Memories of things past, improving the future, teachers!

Walking into town yesterday, we followed a route that took us past the block of flats where we lived some seven or eight years ago. This is a route we have not walked for some time and we noticed places where the project commonly known as "mellorando o futuro", Gallego for "making the future better", had been going on: improved pavements, parks tidied up and the like. Covered walkways leading to bridge over the motorway was still covered in graffiti, although as it was fresh graffiti, I suppose you could say that some renovation had taken place.

When we first visited that flat, the landlady, a lady of Basque extraction with the (to us anyway) odd name of Garbiñe, walked us through an approach to the area which she assured us was scheduled for improvement. A one track road, barely made up, with holes in the tarmac all over the place, it had a rough brick wall on one side beyond which was a wilderness of bracken and convolvulus, mostly the purple kind that abounds here. The wall, she told us, was due to be pulled down, the road widened and resurfaced, and what remained of the wilderness after that was to be tamed and civilised.

Nothing had changed! If there ever were such plans either someone ran out of development money or someone ran off with the development money. Both are plausible explanations!

We tutted and went on our way. As we strolled along Arenal, a wild woman stopped and stared at me. Well, I suspect we all looked a little wild as the wind was tugging our hair in all directions. She looked extra wild perhaps because of her long hair and her weatherbeaten look. "¡Tanto tiempo sin verte!" she cried. The standard expression when you haven't seen someone for ages. Who was this woman who claimed to know me?

And then light dawned. This was Loli, who ran yoga classes at one of the Asociaciones de Vecinos, the Community Groups that work so well here. For two years, while we lived in Vigo, I had gone along to her classes twice a week. Very good value; €8 for a year's membership of the Asociación de Vecinos, and then €20 a month for which you got a two hour session of yoga twice a week. And the membership fee for the Asociación entitled you to sign up for other activities. Far better value than community education in the UK.

In the yoga classes, when we reached the point where we all did a final relaxation, stretched out on mats on the floor, I used to overhear the English class going on in the room next door. What I heard explained the awful pronunciation of some supposed English speakers here. The teacher was clearly not a native speaker of English. Well, I am not a native speaker of Spanish and I taught Spanish in the UK, so I should not criticise on that score. However, I like to flatter myself that my Spanish pronunciation is better than that teacher's English pronunciation. Much of the time it was just plain wrong!

And one day I heard someone ask her, in Spanish, in which part of England they speak the best English. After all, Salamanca is held up as a model of good speaking here I believe. The teacher barely hesitated before declaring London to be undoubtedly the best! Really? I don't think so! So for the most part, I would follow yoga practice and shut my ears to external noise and concentrate on my inner calm!

On the subject of teachers, I hear that George Osborne has a new job: honorary professor of economics at the University of Manchester. Rather than a new job, I should say another job. That makes six jobs, apparently. How many jobs does one man need? And how much does an honorary professor get paid? How much actual teaching must an honorary professor do? Will he commute daily between his newspaper editing job in London and his teaching job in Manchester?

And one more important question springs to mind: if he really needs so many jobs to to earn so much money, does he really have a grasp of economic reality?

Bread and boats and Brexit stuff!

This morning I woke to the sound of car tyres swishing on wet roads. The clouds were already clearing by the time I went out for bread for breakfast and for the rest of the day the clouds have come and gone but the rain has not returned much. 17 degrees was the temperature registered on the billboard down by the roundabout: a cool morning with a bit of a chilly edge to the wind. The bread shop lady complained that it was cold, which struck me as a bit of an exaggeration.

This is not my weather witch bread lady. She was always too busy involved in the baking to notice the cold. But between our being here in March and returning in June the old lady who owned the bread shop has sold up and retired. The weather witch is her daughter. Goodness knows what she is doing now. The new sales assistant only sells bread and sweeps up. No baking and no weather forecasts or commentaries on the state of the world from her so far.

From about 9.30 I watched a fine, elegant sailboat, a three-master yacht I suppose it is, make its way up and down the ría, accompanied by a little orange tug boat. It must have been running on motor as no sails were visible. It sailed up towards A Guía and proceeded to go around in circles for most of the morning. Was it waiting for a berth at one of the shipyards? This is one of life's little mysteries that I don't expect to see solved as at some point in the late afternoon it disappeared.

Checking messages briefly on my phone this morning, I found a lot of comments about goings-on in parliament. The Tories have defeated a Labour motion regarding increasing pay for those who work in public services such as nursing, the police and the fire brigade. (The money must have been spent on something else!). By all accounts, the Tory MPs cheered. Yes, they cheered! I can understand some satisfaction at defeating the party whose views oppose yours but to cheer at defeating a motion like this smacks of a callous lack of humanity. They have only just got over praising our public services for their work at the Grenfell fire!

What a strange world we live in! Somehow you imagine Parliament to be quite austere, with serious debate going on, measured tones and balanced arguments. The televising of Parliament proves it to be a kind of circus where supposedly grown up politicians behave like rowdy year nine schoolchildren! 

Brexit negotiations are underway and I come across newspaper articles in which we are once more being asked for our opinion about it, not that OUR opinion is going to change matters. Some are still convinced that we could reverse the decision of a year ago but somehow I doubt it.

In the meanwhile British citizens settled in Europe have expressed concern that Theresa May is willing to sacrifice some of their rights post-Brexit to cement immigration limits on EU citizens coming to the UK. And EU citizens already in the UK are still uncertain about their future rights.

 The world is indeed a difficult place!

Being back in Vigo, weather, and maternal modesty or aggression!

Here we are back in Vigo after a week in Sanxenxo, where Phil became the superveterano in the chess tournament and won yet another ceramic boat. Pretty soon he will have a whole flotilla, and a couple of days in Pontevedra, where we made up for drinking very little in Sanxenxo by having some very nice wine with just about every meal. Well, not breakfast - we are not quite that bad! As usual I walked down from Poio, where our friend lives, almost into town to buy bread for breakfast. I had been assured there was a shop halfway down the hill but failed to find it ... until I discovered that it didn't open until after 10.00 in the morning. Not a lot of use?

The Sanxenxo tournament was a week earlier than usual this year, which is just as well as the weather has turned blustery and intermittently rainy today. We had a splendid week in Sanxenxo, mostly not too hot but just right. One lady I spoke too on one of the hotter (28 degrees) days told me how nice and cool it was compared to her home town, which turned out to be Toledo, where temperatures were up to 40. Excessive!

Also excessive, in my opinion anyway, is the modern obsession some famous women seem to have with showing off their pregnant bellies. Beyoncé did it and the latest is Serena Williams whose naked photo appears on the cover of Vanity Fair. It's quite tasteful, nothing too garish and with a carefully placed hand over her breasts. But why does she feel a need to show off her naked bump at all? She also tweeted it, inviting people to guess whether she was having a boy or girl. “I’m waiting to find out but would love to hear your thoughts,” she said.

On the same day that her photo appeared John McEnroe, never renowned for holding his tongue, apparently refused to apologise for saying Williams would be ranked around No 700 in the world if she played in the men’s game. A rather mean comment, in my opinion! In response to this Serena Williams told McEnroe to “respect me and my privacy as I’m trying to have a baby”. Where does privacy come into it when you are prepared to bare your body to the world?

I hope I am not turning into a prude!

Other creatures are much less prepared to show off their young. I read today that bears are attacking people in Alaska. I found the headline quite alarming until it became clear that this was in wild woodland areas. On four occasions recently people running and cycling have been attacked, two of them fatally, probably because they went, probably unwittingly, too close to where the bears had their cubs. I have heard of people in Cornwall having to avoid certain roads and paths which go too close to where seagulls are nesting so surely it makes sense to avoid paths near places where bears make their dens. Both species are known to be very protective of their young but the bears are probably more dangerous.

Mind you, I wouldn't tangle with a seagull!

Seats on plains, buses and potties!

Here are a couple of odd stories about seats on planes and buses. First of all this article on who "owns" the space a seat on an airplane can recline into. Some people get very territorial about it. Personally I am inclined to ask people on buses not to recline their seats as the space left for me and my legs and my book is usually very inadequate. I only do short haul flights so it's not usually a problem on planes.

 More seriously, an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor and a former lawyer, Renee Rabinowitz, has recently successfully sued Israels national airline, El Al, for gender discrimination. Flight stewards can no longer request female passengers to move seats to accommodate ultra-orthodox men who do not want to sit next to them. It seems to me that if ultra-orthodox Jewish men don't want sit next to women on planes then they should not get on planes. If you want to live according to rules from a previous age, you should not expect to use the trappings of modern living!

We should congratulate Renee Rabinowitz for her successful action. "Chapeau", as the French would say. We take our hat off to her. Oddly enough, the other day I was reading a Spanish novel in which a character congratulated another on something by saying "chapo", clearly a Spanish version of the French word. Not an uncommon event, after all "croissant" has been gradually changing into "curasán".

I hear that there are plans afoot to dig up Salvador Dalí. 58 year old Pilar Abel claims that she is the daughter of the artist, the outcome of an affair her mother had with Salvador Dalí back in the 1950s. A court has decreed that the artist can be exhumed so that DNA tests can be carried put. Such are the wonders of modern technology.

Among the other odd things I have read recently is an article about potty training. Opinions abound about bringing children and how to look after your tiny baby. This one reckons that you should start potty training from birth, learning from day one to recognise the signs that your tiny one is about to pee or poo and holding the minuscule bottom over a little potty. Enthusiasts say that babies learn quickly and thus you can be environmentally friendly by not using disposable nappies or even having to use detergents on terry nappies. “Also, it’s fun,” adds Amber Hatch, author of a book on the subject. “It’s really confidence-boosting to hold a squirming baby over a potty and see them do a wee or poo. You get this instant feedback. And cleaning them is much easier: just one quick wipe and you’re done. It’s not a big operation on a changing table using hundreds of wipes. It’s quite a pleasant way of dealing with your baby’s wee and poo.”

It strikes me that Ms Hatch is perhaps a little too obsessed with these bodily functions! Surely other aspects of child development are more fulfilling. Our daughter delights in all sorts of things that her tiny daughter achieves but somehow she has missed the boat on potty training as the child is now almost ten months old!

So it goes!  

Coincidence and likely stories in the Southwest of Spain.

My sister, who lives in the Southwest of Spain posted something on Facebook today about coincidences.

Years ago, when I was still working as an A-Level Spanish teacher, students could choose a Spain-related topic to research and then write a piece of coursework in Spanish on that topic. A good choice of topic was always something related to El Coto Doñana, the nature reserve down in the Southwest corner of the peninsula with lots of environmental questions to answer, gaining good marks for students.

An area of natural wetlands, Doñana was always under threat from agricultural projects that wanted to make use of the water supply. Intensive polytunnel developments, growing those all-year-round strawberries and other soft fruit sold in supermarkets in the UK, were amongst the most guilty. The WWF and other environmental organisations have long fought to protect it but it's hard work. There is a National Park there with research facilities in the middle of what they refer to as the natural park. 

On the 26th of June this year fire broke out in the woodland areas of the natural park, near a development of polytunnel greenhouses. As the fires in Portugal have shown, fires of this kind are devastating. Fire fighters managed, I think, to prevent the fire from spreading to the National Park area. Some people, like my almost Andalusian sister, have been pointing out a series of coincidences: 

In 2014, a law was passed, the Ley de Montes, which says that woodland areas can be reclassified after a fire provided the government agrees that project requiring that reclassification can be declare to be "of public usefulness". (A fair number of forest fires have been suspected of being deliberately started as a result.)

In 2015 Gas Natural Fenosa came up with a project for gas storage tanks in the Doñana area.

In 2016 the government declared this project to be "de utilidad pública".

And in 2017 there is a forest fire in the Doñana natural park.

 It's rather a shame I no longer have students looking for interesting topics for coursework projects.

Hasta la vista, Sanxenxo.

And so we say goodbye to Sanxenxo for another year. And another tournament comes to an end. The final result later today.

We shall not be indulging in the latest insurance scam. I read this morning that the latest thing for the ambulance chasing insurance companies in the UK is to approach people on all-inclusive holidays in Spain, Greece, Turkey or wherever and persuade them to sue the hotel for food-poisoning!! They have no need of a medical certificate and the hotels end up paying. But the greedy tourists may be shooting themselves in the foot as some hoteliers on the Costa del Sol are talking of withdrawing the all-inclusive deals for British tourists. Whatever will they do when they can no longer eat and drink as much as they like?

But not us. We don't do that.

And so ...

goodbye to the fine views over the ria..

goodbye to La Madama de Silgar ...

and goodbye to sand dragons on the beach ...

See you next year!

Food stories.

Beware of electronic kitchen itensils. "A popular French fitness blogger has died after a whipped cream dispenser exploded into her chest. Rebecca Burger, 33, who wrote about fitness and travel on social media, where she had 55,000 Facebook and 154,000 Instagram followers, died last weekend in what her family described as a “domestic accident” at her home at Mulhouse, eastern France." I read about this and, while sorry that she had died, found myself with a couple of questions. What was a fitness blogger doing using whipped cream? And what's wrong with just whipping it with a fork or a hand whisk? Far less dangerous!

Belgium is famous for chips. The French used to make jokes about it, rather like people used to make jokes about the Irish being potato eaters. I doubt if any of those jokes are acceptable these days. Whatever the truth of that might be, Belgian chips have been in the news because the European Commission is trying to tell the Belgians how to cook them. Apparently local politicians say this amounts to an attempt to ban the national dish, the frite – or frieten, as they say in the Flemish-speaking north of the country. "Whether eaten with mayonnaise or taken au naturel, the Belgian chip is up there with chocolate, beer and the national football team in the nation’s psyche." Or so they say.

"No public square is complete without a frietkot, or chip stand, where sellers swear by double frying bintje potatoes in beef or horse fat to achieve the ideal combination of a succulent centre and crispy exterior. In a move that appears to demonstrate a dazzling lack of common touch on the part of EU officials in Brussels – which is both the capital of Belgium and the home of the union – the commission is proposing that the potatoes should be blanched first to prevent the formation of acrylamide, an allegedly hazardous compound that can form in the frying process when certain foods are heated to a temperature above 120C."

There I was, prepared to be full of sympathy, until I read the bit about frying the chips in beef or horse fat. Quite gross! I know of a fish and chip shop near our home in Greater Manchester, a fish and chip shop of some renown, where they fry the chips in dripping. It's the same principle: animal fat! I am sure both lots of chips, Belgian and English, taste fine but the animal fat thing is rather off-putting to someone like me who rarely eats red meat!

Here's another quite gross food item, from Wednesday:

 "Police in Canada have launched an investigation after a patron at a Yukon bar allegedly stole the famed ingredient of their signature drink: a mummified human toe. For more than 40 years the Downtown hotel in Dawson City has served up the sourtoe cocktail, a shot of whisky with a blackened toe – nail and all – bobbing inside. Those who manage to touch the gnarled, severed toe to their lips earn a certificate.

On Saturday a customer took it one step further, allegedly making off with the wrinkled digit after swallowing his drink. “We are furious,” said Terry Lee of the hotel. “Toes are very hard to come by.”

The man had apparently boasted of his plans to steal the toe earlier in the evening. He later convinced a staff member to let him try the drink outside of the designated two-hour window known at the bar as toe time. “And this is how he pays her back,” Lee said in a news release. “What a lowlife.”

The  tradition claims to trace its roots to the 1920s, when a rum runner preserved his frostbitten, amputated big toe in a jar of alcohol in his cabin. Fifty years later, the pickled toe was discovered by a Yukon native who brought it to the Downtown, where it became a celebrated ingredient in its drinks. After Saturday’s theft, the hotel contacted the police and began offering a reward to anyone with information. “We fortunately have a couple of back-up toes, but we really need this one back,” said Lee. It was the newest addition to their collection, donated by a man who had had to have his toe surgically removed. After curing it for six months in salt, the staff had only begun adding it to drinks this week."

"Toes are hard to come by"!!! "Back-up toes"!!! Some things are just too disgusting to think about. Worms in drinks are quite enough, without human body parts.

 On a more cheerful note, this is part of what we had for our evening meal quite late yesterday.

Since it was "la noche de San Juan", there was a smell of bonfires on the air, and the delicious aroma of sardines grilling. We got a free sardine with our first drink but we did not leap over any bonfires.

Ritual meals and such like nonsense!

Last night we went to the annual special dinner organised for the chess tournament. Those chessplayers and accompanying family members who are staying in the hotel are invited every year. It's usually very fine. Last night was no exception.

We began with copious helpings of very nice "croquetas" together with pan a la catalana (ie bread rubbed with garlic and tomato) with rather fine serrano ham on top. After this came little empanadas, looking for all the world like tiny Cornish pasties. And then we were served so many plates of octopus (very nice, tender octopus too) that jokes were being made about how it could be recycled for today's lunch: a kind of sopa de pulpo for starters, an empanada de pulpo for the main course and a mus de pulpo (octopus mousse along the lines of chocolate mousse) for dessert.

Some guests were disappointed that there were no percebes (goose barnacles), a seriously over-rated and over-priced regional shellfish delicacy in my opinion. Much discussion ensued. According to one couple, it is still too early in the season. Another denied this, telling a tale of a goose barnacle caught/prized off a rock recently as big as a fist. Sceptics thought this might not taste as good as usual but were assured that it was tender and flavoursome.

Comments flew around about everyone's favourite shellfish. The local nécoras - razor clams - came in for much praise. I tried to think of how a similar conversation might go in England. Apart from black pudding in some parts of the north of England, it was rather hard to think what food items people would get quite so regionally patriotic about. Maybe certain kinds of cakes.

We were all of us trying to resist the temptation to eat too much in these early stages of the meal. We were saving ourselves for the main course: arroz con bogavante - a tasty rice dish with lobster. Some people regard it as paella but it is not really the same. It was delicious, as usual, although I am always left wondering whether dishes that involve cracking open the claws and bony shells of sea creatures to obtain a fairly small amount of meat are really, truly worth the effort involved. No doubt Galician friends would regard this as a kind of heresy.

Here comes another bit of heresy. At the end of the meal, during which we had all downed a fair amount of excellent Albariño wine, we were invited to go down into the deepest depths of the building for a "queimada". This is a drinking ritual where large quantities of orujo, Galician firewater, are mixed with sugar and chopped fruit and set alight. As it burns, the mixture is stirred, large ladlefuls are raised up, spouting blue and yellow flames, and then dropped back into the cauldron, by whoever is brave enough, daft enough, fireproof enough or paid enough to do so. In this case it was one of the waiters.

While this went on a recording told us all about it in respectful tones.

Whenever I have seen this done before it has involved people dressed up as witches and magicians, some walking around on stilts or doing wild dervish-like dances, and a general atmosphere of ritual magic. We had none of that this time but there was inevitably some gaita - Galician bagpipes - music.

Eventually the flames died down and we were all served a little glass of hot, fruity firewater.

All well and good but personally I would have preferred a little chupito of licor de café.

The solstice.

So yesterday was the summer solstice, which won't be celebrated here for a few days yet as they celebrate it with bonfires on the eve of St John's day. The longest day has been and gone. You might say thatvit's all down hill from now on and the days will start to get shorter. However I don't think we'll notice it just yet.

In the southern hemisphere, of course, it was the winter solstice. I read about a place in Australia where they celebrate the midwinter day by having a swim in the cold water of the ocean. SOme places do this on New Year's Day. Anyway this place in Australia had so many participants signed up for it this year, and so manybwho actually turned up on the date - as a rule more register than turn up -  that they ran out of towels and some people had to stand and shiver after they got out of the water. If only all the world's problems were so easily.

So here, to celebrate the summer solstice, are some pictures of our visit to Sanxenxo.

   

What to wear?

Fashion is a curious thing. It even finds its way into leisure pursuits and exercise routines. Long ago, when Jane Fonda's Workout was the go-to book for keeping yourself young and lithe and beautiful, I used to go to aerobics classes. I would turn up in my basic black leotard and basic black tights. Other ladies had a veritable rainbow collection of leisure wear. I swear some of them wore a different set each week. And I would hear the same question repeated again and again: "That's a lovely leotard; where did you get it?" As a rule I was astounded at how much some women were prepared to spend on stuff to get her hot and sweaty in!

Down at the pool I see a similar phenomenon. Some women must fill their suitcases with swimsuits and bikinis in a range of styles and colours. To do them justice, however, I think a lot of them buy extra swimwear from the Chinese shop across the road, where they have a fine selection of bikinis and cover-ups in many colours and all at reasonable prices. And you really need two swimsuits, of whatever style, just in case you swim in the morning and your suit is not yet dry when you want to swim again in the afternoon. Which often happens. Pulling on a wet swimsuit is not the most pleasant experience.

The other fashion trend this summer is probably a bit morepricey than Chinese shop swimsuits. Back in the 1960s there was a trend for baby-doll nightdresses: frothy and frilly, slightly off the shoulder and stopping midway between hip and knee. Well, the baby-doll look appears to have returned in the form of a dress. I keep seeing them around. They are fine on young women with a slender, model-girl figure. On anyone beyond a certain age, they just look silly. And any girl endowed with a large bust, no matter how slim the rest of her, looks as though she is pregnant. (Although nowadays women no longer where clothes which disguise their pregnancy or hide it behind a loose, drapey frock. The thing to do is wear something clingy which outlines the bump nicely, or even reveals an expanse of swelling baby-belly!) As ever, fashion trends are not meant for the woman in the street but for the skinny model on the catwalk!

Today it seemed likely that few would be showing off their bikinis at the pool. The day began overcast and rather cooler than yesterday. This should not prevent people from swimming but it probably will. And the sun worshippers would have to find another occupation. By lunchtime the sun had come out. So maybe the pool will fill up later. Before lunch there were only five of us down there.

Yesterday the temperatures reached silly heights. A friend told me that one of the girls cleaning and sorting rooms at her hotel collapsed with heat exhaustion and had to be taken to hospital. The UK had crazy temperatures as well. A school in Hull reportedly sent pupils home. Not all of them because of the excessive heat, which would have been quite sensible. No, a small group apparently rebelled at having to wear their blazers in the classroom in 30-degree heat and were suspended. The headteacher said "no students were sent home as a direct result of not wearing their blazer" but because of "rude behaviour". However, if the rude behaviour was provoked by having to wear blazers in hot clasrooms, what more is there to say?

Our two middle grandchildren, aged 14 and 12, attend a school where they have to wear their blazers all the time. The uniform is very smart, grey trousers, grey blazer for the boys, purple blazers for the girls. This is meant to give a good corporate image to school and make everyone feel great pride in the establishment. And the blazers stay on at all times, except for PE lessons. This must make writing awkward and practical lessons such as science and art and technology uncomfortable. Presumably there is also a dress code for staff as well. And presumably all of the staff have to agree to enforce the rules.

The whole idea that such insistence on uniform is good for discipline and makes everyone learn more effectively has always struck me as crazy. The Germans manage without it; in fact a German friend of ours once told us that they had had enough of uniforms in their past. In France and Spain uniform is the preserve if the private sector. I am pretty sure that Scandinavian countries don't impose uniform on their schoolchildren.

It's a particularly British madness!

Here and there.

This morning we saw a strange sight: two young men wheeling bicycles along the pavement. They could not ride on the road because it was a one way street in the opposite direction. What the majority of people seem to do in such circumstances is simply ride at full speed down the pavement. Our friend Colin from Poio, Pontevedra, gets very agitated about cyclists on the pavement. Yesterday I came across spme statistics regarding cycling in Pontevedra. The Faro de Vigo newspaper reported on a survey by an assoc called Pedaladas, which found that in Ponters, despite a 30kph speed limit, which is not very fast, most cyclists, 71% of those surveyed, do not feel safe on the road and prefer the pavement!! 20% of the, never wear a helmet, and another 24% only occasionally use one. Perhaps if they took some safety precautions themselves - helmets, lights, bells, a bit of road safety training - they might manage to leave the pavements to the pedestrians.

Here's another bit of statistical information: in Galicia 10 accidents occur per day because of loose snimals - deer, wild boar, etc. This is 30% more than 5 years ago. Does this mean that there are more animals (in the case of wild boar, probably yes) or more cars on the road? Last year there were 400 injuries and 9 people died. Meanwhile, temperatures soar and forest fires rage in Portugal with huge loss of life and property.

 And in the UK they are still counting the cost of the tower block fire. Here is a link to fireman's account of his experience fighting that fire. And the stories keep coming in about people who still go around barefoot and in the clothes they managed to escape in; about people being told that if they refuse to be rehoused in places like Preston (only the other end of the country); about donations of food and other goods to the survivors being left to rot on the streets because the local council has not got organised to distribute it.

And Brexit negotiations are supposedly going on - how well remains to be seen.

The Queen's speech will finally take place tomorrow.

How long all of this will last remains to be seen.

Very Galician problems! Still in my bubble!

Yesterday there seemed to be a prodigious amount of noise around the town, small explosions, cannons being fired, perhaps, or fireworks being let off. What on earth was going on? Is there no such thing as a noise abatement society around here? Did they really have to provoke all the local dogs in that fashion?

Then, at some point in the evening I discovered that yesterday was Corpus Christi, a Roman Catholic feast which "emphasizes the joy of the Eucharist being the body and blood of Jesus Christ". Having been brought up in a Church of England and Methodist mix, I did not consciously know about this. There will have been flower patterns on the street leading to the church. I did not get to see them.

I read that back in 1972 there was a big kerfuffle about trade guilds taking part in Corpus Christi processions and carrying their trades' banners and symbols with them. The bishop of Pontevedra had to intervene. However I have no idea what he decided as I lost the will to carry on reading the article, which had very small print.

One of the delights of coming to the Sanxenxo chess event is meeting groups of people who over the year have become friends in a way. Not the kind of friends you send Christmas cards to necessarily or would invite to your retirement party. Just people it's nice to see once again and catch up with what they have been doing since this time last year.

And so I found myself talking to the parents of a young chess player. We first met this young man a few years back when we got involved with organising a kind of chess exchange for youngsters from their chess club here and from the one that Phil helps run in the UK. This year that young man has just done "selectividad", the end of secondary schooling exam which decides what level of university course you qualify for. How did he get to be so old? Mind you, most of the young English chess players who came here on that exchange are now studying at university or in the process of taking A Level exams. Time has been flying past once again!

Anyway, this particular young man has done quite well in his selectividad exams and will undoubtedly qualify for the optometry course or whatever else he decides to do - there not being a truly viable option for a university course in chess, unfortunately. However he is asking for a re-mark on the paper testing his Gallego, ie knowledge and use of the regional language, on which he scored an extremely disappointing 3. (The paper he was really worried about, Maths, got a high score!) All his friends and their parents agree that the marking on Gallego is extremely harsh. They sense a hidden agenda in there! Quite what knowledge and use of the local regional language has to do with one's suitability to study something like optometry remains a mystery.

I have known large numbers of students who were very good at sciences, technology and all things mathematical but quite hopeless at learning languages. I do, however, feel that a good, all round bright and clever candidate should be able to deal with a bit of foreign language but that is a different matter. And I have helped candidates applying for Oxford or Cambridge to achieve the required GCSE pass in a foreign language but there we are talking about applying to the top universities. And I am a little out of touch and could not really say if that restriction still applies. So it goes.

I have just been reminded that Brexit negotiations start today. And there has been another terrorist incident in London, another kind of terrorist! And so I shall have to come put of my escapist bubble again soon.

A little more escapism!

Back in my escapist bubble for the moment, I am ignoring any stuff about the Queen's speech and Theresa May's machinations to stay in power. I shall only say that perhaps she and her handholding friend across the ocean could perhaps retire into the sunset together at some point.

This morning, as is my wont, I was up bright and early, running along the paseo marítimo and then along to the lighthouse and back along the beach, dabbling my feet in the sea. Other early risers were also up and about, doing the sensible thing and getting some exercise before it got too hot. At least two groups of younger people were also up and about, in their case still up and about rather than already up and about.

Revellers extending Saturday night into Sunday morning, one group of young men seemed to be debating whether they could go into a cafe for breakfast while still holding half-full bottles of beer. Another group were mostly young women, dressed in matching outfits of black top and long shorts, topped with bright yellow net skirts of the kind that our three year old granddaughter would love to possess for dressing up purposes. These young women's fancy dress was finished off with black pussy cat ears. So they were not after all dressed as bees in sympathy with Manchester. One possibility is that they were a hen party, despite the fact that they seemed to have collected a few men en route. They all sat on the sea wall, chatting happily and finishing off glasses of wine and beer.

In Spanish there is a verb, "madrugar", which has different possible meanings, depending on the angle from which you approach it. Those of us who were out and about for exercise were "madrugando" in its sense of "getting up early". Those young people who were still socialising were "madrugando" in its sense of "staying up unreasonably late". We could do with such a verb in English but all we have is the expression about burning the candle at both ends when we try to "madrugar" in both senses at once.

On the subject of words, I have been noting odd uses of English once again. There is a shop here that sells sailing gear which persists, even after several years, in having the slogan "At anytime and to any weather". Surely someone must have told them by now. As my students used to tell me, it's the little words (prepositions, as any primary school child in the UK could now tell you) that make life difficult. A company called ServiNauta, hedges its bets by advertising "Yatch service" on one bit of their van and "Yachting service" on another! And in Porto Novo I spotted a boutique that calls itself "Woman Chic" - possible considered a very trendy name but not really English!

Some things just don't translate, of course, as my friend Colin has been saying about the menu item "huevos rotos", literally broken eggs. Impossible to translate because eggs with their yolks broken and then fried would just not appear on any menu in the UK, even if the Spanish appreciate them. I wonder how the Spanish translate the American "sunny side up" fried eggs!

I had a chat this morning with a small girl on the next door terrace in our hotel. She spotted me through the dividing greenery and told me she was going to pool later. When I replied that I too would be there but that I had not yet had breakfast, she told me "Ni yo tampoco" - neither have I. Then, at the tender age of no more than four, she demonstrated perfect mastery of the subjunctive mood, telling me, "Mi madre me dice que vaya adentro ahora", more or less "mum is telling me to go inside now". Aren't children amazing?

Of course, she had to do as she was told, for as I heard a young mother telling her daughter that she HAD to rinse the pool water out of her hair, "las cosas que dicen las mamás, hay que hacerlas". The things that mums tell you to do, you have to do them!

But of course!

Reality check!

Well, I think I have sat in my escapist bubble for long enough now. I shall probably get back into my escapist bubble before long but in the meantime her are some thoughts. I have been avoiding making any kind of comment about the tower block fire in London by writing about the weather and odd things that I have noticed about life in Spain.

And all the time I have been reading reports, first about how awful the fire was and then the reports of all the things that were wrong with that tower block: the external cladding which probably let the fire spread, and the use of which is banned in so many other countries; the cost cutting that meant that sprinkler systems and other fire-safety measures were ignored; the ignoring of regulations that said they should be installed; the lack of an adequate escape route in the event of a fire; and on and on. And then the reports that tried to put the blame on residents for not installing sprinklers and even one resident in particular whose faulty fridge may or may not have stated the fire.

Then last night our son sent us a long email, in which he talked about sitting up and watching the election results come in last Thursday night to Friday morning (is it really only just over a week ago?), about the London Bridge attacks and most of all about having to go into work on an early train on Tuesday morning and being able to see the tower block fire from his train. What a terrifying sight!

"And now," he wrote, "London enters a hot weekend as a tinder box. Justifiable anger, but the police tired and stretched. First London Bridge then this. Police who in some cases have done two weeks with no break. Angry, rightly angry, people. But all it needs is one tired, provoked, police to over-react and be caught by a smart phone doing something unacceptably brutal and it could so easily erupt now.

 Summer 2011 - I walked home from Mike's flat to the flat Emma and I had in Tooting after watching a box set (probably Treme, appropriately enough). We turned the news on before I left and I realised that all over London shops, flats, were being burnt. I walked (just five minutes) down empty streets realising that if i needed help, if I dialled 999 for a whole long-weekend no-one would come because every police, every fire-fighter was committed. Hopefully this weekend will be peaceful, but it's on a knife edge. I sit far away on my hill in Buckinghamshire, but I worry for my city."

He moved to London with a bunch of friends after university and it became "his" city in a way that Greater Manchester, where he was born never was. Even though he no longer lives in the city itself, he travels in daily from the end of the Metropolitan line to work in the city centre.

And I understand his feelings because it's what we have felt when Manchester, London, Paris, Nice have been threatened in whatever way. And we felt it when riots took place years ago in Oldham, where we live on the privileged edge of town. Our home in Saddleworth was never threatened by those riots like the centre of town was. And we feel almost guilty to live in such a secure place.

And we feel privileged, and yes, again guilty, to be able to take ourselves away to places like where we are now for a chess tournament (for Phil) and a week of pampering and using the wonderful pool (for me). And I think our son feels some of the same, safe on his "hill in Buckinghamshire". I think back to dystopian novels I have read by Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, J. G. Ballard and others, stories of a future where the rich live in gated, indeed fortified, communities with security forces to keep out the rampaging, starving poor and reflect on how they might be coming true.

Getting around again!

So, here we are in Sanxenxo once again for the chess tournament. We had fun organising our travel. We wanted to check up times of trains from Vigo to Pontevedra, to coincide with buses from there to Sanxenxo. Vigo has two train stations: Urzáiz in the centre, the refurbished original train station, and Guixar, out on the edge of town, which we thought was just a temporary measure while the refurbishment work went on, but which remains open. Trains from Guixar to Pontevedra take about half an hour to do the journey. Trains from Urzáiz, on the other hand, do the run in ten to fifteen minutes. Some of the information websites only gave us trains from one station. Others gave all stations but neglected to state which station individual trains left from. We could make a fairly well informed guess from the arrival times in Pontevedra but to the uninformed that site was less than useful! And there would be little point in turning up at one station for a train and hoping that you could make it quickly to the other if you were in the wrong place. Crazy stuff!

We made it in the end, however, despite the bus to Urzáiz railway station arriving late and then our being held up while we had to put our luggage through the security scan system at the station. Vigo Urzáz station clearly has aspirations of grandeur. But then so does Pontevedra station. I suppose you can't be too careful these days!

Anyway, we got here and trundled our bags down the hill from Sanxenxo bus station to the hotel, reflecting that it was quite hot but not as hot as it has been some years on our arrival. We usually have a heatwave for the tournament. There is time yet!


Last night, as we checked train times for the umpteenth time in one of our local wifi-providing bars, I noticed that the football team on the TV was dressed in yellow. The Cádiz canaries. As they scored a goal I sent a message to my sister, who lives just across the bay from Cádiz and supports the canaries. It turns put that she and her son were there - on the front row too! Needless to say, I did not notice them!

In my friend Colin's blog yesterday he put a link to advice on keeping cool in the heat of (especially southern) Spain. This included standing near or even in fountains. I now read that such activity might get you into trouble in Italy.

"Rome is cracking down on anyone hoping to recreate Anita Ekberg’s dip in the Trevi fountain in the film La Dolce Vita, imposing fines for bad behaviour in and around the city’s watery wonders. One of Italy’s most visited cities, Rome has long struggled to protect treasures such as the Colosseum and prevent tourists paddling in its sculpted fountains."

Apparently some fountains have been badly damaged by tourists paddling in them. Some people even take a naked dip in them. No respect!

The worst offenders are often football fans.

 However, a friend of ours, a fan of both Manchester United and Celta de Vigo said he was most impressed by the Manchester fans who turned up in Vigo to watch the recent match between the two teams.

Mancunians are pretty good! Well, most of them!

Some oddities!

When you look back to the times when you spent an evening having a few drinks with friends and then had to wash your hair because it smelt of cigarette smoke, not to mention how the smell got into all your clothes as well, it makes you wonder how it took them so long to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. And then you stop and reflect and realise that it still hasn't really been sorted? Much of the delight of sitting on the terrace of a bar or even eating outside has largely disappeared because that is where ALL the smokers now congregate. And you find yourself checking which direction the wind is blowing before you finally choose a table outdoors.

I have been moved to rant about the smokers because of our experience the other day, when it rained, and we popped into one of our local bars with wifi to check our mail and other such stuff. The bar in question, like many hereabouts, has a kind of enclosed terrace separate from the main bar, where the tobacco addicts go when they don't want to be actually out in the street. You have to take a deep breath and rush through there to the inner, smoke-free area. This is the equivalent of the pubs in the UK where the smokers congregate around the main door, creating a cloud through which you have to pass.

Anyway, on that particular rainy day, probably because the temperature had dropped from 27 to a mere 21 degrees, the outer door to the smokers's area was closed. Presumably the smokers were feeling a little chilly in the draught from the open door and had closed it. This would have been fine but for the fact that the inner door, intended to keep the inner area smoke free, was not just occasionally left open but was actually wedged open! Where was the logic in that? Needless to say, we did not stay too long!

It was an example of a very Spanish thing, a kind of nod towards the letter of the law - after all, they did have a designated smoking area - while kind of thumbing their nose at the real intention of such a law.

Here's another example. I stood the other day at a pedestrian crossing, waiting with a fairly large group of people for the lights to change. Suddenly I became aware of a large motorcycle that had stopped on the crossing, even though the lights had not changed. Finally it dawned on us all that the motorcyclist was waiting for us to move out of his way so that he could get onto the pavement and ride his motorbike a hundred yards or so along the pavement to where he wanted to park it. Now, I am pretty sure it is is against the law to ride a motorbike on the pavement but motorcyclists appear to believe they are not actually riding on the pavement if they are intending to park, even if it's quite some distance up the road. (The motorcycling equivalent of a cardriver parking in an illegal spot but turning on his hazard lights, thus indicating "I am not really here".) A chap standing next to me went into an extended rant about never having known a place like Vigo for motorcyclists who ride on the pavement, a rant which went on as the lights changed and we all crossed the road. He was still chuntering as he continued up the street!

As regards parking, well, I could go on and on, rather like the crossing man, about parking on corners, about double parking, which I saw a police van do this morning so the driver could stop and greet a friend, about quite legal parking right next to pedestrian crossings obscuring everyone's view of the road, about the marked parking places that extend into road junctions and many more. Probably the best I have seen recently was a large van parked with two of his wheels on the pavement halfway round a roundabout! As if roundabouts in Spain were not complicated enough!

These are just a few oddities noticed in the last week!

Free stuff, words and such.

Last night a curious thing happened in one of the bars we frequent. This is a place that is generous in the tapas they provide for free along with your drink. Cake with your coffee or tea. But a whole range of stuff with your beer: slices of cheese and ham with bread, olives and pickles, mini-toasties, bowls of crisps and whatever other savoury bits and pieces it occurs to them to serve up.

And then last night, along with all the savoury stuff, a small bowl of sweets - those jelly sweets amusingly shaped like dummies and false teeth and the like, all coated in sugar! Just what exactly was that about? Who eats sweets with a glass of beer? Just conceivably with a Cocacola or a Fanta, maybe, if you have a really sweet tooth. Or possibly with an alcopop of some kind. But with beer or wine? I don't think so! We hope this is not a trend!

Here's another Spanish word which might, or then again might not, be a corruption of something English: "postín". I came across it while reading Ruiz Zafón's latest book in the Cementerio de los Libros Olvidados series. A character talked about the type of clothes that you see in "los escparates de postín", which context suggested meant "classy shop windows". So I finally got around to checking it. "De postín" = "posh". I couldn't find any etymological information however. It would be interesting to find lut where the expression comes from.

In yesterday's paper a language expert from Vigo university, Fernando Ramallo, was complaining that too much money goes on grants to allow young people to improve their English. There is a programme called "Vigo en Inglés" which has a budget of €1.6 million for 2017. This will make it possible for 650+ secondary school pupils to go and spend three weeks in England improving their know.edge of and proficiency in the language. Mr Ramallo says this is not a "programa educacional" but "vacacional". In other words, these youngsters will be getting free holidays!

His major gripe is that this money could, in his opinion shpuld, be spent promoting Gallego, the regional version of Spanish, which he says is losing ground. Older people in the city speak it but young people are not really interested on the whole. Now, there's a surprise! If you were looking towards the future and thinking about possible employment, I suspect that knowledge of English might offer more possibilities than knowledge of gallego. It's a hard one.

The time is probably bad for all the minority languages. I bet speakers of Walloon in Belgium feel equally under threat. And Welsh speakers, although their education programme seems to work quite well at creating a bunch of bilingual kids. But the argument still holds; what real use is it to speak Welsh, Gallego, Catalan, Walloon or Lanky Twang unless you plan on living and working all your life in Wales, Galicia, Catalonia, Belgium or deepest Lancashire?

And I say all that as a dedicated linguist, as a person who has always enjoyed learning, and teaching, different languages. I am all in favour of everyone learning as many languages as possible and of keeping minority languages going but not at the cost of reducing the employment opportunities of young people.

Meanwhile, everyone will have been busy practising their English in the shops of Vigo today. The tourist industry keeps itself nicely afloat. A cruise boat the size of a small town was in the harbour when I woke this morning, dwarfing all around it. They even had to move the Rumanian navy training ship, a much smaller, and considerably more elegant, three master vessel, out of the way. This latter vessel has been in the port for a few days, manned apparently by trainee Rumanian sailors and a few additional cadets from places like Bulgaria.

Presumably such training programmes, with visits to other countries, are part and parcel of the advantages being a member of the European Union.

Things you, or at least I read in the news.💻🔮

Yesterday I went to the hairdressers. Usually as I sit there waiting for the latest batch of colour to take effect I leaf my way through a pile of gossip magazines: celebrity romances, weddings, infidelities, divorces and, of course, pregnancies at various stages of that cycle. On this occasion, however, I read a local newspaper instead. Most unusual! I wonder who left it there.

Here are some of the fruits of my reading.

I read about the heatwave which has been making its way up from southern Spain and which is expected to continue until the weekend at least. (Today, just to be difficult and different, the sky is covered in cloud and it has been raining. Not that this has affected temperatures much.) Vigo and Pontevedra are expected to get as hot as Orense, which is one of those inland places that has extremes of heat in summer and cold in winter.

Curiously the newspaper referred to the weekend just gone as the "penultimate weekend of summer". Well, it might be the next to last weekend before the summer solstice but I alway understood the solstice to mark midsummer not the end of summer. Even Shakespeare would back me up on that.

All the advertising for the Islas Cíes must have been working as they have been having large numbers of visitors. Low tides have been causing disembarkation problems though. The water was so low one day this last weekend that the 200 or so passengers on one boat reportedly had to walk up a very sloping and precarious gangplank. It is to be hoped none of them was in a wheelchair then! Because of the low water conditions the boat was bounced around quite a lot against the wharf, causing quite a lot of seasickness and general vomiting. The boat companies take all this in their stride and say that the vomiting is quite normal and happens quite a lot. Not the nicest way to begin your day out on the islands however!

Record numbers of visitors are expected in the hotels and restaurants of this fair city, bringing with them the problem of those who depart without paying. There is a Spanish term for this. A "sinpa" is someone who leaves "sin pagar", without paying. In some cases large sums of money are involved. One hotel last season had someone depart leaving behind an unpaid bill of €1,800! Reluctantly, Vigo hoteliers are apparently beginning to think they must adopt the habit of hoteliers in other parts of Europe and ask for details of credit cards when a guest signs in. Are local hoteliers so polite and gentlemanly that they have avoided doing so until now? Somehow I doubt it.

I also read a bit of political stuff. As Mariano Rajoy faces a motion of censure in his government, today I think, the newspaper reminded us that forty years ago, on June 15th, Spain had its first free elections since the time of the Republic. During four decades of Franco's dictatorship elections that took place were hardly free and fair. And then, forty years ago now, Adolfo Suárez insisted on free and fair elections to reestablish democracy in the country. The article I read suggested that Rajoy should use the motion of censure debate to create an opportunity to re-examine the state of the nation and once more re-establish true democracy.

Well! Why not? We have Macron stirring things up in France, Corbyn surprising lots of people in the UK and some Americans calling for their president to be removed.

Things could get even more interesting.

Words!

The Spanish have long had a habit of borrowing, or rather inventing or at least changing the nature of, English words ending in "...ing". To my knowledge the ones that have been around longest are "el camping" for a campsite, also used by the French, and "el parking" for a car park. Then along came the rather ridiculous term for jogging, "el footing". Who decided that that was anything like a word, goodness only knows. In beauty circles you can have "un lifting", a facelift. (Incidentally, I was once told that a "Salford facelift" is when women in Salford pull their hair into such a tight ponytail that the skin of the face is stretched up and back, just as if they had had cosmetic surgery, but at far less cost!) and then there is "un peeling", which I assume is exfoliation, a process of removing a layer of skin, something which has always struck me as quite barbaric!

And now I have come across a new borrowing: "el manspreading". At least his time they have borrowed a term, albeit a relative neologism, actually used in English. Some men, when using public transport, have a tendency to spread their knees wide apart, thus encroaching on the space which would normally be occupied by the person sitting in the seat next to them. The standard, very British, reaction is for the person whose territory is being invaded to swivel their legs away from the encroaching knee and huddle into the remaining space without making a fuss, other than perhaps a resigned sigh. Madrid's transport people are, however, not putting up with it and have invented a new sign to go in their buses, advising against "el manspreading". Now we just need one advising against "el showing everyone what colour your underpants are", to remind young man to please pull their trousers up properly!

Someone who seemingly knows how to do things in a manly fashion is Vladimir Putin. Interviewed recently by the film-maker Oliver Stone, he replied, “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days. I am not trying to insult anyone. That’s just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles.” And at the gym he would apparently prefer not to shower next to a gay man as would not want to "provoke him". How wonderful to feel so confident in oneself!

It's funny the sorts of things that come out in interviews like that. During the recent election campaign, in a television interviewTheresa May was asked if she had ever done anything really naughty, presumably as a child, whereupon she confessed to having run through fields of wheat with some friends. How shocking! I guess she has made up for it since, buying expensive shoes and leather trousers, not to mention being responsible for some bad policies.

And now Carol Ann Duffy has written a poem about her:

Published on Saturday 10 June 2017

In which her body was a question-mark
querying her lies; her mouth a ballot-box that bit the hand that fed. Her
eyes? They swivelled for a jackpot win. Her heart was a stolen purse;
her rhetoric an empty vicarage, the windows smashed.
Then her feet grew sharp stilettos, awkward.
Then she had balls, believe it.
When she woke,
her nose was bloody, difficult.
The furious young
ran towards her through the fields of wheat.

Different points of view!

Once again I say, what a difference a day makes! Yesterday's news reports had senior Labour Party figures admitting publicly that they has been mistaken in their assessment of their leader. After all, Labour had won seats in Thursday's election in places which had been Tory for centuries, palcex like Bedford, Portsmouth and Canterbury.

Owen Smith, who once lost a leadership challenge against Corbyn, said: “I was clearly wrong in feeling that Jeremy was unable to do this well and I think he’s proved me wrong and lots of people wrong and I take my hat off to him.” He went on, "I don’t know what Jeremy’s got but if we could bottle it and drink it we’d all be doing very well. We were hearing people who hadn’t voted for a long while voting Labour yesterday evening, who were inspired by the policies – and, it has to be said, by Jeremy – to vote Labour last night.” The cynic in me asks if they are vying for a place in the shadow cabinet. Or an eventual actual cabinet.

Meanwhile, in the other camp, everything is up in the air. There is pressure for Theresa May to resign but she appears to be hanging on in there, at least for the time being. Policies at home and on Brexit will need to be rethought. Some are saying that the single market and freedom of movement decisions are back in play, despite opposition from the Eurosceptics. Interesting times!

Interesting times for Spain too, as Catalonia has set a date on its referendum on independence: October 1. The Spanish government opposes the idea of secession but the Catalans have long considered themselves different from the rest of Spain. As with Scotland, I find myself wondering about the people who have moved there from other parts of the country, even if it was their family who did so a generation or two back. Do they consider themselves Catalan or Andalusian, for example? I use this example as many Andalusians have traditionally sought work and eventually settled in Catalonia? And do people of Catalan origin but now living in other parts of the country still consider themselves Catalan? After all, I know Scots and Welsh people, and especially Irish folk, who still insist on their Scotsness, Welshness and Irishness, even generations after the accent has long since been lost. Do those people still feel they have a right to a say in the decision on the independence or otherwise of the region?

How complicated life can be. This is perhaps why we should all consider ourselves European or, better still, citizens of the world! 


And now, June 9th! Consequences of June 8th.

What a difference a day, or indeed in this case a night, makes.

I went to bed last night feeling rather gloomy. The papers I had read online in the cafe during the evening all suggested that the Conservatives were in line for a landslide victory. The much talked about young voters were regarded as unreliable. Few of them would turn out to vote was the general consensus. And here we are this morning with a hung parliament and calls for Theresa May to resign.

From various Scandinavian political series we have watched on TV, we are aware that coalitions are an accepted form of government in some countries but they don't often happen in the UK. And the last one was not a great success, doing huge damage to the Liberal Democrats in the process. Poor old Nick Clegg has lost his seat this time around. Were it not for his having brought a lot of his troubles on himself by getting into bed with the Tories, I could almost feel sorry for him. Basically he is not a bad bloke. He must be wondering now how differently things might have turned out if he had made another decision back in 2010. So it goes.

I also find myself wondering how differently things might have turned out this time if the Parliamentary Labour Party had given their party leader their wholehearted support. And, for that matter, if the media had been somewhat less biased in their reporting. However, it is idealistic to expect the media to be truly unbiased or to avoid the sensational. Simple reporting of facts does not sell newspapers and so a "twist" is required.

I was rather gratified to read that UKIP had won no seats - unless they sneak in among the last few to be declared - and more than pleased to see that Caroline Lucas had retained her seat, even though she is the only Green MP. There is still a part of me that wonders how the Greens would have got on if they had had the same level of media coverage as UKIP. The latter always seemed to me to receive an inordinate amount of attention, especially in the early days when they appeared to be something of a joke, one step up from the Monster Raving Loony Party. Okay, so that is a bit of an exaggeration but it cannot be denied that they had a lot of free publicity which resulted in a larger fanbase than they might otherwise have had. But the Greens were too sensible and not sensational enough to receive the same. Once again, so it goes!

And so, as I read that Theresa May has struck a deal with the DUP, we wait to see what the true fallout from yesterday's election will finally be.

June 8th at last!

Well, polling day has come around at last in the UK. It's not been a very pleasant campaign on the whole. Yesterday certain newspapers were once more trying to convince their readers that Labour party people supported terrorists. However, strong winds apparently blew over a van or lorry extolling the Conservatives once again as the strong and stable party. Is there a message in there? Is that karma? I wonder!

Looking through some old notebooks I came across a quote from somewhere, something I copied down at the time of the last general election: "Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong government with the Conservatives or major chaos with Ed Miliband". That has a familiar ring to it. And there was poor old Theresa May thinking she had come up with an original soundbite! 

A lot has changed in the political world since then.

But we have just another day to wait and see what kind of chaos is in store for us. For I suspect that whoever ends up in 10 Downing Street is not going to have an easy time of it.

If the stormy weather of the last few days continues over there, will that affect turnout? Traditionally the right have been more efficient at getting their voters out in bad weather. Forget about the influence of Russia on elections; weather is bad enough! We shall see!

Polls suggest Monsieur Macron, président de la France, might be about to get a lot of his new party elected. That will be another interesting ingredient in the political mix!

Here in Vigo, we continue quietly. Despite news reports last time we were here that fewer tourist cruise boats were going to be calling in at this fair city, both yesterday and the day before there were huge boats docked at the estación marítima. We had to go down to the A Laxe shopping centre to visit Mediamarkt. Big mistake! The centre of town was full of bewildered Brits. (Have they all organised postal votes? Does it matter since many of them may well be Tory voters? Am I guilty of stereotyping?) The young man who served us in Mediamarkt insisted on trying out his quite good English on us. We persisted in answering him in Spanish and eventually convinced him that that was the best option. However, Phil has vowed never again to go to town when there is a cruise ship in the harbour. He resents being mistaken for a tourist!

I have a different problem on my hands. Yesterday I went down to the gardens intending to have a swim. The pool was not just closed but empty! Not a drop of water! And no notices about it! And nobody around to ask for information!

The pool and the view across the bay are the major perks of renting this flat! What is going on?

Nuisances of various kinds.

As we disembarked in Porto in the rain on Monday, I heard a young lady ahead of me on the steps of the plane complain, "We must have gone back to Liverpool. This cannot be Portugal!" And indeed, the weather seemed to be exactly the same as what we had left behind in the North West of England. Yesterday and today, on the other hand, we have woken to sunshine. My brother-in-law sent me a message from the Isle of Man wishing us better weather than he was experiencing. It was so bad there yesterday apparently that they cancelled the day's motorcycle race.

It's just as well the sun shone for us yesterday as we had to make an unscheduled trip to Pontevedra because I had inexplicably managed to drop the keys to my suitcase in a friend's car. I am afraid I got rather grumpy on Monday night at the prospect of everything in my suitcase having another day of being crumpled but at least we did not have to try to break into the case, something which at one point appeared likely.

Serendipitously we found a very good menu del día for €12 in Pontevedra, so the trip was not at all unpleasant. As we sat in the Plaza de Verduras we watched a chap at another table trying to coax pigeons to perch on his hand while he fed them crumbs. Truly, some people have very little sense. By contrast we spent our time batting at the pests with rolled up magazines. There are far too many of these annoying creatures around and those who persist in feeding them just encourage them to land on cafe and restaurant tables and make a nuisance of themselves.

They are not even as appealing as grey squirrels and some people set about hunting them down. Here is a link to an article about grey squirrel hunters on the UK. Of course I am aware that they are not native to the British Isles and that carry a kind of squirrel disease to which they are immune but which has decimated the native squirrels. But it's not their fault. Nobody asked them if they wanted to move to the UK. They may not be quite as cute and pretty as the red squirrels but the one that comes and sits on our kitchen window ledge is rather appealing. So are his antics stealing nuts from a neighbour's bird feeder and burying them all over the garden. I remain convinced that it was a squirrel that planted the bluebells in our garden. It certainly had nothing to do with me.

While we are on the subject of birds and animals being pests, here is a link to some pictures of grey herons which have become urban birds in Amsterdam, rather as seagulls have become urban birds in many cities around the world.

And here is a link to something about a man with a healthy disregard for bad weather, manfully mowing his lawn with a tornado behind him. Canadians are obviously the best kind of North Americans.

I am trying to think and say as little as possible about another North American whose advisers are said to be seriously rethinking his visit to the UK in the light of the London terrorist attack.

More madness!

The madness continues. Late yesterday evening a breaking news message flashed across the television screen, interrupting the programme we had not quite decided to watch. And so we flipped over to BBC news to discover that some crazy people in a van had mowed down Saturday evening strollers on London Bridge and then set about anyone they could reach with knives. I watched for a while and then, having checked that our London inhabiting son was safely home in bed, I gave up and went to bed myself.

This morning Theresa May says we must stop being too tolerant of terrorists. What does that mean? This from a woman who appears to think it is all right to sell arms to Saudi Arabia. No, more than all right; it is good for the economy and helps to keep Britain safe!

Before he even knew whether this was in fact a terrorist attack, President Trump was tweeting the need to bring his travel ban into effect to ensure the security of his country. This despite the fact that our recent terrorists have not actually flown in but were here already.

But this is the modern world and America is the country where a New Hampshire Republican politician recently reacted to a campaign to raise the age limit for marriage in the state, where girls can still marry at 13 and boys at 14, by saying:

"We're asking the legislature to repeal law that's been on the books for over a century, that's been working without difficulty."

Isn't that the point of changing the law? Is he aware that in some states it is still on the statute books that a woman can only drive a car if a man walks in front with a flag to let people know she is coming?

I had some further thoughts about having lots of stuff. Not just shoes and bags. We all tend to amass stuff. Phil has chess books. Too many to count. A friend of mine once counted up and found that she have over sixty coats. Just a little excessive! I still wonder where she kept them all. Did she have a spare room just for coats? This would be like a young lady I once worked with whose fiance told her they would need an extra bedroom in the house they proposed to buy, just to accommodate her bags and shoes!

And the other night we watched a BBC Arena programme about Loretta Lynn. As well as being able to visit her dude ranch (yes, her dude ranch!), you can go to the Loretta Lynn museum. This is extremely well stocked with just about all the outfits she ever wore on stage, including some astoundingly dreadful frocks, because, according to the curator of the place, she never threw anything away. Having grown up in austerity, she simply kept everything!

Madness!

Collectables!

From time to time my husband makes rather rude comments about my shoes, usually along the line of my middle name being Imelda. Yes, I have quite a few pairs of shoes - not as many, however, as some people I know - but mostly it's because I look after them. It seems silly to throw something out when you might make use of it again. Which I do. I like to ring the changes. And when I have decided that there is no likelihood of my ever wearing certain shoes again, I take them along to one of those shoe-banks so that someone else can make use of them.

At least I don't have umpteen pairs of almost identical brown boots lining the hall!

Then there are the handbags, once again amassed over years. Some people buy a new bag and use it ALL the time, until it is thoroughly worn out or until they have grown so heartily sick of it that they never ever want to see it again. Me, I prefer to have different bags for different outfits, different colours and styles, large bags for the days when I need to carry a load of stuff around and small, neat bags for days when I need little more than my keys, my purse and my mobile phone.

However, perhaps I should have a new philosophy towards handbags. It would seem that handbags should be regarded as an investment. Christie's auction house has been holding a handbag sale. None of your bargain-basement stuff here. We are talking about bags expected to sell for £100,000 to £150,000. And that's for secondhand bags!

There is an auction catalogue where each bag is described in detail and graded. A grade 1 bag shows "no signs of use or wear" and comes in its original packaging. (My handbags' original packaging would usually be a plastic carrier bag, which I don't think would add much to the value!) A grade 6 bag is damaged and requires repair but is still "considered in fair condition". Of course these are bags with trimmings such as white gold and diamond clasps. (I wonder if my Kipling bags would retain their value because they still come along with the original Kipling monkey.)

Apparently the most expensive and most sought after is the Hermès Birkin, named for singer, actress, all round famous Jane Birkin. They cost £5000 new but there is a waiting list for them and they are picky about who goes in their waiting list. Presumably they increase in value over time, for most of the rich women buying such bags on the auction circuit do so for the investment value. As with works of art, they end up spending most of their time locked away somewhere. How sad!

The whole things becomes rather weird and silly. Christie's auction house has a "head of handbags". Who knew that such a profession could exist? I wonder if the gentleman concerned ever thought when he was a child growing up that he might one day have such a job. I also wonder how much he is paid to sell secondhand bags.

How the other half lives!

The people who buy such bags live in a level of society that doesn't need to be concerned about education cuts, NHS spending, food banks or the rights and wrongs of spending money on nuclear defence systems. They clearly have more money than anyone can possibly need and should be paying more taxes!

It's all about me, me, me!

We seem to live in an ever more me-centred world. Last night I watched President Trump talking about his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. His reasoning ran along these lines:

• Back in 2015 when America signed the agreement all the other countries of the world cheered. 
• They were really happy because they knew that this agreement would put America at a disadvantage. 
• They were all secretly laughing at America. 
•  Now he is putting all of this right. 
• Nobody can laugh at America ever again. 

Rather disturbingly, his audience clapped and cheered.

Large parts of his country suffer from the problems of climate change. Even his own place at Mar A Lago suffers from flooding because of climate change.

His own states are combining against him over this. One of the residents of Florida expressed his amazement that their "so-called president" (his words, not mine) was working against the good of the country.

But the whole climate change thing is apparently something dreamed up by others, such as the Chinese, so that they can beat the USA. And the president said he wanted to put America first. Clearly the reason why the nations of the world want to fight climate change and why Mr Trump denies it is all about America being first as well. What a man!

Meanwhile, another president, Monsieur Macron of France, is asking everyone to "make the world great again". I wonder where he got that slogan.

The whole business of denying scientific fact is hard to understand. Does it take a special mindset to look at all the evidence and simply deny it? It may be, however, that in some areas of knowledge this blinkered approach might be about to change. The Pope has made a judgement about evolution and the big bang theory. He says that belief on both of these bits of science can be considered quite compatible with a belief on a supreme being. God, he said, is not some kind of magician who could wave a wand and make stuff happen. So why not accept evolution. God still needed to create the original beings which were then going to evolve. Similarly for a big bang to take place God had to create the necessary conditions.

He has not so far explained where God came from in the first place! But his declaration might change some attitudes to education in some parts of the world.

Listening to the views of others!

Last night I watched the television debate between the various party leaders. All but one, of course, as Theresa May, amazingly stable in her decision for once, did not turn up but sent Amber Rudd to speak for her. Amber Rudd seemed to have adopted that physical stance so popular among some politicians at the moment: feet apart, legs sturdy, not quite arms akimbo but looking very determined. She received some opposition from the audience when she suggested that selling arms to Saudi Arabia was really good for the British economy. She also got a lot of stick for the absence of her leader. So it goes!

Zoe Williams, writing about the debate, expresses the view that Jeremy Corbyn did quite well. She then goes on to say this in today's Guardian:

"Let me do you the giant disservice of casting your mind back to the televised election debates of 2010. Nick Clegg did brilliantly, remember: everyone agreed with Nick. He seemed so plausible and so nice, so far removed from the to and fro, the rough and tumble. This gave us two data points: one, that he didn’t get any seats from it; two, that he ended up in a coalition that made him the enemy of every value he’d espoused. I don’t want to get excited about a TV debate ever again."

So we shall have to wait and see but some people are getting quite excited.

On the whole, UKIP's Paul Nuttall came off worst, ranting a little like a comedy politician. The one who came across best - collected, rational, warm and courteous, and truly passionate - was Caroline Lucas, joint leader of the Green Party. It's a pity hers isn't a bigger party.

Meanwhile, over the pond, Donald Trump is about to pull the USA out of the Paris agreement on climate change. Will it make any difference if all the other presidents and prime ministers tell him he is wrong? Probably not! Tolerance of other people's opinions is not his strong suit.

Across the oceans in another direction, over in Australia, a row is building up in tennis circles. Margaret Court, once one of Australia's top tennis players and now, at 74, a pastor in the Victory Life church, has been declaring her intolerance of gays, gay marriage, gays having children, and almost anything at all to do with transgender people. Apparently it all started when someone threw a pie in the face of the gay chairman of Qantas, because of his support of same-sex marriage. Margaret Court then decided she would boycott the airline and now some tennis players want to boycott her and her arena in Melbourne. She has now said that tennis is “full of lesbians” and that transgender children were the work of “the devil”. Oh, dear!

Lots of big-name tennis people have got involved; even our own Andy Murray has had his say.

One suggestion is that the Margaret Court Arena should be renamed the Evonne Goolagong Arena, which sounds to me like a really good name, celebrating Australia's indigenous people.

A little tolerance would be a very good idea.