A
beautiful day for a lunch with friends in Vigo. Blue skies and plenty
of sun. I hadn't seen some of my friends for more than a year so the
greetings and kissings were more fulsome than usual. At least from
me. Greeting the señora, I found myself saying “You look lovelier
than ever. When your divorce comes through, give me a call.” Now
this is something I've never, ever said (or even thought of saying)
before. And I hadn't had any intention of saying it now. Spontaneous,
then. And possibly OTT. But one of the (few) advantages of being my
age is that one can get away with this sort of thing. Probably
because everyone assumes you're joking. Which I might have been.
The
train back to Pontevedra at 3.45 afforded irrefutable evidence of a
key element of Spanish life. The train was packed and most of the
(young) passengers were lugging the sort of case you take on a plane.
These, I realised, were students at Vigo University taking their
dirty washing home to Mum in towns and cities all along the coast to
La Coruña. Many of them got off with me at Pontevedra, to be
replaced by other students from the Pontevedra campus, going north.
As it happened, a train from La Coruña arrived at Pontevedra at the
same time as ours did, disgorging students from the university in
that city. I've never seen the station so packed. And I've never seen
so much dirty washing.
Another
aspect of Spanish society – The Consumer Association reports that
92% of the population thinks there's either a lot or quite
a lot of fiscal fraud in the country. I wonder what planet the 8%
are living on.
As
you'd expect, sales of both new and second-hand cars are way down in
Spain. And the number of cars on the road is inevitably down as well.
It's reported that more and more people are switching to scooters and
bikes as cheaper forms of transport, at least in and around towns. So
I guess it's not very surprising that the theft of these is on the up
as well.
Talking
of cars . . . One unusual aspect of driving on motorways in Spain is
that you regularly come up against large overhead signs telling you
you're about to pass a fixed radar camera. In some cases the latter
are, nastily, only a metre or so after the gantry but in most they're
sufficiently far away to allow you to slow down, if necessary.
Recently, another wrinkle has been added to this set up – the
cameras at the side of the road are painted in luminous green and the
speed limit is written in large black numerals on them. I confess I
don't understand the logic of all this. But this isn't unusual in
Spain.
My
old friend Alfred B Mittington - 'ABM' to the inner circle – has
reminded me that he addressed last night's question of what the EU guilty knew way back in March. Though at rather greater and more
eloquent length than I did. Which means not only that Alf is ahead of
the game but also remembers what he's written. For someone like me –
who can't recall from one day to the next what he wrote yesterday –
this is truly impressive. I suspect he also has views which are
consistent. The mark of a disciplined mind. Whereas . . .
Finally
. . . Facebook has gone a tad mad with the ads down the side of my
page. Some are in French and the rest are in Spanish. But none of
them has anything to do with meeting members of the opposite sex. The
oddest is a French site which seems to specialise in cartoons of
people of people (usually women) spanking someone else (usually men).
I dedicated a minute or two to trying to identify what word in my
emails or Facebook comments could have instigated this but gave up.
Note: Just checked. The spanking ad's gone.
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