Training!

The World Sudoku Championships are taking place in Croydon. The competitors range from 7 to 65 years old. One American chap is there with his seven-year-old daughter, both competing. A couple of twelve-year-olds were interviewed. This is what one of them said:- 

"Some things are difficult and some things are easy," said 12-year-old Kim Yu-jae, giggling next to her teammate Yoo Jin-kyo, also 12. "I love sudoku, I have been doing it for two years. In Korea we go to a training camp for two days where we just do lots and lots of sudoku puzzles. We went to the same academy and that was where we were both introduced to sudoku." 

Now, I do sudoku puzzles on a regular basis. Yes, if a puzzle is too easy it's no good and can get boring but I don't think I could be in their competitions. One of the men interviewed for the news item said he enjoys sudoku because it is totally absorbing and takes him away from the stress of his everyday life as a maths teacher. So why introduce stress from a different angle by making a competition of it? I wonder what they do in the training camp apart from lots and lots and lots of puzzles. Of course, there are strategies for puzzle solving but surely there can't be enough to merit a whole two-day training session. 

I have been impressed with the training that goes on at the chess camp here in Pontevedra that four of our Manchester boys are taking part in. However, somehow I can't help thinking that there may be more training and strategy preparation necessary for a chess tournament than for sudoku. No doubt someone will put me wise, telling me about the different levels and types of sudoku and how you need to prepare for them. 

The attitude to training is different from one country to another. The young Spaniards involved in the chess training camp here will be off to another one in Extremadura once this tournament is over. (I suppose it's one way to keep youngsters occupied during their very long summer break but somehow I suspect that the youngsters at the camp are the sort who would have found ways to entertain themselves anyway.) I've not heard of such training camps in the UK. Maybe they exist around the London area. I get the impression that in most parts of the UK only football training gets that kind of intensive attention. 

Here in tournament world, at the end of yesterday's session Phil and one of his young protégés were on the same score. Young Jake joked about looking forward to beating Phil today if they should be drawn against each other. When the pairings for today's game appeared online, lo and behold, Phil and Jake are playing each other today. how very annoying!!! That young man may have powers he is unaware of!

I finally got in the pool yesterday. A most excellent pool, I have to say. The water was delightfully just warm without being so hot that it felt like stepping into a bath. Because of the size of the pool it didn't matter that there was a mini water polo game being organised for a bunch of smallish children, some of them with armbands; there was still plenty of room for enthusiastic fast swimmers to speed up and down the length of the pool and for more sedate swimmers like myself to plod along doing an almost sedentary breast stroke. 

The only downside was that I was stung by a wasp as I sat in the sun after my swim. These annoying little beasts appear to have reached the stage where they are slightly sleepy, but not a great deal less aggressive than usual. What happens is that they will land on your arm, for example, and crawl around for a while before you realise that they are there. You then have to be careful not to react with an angry swipe because they will retaliate in kind. Fortunately I had a tube of cream for stings and insect bites in my bag so I was able to self-medicate immediately. Since the chess boys complained about mosquitoes at the camp I have been carrying a mini medical kit around with me. Just as well!!! 

Today started grey and gloomy with a bit if drizzle in the air. This does not bode well for a swim this afternoon. I suppose I could still swim in the drizzle though. We shall see. When it's wet, however, it's harder for the chess camp organisers to set up post game analysis under the trees close to the pool, which is one of the charms of the location. Al fresco chess loses its appeal in the rain. 

The Apeles charanga band has been out this lunchtime. Is this a sign that the weather is picking up? 

So, anyway, my fingers are crossed for an improvement by late afternoon.

Sunshine and showers and stuff.

I look at pictures on the Guardian website of people crossing the Millennium Bridge in London in torrential rain and feel very glad that Hurricane Bertha (I am told she is to blame for the all the rain over the last few day.) seems to have moved on and we have the sunshine back again here in Pontevedra. I hope the UK doesn't suffer too badly from storms and such. 

It's nice to see that blue sky again.

Although rain stopped festivities to some extent here, people still continued to have fun and the newspapers report large numbers of people ending up in A&E after having drunk too much on Saturday evening. Sunday night saw fewer people out and about but we still saw groups of young people sitting around their boxes of pizza and bottles of whatever it was they were going to drink. I wonder how soon there will be the kind of notices you see around university halls of residence areas in the UK telling people that it is forbidden to drink alcohol on the streets. 

The other evening we walked through the funfair that has been set up on the Alameda. Loud and bright, it reminds me of the travelling funfairs that used to set up in the summer at the end of our street when I was a child. The one here is very extensive with, in addition to dangerous looking rides, huge areas of stalls selling clothes, leather goods, mobile phone accessories and goodness only knows what else. Who goes out for the evening and buys skirts, dresses and other items of clothing? How do you take a look at the quality of the leather bag you might fancy buying at 11.30 at night under the garish lighting of a funfair? Very odd! 

Today's papers are full of pictures of young ladies dressed in virginal white. On Saturday evening they had the Baile de la Peregrina, a big social event where young ladies are presented to society by their proud fathers. This year there were 14 debutantes, sixteen year olds, presumably from the best families in town! For me it's a kind of step back in time to when my Spanish teacher back in the girls' grammar school I attended would ask if we were old enough to put our hair up when one or other of arrived with such a "grown up" hairdo. 

 I wonder if these very respectable young ladies go out on other occasions to botellón, eating and drinking on the streets around the basílica and the Cinco Calles, where apparently they usually congregate. 

The charanga bands are back on the streets today, or at any rate one of them playing loudly and enthusiastically, if a little out of tune! 

We went to the Froiz supermarket earlier today. Bought water and fruit. Then we decided we needed to go upstairs to look for a new memory stick for Phil. As we paid for it, I said to the cashier that we didn't need a bag as we already had one. So she asked to see the receipt for the goods we had bought in the food section. Okay, maybe we do look like thieves, after all. 

Before that I had been amused to listen to a conversation between a customer and the cashier. She gave him a five euro note in his change. I think it was a new one and he wanted her to change it for an old one as he "trusted" it more!!! Ideally, he said, he would prefer coins because you can trust coins far more than paper money. Well, I suppose paper money can be forged but it was a matter of FIVE euros!!!! I wonder if he ever uses his bank card. As a rule, you see far more people paying cash here than buying with cards, although slowly I am seeing more people using their plastic. Still nothing like the number who use plastic for just about everything in the UK. Sometimes this country is very odd! 

With that, I am going to gather up my stuff and head for the big pool later. Today I am determined to swim!

Rain and such.

Running in the damp and the drizzle or even the fog, those I can cope with. Running in the driving rain is another kettle of fish altogether. All right, I exaggerate somewhat; maybe it's not really "driving" rain. It was certainly steady and persistent enough at 8.30 this morning to make me turn over in bed and go back to sleep for a while. 

I'll go for a brisk walk with my bright pink brolly later. That's the bright pink brolly bought when it rained quite hard the other day. The bright pink brolly that Phil will not be seen carrying. It's ok when it's up; then he's doing the gentlemanly thing and holding my umbrella to shelter me from the rain but when it's rolled, it's altogether too girly an umbrella for him. 

Should I have bought a pink umbrella? Especially such a girly pink umbrella? If you have any feminist leanings at all (and I suppose I do have quite a lot) should you buy such a thing as a girly pink umbrella? I have no idea. No doubt the staunch feminists would say not but I don't see why it has to go so far. 

Yesterday I carried my pink umbrella around in the sunshine by the huge Olympic sized pool up at the sports complex where Phil is playing chess. The day before I had taken my swimsuit, intending to make use of the aforementioned pool, and it had bucketed down with rain on me. So yesterday I took a look at the looming grey clouds, left my swimsuit behind and took my pink brolly instead. And I ended up sitting near the pool with my book, pink brolly hanging from the back of my seat. So it goes. I probably need to take everything with me: swimming gear, book, iPad, sudoku puzzles, sketchbook .... the list goes on and on. 

Sitting near the pool, I earwigged on a conversation between several smallish boys about Minecraft, the virtual reality, create-a-universe game that intrigues small boys and girls, and some not so small ones, in the UK. The small, wet Spanish boys were discussing the need to have "diamond" tools to complete certain tasks. Just like our grandchildren, I found myself thinking. 

I have yet to see children making bracelets out of loom bands, the big craze in the UK. However, it must exist here too because I have seen sets of these tiny rubber bands on sale in the Chinese bazaars. The world gets smaller by the day!!! 

Now, Lucy Siegle, writing in The Observer today, has been expressing environmental concern about loombands. She reckons that, from the amount she sees spilt on pavements and being washed down gutters into the drains, they will be causing problems for wildlife. Even if the bands break down, which they will do as they are supposed to be photosensitive, little bits of silicone are still going to be eaten by birds and animals. She suggests persuading our children that their loomband creations are very precious and should be kept hidden away in locked boxes. Not a very practical solution, I fear. 

In her article she also mentioned a scare some years ago about the rubber bands dropped by postmen and how they were causing environmental problems. I knew nothing about this although I have long been aware of the rubber bands on the pavements. When we are out and about it is a regular thing that Phil stops every so often to pick up rubber bands, which he then re-uses at home. This is so much a habit that even the grand children now stop and collect bands for him if they spot them in the street. We have trained them quite well, ecologically speaking. 

Also in this morning's papers, I came across a certain Lauren Laverne, writing about words. Even though English has an immense lexicon, we still lack words for certain things and borrow them from elsewhere. She mentions "shinrin-yoku", Japanese for "forest bathing", not the most useful expression since we don't tend to do a lot of forest bathing, although they use it to mean a "constitution-boosting walk in the woods". Then there is the German "kummerspeck" or "grief bacon", meaning the weight put on by comfort eating. She suggests a new one, "hiberbacon", for weight put on in winter. 

One of the delights of learning another language is finding those interesting expressions and seeing which are incorporated into your own. The Spanish, and the French for that matter, take incorporating words as to further, of course. I have watched the French "croissant" evolve into "croisán" in Spanish, although sometimes it has a t on the end. So the plural can be "croisanes" or "croisants". 

And then they invent "English words" for things. The French have a verb "relooker" , meaning to give something a new look, and the Spanish have "el footing" for jogging and "un lifting" for a facelift. I love it. They are always surprised when you point out that we don't say these things in English. 

Ms Laverne finishes her article: "I’m still looking for one more … a word for the mistaken belief that there is no English equivalent for a non-English word, such as Schadenfreude, which many people believe doesn’t translate, but which of course simply means epicaricacy. Suggestions welcome." (Epicaricacy???) 

And finally, I read about some research that says that one in 10 UK residents can't name a single one of their neighbours, while less than a fifth of people know the names of even their immediate neighbours. But they would like to: almost two-thirds (65%) of people say their neighbourhood would be a "stronger" and safer place if people were encouraged to get to know each other better. I have a theory that our climate has a lot to do with it. It's not that we are antisocial or even as reserved as some foreigners think we are. It's just that the weather is traditionally so bad that we don't live as much of our lives on the streets and in the corner cafe as other nations do. Yes, there is the pub but that is not for the whole community. It's not the same as the bars and cafe here in Spain where whole families can go together. But when you get a spell of good weather in the UK, suddenly people are in their back gardens organising barbecues and getting to know each other just like anywhere else in Europe. 

It's a theory anyway. 

Maybe if the rain continues here, the Galicians will become like the British in that respect. But somehow I doubt it.

And the fun begins.

Saturday morning brought the sights and sounds of preparations for Pontevedra's week of fun and games. Today has the serious bit, a speech made from the balcony in one of the squares and a procession to the Peregrina. From quite early in the morning you could see ladies rushing around with bunches of flowers, getting ready for the procession. Later in the morning you saw them again, in their Sunday best or, in some cases, in traditional dress. 

The brass band playing before the speeches were made was one of the most impressive I've seen in Spain. On the whole, town bands here tend to be a bit tinny and scrappy. This was very professional both standing still and later marching. Lots of brownie points for them. It could have held ts own in the Saddleworth Whit Friday band contest.

When I see festivities around Saddleworth, where we live in the UK, it's usually the morris dancers, all male of course, who wear the flowery hats. Here it was ladies in traditional Galician dress. All very stately. They do formal processions very well here. 

 A fair number of children were dressed traditionally as well, even one or two little girls still too small to walk. When you think about it children have an easier life these days. It must have been very uncomfortable to be a child of the bourgeoisie and be dressed up to go out in all those layers. 

In the midst of all of this stuff, as we were walking around the town, on one of the quieter streets we had to stand back to let a bunch of cyclists go by. The lead cyclist had his phone in his hand, held high in the air, videoing his descent of the street. At least he was ringing his bell. I wonder if his sound track also includes curses from pedestrians he almost knocked down! 

There was dancing in Plaza de Verduras at lunchtime. One elderly lady was swirling away to the music of the Gaita band, reminding me once again of Scottish dancing. Others joined I later in more sedate waltzes. All good stuff. 

It threatened rain earlier and many people walking around have had their umbrellas with them. The sky has been distinctly "lowering", as they say, as well. But the rain managed to keep off for the procession which is a big plus. 

Let's hope it keeps off for the rest of the festivities for them. 

There will be fireworks at midnight!!!

Day one of the tournament and after.

Thursday finally came round and with it the start of the Pontevedra chess tournament. We had a lift arranged to get us up to the venue where we met up with our boys. The boys have been suffering from mosquito bites so we went equipped with creams to put on after the event to stop itching and scratching. The insect repellent we bought to Santiago on Wednesday seemed to have prevented more bites but earlier ones were still being annoying, so the Adams family dispensary came into its own. 

I left the men to their chess and followed the instructions I received the other day on how to find my way down from the Mercantil sports complex, through the woods, to the river and thus back into town. A very pleasant walk on the whole. Following the route in reverse later went well until I was almost there when suddenly I found myself amongst houses. This was not the plan. It was almost a panic moment but then I spotted a chap in his garden and asked the way. As I thought, I was within five minutes away from the place but I just needed pointing in the right direction. 

I arrived at the complex only to have a Vigo chess playing friend tell me that Phil was playing a junior who seemed to know a lot more about openings than you might expect from one of such a young age. That was about par for the course. This happens all the time. And Phil's was one of the last games to finish. This also happens a lot. In the end it was drawn. So, a moderate success. 

Our boys on the other hand had all won their games. A great success there then. Let us hope it continues. 

 We had a lift back to town and sat around in the hotel for a while before venturing out into the noise of the Pontevedra evening. We had watched a very good (and very loud) drumming band as soon as we got back. 

 When we went in, they moved from Plaza de Verduras, on one side of our hotel, to Plaza de la Leña, on the other. So we were treated to a double dose of drumming. 


Not long after this fireworks started. We couldn't see anything but we could hear them and we had to shut the windows to keep the smoke and gunpowder smell out of our room. Eventually they moved on and, once again, we could hear the activity being related in the next square along. 

When we went out later we saw them in the square near the Peregrina chapel. Tall men in silver cloaks were gliding around, waving fireworks on the end of long slender sticks. It was most impressive. The crowd stood frighteningly close to the action. There were barriers but these would have been of little use if one of the gliding men had dropped his firework wand. 

Health and safety men in the UK would have had conniptions. 

The light show was pretty fantastic all the same. It has to be said: the Spanish can put on a bit of a spectacle. 

Pontevedra's old quarter is quite compact which is a big advantage when it comes to organising festivities like this week's fun and games. There are enough buildings between the different squares to keep each one separate but the distance is not so great that it makes it hard to move an act from one square to another. 

This sort of thing is going to continue all week. I'm not sure how much sleep we are going to get. 

We may have to just go and join in and then sleep in on the next morning. It's a hard life!!

The aesthetics of Santiago.

On Tuesday our friends. Steve and Jackie went off to Santiago de Compostela for the day. On their return, Steve asked me, "What's going on with all the naked men on the balconies in Santiago?" Well, as you can imagine, I was surprised. He went on to explain that these were not naked live men but statues of rather bulky naked men in various places on balconies around the monumental squares of the city. I was still surprised. There were no such statues the last time I went to Santiago last year. 

So yesterday, when I went there with our boys from the chess camp I had a good look. Indeed, there in the Obradoiro Square, not on the cathedral itself but on other buildings, there were statues of rather grotesque figures, almost caricatures. Our Spanish companions confirmed what I already suspected: this was an art exhibition of sorts. The artist had been given permission to display his art around the historic centre of the city but there had been a fair amount of controversy about it. A large number of people thought that such figures were inappropriate in a place where people came for religious reasons, more often than not having made a lengthy pilgrimage to get there. It was quite likely that they might be offended by the sight of such things so close to the place of worship. 

However, their opinion does not seem to have held sway. It was quite an interesting sort of exhibition, I suppose, but it didn't really add anything of great aesthetic value, not in my opinion anyway. 

The cathedral towers are swathed in scaffolding as restoration work is going on so it wasn't really possibly to see it in all its splendour. Mind you, in order to do that you need to see it against a blue sky or with trails of wispy cloud coming from behind the towers. Typically, although we had left blue sky and sunshine in Pontevedra, Santiago de Compostela was grey and gloomy. (Not for nothing do they call it the rain capital of Galicia.) Indeed, as we drove back we went through drizzle. 

While we were there though, it stayed fine enough for us to sit outside and have a little refresco. By then it was getting on for 7.30 and so our boys, always hungry, sat and tucked into tortilla and olives and peanuts, making themselves quite a home. I now have a request to give them the recipe for tortilla and possibly to take one along to the chess club when we're back in England. 

Later in the evening, when Phil and I went out for a drink and tapas, the air in Pontevedra was distinctly damp. 

This morning I woke to rain and decided against running along the river in the wet. 

So I stayed in bed a little longer. Even the most dedicated runners need a lie-in sometimes.

A run for our money!

I debated whether or not to bring my running gear to Pontevedra. In the end I did. Correct decision. This is a runner-friendly place. I get up in the morning, turn right out of the hotel, left down to the river and then along the river path, past the "singing" bridge, the one with all the cables that vibrate in the wind, and along to the pedestrian bridge. There I cross the river and run back along the other side, dodging sprinklers as I go. 

Along the way, I cross paths with numerous runners. It's quite unusual around O Monte de San Juan, in Vigo, to see any other runners at all. Here you see loads. And the place is geared for it. As you come back across the singing bridge there is a track for cyclists and another for runners. There is also an unlabelled track for all other footsloggers. Very organised! 

I intend to extend my run a little but this morning was not the occasion to do so. I needed to be sure that we were around in time to go down to the bus station with our friends Steve and Jackie. When they arrived last week they bought return tickets from Oporto to Vigo, thus restricting themselves to the 12.00 bus from Vigo. Now, according to the Autna website, there should have been a bus at 11.30 from Pontevedra. We just wanted to ensure that they got tickets from here to Vigo without problems and would be able to continue then with their Vigo to Oporto tickets. That should have been straightforward!! Well, you would think so!! 

When we got to the bus station, at about 11.10, we looked at the departures board: no bus to Oporto. On enquiring, we discovered that there was indeed no such bus. The Autna website lied!!! Last year there were definitely buses from here because I caught on. I did, however, have immense difficulty buying a ticket for said bus. Anyway, today we went into overdrive to find a solution. We asked at the alternative bus service, Alsa, who have a ticket office in the Pontevedra bus station. Yes, there was a bus. It left at 12.45. BUT, there was only one seat left on that bus!! How very annoying. After much running around finding out about trains and so on ( fortunately the train station is just across the road from the bus station) we decided the best option was a taxi to Vigo bus station. 

So, off they went in haste. And they caught the bus. The last we heard of them they were going through Tui. 

Later today I am off to Santiago with the boys from the chess camp. I wonder if it will rain. Santiago, after all, is reputed to be the rain capital of the region. It can be sunny on the coast and wet and drizzly in the saintly city. 

At breakfast time this morning I overheard one of the girls working in the bar commenting that it looked like rain. Her expression was, "Tiene pinta de querer llover, ¿no?" "Pinta" is one of the ways of saying face. You can say someone looks a bit ill by saying, "Tiene mala pinta", literally, "he has a bad face". Of course you can do the opposite and say someone looks well: "Tiene buena pinta". So the weather had a face that looked as though it wanted to rain. Lovely. 

However, the cloud has shifted now and the sun is out again. So all is well.