Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 25.7.19

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable. 

                  Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain

Spain

• If you're a true Galician nationalist, you believe that almost everything was invented here. Including the kilt, it seems. My thanks to reader Eamon for this citation. I won't reveal his location as some nationalists can be quite sensitive. They already know mine . . .
• A truly Spanish tale? . . . .

- Two days ago, one of my neighbours honoured(?) me by asking me to cook 2 curries for 15 people who were due to attend her birthday dinner last night. So, I gave her a list of 10 items to buy and yesterday morning she messaged me to tell me she'd got them all. I replied that I didn't believe her and she then admitted she hadn't got the cardamom pods but insisted she had everything else. When I told her I still didn't believe her - I have a lot of experience of her familiarity with the concept of truth - she admitted that she hadn't got the cloves either. So I scoured the health food and spice shops of Pontevedra and finally got these. Starting the preparations for cooking, I discovered she hadn't got the almonds, the ground coriander seeds or the turmeric. So, in total 5 out of the 10 items. And then - to my (almost) disbelief - I discovered that, instead of the shin beef I'd asked her to get for the - wait for it - beef buffad curry, she'd bought pork. "Because the woman in the supermarket told me it'd be better". And the 3ko of chicken breasts I'd asked her to get was half in thin slices. Inappropriate for a curry, of course.
- The quintessentially Spanish element of all this? Even at 5pm, she didn't know how many guests would be turning up. Even her best friend, she said, 'might have a family do to attend'. At 5.30, I heard her inviting someone who'd just called her. Presumably to replace one of the 15 who'd dropped out since Monday.
- To top off the day, I got a message in the evening saying that her dog was a nuisance for her guests and so she was putting him in my house. Where he still is as I type this, at 10.08.
- Finally on this . . . One of her 2 daughters - who both flitted in and out, offering to help but disappearing after starting a task - filmed me shouting, real chef style, at their mother in frustration. I might post the video here one day.
- Oh, I forgot . . .  It took me at least 5 requests before I finally got the glass of wine I desperately needed.
- I've just received a message giving me a thousand thanks and telling me how much she loves me. I've replied that, in that case, she can come and vacuum the floors of my house. Which she never will, choosing to see this as a joke.

The UK

• Boris Johnson: He's not really a British version of Fart, but it is true that he can't knot a tie properly, leaving the wide end dangling way down below the narrow end, a la Fart. Is it really possible that no one has told him how ridiculous this looks? Or is it quite deliberate, furthering his dishevelled schtick?

The Way of the World/Social Media

• Columnist Matthew Parris:- I argued last week that people are not necessarily “racists” for feeling irritated when their way of being is attacked by others who seem to stand outside their culture; and that we play into the hands of unpleasant rabble-rousers like Donald Trump if we spray the word “racist” around undiscriminately. Afterwards, friends called to ask if I was OK. Why the (kind) concern, I asked? “You’re in a Twitterstorm” they said. I was unaware of this. I don’t entirely know what a Twitterstorm is. How many other Twitterstorms have I been in without knowing it?  . . .  I cannot understand why people get so upset by what is said about them on social media. It’s a world you visit voluntarily, and you don’t need to.

The USA

• Once upon a time, these were scarcely credible reports:-

1. Trump gave a talk to a group of conservative youth and gave them an incredibly twisted lesson in civics, claiming that Article II of the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.” This betrays both his total ignorance of the Constitution and his deep-seated desire to be an actual dictator.
2. He also lied and claimed that the tariffs he’s created have meant foreign countries have contributed “billions and billions of dollars” into the U.S. Treasury:

You constantly have to pinch yourself to remind yourself this is not some tinpot dictator in a banana republic but the president of the USA. Who might well get a second 4 year term in office.

The most depressing aspect? The young 'conservatives' in his audience cheered him to the rafters.

Could this happen in any other Western democracy?

Spanish 

• Word of the Day: Corto.

English

• Going back to the long S . . . Wiki says that it was differentiated from an F by having a 'nub' on the left, as opposed to on the right for the F. Well, maybe. Here's an example from the writings of William Penn which shows - see 'mischief' - that it was hard to see this nub. Even in this (very) enlarged version of the text:- 

No wonder it fell out of use. Hard to understand why it ever existed in the first place. Something to do with buying printing equipment from Germany, I believe.

Finally . . .

• Thanks to Brexit, UK temperatures are forecast to reach record levels today, possibly hitting 40 in some places. Here in Spain, Madrid's peak is predicted to be a 'normal' 35%. While Sevilla's will be a 'cool' (for them) 37. Here in Galicia, we're expecting a high of only 22. And rain, of course. It's a public holiday after all. The feastday of St James/Santiago, the patron saint of Galicia. And of arthritis, I've just discovered.