Dawn

Dawn

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Cataluña cash; The national motto; Useful Spanish words?; Train security; Beggars; A nice song; & La Ultramar.

Accusations of political corruption hit the Spanish media headlines yesterday, a short while before the government there holds an election that's really a proxy for independence. A coincidence? I rather doubt it. More likely the Dirty Tricks Department in Madrid has taken a break from Gibraltar and moved to something far more important - calling the kettle black.

Yesterday I saw a T-shirt bearing the Spanish national motto - albeit in English:-
Fuck rules

Talking of Castellano . . . Is there really a Top Ten of Spanish words that English lacks? Well, The Local thinks so. They're:-
Espabilar
Maruja
Estreno
Cachondeo
Pagafantas
Guiri
Autónomo
Trapichear
Empalagar
Desvelado
Entrecejo
You can see what these 10 words mean here. All 11 of them. After which, you might wonder whether Spanish has anything like the word 'barrel-scraping'. Or even 'counting'.

How long before the selfie craze grinds to a halt? Yesterday I saw a couple walking backwards and wielding a stick to take pictures of a friend walking forwards scattering pigeons. Now, if she'd been machine-gunning them, I could have seen the point of this selfie. Which wasn't really a selfie,of course. Just 2 friends taking a video of you. Like they had a camera of their own.

I've wondered(worried?) for years about security on trains. So, last month I was pleased to see that, down at Tiffintown and Vigo stations, they'd introduced X-ray machines and changed access to the platforms so you had to go past them. Less encouraging was the shut-down of the machines the following day. And the fact that you could, anyway, by-pass the changed access and the machines by waiting for someone to exit through the old door and walking through it as they did. I wonder if the event in Paris will lead to a re-think of the re-think.

Beggarly Notes: 1. A newish addition to our catalogue - a woman in her 50s(?) and reasonably well turned out - last night hassled me while licking an ice-cream cone. She could hardly get her words out. I had no such difficulty; 2. The sweaty-shirted bag-man who stands all day in one quarter of our main square can sometimes be seen in another part of town, sitting on a bench and reading a paper he's fished out of a rubbish bin. He was there last night, with 10-15 variably-sized plastic bags of stuff. And reading a mobile phone catalogue. Good times or very bad times, then.

Finally . . . My daughter, Faye, left for Madrid yesterday afternoon. Which was saddening. Then again, three troublesome episodes of my life ended cleanly and happily. As the estimable (but dead) John Denver sang:- Some days are diamonds; some days are stones. And some days are both, of course

Finally, finally. . . . This is Tiffintown's newish, fashionable restaurant, in the environs of our not-so-newish but still ugly Edificio 6(Building 6) of our museum. I will definitely write my review on Tripadvisor later today. Now, in fact.



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