Lots of people stood for hours and hours in the rain in St Peter’s Square in Rome waiting for white smoke to appear through the special chimney. I don’t remember people in the UK getting quite so excited about who was going to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury. So it goes.
Listening to all the reporting about the conclave I picked up a bit of linguistic knowledge when the BBC reporter casually said that the cardinals were locked away “con clave”, with a key. Why had I never thought of that before? Probably because it’s not a word I use all the time. Interestingly, despite its etymology the Spanish word “cónclave” puts the stress on the first syllable, something that rather surprised me.
Another little linguistic titbit I’ve come across today concerns the vocabulary of crashes. I was looking at reports of the bad weather in the north of Spain and found one about a lorry in difficulty in Galicia. In English we would say that a lorry “jack-knifed”. The Spanish report said, “un camión hizo tijera”, literally, “a lorry made scissors”. Different expressions but both connecting with sharp instruments.
The weather has been causing some problems – and some nice pictures – in the interior of Galicia.
Lugo had snow on its fine old Roman walls. 
Cars slithered all over the place and needed pushing. 
And the countryside just looked like Christmas cards once again. Even Santiago de Compostela got a sprinkling.
And there I was thinking that we should escape to Galicia to avoid the winter.
Here in the northwest of England we seem to have got off lightly. In the past we have had lots of snow, more than most other places, but this year the south of England has suffered far more than we have. Even the Channel Islands have been snowed up this year. But we've had blue sky and sunshine interspersed with snowshowers, none of which has stuck for long.
The weather is seriously strange!
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