Driving
back from Basingstoke-cum-Reading yesterday afternoon, I tried to
fool my misbehaving sat-nav into guiding me back to Headingley. As I
knew the way, this was all about checking whether I could surmount
the problem of the thing's failure to have a UK map in its
directory. Initially all seemed well, in that it correctly showed me
on the M1 as I drove north. But I started to suspect it wasn't
entirely correct as regards the A roads we were passing over or
under. And when we got into the outskirts of Leeds, I realised two
things were wrong:- 1. My actual position didn't tally with where the
map said I was; and 2. The voice and the map were not in sync. Thus
it was that, parked outside my daughter's flat, the map had me
stopped in the middle of the A65 a mile away. So, not a huge success.
But at least I got it to acknowledge the existence of the UK. Which
is a start.
My
Anglo-Teutonic friend - known affectionately within my family as
"German Geoff" - told me of a cheap Spanish wine which had
wowed the judges in an international tasting competition, beating
wines costing up to ten times more than its price of only pounds
3.59. It's a brew called Toro Loco (Mad Bull) and is produced
in Valencia from the tempranillo grape used for all the Rioja
reds.This sounded rather incredible so I went off to a nearby Aldi to check it out. Sad to relate, there wasn't a single bottle
of Toro Loco on the shelves. So, rather than come away
empty-handed, I decided to try a bottle of alcoholic ginger-beer
called Fursty Ferret. But, reading the label in the check-out
queue, I realised it was just plain ale and put it back on
the shelf. And so did leave empty handed.
Driving
back home, I recalled being a tad shocked at the prices of the drinks
in the pub outside Reading station yesterday. Pounds 3.25 for a bottle of Mexican Corona beer; pounds 3.50 for a pint of cider; and
pounds 3.70 for a pint of Guinness. Verily has
it been said that it's cheaper to get your pleasures in Spain. By the
way, be prepared to wait to get served in a pub in the UK. Especially if the
people in front of you are paying by credit card or getting three
pints of Guinness slowly poured for them. Or, in my case, both. It
could have been worse - in Spain they would've been asked for proof
of identity. And to both enter a PIN and sign a pice of paper. Belt
and Braces stuff.
There's
a bit of a fuss here in the UK about a judgment from the European
Court of Justice that votes must be given to prisoners, presumably
because their human rights have been infringed. The government is
posturing resistance but will have to give away eventually, when everyone's
forgotten about it. Far better would be the Continental Solution of
introducing voting into Britain's prisons, allowing the inmates to place their crosses and then losing the ballot boxes on their way to the counting
house. Sadly, though, this is never going to happen.
One
of my Spanish intercambios - Raúl - asked me this evening why
so many Leeds students were decked out in fancy-dress costumes so often. In
Spain, he said, this was only done during fiestas. I had to confess I had no real idea but that I now knew there were four, not
just three, shops catering for this demand in the mile or so between
here and the university. Nor could I explain why the students seemed
able to wander abroad on any night of the week. Especially as exams
should be coming up. It's a different world, I said, from the one I'd
inhabited as a student. But that was back when only 7% of the population
went to university, not the 40+% that does now.
Finally
. . . I was going to include a few references to articles on the
woeful state of Spain's finances in general and the banking sector in
particular but, as the papers are full of them, I figure anyone
interested can easily find what he or she is looking for, without my
help. Plus I'm not sure I understand it. The Bankia bank asked
for 4.5 billion euros last week but this week upped it 20 billion.
Have they got no one who can count? Or were they hoping to hide their
really, really toxic assets for a while longer but ran out of chutzpah?
What
I really need is for Charles Butler of IBEX Salad to tell me
whether it's finally time to join the capital rush from Spain. Or
anyone else who's got an inside track. I'm listening . . .
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