Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, July 16, 2009

I have a Spanish friend who's had two English boyfriends and who, as a lawyer, has worked a good deal with British house buyers. As a result, she's pretty cross-cultural and, indeed, her Spanish friends are wont to call her La Britanica. Especially when she advises them their preconceptions are wrong. But I had to tell her on Sunday that she has as much chance of being truly British as I have of being truly Spanish. This was after she’d told me that another Brit’s accent was “worse than yours.” Nobody British, I told her, would ever say something as blunt as that but would opt for an alternative such as “not as good as yours”. If this is the hypocrisy that we Brits are regularly accused of, then I have to say I prefer it!.

And speaking of Spanishness . . . I was wrong last week to say that Tony had gone back to sea – the result of a mistake on my wall chart. Yes, I do track his movements. Anyway, he turned up at my gate this afternoon, asking for a favour. As the woman (“chica”) who looks after the kids is on holiday, the younger boy, Pablo, couldn’t be taken every day to the grandparents’ house so he could practice the piano. So, as I had a piano, they were wondering if he could use it. Well, I tried a few shafts of British humour designed to demonstrate I wasn’t totally enchanted with the thought of Pablo doing this every day for two months but, as these clearly went right over Tony’s head, I had little choice but to agree. And so they came at 5. And left at 5.05. Happily, a couple of scales with one hand seems to be young Pablo’s limit right now. And the other bit of good news is that Tony flies to Singapore tonight, to pick up his oil tanker. As it were. One door closes and another opens.

Pontevedra City now has a new tourist organisation and this is its HQ.


They say it will be functioning by September – when all the tourists have gone – but, as little is going on right now and nothing at all will happen in August, I find this a little hard to believe.

The rest of the city is equally ready for the summer tourist season, which began a couple of weeks ago. Here are a few fotos of the mess in front of the town hall and on the Alameda, where our Peregrina Fiesta events will take place in a couple of weeks. I will let you know how things go.




Which reminds me – I’ve now had a full look at the program for July and August and found that far more than two events had taken place before it hit the streets. But does anyone care? Or, as most of our tourists are Spanish, is it just assumed they’ll be unaffected by the lack of information and the mess in the streets? And only too happy to return for a second bite at the mouldy cherry.

To be more positive . . . We had a lovely exhibition of Galician musical instruments in the main square this week. I found the harps particularly attractive but this might just have been because the woman manning the stall was stunning. Frankly, I think she soon saw through my questions about design, wood used, strings material, etc. Or she would have done if I’d had the courage to ask them.

English Showers: The Sky woman went straight to the point this morning. “The showers will be heavy, slow-moving and thunderous. But also the least of our problems. Two to four inches of rain will fall on many places today.” What fun.

Finally, if you have any understanding of the Blair-Brown feud that has disfigured British politics over the last 12 years, this video of yesterday’s proceedings in the House of Commons may bring as many tears to your eyes as it did to mine. Enjoy.

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