don't confuse the narrator

using language

I hadn’t realised that the library in Navarredonda was following a long and honourable Spanish tradition with their sign listing their rules and regulations for behaviour.

Still, the tile in the photograph was spotted embedded in the wall outside a bar in Pedro Bernardo and does seem to be a genuine antique.

Presumably, though, the residents don’t want visitors to think that they are quite so stuck in the past as a ban on blasphemy and the image of a pony parked in the bull ring might lead you to believe. At least, I assume that’s why they felt the need to add the small explanatory tile that reads, “curiosidad antigua”.
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local transport

One thing that never ceases to amaze me about Spain is how easy it is to find scenes of traditional village life.

I’m not talking about travelling to the more remote provinces such as León, where, according to today’s El Mundo, there are 23 municipalities with fewer than 200 registered residents.
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plane and fancy

Not all the plane trees in the area are the carefully trimmed and ‘domesticated’ ones I mentioned in the post Plane Speaking. There are some along the other side of the river that are huge and untrimmed.

Which is why I had to look up straight into the sun to take this picture the other day.

Of course, if the sun hadn’t been directly behind it, I wouldn’t have noticed the tiny halo of light caught on the stem of the lowest hanging fruit. It was as bright and pretty as any Christmas-tree bauble wrapped in tinsel. And almost impossible to catch using a phone camera.

not my own words

I had a dream a while back where I was telling someone that I earned my living from writing – “But not my own words.”

No, it wasn’t an admission of plagiarism. I think it was a subconscious recognition of the fact that I am too busy translating to do very much original writing.
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health check

I received a very worrying newspaper cutting through the post this weekend. (Yes, I know people who still communicate by ‘real’ mail and take the trouble to clip and send on articles of interest.) It came from the UK Metro, and the headline read Take the Pill ‘for a long life’. What was particularly disturbing was the following phrase that also appears on the web version of the story: