Dawn

Dawn

Friday, September 14, 2012

Richard Recovered; More Money Measures; Galician Gripe ; Burying the Bodies; The Chirpme Challenge; Kenneth the Kind; A Feast of Feminines; Car Culmination; Knives Knot for Killing; and The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B.


So, they think they've found the grave of Richard the Third. Or Richard One Hundred and Eleven, as I once heard him called. Incredibly, they'll now do DNA analysis using a sample from someone thought to be a direct descendant of this much maligned (especially by Shakespeare) king. If so, his hump will disappear from the mythology, to be replaced by a bit of scoliosis. Which left R3 with one shoulder a little higher than the other, rather than a hump the size of Gibraltar sported by Larry Olivier in the celebrated eponymous film. All in all, a fabulous development, posing the question – If it is R3, will he be re-buried in Westminster Abbey? Not that he cares.

A couple more cost-saving measures that are unlikely to be carried out:-
  • Close down all the local TV stations
  • Amalgamate all the regional savings banks across borders and convert the resulting institutions into real banks.
Yet again the weather in Galicia is traduced, this time by the bloody Financial Times:- The drama of contemporary Spain can be told as a tale of two men from rain-swept Galicia on the Atlantic coast. Stage right is Mariano Rajoy, prime minister, who is struggling to spare Spain the indignity of requesting a financial rescue from its European allies. Stage left is Amancio Ortega, founder of the successful Inditex(Zara) fashion group, whose fortune – comfortably in excess of €30bn – makes him Europe’s wealthiest man. I think TurGalicia should sue them for defamation. We could do with more publicity to follow up the great shots of the Galician coast during the Tour de Espagne.

Reader Perry has followed up my recent mention of DIY burials by tracking down more info on the subject. Contrary to popular belief – says one site - it is not a legal requirement that a coffin or casket be used to house a dead body. The only legal stipulation is that 'It is an offence to expose a dead body near a public highway as this would outrage public decency'. I found this interesting but not as much as the assertion that In some traditions, for example that practiced by the Spanish royal family, the soft tissues are permitted to rot over a period of decades, after which the bones are entombed. Lovely Letizia has so little flesh on her bones, this process would only take a couple of months in her case.

Someone who's befriended me on Facebook seems to have locked me into yet another social network called Chirpme. I guess this a play on the word twitter. I'm not sure what the site purports to do but, as it keeps telling me my popularity is 'Very Low', I'd like someone to tell me how to get out of the bloody thing.

I listened to a podcast today which featured responses famous folk had made to members of Joe Public who'd written to them. One of the former was the English actor and comedian, Kenneth Williams. Regarded as difficult and tetchy, he had continued a correspondence with a teenager over several years. Which rather interested me as he'd once taken the trouble to send me a four-page handwritten response to a sketch I'd mailed him during my final year in university. Sadly, it was lost in a fire a few years later. Along with all the fotos of my year in the Seychelles.

I had a delightful dinner last night with four of the teachers I used to 'teach' plus a lawyer. It's pure coincidence they were all women. The bag on the floor contains my owl. Who could be male.


Well, I got my new car today by the skin of its paintwork. The insurance company was due to close at 7 and at 5 to, documents were being faxed back and forth. All's well that ends well, as they say. When it does.

Finally . . . A sight you'd never see in the UK - a shop full of knives of every description. But I've seen even more sharp metal in Toledo shops, including battle-axes, swords and lances. Apparently this doesn't impact on crime here in Spain the way British legislators believe it would in the UK.


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