seasons – Page 41 – don't confuse the narrator

early awakening

Alarm

The neighbour’s rooster wakes
and flings his morning warning
to the hills. The echoes stretch
a string between hoarse-throated brays
and barks which tumble to the still-grey sky.

autumn, but the sky’s still blue…

cloud

alone
in the blue, a small cloud, broad
in the beam as a nursery aeroplane
crumbles
and fades
to leave
a wisp
of
vapour
.

Yesterday the summer ended in Madrid. There were several torrential rain storms – proper “vertical rain” soldiering down – during the afternoon and evening, and then the worst hail storm I’ve seen in years which started around 1:00 a.m.
Continue reading “change in the weather”

coches de choque

After three weeks of the grey-green UK “summer”, I returned to the dusty yellows of Spain and found the village in the throes of fiestas.

Las fiestas del veraneante, to be precise – the annual celebration during the last week of August which is put on for the benefit of those who spend summer in the pueblo. Veranear – “to summer”. Not a verb that exists in English, though we do talk of birds wintering in warmer climes.

Continue reading “coches de choque”

mixed marriages

From the print edition of today’s Público newspaper, a double page spread on mixed nationality marriage; an assortment of news and commentary.

The left hand page is dedicated to the story that eight European states have agreed to make divorce easier with a new law that gives parejas mixtas the right to choose which law should be applied when they split up. It seems that there are 170,000 divorces between these so-called mixed couples in the EU each year, which is around 20% of the total number of divorces.
Continue reading “mixed marriages”