topical – Page 27 – don't confuse the narrator

fire and rain

Some readers will remember the fraught few days last summer when I wondered if the house was to be burned to a frazzle by the Gredos fire. It’s hard to believe that with all the rain that’s fallen recently.

Anyway, I still have a “Google alert” set up that tells me when any relevant news appears on the web. Which is why I’ve just seen this headline from the catástrofes y accidentes section of ABC online:

Yes, the re-forestation has been put off because of the weather.
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plus ça change

The BBC are running a story under the headline, “Middle-aged targeted in Change4Life health campaign“.

The report says that people in the 45 – 65 age group

are to be urged to downsize their plates and dance to the radio as part of the government-backed Change4Life advertising campaign.

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it’s all Greek to them

An interesting story on the BBC website under the headline Spanish hairdressers rebel against radio tax. It’s all to do with the fact that here in Spain the SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores) is determined to protect the intellectual property rights of its members.

The SGAE are the people responsible for the Canon por copia privada, a tax imposed on recording devices (both storage media, such as cds, and reproduction devices) in Spain.
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all the rage

I haven’t been following the X-factor/Rage Against the Machine story, but it’s one of those things that filter through even if you aren’t the least bit interested in it, and the headlines this morning make it unmissable.

Even so, the only real interest I have in the story is that it’s triggered a memory of being asked by a Swedish friend’s son, back in the early Nineties, what Rage Against the Machine meant.
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word power

They say that in Valladolid they speak the purest Spanish. And apparently it’s powerful as well as pure.

From the Castilla y León pages of El Mundo, the headline: “Una pareja de sexagenarios desarma a un atracador en su portal sólo con palabras”.

The story begins:

El poder de la palabra es inmenso, pero no sólo en sentido figurado. Solamente con ese arma, una pareja sexagenaria logró desarmar al atracador que trató de robarles cuando entraban en el portal de su vivienda en […] Valladolid.

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