I saw this sign in a designer shop escaparate in Madrid and wonder whether it sounds as odd in Spanish as it does to an English speaker. I guess ‘puff’ is an imported word and they just think it means some kind of small stool.
For me ‘puff’ should be associated with something as delicate and formless as smoke or clouds.
Definitely not with a solid lump of marble.
Reading a friend’s book proposal ready to contribute my two penn’orth, I was startled to find my name appear in one of the sample chapters. (Amused, too, to find myself described as “the Welsh poet” as if I were the only one!)
People who know me will probably find it as bizarre as I do that I am being quoted in a parenting book aimed at new fathers.
Continue reading “other people’s projects”
Potentially good news for all those Brits in Spain who are living in houses that were built without proper licences. The Reader (Almería-based English-language paper) tells us: Mayor of Zurgena and 24 more charged in urban corruption case.
An interesting language point from the story is the word prevaricación which although clearly connected to the English “prevarication” is not a direct translation.
Continue reading “crooked houses”
The flower is one of my favourites: in Spanish it’s a girasol – which neatly translates to “turnsole” in English, though we know them more commonly as sunflowers.
Continue reading “where the bee sucks”
From yesterday’s El Mundo, a clipping with a quotation that annoys me.
Baroness Thyssen has been writing her memoirs and they have been published in the Spanish society magazine ¡Hola!. It seems, though, that she has skipped over some of the facts and incidents that her (unofficial) biographers think relevant.
Her excuse?
Continue reading “putting poetry in your life”
don't confuse the narrator 