Our visitor having left and my having no other commitments, today I took myself off to the hairdresser's, where, as you might expect after several years of albeit intermittent custom, they greeted me by name. And I got my fix of prensa rosa, scandal magazines.
I found out all about the royal families of various countries.
The British royal family make a splash with the celebration of the queen's ninetieth birthday. The young woman formerly known as Kate Middleton is deemed to have stolen the show. She is judged to have adapted well to being royal and it is generally felt that Queen Elizabeth II can be reassured that she has a suitable successor there. This must assume that poor old Charles is never going to make it to kingship and we shall never have a Queen Camilla! If Kate was upstaged by anyone it was by her own small daughter, who charmed everyone by waving delightfully to the crowd.
The various generations of the Spanish royal family were also featured. The retired king and queen have been on joint engagements, after two years of appearing separately. Who knew that there had been a royal separation there? Mind you, there have always been bits of scandal about his retired majesty. Retired Queen Sofía seems unable to do any wrong. There is some concern about the ex-Infanta Cristina losing weight. It's all that stress from the court case!
The clothes of the various royal females receive a good deal of comment, except for the members of one of the Scandinavian royal families, as they were all wearing national costume. You will be pleased to hear that Queen Letizia is noted to be patronising cheaper brands, well, less extremely expensive. Our very own Kate was wearing the same suit to the queen's birthday do as she wore to little Princess Charlotte's christening. But she did have a fancy new hat, with a large artificial rose on it. The princes seem to get away without comment, except for tiny Prince George. He did better than anyone at recycling outfits by wearing the same shirt as his father wore to his brother Harry's christening all those years ago. I have heard of christening robes being re-used but a small boy's shirt?! Did William not wear it out? You would have thought they could afford a new shirt for wee Georgie!
And then there was the alternative royalty. David Beckham was featured smiling and laughing with small boys in an African country. Richard Gere was in Taormina, Sicily, for the film festival, with his Galician young lady, Alejandra Silva. Poor Richard Gere is still having problems with his ex as they cannot come to an equitable agreement about money. There's about €40 million to share out. Surely with amounts like that you could just split it two ways and still have plenty?
And the Spanish star Ana Obregón is apparently making "un reality" about her life. Amazing! The things these celebrities get up to. Her justification, apart presumably from making some more money, is that her life has been a reality show without her wanting it to be so. Her Spanish construction was one I would probably have marked as incorrect if one of my students had used it in the past. She said, "mi vida ha sido un reality sin yo quererlo". I would never have used an infinitive there in that way. Always something new to learn. And she is speaking her own language after all!
More seriously, I also got a look at a local paper with this main headline: "El "Brexit" se convierte en una grave amenaza para las exportaciones gallegas". The long and the short of it is that the UK leaving the EU may cause problems ("be a serious threat") for Galician exports. The UK is the fourth biggest importer of Galician goods, in the region of 1000 million pounds or euros worth, and trade has doubled this year so far.
They would rather we stayed in!
Voting takes place tomorrow. By Friday we should know what is going to happen.
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