Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Corruption latest; Motorway madness; Begging letter; Adolf in Scouseland; & Paste problems.

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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