We
had an innovation down in Veggie Square today. Well, a triple
innovation in fact. A lady accordionist who sang, accompanied by a
clarinettist. I was so overwhelmed by the novelty that I broke my
rule about not giving anything to an accordionist.
We
also had a charanga
– a manic brass band - who made more noise than I'd have thought
possible for ten to fifteen minutes. Things weren't helped by my
friend Jon making 'ironic' calls for more which were misinterpreted
by the musicians. Who, surprisingly, don't have an English sense of
humour.
There are a number of word duos in Gallego and Spanish like Forno
and Horno,
in which the former has retained the Latin F but the latter has
turned it into an H. Living here in Galicia, one bumps into them all
the time. Farina
and Harina
is another example. Anyway, I thought of this today as we walked past
a shop called FERPES.
In
Combarro last night for their Mussels Festival, I bumped into the
owner of what was for years my favourite tapas bar. The bad news was
that he confirmed the place had closed as he'd retired. The good news
was that he gave me a big hug and I reciprocated. This has happened
to me several times since I got back and my suspicion is that I
couldn't have dealt with it when I first came to Spain twelve years
ago. Now, I'd be devastated if men didn't hug me! At least if we hadn't seen each other for a while.
I've
just spent 10 minutes trying to get the plastic cover off the top of a bottle of Ribeiro to get to the cork. Will Spanish wine producers
convert to screw tops in my lifetime? I rather doubt it. Customer preference doesn't really count.
Back
to life in the raw . . . I was using the urinal in a bar yesterday
when I noticed the seat of the adjacent toilet was up. As the place
was too small to accommodate adjacent members of the male fraternity, my conclusion was that someone had actually preferred to use the toilet. I
couldn't understand why but then this morning I walked into an aseo
behind a guy who went straight to the toilet, leaving both urinals
for me. It's an odd world.
Some
more Spanish words:-
- Procer:
Famous citizen.
- Marras:
Long ago, long since.
And
a query: Does anyone know whether Poner
una tuna
means something unobvious?
Finally
. . . More examples of the failure to get a native speaker to cast an
eye over the English version of the Spanish original.
In this one, the Spanish word singular is translated as peculiar. Twice.
Same thing here.
And here's the old favourite 'backside'.
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