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However if you get out and about early enough there is often a window of fine weather at the start of the day. I thought I had got away with it: overcast but still fine and fairly bright. On the whole not a bad morning for a walk into the village.
The fishermen were out in droves around the old mill pond. Then, just as I was about to snap a picture of said fishermen, the heavens opened and I had to root my umbrella out of my bag instead of my camera. So it goes. But I bought the newspaper and made it home for a late breakfast without getting too wet.
My newspaper had a report about the little village of Castillo Matajudíos, near Burgos in northern Spain, where they are soon going to vote on changing their name, which means Jew Killers, to something like Mota de Judíos, Hill of the Jews. Political correctness hits Spain. I wonder if the various people called Matamoros (and there are some to this day, not just Santiago Matamoros, Saint James who is supposed to have helped the Spanish Christians defeat the Moorish Muslims) will also think of changing their name. I had heard the story about the little Spanish village some time ago but who would have thought that the story would reach the English newspapers?
Voting is going on in a number of European countries today. We voted on Thursday, not just for the European parliament but for local government. Unfortunately UKIP has successfully messed up results for all the major parties. Previously sensible people have accepted Nigel Farage’s rants and have voted for his party. Hard to believe but true! One of my daughter’s friends posted on Facebook about how he heard a number of foreign languages spoken in the centre of his town, Oldham, where we live, and how proud he is that people from other countries of Europe have chosen to live there. All is not lost while there are young people expressing ideas like that.
However, xenophobia is still around in government circles as well. It seems that our Mr Gove, in a moment of wisdom, has said that books like Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mocking Bird” should be removed from the GCSE English Literature syllabus because it is American, not English. As one of my friends pointed out, maybe he also needs to ban T.S. Eliott and Seamus Heaney for the same reason. Mr Gove certainly wouldn’t approve of the list of books read by the SPANISH book club I used to go to at Vigo library. Half of them were translations of English best sellers!
That’ll do for now. It’s still raining!
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