My neighbours may think I should be concerned about meeting wild boar(s) in the vecinity, but not all such meetings are to be feared.
The picture is a close up (full image below) of one such beast that I came across at the Feria de Arte in Arenas de San Pedro a couple of weeks ago and that I really wish I could have taken home with me.
Continue reading “hunter of dreams”
During a break in the rain this afternoon, I went for a brief walk. The whole thing only took me about 40 minutes, and I met and spoke to three guys. The first, walking a small dog along the road down by the river, simply wished me good afternoon. Then I turned off the road onto a trail up between the olive groves and towards the pine woods.
There I met a neighbour whose first reaction was, “¿No tienes miedo de caminar por aquí?” I said no, I wasn’t afraid, and he hastened to assure me there were lots of jabalíes in the area; he definitely seemed concerned when I didn’t pale at the thought of bumping in to a wild boar in the middle of the afternoon half a mile from my own back yard.
Continue reading “wild boars and motorbikes”
Living in Spain, there are times when I feel as if I am looking at life through linguistic bi-focals: one lens is my mother tongue, English, the other is the local language, Spanish (Castellano).
Now that the weather’s improved and the council workers have managed to get out to do some jobs around the village, they’ve finally put in new lamp posts down by the river. Proper wrought iron ones that cast soft yellow light quite unlike the unnaturally white blare from the UFO-type double-headed farolas they put along by the polideportivo during a lull in the storms a month or so back.
Set against the snow-pocked backdrop of the Sierra de Gredos, the new Narnia-style lamp posts make me think of the Pevensie children helping Aslan banish the White Witch and release Narnia from the long winter.
They’ve also brought to mind a poem from a few years back:
Continue reading “light and hope”
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.
Continue reading “local transport”
don't confuse the narrator 