Weather (again) and graffiti in dreams!

Yesterday was an odd day. It began with intense heat first thing in the morning. While I was down at the pool in the late morning and into midday it cooled down, not enough to cause concern but indicative of a change on the way. By late afternoon the Islas Cíes, outside the Vigo ría but which can be seen from our balcony, were disappearing under a bank of sea mist. And that bank of mist proceeded to roll up the estuary, as it often does suddenly in a heatwave, and cover the port area and the peninsula of A Guía. It wasn't as spectacular as I have sometimes seen it but it was just as effective at bringing down the temperature. This morning we have a grey sky and 19 degrees. What a difference a day makes.

In this town graffiti can be seen all over the place. Sometimes it's just a tag but even these have different levels, from a badly scrawled name to a more stylised set of initials, like ADMS which is everywhere, or the fancier Grey Brus, seen almost as frequently. I would like to know how they manage to produce such careful graffiti high up on walls of buildings or, more frighteningly, on the walls overlooking the motorway!

There are messages as well. There's the simple "TE AMO" (I LOVE YOU), which is written almost without a space, so that I always do a double take when I see it and wonder what "teamo" is. In one place there is a now much out of date wedding announcement; I hope it went well! And on one wall someone has written an apology: LO SIENTO. What did the writer do that demanded a public apology; there must be a story behind that.

In some places the graffiti are really elaborate, a whole work of art. There is a section of the river walk back from Samil beach to Castrelos Park with some excellent examples. It's a shame that sometimes the taggers who feel the need to scrawl their names as inartistically as possible often choose to overwrite such urban decoration.

It was last night's dream that spurred me to write about the graffiti here. In the dream I was out with friends having drinks and tapas. The list of raciones included flamingo. Not a usual item around here. Intrigued, we ordered flamingo, expecting some kind of steak. After all, there are farms that specialise in rearing ostriches in order to sell the meat to restaurants. So why not flamingo meat? When the order arrived it was a plate of tiny flamingo-shaped offerings, impossibly flamingo pink and intended to be eaten whole, like the little sardines or the pescaditos fritos. What did they taste of? My dream memory lets me down on that detail. No doubt ancient Romans or Greeks would have found some interesting interpretation to my dream.

However, I am pretty sure I know what inspired it: a piece of graffiti. Every morning, out on my run, I turn a corner and find myself looking at a bright pinky-orange flamingo painted on a wall. In case you are left in any doubt, the artist has written in large letters FLA-MIN-GO. That must have been the trigger!

Dreams are definitely strange ... and I hadn't even eaten any cheese!