I’ve been listening to the news and it seems we have a new blueprint for our foreign policy - basically we seem to be becoming more aggressive and more nuclear. On the radio news I just heard an expert talking about the power of each nuclear warhead - the power for each one to take out a whole town. Do we need such power? Someone must think we are a superpower. But apparently our proposed increase from 180 to 260 warheads is small beer compared to Russia and the USA. I wonder what future lies ahead for our grandchildren! I’m almost pleased that I won’t be around to see it.
I read that a 12 year-old schoolgirl in west London has just won the right to wear a long skirt to school, in school uniform style, just longer than the school liked. They kept sending her home. Then the family was in trouble for her absence - surely caused by her being sent home. It always used to be too-short skirts that caused girls to be sent home and nobody could ever use the excuse that a short skirt and showing your legs to everyone was required by your religion. But now it has been ruled that the young girl on question can wear her ankle-length skirt. Common sense!
Fifty years ago in the school where I first taught we used to have girls from Asian families who were permitted to wear trousers under their school skirts. Another sensible compromise.
Having seen girls in ridiculously short skirts in the private school that featured in the Galician series “O Sabor das Margaridas”, skirts that really would not have been out of place in St Trinian’s, I found myself once again questioning the wisdom of having school uniform at all. We are currently watching another series set in Galicia, “The Mess You Leave Behind” - “El Desorden que dejas” - which also features a school, a state school this time. The teenagers cause problems in all sorts of other ways - indeed I am heartily relieved I never had to teach such a nasty, devious bunch of youngsters! - but they all wear normal clothes, mostly jeans and tops. None of the girls, so far anyway, look anywhere near as Lolita-provocative as the girls in the private school in the other series.
As you can probably guess, I am not a great fan of school uniform.
Thinking of Spain, however, here is something about wine:
“Myths, mysteries and legends surround the origin of albariño, widely regarded as Spain’s finest white wine, and how the grape from which it derives wound up in the far north-west of the country.
Now scientists at a research institute in Galicia have debunked theories that it originates in the Rhine valley or was brought by French Cistercian monks on pilgrimage from Cluny in the 12th century.
The grape, they said, is native to the region and albariño wine has been produced there since Roman times.
“We were already sure it didn’t come from the Rhine,” said Carmen Martínez, the head of viticulture at the biological research centre in Pontevedra. “Studies show that there is nothing like it in the Rhine valley, not even under another name.”
Martínez said they believed the grape derives from a woodland vine that over the years became domesticated. “There are no examples of albariño vines hundreds of years old anywhere in the world except Galicia,” she said.
In a joint study carried out with the history department of the University of Santiago de Compostela, the researchers compared seeds from one medieval and two Roman sites in Galicia with cultivated and wild varieties from other parts of Spain.”
We discovered Albariño years ago when it was still very reasonably priced and were most impressed. For various reasons the price has gone up but it’s still one of the white wines we appreciate. Others feel the same. “In 2019 the Spanish association of wine writers voted the albariño Martín Códax Lías the best white in Spain.” And the vine must have been exported as varieties of albariño are also produced in Portugal, the US, France and New Zealand. Happy drinking!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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