Points of view.

How nice to look out at blue sky once again. For most of the weekend our horizons were very limited. The cloud had come down again and hidden everything. However, my weather witch bread lady assured me the weather would improve during this week. For today and yesterday at least that seems to be the case. 

On Saturday, the bread lady informed me, they even had to cancel the "entroido" procession in the town centre as the weather was so bad. There were a few people around in fancy dress on Monday so clearly something was going on somewhere but apart from that I have seen very little this year. Having stood on chilly, windswept street corners watching the procession in the past, I have reflected before now that the Vigo climate, indeed the Galician climate, does not really lend itself to a Caribbean style carnival parade with girls in skimpy costumes. Floats with Sponge Bob Square Pants lookalikes are one thing but girls in sparkly bikinis and feather headdresses are something else again; the poor things must freeze. The Atlantic blanket that came down on Saturday was just too much for the "entroido" procession this year. No one would want to turn out and watch, let alone take part in, a soggy parade. Presumably yesterday they were able to bury the sardine without hindrance from the weather. 

Maybe we should just work on converting the Galicians to simply having pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Not so colourful, but decidedly warmer. I am sure that they could arrange some colourful pancake tossing competitions. They are good at making fiestas out of any occasion after all. And fresh pancakes are much more appetising than the "orejas", weird, vaguely ear-shaped stiff batter concoctions on sale in all he breadshops at the moment. 

We had free pancakes last night at the Pitillo restaurant in Pontevedra. We are visiting our friend Colin and when he asked where I fancied going for tapas in the evening, that was my first choice. So to the Pitillo we went, despite his having already been there for lunch earlier in the day. They were surprised but very pleased to see him again. And after we had eaten little fish, calamares and zamburiñas, they gave us free pancakes along with the usual free "chupito"! Like Vigo, Pontevedra is all decked out for carnaval/entroido. 

Unlike Vigo, the street decoration is properly carnival themed. And there are pirates and pirate ships all over the place. There were even pirates dining in the restaurant while we were there. I hope they paid for their food and didn't behave like old style marauding pirates. 

Having commented on cold carnivals in Galicia, I found this picture of celebrations in the Czech Republic to mark the end of winter and the start of lent. It's not just the Spanish who dress up in brightly coloured costumes then. 

Meanwhile, I read an odd story the other day about a woman who was stung on the hand by a scorpion just before her flight from Los Angeles took off. They stopped the take off, took the plane back to the gate and had the woman checked by medical staff. Understandably, she decided not to get back on the plane. The flight attendants killed the scorpion and checked that there were no more non-paying passengers before the plane took off an hour late. Nobody knows for sure how the got on but the flight originated in Los Cabos, Mexico - illegal immigrant, obviously. You can't be too careful! The Oregon State University men's basketball team was on the flight and their coach commented, “The woman was a real champ. She acted like it was a mosquito bite. They got it off her, but the needle was stuck.” I think I might have been a bit more upset. 

Obviously there are more dangerous places than sometimes cloudy Vigo.