Although it’s only the 30th, people in the village are already beginning to round their conversations off with the phrase “feliz salida y entrada…”
It always seems such a mouthful to me, and I can never get the order right – subconsciously I think “happy exit and entrance” seems a bit cart-before-horsish, although in the context of the old year leaving before the new one comes in, it’s perfectly correct. Still, it twists my tongue every time, and today it’s set me thinking:
Continue reading “successes, exits and happenings”
Category: spanish
baaaa, humbug!
Although the festivities go on for the best part of a month – starting with la Concepción Inmaculada on December 8th (or possibly el Día de la Constitución on the 6th) and not ending until Twelfth Night when los Reyes bring the children’s presents – it never seems very Christmassy in Spain.
For a start there may be snow on the mountains, but there’s also glorious sunshine and it’s still daylight till after 6pm.
For the last few days we’ve been having carols piped over the council tannoy system for a couple of hours every morning in the village, but other than the Little Drummer Boy, Continue reading “baaaa, humbug!”
bubbles, butterflies & baseball
Apparently unrelated, perhaps, but the words in the title do, in fact, have something in common: they are the topics of the three new titles in the T-Tales collection by Topka.
And those are the books I’ll be reading at two separate readings/story-telling sessions in Madrid this coming Saturday, December 13th.
Continue reading “bubbles, butterflies & baseball”
a critic barks
It’s always nice when the walk to the village has some kind of productive outcome, other than the purchase of a not-quite-a-baguette Spanish loaf and the inevitable associated longing for proper English wholemeal.
Today there was the pleasure of finding two ‘letters’ in the PO Box. Well, “letters” es un decir: one was a glossy flyer from the bank assuring me that if I use my credit card over Christmas and get further into debt, Continue reading “a critic barks”
rights and royalties
When I wrote the previous post and thought about ‘tags’ for it, I included the Spanish expression derechos de autor. For non-Spanish speakers, it’s possibly worth pointing out the ambiguity of that phrase.
Literally, it looks like “author’s rights”, but in fact it can translate as both “copyright” and “royalties”. This can be confusing, but probably makes some kind of sense. Continue reading “rights and royalties”
don't confuse the narrator 