Noises off!

This morning I woke up to a strangely muffled city. The sea mist that had rolled thinly up the estuary late yesterday evening had spread all over? Cangas and Mosña had disappeared as had the top of A Guía. The temperature gauge at the roundabout read 17 degrees at 9 o'clock. Rather a large drop from 25 and 26 which it has been showing at that time.

I ran around the block as usual, in shorts and t-shirt prompting the lady in the breadshop to ask me if I was not cold! 17 degrees, not 7! Not hot but not really cold either!

Anyway, the city is muffled, which is strange as this is quite a noisy place. In fact Spain as a whole is a noisy place. People speak loudly. Elegant ladies often have shrill or hoarse voices. Even small boys sound strangely gruff at times.

And the Spanish love fireworks. They let them off at the drop of a hat. There was a display across the bay late on Saturday night. Now, I love a good firework display. The magic still works. What I find hard to understand or appreciate is the apparent obsession with firing off what might be flares in rapid succession at various points in the day. There is simply nothing to see!

Yesterday, for example, at some point in the mid- to late-afternoon, we started to hear the pop-pop-thump of small explosions. Looking out, we could see a series of flashes followed by small puffs of smoke emanating from some point on the other side of the estuary, more or less opposite the A Guía promontory. This was in broad daylight, indeed, in bright sunshine. After a while, when they had accumulated a fine lot of smoke it all stopped. Some time later, long enough for someone to have driven along with supplies of small explosives, it began again a little further along the coast: repeated pop-pop-thumps, flashes and puffs of smoke intil a small cloud was created. And then it stopped, only to recur a little further along some time later. Perhaps it was a fog-creation project!

Some time around midnight we had a repeat performance, this time cumulating in a huge bang, as if someone was trying to blow up the Rande Bridge. Of course, as you would expect, each time this small arms stuff occurred all the local dogs set off barking nineteen to the dozen.

Add to that the fact that a pop-up disco (similar to pop-up shops that appear overnight) came into being sometime in the wee small hours and continued until around four in the morning, emitting a hurdy-gurdy dumph-dumph which woke me up several times, and it was quite a relief to have the city under cotton wool this morning.