I
read a few years ago - in The New Spaniards? - that here in
Spain you can have your coffee in around 42 different ways. I
discovered a new one (for me) this morning, when I asked if I could
have my coffee 'long of milk'. The waiter referred to this as un
manchado, meaning that the milk is merely 'stained' with coffee.
So, "a stained" in English.
My
visitor has been here a week deciding whether Pontevedra would be a
good place for her and her husband to set up a business. For this
they'd need a fast, reliable internet service. Obligingly, my
connection has gone down twice during her stay. A (long) phone call
to Telefónica has solved the problem in each case but the damage has
been done. Roll on August and my new radio internet service.
Meanwhile, you can guess what their decision has been, albeit there
were other negative factors as well
I've
had to explain several times to Spanish friends and contacts that
Brits both don't have ID cards and don't have to carry their passports, at
least not in their own country. But this hasn't always been the case.
During WW2 and for a couple of years after it, the UK did have a
system of ID cards and here's one from 1948, given to me by my mother
when I was in the UK last month. It's pretty basic and probably
easily forged but it kept some bureaucrats in employment.
On
the endless conveyor belt of panhandling, new beggars appear on an
almost daily basis. It may be unfair but I do wonder whether they
don't just follow each other around Pontevedra but also from city to
city. I've certainly see the same people in both Pontevedra and Vigo.
Those
who let their dogs foul Galician streets will soon be faced with a
€500 fine, up from 300. Those who abandon their canines will face a
fine of €3,000, up from €1,500 and those who mistreat them to
death or hang them from nearby trees will be looking at a €30,000
fine. I'd love to think these increases were driven totally by a
genuine desire to stop the offences but, cynic as I am, I'm tempted
to see them largely as a revenue exercise. Not that I expect to read
of anyone being fined 30k for stringing up his no-longer-useful
greyhound.
Given
today's antipathy to sugar, I've labelled it here "The Devil's
Grain". Today I read that "Sugar will soon be the new
heroin, to be proscribed by governments as injurious to health".
So, sell your shares in Tate & Lyle now.
Finally
. . . I read today that the French think their language is the most
precise in the world. Does anyone know why? Incidentally, the article
in which I saw this suggested that French still remains a more popular subject in the UK than Spanish, despite its lower utility, because it's a
'class marker'. Snobbery, in other words.
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