Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- I picked up a book from an Amazon delivery point yesterday. The odds on me being impersonated by someone intent on stealing it must be vanishingly small. OK. nil. But, nonetheless, I had to display my (long expired) residence card to prove my identity and then give my (totally unintelligible) signature with a pen on a PDA. IGIMSTS.
- Here in Galicia we've had fewer summer fires than usual. Possibly because it's been cooler and wetter than average. But, sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case down in nearby Portugal.
- Down on the south coast, they have an entirely different problem, very probably as a result of GW/AGW.
- And it's not only me who's having bird-disappearance problems . . .
- My visiting daughter just tried to book a train seat back to Madrid on Thursday but should have done so sooner. Perhaps a lot sooner. Nothing available on that day. Nor on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday Sunday and Monday. The Great Return.
- Richard North* today: When the history of Brexit comes to be told, it should include a strong comment on the failure of the media, from its own resources, to research, analyse and report on the predictable consequences of a no-deal Brexit. . . So many of them are superficial and derivative, relying in the main on previously published third-party sources. It is in this information vacuum that charlatans such as Johnson survive and even prosper, getting away with the vacuous and palpably dishonest claim that "We can easily cope with a no-deal scenario". We can't – not easily. We will cope, because cope we must – it is not as if we have a choice in the matter.
USA
- Compulsive - but worrying - reading:- This Isn’t the Madman Theory. This Is a Madman President. Taster: The Trump campaign and the early days of his administration were marked by the charming window when most of his supporters—and frankly, much of the mainstream media—believed that the vomitus spraying out of Trump's mouth was part of some clever psychological game, quantum chess to own the libs. Only idiots and zealots believe that now.
- Query of the Day: How best does one translate Jane Austen's comment that To wish is to hope and to hope is to expect without using esperar more than once?
English
- Do you confuse tenderhooks with tenterhooks?
- More good news for me on the avian front . . . I certainly saw a blackbird - a backbird?? - in my garden last night. And I might well have seen a sparrow. Albeit only the one so far.
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