pueblo – Page 10 – don't confuse the narrator

a visitor

Yesterday I started to worry at a draft poem that I found in my notebook. It was started a year ago and is provisionally called Monsters.

The appearance of the creature in the photo on my verandah today was entirely fortuitous.

That picture doesn’t give much idea of scale, but if you click you’ll see her full length. She was a good two tiles long and they are 24 cm across. (So, allowing for the ripples, I suppose she was around 18 inches from nose to tail tip.)*
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leap of logic

I don’t think there will be any daffodils in bloom for St David’s day tomorrow, but the apricot trees have suddenly burst into blossom. Of course, it’s far too early for them, but since we’ve had nothing but sunshine for weeks now, it’s hardly surprising that everything’s confused.

The river is as low as it usually is in summer and even when we get a frost, it seems to thaw to dryness and leaves the earth scorched rather than moist.

The locals have a theory about the drought: they say it’s because 2012 is bisiesto – a leap year.

I’m really not sure about the logic there, but who am I to come between el pueblo and their folclore? (Yes, that really is a Spanish word and it means exactly what you’d expect it to if you substitute a ‘k’ for the ‘c’.)

Personally, I was hoping bisiesto meant I’d get twice as many siestas as usual this year.

costumes and customs

Years ago (in our world before digital cameras, hence no photos) we were asked by a friend to make a costume for his son for the school carnival celebration. I don’t really know why he thought we would be good people to ask, but clearly as bar owners he and his wife had little free time for handicrafts.

He gave us a cardboard box and told us what the costume should be, but the details were up to us. Several rolls of aluminium foil later, and with the addition of such details as stick-on dollar signs, a coin slot and tray, and a dangling electric plug, we had created a rather wonderful one-armed bandit that won the prize for best costume.
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a Chekhovian view

Well, I think it’s a cherry orchard, but I may have to go back when the trees are in blossom to be certain.

a flock of bird thoughts

A fragment of an old poem to start off with:

Under the apple treee, a prattle
of tabby-feathered sparrows anticipates
the flick and snap of chequered tablecloth
that signals their breadcrumb breakfast.

I was reminded of the image because I had a newspaper clipping sent to me the other day – yes, there are still people who read printed newspapers, albethey freebies, and who cut out things other than coupons to send on accompanied by real letters to specific people, rather than glancing superficially at on-line phrases and sending irrelevant links to everyone in their email address book. It was a cutting about the Spanish sparrow who is causing a furore in a coastal village in Hampsire.
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