the immaculate conception with the sheer red-blooded traditional country ritual of pig slaughter seems to be crying out for a poem to be written.
Continue reading “of pigs and poetry”
room at the inn
We stopped for an aperitivo at a local bar at lunchtime and found the owner’s brother busy setting up a belén – the traditional nativity scene complete with stable, inn, and all the activity of the little town of Bethlehem.
The guy was clearly an experienced belenista.
The scene had been allocated something over two square metres of table space and although the basic layout was settled, he was still working out some structural details. The figures were sitting on another table waiting to be put in position.
Continue reading “room at the inn”
diplomatic immunity (the silly season II)
When I started to write the previous post, I was actually intending to talk about this ‘news’ story:
Judge pardons King Balthasar for ‘caramelazo’ in the Three Kings cavalcade.
‘Caramelazo.’ What a lovely word. And what a wonderful language Spanish is that it can produce such words: Continue reading “diplomatic immunity (the silly season II)”
don't confuse the narrator 