I mentioned the dictionary of the Spanish Royal
Academy the other day. This illustrious body made the news yesterday.
It's unhappy that Spain's Eurovision Song Contest entry is in
English. I'd have thought they had rather more important things to
worry about. Do they really fear this will cause fewer young
Spaniards to speak Spanish? Correctly or otherwise.
With a temperature close to 25 degrees and
beautiful evening sunlight, last night was perfect for the postponed
parade of Carnaval dancers and floats. But it wasn't a good
night for visiting my favourite tapas bar, where the queue for tables
was almost as long as I've ever seen it it. But friends are friends
in Spain and we only had to wait 3 seconds for ours. An added joy was
the 3 free pancakes and, as ever, the free liqueurs. As for the
parade, this was my first viewing since the one I wrote up here,
several years ago.
Britain's recent floods have brutally exposed the
immense power of unaccountable EU bureaucrats, augmented and implemented by
self-serving international agencies and willing national
bureaucracies. And this is (long) before Brussels becomes the centre
of a true supranational government. Or, in truth, a supranational
bureaucracy, similarly unaccountable. How such animals act in crises has been
demonstrated perfectly by the chaotic response of the EU 28 member
committee to the Russian invasion and de facto annexation
of the Crimea. O Brave New Future World.
Finally . . . Two of my Spanish friends have
advised me of the imminent opening of a new pub in Pontevedra. Or
paff in Spanish pronunciation. One of these has warned the
owners that 4 places I've patronised regularly over the last decade
or so have since closed down. Indeed, one of these was on the very
site of the new pub. Being, she says, superstitious, the owners would
like me to stay away. And so the question arises of how much
they'll pay me to do so. Incidentally, the place is to be called The
Bassett. Since this makes no sense in English, I assume it's
meant to be either The Bassett Hound or The Bassett
Liquorice Allsort.
Note for Mac users: By accident, I've
discovered that you can increase the size of the Gmail Compose page
to very close to what it used to be by pressing fn and D.
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