Spain's latest
corruption scandal involves 30 civil servants around the country (in
13 of the 17 regions) who were allegedly bribed to grant gardening
contracts to a particular company. The case has been given to a lady
judge who's already famous for being elegant and attractive. And so
much photographed each day she arrives at court. To give her her due,
she never plays up to the cameras.
Drivers who head down
the autopistas are known in Spain as kamikazes. Reports about their
errors are quite regular there. This is the first I recall seeing in
the UK, where it was front page news, complete with video.
Some French letters
will soon come under an auctioneer's hammer in Paris, including one
from Brigitte Bardot to her hubby. But the star document will be a 1529 Spanish
document, a plea from Catherine of Aragon to a Spanish cardinal,
begging him to ask the Pope to intercede to save her marriage with
Henry VIII. What she wanted was an annulment that would obviate the
looming schism over a divorce with Henry. The rest is hisory.
You couldn't make it
up. As I passed through Toxteth in Liverpool today, my brother-in-law
pointed out the pub in which Adolf Hitler is said to have drunk when
he stayed in that city for 6 months between 1912 and 1913. He was draft
dodging, apparently, and living with his half-brother and his Irish
wife. He even had a job at the Adelphi Hotel in the city centre. Or
this is what the lady says in her memoirs. Here's the BBC's take on
it anyway. The big irony is that the house in which he's said to have
lived was the last one to be bombed during WW2.
Funny Fuji: I got my
faulty camera back from this company today. Or, rather, I didn't. The note
said they'd repaired a faulty shutter but the camera they sent me was
a new one. And a later model. I think I'm impressed.
Finally
. . . Travel broadens the mind, they say. And indeed it does. For
example, on the ferry to Portsmouth on Sunday, I learned what happens
when you use 'Savlon' antiseptic cream instead of toothpaste. It kills all known germs. But doesn't froth up.
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