spain – Page 71 – don't confuse the narrator

old chestnuts

Horse chestnuts hold pale torches high
in green spread fingers and old wisteria
writhes around wrought iron
in a blue-teared cascade.
Throughout the city,
elm trees sway, scattering
indifferent confetti.

These lines have been retrieved and re-vamped from a poem called Flowers for an Easter wedding.

It was written some years ago – in Spain, which accounts for the elms, and for why it’s so out of synch with the English flowering season – and I think it was published as a three stanza piece with 15 lines.
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time flies

And there are too many things need doing for me to write much, so I’ll settle for a picture of this rather splendid creature I found in the garden this morning.

I suppose it’s a kind of tiger moth. (I should have stuck a ruler in the picture as an indication of scale, of course, but it must have been something over an inch long.) Its impressive camouflage would have been marginally more effective if it had chosen the cream painted wall for its morning siesta.
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sinful snacking

I’ve already commented on how fond the Spanish are of the genitivo sajón so I suppose the strange and entirely inappropriate little green leaf in the logo of this packet of “snatt’s” isn’t really surprising.

Still, it does make me wonder once again who does the copy writing and design for Spanish advertising agencies.

I imagine the brand name “snatt’s” is someone’s interpretation of the sound of the English word “snacks”. But what purpose does the leaf serve?

If it’s purely a design element, surely it could have been put somewhere where it wasn’t likely to be mistaken for an apostrophe? Or did the company chairman think that an apostrophe added a sophisticated English twist to the name?
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immortal bird

At half past one this morning, I was tossing and turning, unable to sleep because of the loud birdsong outside my window.

I’m not at all good with identifying birds from their songs, but I’m pretty sure it was a nightingale singing from the cherry tree. It stopped briefly when I put the light on, but then, from what I remember – I did get some intermittent sleep – it continued all through the night until I was awake again around six. Gradually, as it got lighter, the voice was joined by others, and now it’s daylight, there is still much birdsong, but it is more scattered as they are all off about their usual business.
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