Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Soap operas; Walking in sand; Galician names; & A pen with attitude


From brief experience of watching one for 10 minutes, I'd say that nothing much happens in Portuguese soap operas. And that what does happen happens slowly and, above all, quietly. Which is not quite how things go in Spain. Or in East Enders, for that matter. Anyway, in the one I watched tonight, one of the main characters had a stammer. Which naturally slowed things down even further. For reasons lost on me, the background music to one romantic scene over dinner was an instrumental version of that old Irish favourite, Danny Boy.

We walked a bit of the Fisherman's Trail today, along the magnificent Atlantic coast. It was described in the guide as 'Quite difficult'. Which wasn't totally accurate. One part would've been quite difficult for a mountain goat, never mind us. And I also re-learned a lesson of my youth - when it comes to sand dunes, it's great walking down them but hard pounding going up them. I fear for my leg muscles tomorrow morning.

Before I left home, I saw an article on the most popular names in Galicia last year. For girls, these were:- Noa, Sara, Daniela, Lucía and Carla. And for boys: Hugo, Mateo, Pablo, Nicolas and Daniel. All pretty traditional, then - though I've never heard of Noa - and probably all saints' names. Significantly, none of the first 10 in each category were old Galician names but the following did rank among the top 20:- Breogán, Brais, Sabela, Iria, Antía and Iago.

Finally . . . I bought a pen in Pontevedra last week and have just noticed it's called V Sign. This is, to British eyes, like calling it The Finger in the USA.

My apologies to those confused by my referring to 87 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. It should, of course, have been Centigrade. Reader Perry suggests waiting a minute before pouring boiled water on your coffee grinds. Which I will now try.

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