From yesterday’s El Mundo, a clipping with a quotation that annoys me.
Baroness Thyssen has been writing her memoirs and they have been published in the Spanish society magazine ¡Hola!. It seems, though, that she has skipped over some of the facts and incidents that her (unofficial) biographers think relevant.
Her excuse?
Continue reading “putting poetry in your life”
Yes, it’s that time of year again.
Hearing a helicopter directly overhead, I assumed it was the ultralite that comes round taking aerial photos. Seeing the shadow of the blades cross the vine, I realised it had to be something rather bigger and went outside to see what was happening.
It’s not surprising that there’s a danger of fire with skies this blue, but since the holidays don’t officially start till tomorrow, it’s a bit worrying.
Continue reading “fire!”
I was out on the verandah talking on the phone when I saw a tiny lizard. “Ooh, ¡qué lindo!, ¡un lagartijo pequeñísimo!” I exclaimed, or something equally inane.
The friend I was speaking to was quick to reply, “But clearly not that small, or you wouldn’t know that it was male!”
He was, of course, making fun of my Spanish and the fact that I’d got the gender wrong.
Continue reading “a lizard’s tale”
I was down in Seville at the weekend, at the Feria del Libro, for a cuentacuentos session and book signing.
Of course, people go to bed very late – the women in the next room to me in the hotel clearly didn’t go out till after 11:00 on the Friday night and came back at about 4:30am. It seems odd, though, that the best part of the day – first thing after the sun gets up and while it’s all still fresh and cool – should be wasted. Particularly as, by lunch time, Seville heat can be suffocating.
Continue reading “books and their covers & a glimpse of fame”
Having worked hard in the garden on Saturday, not realising just how strong the sun was, I was probably fortunate only to feel slightly under the weather yesterday. Sunstroke can be fatal, of course, and is perhaps more likely to be so for those of us who were brought up in colder, wetter, and altogether greyer, northern climes.
So I was interested to read this story about the Brits in Alicante who have worked out what to do if (when?) they die here. Apparently many of the 350,000 who are resident there are donating their bodies to science.
Continue reading “some corner of a foreign hospital research lab”
don't confuse the narrator 