Driving between Santiago and the north coast this [Monday] morning, we passed three brothels in the space of ten minutes or so, none of them anywhere near a town. We guessed their clientele are the lorry drivers who use the particular national road. Which doesn't bode well for the establishments, as the part-built A8 motorway will eventually make this route redundant. But I guess the A8 will have exit roads. Quite possibly financed by the brothel owners.
When I first came to Spain twelve years ago, the dream was that the A8 would soon connect the Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia. It still is the dream. And I fancy it'll take at least another twelve years for it to be realised. A toss-up, then, between the A8 and the AVE high-speed train as to which can get to Galicia first, whole and entire. To be fair I should say that the completion of more and more A8 segments makes the journey from Pontevedra to Santander progressively shorter. Today it was down to five and a quarter hours, compared with more than six the last time I did it. That said, it was May Day, with little traffic on the roads.
Private
Eye
magazine's December edition has this gem of an exchange during a TV
quiz program:-
What
is a chaffinch?
It's
a measurement.
As
you may have guessed, I'm using the long ferry crossing to catch up
on back-numbers of the magazines delivered to my home in Spain. So,
now, back to the serious stuff . . . Here and here are two
fascinating Prospect
articles on those who emerged the winners from the global meltdown - the banking
industry. They were published last September, so a couple of comments
are now misplaced.
And
here are two interesting facts from the same magazine:
-
France has almost 30,000 roundabouts(circles), more than any other
country in the world [Though Spain must be catching up fast.]
-
A British member of Parliament from the last election is four times
more likely to be in
prison than the average Briton. [Though I suspect it's a higher ratio in Spain.]
And if I wasn't determined to stay out of depression, this news might well have driven me into it:- The 'Daily Mail' website is approaching 80m monthly users and might soon overtake 'The New York Times' as the world's most popular newspaper website. O tempora. O mores.
The
German Question: An independent and powerful Germany has to be
be fitted into Europe. We are still going round the German problem.
British historian A J P Taylor, writing in 1960 in The Origins of
the Second World War. Can we really say we've solved this problem
in the last 52 years? It was, of course, the primary purpose of the
creation of the EU that Germany be constrained in a peaceful and
acceptable-to-the Germans manner. And I guess the problems we're now
having prove how dangerous it is to prioritise politics over
economics on a grand scale.
Incidentally,
if you want to see how dishonestly the EC/EU was created and
developed, get hold of Christopher Booker's The Great Deception.
If you live near me, you can borrow my copy. As I've said before -
and will doubtless say again - I wonder whether the stitching isn't
now coming apart. When there's no one with the ability to re-stitch
it.
But
anyway . . . Search engines direct a variety of readers to my blog -
particularly when, as today, I mention brothels. I rather liked this
one yesterday, as it displays an unusual perspective:- why
are Galicians all pyromaniacs?
Finally
. . . Searching idly through my computer, I fell upon this bit of
doggerel. No idea where I got it from but it's a nice version of the
famous Rudyard Kipling peroration If.
If
you can always be cheerful
If
you can sleep without drugs
If
you can start the day without caffeine
If
you can take blame without resentment
If
you can resist complaining
If
you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it
If
you can understand it if your loved ones are too busy to give you
time
And
if you can overlook it when those you love take it out on you when,
through no fault of yours, something goes wrong.
Then,
my friend, you will be almost as good as your dog.
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