Palm Sunday processions. The problems of eating out on Palm Sunday. The wider world - Gaza.

Today is Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus is supposed to have ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey and palm fronds were strewn in his path in his honour. And so there was a procession on the street where our accommodation here in Las Palmas is situated. 

Small children were in the forefront.  Well, almost in the forefront.

A band played. A statue of Christ on his donkey was, of course, brought out of the church and carried along the street. 

And masses of people followed with olive branches

.

There will be more processions as Holy Week progresses.

Because today is Sunday and even more so because today is Palm Sunday, several of the places where we have enjoyed eating in the short time we have been here were closed. Other places had tables reserved for family groups. We managed to get a table (on a short term, “be aware it’s booked for 3.30”) at a restaurant called Allende. 

Last time we were in Portugal we had “ovos rotos”, “huevos rotos’ in Castilian Spanish, a dish made up of chips, serrano ham and fried eggs - the eggs being broken onto the potatoes. Phil had that same dish here but served in a completely different way, almost moulded into a compact shape. Still tasty! Still far too much for one person to eat in one sitting! 

I had a Lebanese salad, which was very good. 

Back home in Oldham, the historic Tommyfield Market has finally closed and moved to a new home in or next to the Spindles shopping centre. I’ll have to investigate it when I return home. The old open air market site is going to be home of an academy backed by Eton College. Here’s a link to an article about it.

And here’s a link to an article reminding us that the “ceasefire” in Gaza is still killing Palestinians.

Nothing changes!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

The trials of using Google maps. Looking for bread for breakfast. Guiding. And other stuff to cheer us up.

 In the middle evening last night we decided to go for a stroll and a beer and maybe a snack. We had a place in mind, a place where we ate “papas arrugadas” on Thursday. The idea was to decide if it would be a good place to go late in the evenings when Phil has finished playing in the chess tournament here. 

We’ve been relying on Google maps or satnav to find our way around and last night almost got ourselves lost. The trouble with maps on your phone as opposed to actual paper maps is that it’s hard tell which way the map is oriented - north isn’t always at the top and you can end up walking in the wrong direction. I suspect it works better when you’re driving and you have an annoying voice telling you when to turn left or right and so on. 

Anyway, we overshot and found ourselves in a bit of the area that we have not yet explored! Minor panic! Especially as the phone signal dropped momentarily. But we found our way back to our planned route. The restaurant/snack bar we were after was absolutely overwhelmed with customers. Well, it was Friday night. Everyone and their grandmothers were out and about. In fact, with the mix of ages, it looked as though everyone was out and about WITH their grandmothers. 

Finally we stopped for a beer and croquetas at a little place on one of the back streets. Perfectly fine!

This morning I got up and went looking for bread-shops. There seems to be a dearth of bread-shops as such in our neck of the woods. Eventually I found two small cafes which also sell bread. This is the reverse of the breadshop which has a small cafe section, and sometimes not even a table outside, just a seating area at one side of the shop. So we had fresh bread for breakfast with our coffee this morning.

Now that I have located the bread shop, tomorrow I may well get up and run (keeping my Fitbit happy) and buy bread on my way back! That’s the plan. I just need the will-power.

Some time ago, chatting with the smaller grandchildren about favourite animals, I was asked if I preferred dogs or cats. I kept them waiting and then told them I preferred a ca….pybara! This has been a family joke ever since. And here is a link to an article about a capybara who got away!

Following the UK supreme court ruling last year that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex, trans women have restricted access to services and places and organisation. The Girl Guides have chosen to follow the letter of the ruling and are expelling trans women. It seems a bit harsh. Here is a link to Zoe Williams’ article on that matter. 

With the world in a continued state of chaos, I read this: “Britain is “a few weeks away” from medicine shortages ranging from painkillers to cancer treatment if the Iran war continues, according to experts, while drug prices could also rise.”

The interconnectedness of everything goes on and on.

To cheer us up, here is an illustration by Tove Jansson, creator of The Moomins. This is from a satirical magazine Garm, where Tove worked as a political cartoonist from 1929 to 1953. In the 1950s, dancing and festive evenings became a source of joy for Jansson and her artistic circle. In an post-war era marked by renewal and optimism, music, movement and shared celebrations offered a sense of freedom and delight.

Music and dance - a source of joy in a crazy world.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Out and about in Las Palmas, dodging Storm Thérèse. Historical-mythical heroes. The continued craziness of the world.

 This should have been posted yesterday but somehow went into draft. So here it is.

My Spanish sister has expressed concern that we might have been affected by the rain that has hit the Canary Islands - Storm Thérêse I think it has been dubbed - but we have been fortunate with no more than a little shower of drizzle at some point this morning.

Out on walkabout yesterday we saw a statue of good old Christopher Columbus. Allegedly … because surely nobody knows for sure what he looked like.

Thinking of historical, semi-mythical, literary figures, here’s an interesting thing about D’Artagnan, of The Three Musketeer fame:

“More than three-and-a-half centuries after a musket ball to the throat put an end to decades of exemplary swashbuckling, the French soldier who inspired Alexandre Dumas and went on to be immortalised on the stage and screen.

Workers repairing a church in the Dutch city of Maastricht have discovered a skeleton that could belong to the 17th-century Gascon nobleman Charles de Batz-Castelmore – better known as d’Artagnan – whose exploits led Dumas to make him the hero of the Three Musketeers.

The real-life d’Artagnan was a spy and musketeer for King Louis XIV who died during the siege of Maastricht in 1673. Three hundred and fifty-three years later, the longstanding mystery of where the warrior came to be buried may finally have been solved, thanks to a set of bones found under a collapsed church floor.”

There you go. Another mystery solved. 

Getting back to being out and about, I also admired the strange root formation of a tree. Trees are always fascinating, maybe exotic ones even more so.

Having got into our accommodation finally yesterday, we had a bit of a snooze, making up for being up well before the crack of dawn. In the middle evening we ventured out for a beer and a snack, sampling the local delicacy: papas arrugadas - small potatoes boiled in their skins (hence the wrinkles) and served in a slightly spicy sauce.

This morning we went back to the same place, Bodegón Veguetas, for breakfast. There’s something very civilised about coffee and toast and freshly squeezed orange juice in the open air.

Then we packed up and left, setting off to join an old friend with whom we’ll share accommodation for the rest of our stay here. 

Out in the wider world, Israel claims to have killed an Iranian naval chief. There is some doubt about whether or not peace talks are taking place. Personally I have little faith in peace talks any longer as someone always seems to continue dropping bombs and shooting folk despite alleged peace talks. Experts say the UK economy will be worse hit than other places by the conflict in the Middle East. Goodness, even the clothes store Next is saying they will need to raise prices. 

So it goes.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Sight seeing. Moving house. Magpies.

 Yesterday after a bit of post-lunch snooze we went sightseeing. In the Plaza Santa Ana we admired a fine building at the far end of the square, which turned out to be Casas Consistoriales - more or less council offices.

There were some splendid dog statues for some reason.

And of course there was the  Santa Ana cathedral, less spectacularly beautiful than some cathedrals we have seen. 

We also saw the supposed Casa de Colón, the house where Columbus is supposed to have stayed on his way to the Americas.

Today we had to pack up and leave our temporary accommodation and move house again. A friend had booked accommodation for a group of us in the Triana district of las Palmas. The booking didn’t quite coincide with our flights from the UK and so we have been like wandering gypsies, spending Wednesday night in one place and Thursday night in another. Today finally we have been able to unpack our suitcases as we’ll be here for about 10 days! 

So this morning we went out for breakfast in a funny little bread-shop cum cafe not far from where we spent the night. Later we set off for this new accommodation, stopping en route to look again at places we saw last night. We considered looking inside the cathedral and inside the Columbus museum but the queues were rather daunting. That will be for another day.

Here’s something quite unrelated to our adventures. On social media someone asked what the collective noun for magpies. Why do people ask questions that you can look up cor yourself. In comments people declared their ignorance but offered magpie folklore:

“One is for sorrow, two is for joy, three is for a girl, four is for a boy, five is for silver, six is for gold, seven is for a secret never to be told” 

 8s a wish, 9s a kiss, 10s a bird u must not miss 

And here is a long version by Anyone John Finnemore:

One for sorrow

Two for joy

Three for a girl

Four for a boy

Five for silver

Six for gold

Seven for a secret

never to be told

Eight for a wish

Nine for a kiss

Ten for a chance

you must not miss

Eleven for a wasp

Twelve for a bee

Thirteen for a coffee

Fourteen for tea

Fifteen for a pencil

Sixteen for a pen

Seventeen to hear

these options once again

Eighteen for pepper

Nineteen for salt

Twenty for an accident

in which you were not at fault

Twenty one for Jerry

Twenty two for Tom

Twenty three - where are all these

magpies coming from?

Twenty five no seriously

Thirty this is weird

Forty eight from where have all these

magpies suddenly appeared?

Sixty two stop counting

Seventy just run

Ninety nine the revolution

of the magipies has begun

Two hundred no more sorrow

Five hundred no more fears

One thousand for how long

the empire of the magpies will last

in years

That’s enough of that. A group of magpies, by the way, can be called a "conventicle," "tiding," "gulp," "mischief," or "congregation."

And a group of moles is called a “labour”

Hey ho.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!