Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Café choices; Embarrassing your kids; The irrelevant King; & New words.

Having braved 25 minutes of driving wind and rain yesterday midday and then deposited my younger daughter at Sevilla cathedral, I looked around for the nearest café in which to meet my delayed, atheist elder daughter. Happily, I alighted on El Horno de la Benaventura before my gaze came to rest on a Starbucks across the road. Who but a tourist would patronise that? Mind you, I suspect the American-induced bonhomie of their staff would be an improvement on the tourist-ruined manners of the staff of El Horno. Plus no wi-fi. So, no tip.

After a coffee with my elder daughter, I repaired to the entrance of the cathedral to wait for my younger daughter. As she exited, I held out my hand and feigned beggardom. She was not amused and asked whether there was any depth to which I wouldn't sink to try to embarrass her. I said I rather thought not. At least I didn't crouch and make monkey noises as I used to when they were small and disobedient. For new parents - the only effective tool you have against kids is their fear of being embarrassed in front of their friends. Or anyone, really.

Well, the Spanish King's Xmas discourse may or may not have struck the right notes and redeemed his reputation a tad but only about a tenth of the population watched it, even though it was on all channels except the Catalan one which went on strike for its duration. I think his end is in sight. As it were.

El País tells us today that 32 words - some of them English, of course - entered Spanish discourse this year, including twerking. And here they all are.

Two other words new to me are sprint/esprint (both pronounced the same way) and sprintar/esprintar (ditto). But they may have been in the dictionary for years.

Finally on words . . . I may have invented one last night. Noting that all 3 of us had Macs and that each of my daughters had iPhones, I remarked on the amount of applemongery in the room. A quick search suggested it wasn't yet in the Googlesphere. But it is now and you have my permission to use it freely.

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