Dawn

Dawn

Saturday, December 18, 2004

My next-door neighbour, Tony, talks to his plants and calls his young kids los enanos. This means dwarves, midgets, runts or, at a stretch, the little ones. But I’m sure he means it affectionately. When I got back from my coffee early afternoon today, I clocked said enanos sitting in the front seats of his Seat Ibiza, pretending to drive. As the car was right behind mine, I took the liberty of checking the key was not in the ignition before coming indoors. I suppose banishing your noisy kids to the car in the street is an unusual way to solve a problem but, on balance, it has my support.

Thinking further about the weaponry I saw on display last week in Toledo, it occurred to me that the Spanish government would certainly have some justification for a UK-type crack-down on knives. This was prompted by the latest in a scandalously high incidence of husbands stabbing their, usually separated, wives to death. But I guess that Spanish pragmatism leads to the conclusion that, once you have decided to do away with your ex, a carving knife would be just as effective as anything else.

I see that, once again, a citation in my blog has been the kiss of death for something. Donegal’s Cavern is no more. The love affair with all things Irish may finally be at an end. The place I mentioned only a few days ago now calls itself a tapas and wine bar and signals its trendiness with bright chrome sign-writing. Why, even the Guinness sign has been half dismantled.

Six solid weeks of sun came to an abrupt end yesterday, with the departure of a persistent anticyclone for its Christmas holidays. Most of us will regret its passing but not, I guess, the dowagers of the town who have sweltered through the last two weeks in the statutory fur coats of December. I imagine they will be swarming through the streets and cafés after Mass tomorrow, smug with seasonal satisfaction.

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