Today is January 6th: el día de Reyes, the day when Spanish children finally get their Christmas presents. (Although we were told that Santa took gifts to children all round the world, he doesn’t visit many houses in Spain as he leaves it to the Magi to deliver the parcels – or coal for those who’ve been naughty – on Twelfth Night.)
Continue reading “kings, sages and magicians”
Category: transport
reunited!
A full two weeks after it went missing, my suitcase has been returned to me and I have been reunited with my dirty washing.
I have no idea where the case went in the meantime, although at one point I was told that they were looking for it “in eight different airports”. I think it must have gone a long way away, though, as the baggage tag labelled “RUSH” is dated the 7th of December and today is the 15th.
When it first went missing, I started to compile a list of the contents in a spreadsheet in case I needed to claim for them. When I’d reached some hundred items, I began to wonder whether it was all so densely packed that it had caused a singularity in the space time continuum and the case had imploded under its own gravitational pull like a black hole. It was, after all, only a small case.
Continue reading “reunited!”
state of alarm
I woke this morning to find the country in estado de alarma.
On the radio they were talking about the military being mobilised, Spanish air space was closed and we were awaiting news from La Moncloa. It all sounded pretty desperate.
Continue reading “state of alarm”
not all’s fair in love and Warrington
I don’t think I’ve ever been to Warrington. And now I have less interest than ever in going there.
According to this story in the Telegraph, it appears that “No-kissing signs have appeared in the taxi rank at Warrington Bank Quay Station” and that lovers are being forced to use “designated areas only”.
It seems odd that a place in the UK should be adopting such measures when it’s only a couple of weeks since the BBC published a report beginning “A court in India has dismissed criminal proceedings against a married couple charged with obscenity for allegedly kissing in public in the capital.”
Continue reading “not all’s fair in love and Warrington”
counting cars
In the previous post I said that back in 1964 there were a fraction of the number of cars in Spain that there are today. I’ve actually looked that up and figures cited this week in the newspapers claim that back then there were “dos millones de vehículos frente a los 30 millones de ahora y cuatro millones de conductores frente a los 25 millones que existen en la actualidad.”
Let’s look at that again, in English:
Continue reading “counting cars”
don't confuse the narrator 