Tattoos, timing and DIY.

Down at the pool yesterday, late morning, coming towards lunchtime, there was a group of "beautiful people", probably late twenties, maybe early thirties, a little bit hippyish, the men with long hair, some in ponytails, one with dreadlocks. All were slender and bronzed. They sat on the grass in the garden and the chap with the dreadlocks played the guitar - quite well, I have to say - while the rest sat around and chatted. Their own little music festival! 

 I thought briefly that one of the girls was wearing a swimsuit with some kind of grid or net arrangement on the back and then I realised that her back was covered in lines of writing tattooed onto her skin. It just toned in with her black bikini. A curious effect. Now, I am not a great fan of tattoos and I find myself wondering why you would cover your whole back with a poem, a novel, a political statement. I am only hazarding guesses as to what was written there as I never got close enough to examine it closely. 

The beautiful people barely ventured into the pool so for the most part it was practically empty. My own private pool - or very nearly. Late morning is obviously a good time to swim; the temperature has not yet reached its maximum and there are relatively few people in the water. 

On Thursday I went down in the late afternoon and had to give up on the idea of swimming altogether. Mr Bossy, someone from the "comunidad" who has availed himself of a high vis vest labelled "monitor", was organising a group of smallish boys to dive for tokens that he threw into the water. All very commendable and I truly appreciate the value of community spirit and all that, but it wasn't very conducive to a quiet swim. Altogether too splashy and too many smallish bodies leaping around all over the place. When I do my dormouse (from Alice in Wonderland) impression, I prefer the pool to be a little quieter. 

On Friday we had planned to meet some friends and go for lunch at El Puerto restaurant, one of the best fish restaurants in town, but when I tried to book a table the other day, they reminded me that Friday was a "día festivo"' a bank holiday, and they were not going to be open. We met anyway and found another place to have lunch. A good time was had by all. 

 Friday was a bank holiday because it was the 25th of July, the feast of Saint James, Santiago as they call him around here, patron saint of Galicia. The saint's day has morphed into Galicia Day, celebrating the whole region, not just the arrival of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. 

They do a fabulous montage of fireworks on the facade of the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela at midnight on the 24th of July. It's quite a sight to see. This year apparently the firework display included a tribute to the people who died in the horrific train crash just outside Santiago last year at this time. The papers on Thursday were all full of stories of survivors one year on and stuff like that. 

In the Guardian newspaper yesterday morning I found a feature called "The secret pupil", made up of quotes from pupils, commenting anonymously about their teachers. Most were very favourable but there were some complaints about poor teachers who clearly didn't know their stuff and sent pupils away to find out things on the internet. Meeting deadlines and handing back marked work featured quite a lot as well. One pupil wrote, "On the theme of marking, I would much prefer to get my work marked by a teacher than Joseph Barker who has been picking his nose for the last half an hour." I always did have my doubts about the pros and cons of "peer marking". I'm sure it only works in subjects like Maths where you can have a definite right or wrong answer. Anything that is in the least subjective gives rise to too many arguments. 

We spent part of Saturday afternoon rebuilding a sofa bed in our flat. I believe it was bought originally from a certain Scandinavian furniture company who specialise in build-it-yourself stuff. In a few weeks time we will have a group of young chess players overnighting with us on their way back to the UK from a chess event in Pontevedra. Part of the arrangement involves a couple of them sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room. So we decided to check it out. Just as well! There was just no way to open it up and make the legs touch the floor. 

On closer examination we worked out that the main section of the sofa bed had been put in the wrong way round. So we bought ourselves a cheap set of Allen keys from the Chinese shop down the road and took the thing to pieces. Reassembled, it works perfectly. Whoever put it together clearly didn't test it or, if they did, decided they couldn't be bothered putting it right. 

When first we saw this piece of furniture, I was surprised to discover that, in order to keep the back of the sofa upright, you had to have it against a wall. At the time I put it down to a basic design fault. I should have known better. These things are tried and tested and intended to work. So, there you go, a little bit of jigsaw-solving thinking and the wonders of Scandinavian furniture technology can be made to work as planned. 

Having said that, I can think of occasions when I have torn my hair out trying to follow their instructions in diagramese. 

 On the whole, quite a successful day!