Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Coffee no. 43; The internet & me; UK ID cards; Beggars; Dog fines; & The French.


I read a few years ago - in The New Spaniards? - that here in Spain you can have your coffee in around 42 different ways. I discovered a new one (for me) this morning, when I asked if I could have my coffee 'long of milk'. The waiter referred to this as un manchado, meaning that the milk is merely 'stained' with coffee. So, "a stained" in English.

My visitor has been here a week deciding whether Pontevedra would be a good place for her and her husband to set up a business. For this they'd need a fast, reliable internet service. Obligingly, my connection has gone down twice during her stay. A (long) phone call to Telefónica has solved the problem in each case but the damage has been done. Roll on August and my new radio internet service. Meanwhile, you can guess what their decision has been, albeit there were other negative factors as well

I've had to explain several times to Spanish friends and contacts that Brits both don't have ID cards and don't have to carry their passports, at least not in their own country. But this hasn't always been the case. During WW2 and for a couple of years after it, the UK did have a system of ID cards and here's one from 1948, given to me by my mother when I was in the UK last month. It's pretty basic and probably easily forged but it kept some bureaucrats in employment.



On the endless conveyor belt of panhandling, new beggars appear on an almost daily basis. It may be unfair but I do wonder whether they don't just follow each other around Pontevedra but also from city to city. I've certainly see the same people in both Pontevedra and Vigo.

Those who let their dogs foul Galician streets will soon be faced with a €500 fine, up from 300. Those who abandon their canines will face a fine of €3,000, up from €1,500 and those who mistreat them to death or hang them from nearby trees will be looking at a €30,000 fine. I'd love to think these increases were driven totally by a genuine desire to stop the offences but, cynic as I am, I'm tempted to see them largely as a revenue exercise. Not that I expect to read of anyone being fined 30k for stringing up his no-longer-useful greyhound.

Given today's antipathy to sugar, I've labelled it here "The Devil's Grain". Today I read that "Sugar will soon be the new heroin, to be proscribed by governments as injurious to health". So, sell your shares in Tate & Lyle now.

Finally . . . I read today that the French think their language is the most precise in the world. Does anyone know why? Incidentally, the article in which I saw this suggested that French still remains a more popular subject in the UK than Spanish, despite its lower utility, because it's a 'class marker'. Snobbery, in other words.

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