Things you find out.

My panadera’s mother was on duty at the shop this morning. Like her daughter, and as a good gallega, she gave me a weather report. The morning mist which lasts pretty well until midday or thereabouts is, according to my meteorological expert, not July weather but more typical of August. The climate is “trastornado”, all mixed up – just like the people, she told me. That’s that then. 

One consequence of the late emergence of the sun is that the pool tends to be empty when I go down for a late morning swim. I can pretend that the pool is just for me. I was joined towards the end of my swim today by a couple of daddies with their smallish offspring. They were part of a group of about twenty people preparing to have lunch al fresco. 

While these two daddies gave swimming lessons others manned the barbecue. Cooking at a barbecue, or burning meat as I like to think of it, is men’s work. The women just provided crisps and salads and stood around looking decorative, which is quite as it should be in such a situation. 

I am still reading Max Aub. Book one finished with a description of the chaotic fighting in Barcelona at the start of the Spanish Civil War and gave a list of the fate of the characters who figure in the book: some dead in the fighting, some ending up in prison, some executed by Franco at later stages of the war. Quite traumatic but effectively done. Book two, Campo Abierto, move us on to Valencia with some new characters and some old ones reappearing. Mixed up amongst them are real life leaders such as Durruti. 

This kind of reading is not the easiest of Spanish. It’s not unlike reading Dickens or Jane Austin. Like almost anything written before the second half of the twentieth century, it’s full of vocabulary that is really hard to find. Maybe it’s a result of readers’ familiarity with stuff they have seen on TV or in films but later books have shorter descriptions. I know younger readers who get really impatient with the classics for that reason. 

Anyway, I have made some linguistic discoveries: - 

    Back in the 1930s, the Spanish were already borrowing English words, such as “un dancing”, an exclusive sort of lace where the “señoritos” from good family could go and dance to the latest music. 

    The word “postín”, which I recently commented on as possibly being related to posting on Facebook and other social media, was also in use then. Mr Aub describes his hero, Rafael, going to a cafe which is rather more upmarket than his usual sort of place. “A Rafael le chocaba tomar un café en un sitio de tanto postín”. 

    In English we have one verb for planes landing: to land. In Spanish when a plane comes down on land they use “aterrizar” (from “tierra” – land) but when it lands on water they use “amerizar” (from “mar” – sea). How logical!! 

All the above courtesy of Max Aub. It’s amazing what you learn from a little bit of reading. 

From the papers I have discovered that the House of Lords is referred to in Spanish as “la Cámara de los Lores”. I never knew that a Lord was “un Lor”. 

I have also read, in both Spanish and English papers about an obesity gene, currently being researched by British doctors. Apparently it affects 1 in 6 people. If both your parents have it, you’re stuffed! No chance! You are condemned to get fat! There’s also a “hunger hormone”. If you have the obesity gene you are likely to have a higher level of the hunger hormone than other people and so you want to eat more. There, you see. It’s probably not your fault you can’t get into your jeans; it’s in your genes! 

Call me cynical but aren’t they finding all sorts of excuses for being overweight or underachieving, for being unable to give up smoking or just being generally anti-social? 

More cheerfully, I read that Chris Froome is the first Briton ever to win the Mont Ventoux stage of the Tour. Well done, Chris! 

He’s still in the yellow jersey, despite concerted efforts by Contador and his Czech team mate Kreuziger to give him a serious challenge today. They kept pushing him to ride faster by taking turns to overtake him, so that he had to work hard to catch up; presumably they were trying to tire him out. It nearly went wrong as Contador lost control of his bike with7.5km to go and Froome had to swerve round him. Both of them were off the road and had to remount. The group of riders politely waited for them. Wasn’t that nice? 

The stage winner was a Portuguese rider, Rui Costas, but Froome keeps his lead and Contador remains in third place. So it goes!