Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Leading lights of the ETA terrorist organisation continue to fall into the hands of the French and/or Spanish police. These successes began in 2002 when the French government, after the Twin Towers atrocity, finally decided to stop turning a blind eye to activities on its territory designed to destabilise a fellow-EU member. But, anyway, perhaps it’s not too soon to see the effective evisceration of the organisation. ETA, I mean. Not the French government.

An El Mundo leader this week used the expression ‘a Scottish shower’. My guess was this wasn’t a reference to, say, Celtic football club but to the action of chucking cold water on some aspiration or other. But apparently not. According to this, it’s alternating streams of hot and cold water. Healthier. And, of course, cheaper.

Another nice word seen this week was obus, to describe the 40 yard shot from Ronaldo that put Oporto out of the Champions’ League semi-finals. I took this to be a poetic reference to a medieval cannon but the dictionary gives the more prosaic ‘howitzer’. En passant, here's one - slightly caustic -view of The Portuguese One's achievement. And of him generally. Highly amusing. And valid.

Well, it’s official. A local newspaper this week confirmed that, whether there are two approach lanes or just one to a roundabout (circle), we’re all supposed to funnel down to the one outside lane, whatever exit we’re taking. Even if there are two exit lanes going straight on. The second cardinal rule is that, if you do use the inside lane, you must give way to anyone on your right, in the outside lane. Of course, this is only theoretically possible if you’re executing the one exception to the primary outside-lane rule and are using the roundabout to make a U-turn. The article was about police plans to jack up their campaign to reduce accidents on these hazards. So I guess we can expect them to start parking nearby and fining anyone whom they allege is in the wrong lane. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to get done one of these days. Meanwhile, I’m genuinely interested to know whether these rules apply anywhere else in the world. I’ve driven in 20-30 countries and don’t recall this ever being the case. But it obviously makes sense to someone Spanish.

Finally. . . If there’s one thing the writer of this article should never do, it’s move to Spain.

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