lifestyle – Page 12 – don't confuse the narrator

a little bit of this…

One of the basic foods that I miss when in Spain is bread.

They do eat plenty of bread here, but it’s mostly white – a sort of faux baguette – and has no more flavour than I would expect from cotton wool or cardboard.

Other than the incredibly expensive pan artesano on sale in the village square some Saturdays, there is, however, one type of bread here that I like.

Since I buy it at the cut-price supermarket, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s cooked from frozen dough rather than made on the premises. It’s labelled as pan 6 cereales – six cereal bread. I was a little taken aback, though, when I read the ingredients list more closely: Continue reading “a little bit of this…”

tempus fugit

I had an email from Google recently reminding me that they had offered me an AdWords voucher. This sentence caught my eye:

Nos complace comunicarle que hemos ampliado la promoción hasta el 27 junio 2013, lo que significa que aún puede canjear esta oferta y empezar a anunciarse justo a tiempo para la época navideña y el nuevo año.

Translated, that’s:

We are pleased to be able to tell you that we have extended the promotion until 27 June, 2013, which means that you are still in time to take advantage of this offer and start to advertise just in time for the Christmas season and the New Year.

Is that how time works in the information age? Maybe I should install a calendar app and stop relying on dandelion clocks.

royal oak day

A message in my inbox tells me:

It’s the 29th of May, Royal Oak Day:
if you don’t give us a holiday, we’ll all run away !

Strange how even the most ardent socialists are willing to consider becoming monarchists when there’s a holiday involved.

Still, I’ve talked in the past about the complications of political labelling as well as about the difficulties in talking about oaks and acorns in Spanish. So, since I seem already to have dealt with the obvious follow ons, and it isn’t actually a holiday, perhaps I’d better get on with some work!

surprised by scarlet

Perhaps size matters. Scale certainly does.

Without further information, is one of the flowers shown really any more spectacular than the other?
Continue reading

life, death and points arising

Lion, sovereign's entrance, Houses of Parliament, London

Despite all succeed-in-social-media advice, I don’t have a regular schedule for blog updates, but this hiatus of nearly a fortnight is not the norm.

While travelling last week, I found I was doing my own impersonation of the Seven Dwarfs: puffy, sniffy, whingey, dozy, grumpy, busy… well that’s only six, but I tagged coffee onto the list, and kept going.

I grew up thinking the seventh Disney dwarf was Dock – a very dwarf-like name; listing my symptoms in an email, though, I had a moment of clarity: I was missing Doc.

So I went to the doctor and discovered I was rather more poorly than just a “stinking cold”. Dosed up with three types of antibiotic, I am now beginning to get back on track.

This means I’ve been out of commission for most of the initial furore surrounding Thatcher’s death, but am still just in time for all the fun of the funeral.

Although there’s little to be added to all the keen online wit and repartee, I do want to raise a few points:
Continue reading “life, death and points arising”