Last
night, Ian and I watched what some believe to be the worst film ever
made. It's called Jaws
The Revenge and thus
gets off to a bad start, as it should be titled Jaws:
The Revenge. Or
something similar. Actually, it really should be called Jaws
4, because that's
what it is. But, anyway, it's truly dreadful and is best watched with
a printout of the review which lists the many inanities and cock-ups
as they occur. Including a shark which can follow one individual
right down the east coast of the USA at the speed of a Formula 1
racing car. Into waters far too warm for it. But I'll leave it at
that.
As
everyone knows, astrology was once regarded by the very best brains
as a valid field of study.
Some people still take this view, allowing unscrupulous charlatans to
coin it by playing on their gullibility. But, anyway, at the turn of
the 13th
century, there was in England a bright philosopher-cum-astrologer
called Michael Scot. Using the stars, he determined that he would die
of a small stone falling on his head. So, irrationally if he believed
his own prediction, he took to wearing an iron skullcap beneath his
hood. But just once, when entering a church, he took it off so as to
avoid offending the faithful. Whereupon a small stone fell on his
naked head and cut his scalp. Michael picked up the stone and found
it to be exactly the weight he'd predicted. Now certain of his death,
he put his affairs in order, took to his bed and duly passed away.
Surely the best ever example of the power of negative thinking.
It
must be August. In the UK, I used to get The
Economist
on Friday, the official day of publication. Here it's usually the
following Monday. This week, here we are at Friday and it's yet to
arrive.
There've
been a few arrests here in Galicia this week of Mexican and Colombian
drug dealers, over here to pursue growth in the cocaine market. Plus
their local confederates. One of the latter turns out to be the
police chief of the town of Corcubión, who was known locally, it
emerges, to have become the proud possessor of a number of shops,
bars, flats and even – rumour had it – a hotel. All in the last
ten years. But none of this, it would seem, came to the ears of his
superiors. So, imagine their surprise when he was caught in the net.
The
world of Restored Historical Memory meets the world of commerce. A
family is demanding 1,500 euros to allow the authorities to enter
their land and dig where they think is a grave of republicans shot in
the civil war. Nice.
One
of the daftest things about Galicia is that – for a population of
3m - it has not one but three airports – in La Coruña, Santiago
and Vigo. Or 'coffee for all', as it's called in Spain. This is a
dire situation in the best of times – when none of them can
effectively compete with the vast new airport in Oporto in North
Portugal – but in the worst of times it's little short of
ludicrous. Needless to say, they are losing passengers in the
thousands, one reason being that Ryanair tossed its toys out of the
pram when the airport wouldn't play ball with them. On Ryanair's
term's, of course. Oporto, though, has no such problem. Which is why
so many of us end up going down there.
In
Combarro on Wednesday night, Ian and I joined the procession from the
church of San Roque (St. Roch) to wherever it was going. We were
possibly the first foreigners to do this and felt good about all the
fotos being taken of us. But we did have a bit of the problem with
the various statues and finally came to the following conclusions:-
This
is San Roque. I think.
This is St James(Santiago), without whom it wouldn't be a show in Galicia,
This
is San Sebastian, but I've no idea how he got in on the act.
And this is the Blessed Virgin Mary.
We didn't start the procession with
her but met her on the main road and processed back to the church
with her. Or we would've done if Ian and I hadn't taken a short cut
to get to the front of the procession and completely missed them in
the narrow, winding side streets.
Finally
. . . Courtesy of my friend Dwight, if you want to know how the EU
and the eurozone work, click here. Basically, so long as it's in
Germany's interest for it to survive, it will. As to its true
origins, try Christopher Booker's The Great Deception.
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