Referring to Google for help with an article, I find a new doodle. The mouse-over text tells me we’re celebrating “Día internacional de la mujer” – presumably I get that in Spanish as it’s my browser language.
A couple of clicks takes me to the Wikipedia page, also in Spanish:
I click to the English equivalent page and compare, and two things strike me:
Continue reading “wiki-ed women”
Years ago (in our world before digital cameras, hence no photos) we were asked by a friend to make a costume for his son for the school carnival celebration. I don’t really know why he thought we would be good people to ask, but clearly as bar owners he and his wife had little free time for handicrafts.
He gave us a cardboard box and told us what the costume should be, but the details were up to us. Several rolls of aluminium foil later, and with the addition of such details as stick-on dollar signs, a coin slot and tray, and a dangling electric plug, we had created a rather wonderful one-armed bandit that won the prize for best costume.
Continue reading “costumes and customs”
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.
Continue reading “a flock of bird thoughts”
I don’t really see the appeal of Twitter – perhaps because I don’t really understand how it works – but occasionally friends send me links to ‘trending topics’.
Yesterday, I got a link to #whatsyourgeekconfession and found this at the top:
Continue reading “books and friends”
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”
don't confuse the narrator 