don't confuse the narrator

hiraeth

The round-shouldered cobblestones nudge
at my sandalled feet. They are smooth
as the pebbles that sang on an Anglesey beach,
as the present-from-Beaumaris paperweight
whose faded dragon still parades
across my desk. They are warm
as cottage loaves fresh from Powell’s,
or bakestones from the griddle. The gulls
shriek with the same harsh voice, but the river
is an unfamiliar olive green and runs
beside a motorway that leads me
away from you.

(Not a new poem, but appropriate for March 1st, the feast day of Dewi Sant.)

like a lamb

Well, we’ve reached the end of the month and the expression “February fill dyke” has never seemed more appropriate.

How March is to come in remains to be seen: last night, I thought it was going to come roaring like a lion, but today has been as mild a day as you could wish for. On a walk back from the village at lunch time I saw:

swallows: I don’t know how many it takes to make a summer in Spain, but there were several.
lizards: not the first of the season, but the first time this year that I have seen more than just the one.
a stork circling the church tower.
a bat: I thought for a moment it was another swallow, but there’s no doubt it was a bat, even though it was broad daylight.
a red admiral butterfly: who must have managed to weather the storms and was now enjoying the sunshine

Continue reading “like a lamb”

I have a spelling chequer…

…which seems to be a little confused:

no suggestions for correct spelling of "suggestions"

(The fact that the “match case” box is ticked is a red herring. That was for an earlier “search and replace” operation.)

Maybe I should point out that although I complain about the results of automatic translation and correction programs, I still find them relatively useful. And amusing, of course.

parenthetical pharmaceuticals

I found this on a box of non-prescription tablets:

instructions for taking tablets — I'm a little bit in the dark about the instructions

The way I read that, the commas make the phrase “half an hour before going to bed” parenthetical, so you are advised to go into a darkened room to take the tablet. After that, presumably you can switch the lights back on to go to sleep.

There’s probably some neat pun on “comma” and “coma”, too, but I can’t think of one right now.

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: