When I started to write the previous post, I was actually intending to talk about this ‘news’ story:
Judge pardons King Balthasar for ‘caramelazo’ in the Three Kings cavalcade.
‘Caramelazo.’ What a lovely word. And what a wonderful language Spanish is that it can produce such words: Continue reading “diplomatic immunity (the silly season II)”
Although in the UK that phrase refers to the summer, here in Spain, it seems to suit the winter, or more specifically, the period between early December and the end of the week when Epiphany falls. What with official holidays and business dinners etc., it’s amost impossible to get a full five days’ work done in any semana laborable in that period.
This year is what I think of as “un año segoviano”: next week we’ve not just got a puente – a bridge day linking a Tuesday or Thursday bank holiday to the nearest weekend – we’ve got a whole aqueduct coming up.
Continue reading “the silly season”
Yesterday, around the world millions of people gave thanks for lots of different things. In a month’s time, it will be Christmas Day, and millions of others will also be counting their blessings.
Today, I haven’t a single poetical thought to share, no particular insights into life, and I have seen no particularly atrocious grammar in the papers to mock. I don’t even have time to go and find something odd or otherwise worthy of a photograph.
However, since today is as good a day as any other to be thankful, I’ve found two old photos from November last year of sights that were both bright and glorious and made me feel thankful, cheerful and just generally good about life, even if only briefly:
I’ve been reading online that lots of places in the States won’t let you adopt a black cat in October for fear that you’ll torture and mutilate it as part of a satanic ritual for Hallowe’en. This being Spain, though, I suspect that these three – who, when tumbled together in the sunshine seem to jointly warrant the name of Cerberus – are probably no more at risk than at any other time of year.
Fairground colours fade with sunlight;
chrome still glints, but tawdry pastels
replace pounding neon, and disproportioned
Disney silhouettes pale under ragged awnings.
(Notes for a poem, rather than a finished piece.)
Continue reading “fairground colours”
don't confuse the narrator 