“So, what are you doing to further the revolution?” I ask.
Mainly, I’m trying to distract her from her woes, but I do think that if you’re nearly 90 and want the revolution to come in your lifetime, it’d probably be a good thing to be pro-active about it.
At first, she doesn’t think there’s much an old woman like her can do.
Then, “I could carry a placard.”
This is good: she’s no longer thinking – or complaining – about how cold and wet it is.
Continue reading “circles”
It’s Noche Vieja – New Year’s Eve – and I am in Spain; so, as the Spanish would have it:
“Feliz salida y entrada”
And if you feel you are making your exit from 2013 “pursued by a bear”, I hope you discover that it’s really nothing more threatening than a teddy-bear.
We went for a drive yesterday and, as usual, I took my camera with me. But I wasn’t really in the mood for taking pictures; I wanted to see things for myself rather than look at them through a viewfinder. Sadly, that means that although I have a few nice pictures of a reservoir, I missed a really good shot of black cows straggling across the Spanish hillside and another of a herd of bracken-coloured goats grazing on the scrubby roadside. 
We also saw an elderly rustic walking down the middle of the road carrying a seriously dangerous-looking rifle, apparently stalking something. I didn’t take a picture of him, either, but that was mainly because I think that pointing a camera at a man with a gun is not the wisest of acts.
Continue reading “words & weapons”
In the UK, when Christmas falls at a weekend, there are compensatory holidays; this means that if you invite friends over for Boxing Day, you need to be absolutely sure they all turn up on the same day.
This year, with the 25th falling neatly on a Wednesday, there was no potential confusion: Boxing Day was the day after Christmas, it was Thursday, December 26th, it was St Stephen’s Day, and no one was likely to dispute that.
Except Amazon, it seems, whose constant messages flood my inbox: 
The neighbour’s oaks are always among the last of the local trees to lose their leaves, but the terrific winds of a few nights ago left them practically bare. Yesterday was the shortest day, so now it’s downhill to summer. 
And you? Are you planning to turn over a new leaf? Do you have a New Year’s resolution already prepared? Why aren’t you going ahead with it right now?
(And by “you”, I mean “me”, of course.)
don't confuse the narrator 