Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, January 25, 2015

The Church & State; Whither Spain? Ex presidents; Cartoons & Vignettes; All Furred Up.

The Spanish king is handing over to the Pope the responsibility for appointing bishops. Not before time. Anything which promotes the separation of Church and State has to be a good thing, even if 200 years late.

The headline to an article in El País yesterday: In Spain, we don't know whether the paths we are taking are leading to Copenhagen or Caracas.

And a lovely comment: Ex-presidents are like Chinese vases. Every house has to have one but no one knows where to put it. This reflects the fact that we're now in full pre-election mode and both the conservative and socialist ex-presidents have jumped onto the stage. At this point, it looks like more trouble is being created for the PP party by Sr Aznar, who's asking the current president, Sr Rajoy, where the hell the party is going and whether it really wants to win the elections. Helpful. Meanwhile the (newish) leader of the socialists is said - like Ed Miliband - to be fighting off attempts to dump him.

And good cartoon . . . This one relates to a long-running PP party corruption scandal, in which the ex-Treasurer has been released from prison on bail, pending his (eventual) trial. He's pictured flying out of his cell and 2 onlookers are commenting on this (convenient) event:
Look. He's flying as free as a bird.
Yes, provided he doesn't sing.

Two little Spanish vignettes in town yesterday. The first occurred in a supermarket, when a woman insisted I go ahead of her with my one item, even though she only had about 10 herself and I was happy to wait. The second was in a pharmacy, where one of the ladies there is always remarkably brown in summer and still pretty tanned in winter. I'd previously thought about mentioning this but had thought better of it. But this time I did and she responded with laughter and a bit of a chat. I can imagine the first of these events taking place in the UK and elsewhere but not the second. If I made a similar comment to a girl young enough to be my daughter in Liverpool, I'd fear having my eyeballs lasered by a withering look. Or even arrest for harassment. Or am I being paranoid? On second thoughts, Liverpool is possibly the only city in Britain where I could get away with it.

Going back into town for dinner, I passed a woman wearing what looked like a short gabardine mac, from which were dangling 8 fox tails. It was impossible to say whether they were real or faux but there's no aversion to fur here in Pontevedra. In fact, we're approaching the season when they're worn even if the temperature is 20 degrees. Needs must. See here for something I wrote years ago on this.

When I was depressed in 2011, I suffered a number of delusions, some of them minor and some of them not. One of the former was that the cords of my blinds were filthy and that I'd never be able to sell my house because of this. Not that I was planning to do so but delusions admit of no logic. Anyway, I thought of this yesterday when I read about cleaning cords with a mixture of bleach and water. And since mine are still dirty, I'm going to give it a go.

Finally . . . Reader Paideleo has kindly advised that my yellow flowers are vinagrillos and that they taste, logically, of vinegar when you suck the stems. I'll let you know. If I can find a gullible child. Perhaps I'll just sniff them.

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