Sunday. Bridges. Tour ending.

It's been a splendid Sunday: sunny, warm but not too hot. I went down to the pool in the late morning and found hardly anyone there. Just me, the Italian Spanish couple with whom I have a nodding acquaintance and a daddy giving his small daughter a swimming lesson. So I took advantage of the emptiness, and especially the absence of adolescent boys showing off their prowess at doing the "bomba", swimming underwater, retrieving items from the bottom of the pool and generally splashing a lot, to swim a bit further than usual. How many circuits do you need to swim to do a kilometre? How many kilometres will I have swum by the end of the summer? Am I the only resident who actually swims any real distance in the pool?

Where was everybody? This is Sunday and the usual enthusiastic barbecue fiends were absent. Not a single barbecue fire being lit. Today it seemed that nobody wanted charred meat for lunch. I suspect that what María at the Midcentury cafe commented to us on Friday is probably true: Vigo has emptied for the weekend. She was warning us that she will be closed on Monday, in addition to her usual Sunday closing. Tuesday is a día festivo, a public holiday, and so, like many Spaniards when a public holiday falls on Thursday or a Tuesday, she is making a bridge and giving herself a long weekend. Tuesday is Saint James' Day. Saint James is the patron saint of Galicia and so July 26 is a public holiday, Día de Galicia. Everything closes, except for bars and restaurants, facilities at seaside resorts, and breadshops: bread and cakes, freshly baked are still needed. But masses of people will have left the city and headed for the hills or the beach. And they say it's a British thing to head off on a Bank Holiday weekend!
 The Tour de France is not having a day off. Indeed, as I wrote, Chris Froome should be making his way into Paris to wind another tour, all being well and provided nothing untoward happens. The time difference between him and the close followers has been so small that I wondered if there would be a last minute battle on the Champs Élysées. He consolidated his lead a little yesterday so maybe they will follow what seems to have become a tradition of letting the yellow jersey win and just competing for second place. I shall try to ascertain the truth of this matter before posting.

They have dug up Salvador Dalí. A certain Maria Pilar Abel claims to be the result of a liaison her mother had with Dalí in 1955. So they have been collecting DNA samples. Under Spanish law, she would be heir to a quarter of Dalí’s fortune if the DNA supports her contention. In a twist almost a surreal as some of her putative father's painting, María Pilar is a fortune teller. Does her profession give her access to information about the past as well as the future? If so, she should know whether she has a good case or not. But it would seem that she might not just be after her fifteen minutes of fame but a tidy sum of money as well. Perhaps I do her an injustice. 

What the papers have been getting most excited about is the fact that Dalí's famous moustache is still there! What did they expect to have happened to it? Apart from maybe growing a little? After all, hair and nails are said to continue growing after death. But surely hair does not rot away as such. Isn't that way locks of hair were kept as mementos? And back in Victorian times, pictures used to be made using the hair of deceased loved ones. Gruesome stuff! Almost as gruesome as the reaction of the embalmer who dealt with Dalí's body back in 1989. “His face was covered with a silk handkerchief – a magnificent handkerchief,” he told reporters. "When it was removed, I was delighted to see his moustache was intact … I was quite moved. You could also see his hair. His moustache is still intact, [like clock hands at] 10 past 10, just as he liked it. It’s a miracle."

Oh dear! Someone takes his work too seriously. He should get out more!

Postscript: Froome won his third Tour de France in a row, his fourth altogether, by 54 seconds. Not a single stage win though!