Late. Running with the grey herd
across the Manzanares bridge, I pause,
look down from the parapet, attention hooked
on the ess of a cormorant’s neck.
The race resumes; then, on the city side
the first green parakeet of spring
squawks my gaze skywards.
Featherfall
simplifies the city.
Cameras click; mobiles sing. 
Apparently unrelated, perhaps, but the words in the title do, in fact, have something in common: they are the topics of the three new titles in the T-Tales collection by Topka.
And those are the books I’ll be reading at two separate readings/story-telling sessions in Madrid this coming Saturday, December 13th.
Continue reading “bubbles, butterflies & baseball”
I’ve already had a moan about Starbucks and their grammatical inadequacies, but now I’ve found further reason to complain.
At the weekend, I had to meet a fellow writer who lives in the centre of Madrid; she suggested we meet in Starbucks. Not my first choice, perhaps, but no problem. When I got there, there were two customers at one of the tables, and no one else in the whole place. The camarero – I bet he’d have called himself a barista – took my order.
It annoys me that the smallest measure in Starbucks is “tall”. It annoyed me more that the waiter wanted to know my name.
Continue reading “personal details to go”
It’s not just the bread and cake shops that confuse me in Spain. There’s a-whole-nother area of shop difficulties associated with chemist shops and drug stores.
In the UK we have chemists. Inside a chemist shop you’ll find the pharmacy counter where you can buy your medicines – or, hopefully, in the near future get your prescription made up free of charge. You’ll also usually find a photographic department, perhaps an optician, even, maybe, a wine-making area. Continue reading “de tiendas II”
don't confuse the narrator 