April First and such like.

Yesterday a notice appeared on the outer door to our block of flats. It informed us that on Monday the water supply will be temporarily suspended so that work can progress on the "humanización" of our bit of Calle Aragón. This "humanización" does not imply that our street was somehow inhuman until now. "Humanización" is the term used for renovation or gentrification of an area. We did wonder if the work of replacing cables and gas pipes, and laying smart new pavements was going to stop at the traffic lights just down the road. But no, it appears that our little section of the street is also to be included in the "humanización". Quite right too! The central reservation was "humanizado" last year, with a selection of new plants and shrubs planted there, irrigated by a special system of tubes and pipes. They do things properly around here.

So the "humanización" of the section down by the breadshop must be coming close to completion. María, the bread shop weather witch, told me of her rant at the workmen. At some point on Friday she had asked when they thought they would finish. Soon, they told her. However, before they could lay the cement which goes beneath the fine granite paving stones, they still had to dig up the section beneath the bridge affair they had put up to give people could get into María's panadería. They promised to do it some time later in the day. When she shut up shop at lunchtime and went off home to eat, she suggested that then might be a good time to do the digging up. And even possibly lay the cement. In that way, as the shop is closed for a good two to two and a half hours, they could re-erect the little bridge affair and María's business would not be inconvenienced. "And, would you believe it?" she told me, "they complained". "¡Protestas! ¡Protestas!" they said to her. "Todo el mundo se queja todo el tiempo". Apparently they were fed up of complaints.

I wonder why there are complaints. After all, life has been made more interesting by the construction of a fine maze which you have to navigate in the correct manner if you want to reach the bread shop, the chemist's or the hardware shop, none of which connect with each other. As for the car repair workshop, they must have had to suspend business for the duration of the "humanización" as there is no way for cars to get through. The maze only works for pedestrians!

Bread shop María's rant was effective though. By the time she returned from lunch, the cement had been laid. There are still no smart new granite paving stones as yet but she is optimistic! And now the new pavement coming our way too.

I wonder, however, how many of the residents of the flats will see the notice. It is on the outside of the outer door to the flats. This glass door door gives access to the small vestibule where the letterboxes are situated. The lock on the door has not worked since a month or so after we moved in; nothing to do with us, I hasten to add. Consequently, the door is frequently, no, regularly, left open. Therefore any notice stuck to the outside of the door is not immediately noticeable, as it were! Some people might be surprised if they step into the shower after 8.30 am tomorrow and find that there is no water.

We walked up to A Guía in the sunshine yesterday afternoon, not along the coastal path this time, but straight up to the chapel at the top, if you can call walking up the winding road that goes round and round the promontory "straight up". At the top a group of people appeared to be videoing the view over the bay. Or else they were just very slow at taking pictures. So I got out my phone and took a quick panorama picture!

On the way down through the wooded area - another nice walk - we noticed that some places seemed clearer than usual, permitting views of the estuary that were perviously hidden. Someone appeared to have been cutting down trees. Our suspicions were confirmed when we came across a patch of land with the evidence: huge piles of mature tree trunks. I only hope that no-one is planning a new housing estate, something that often seems to happen when a patch of land is cleared. The local beauty spot is fine just as it is.

Out and about, we also spotted rubbish-container scavengers. Since the weather has improved a little I have seen several of these recently, propping bins open and poking around for something of value. They come equipped with sticks, or even those litter-picking gadgets with a sort of grabber on the end to get hold of stuff, and a trolley to carry things away in. I saw one the other day walk off triumphantly with a framed picture that someone else had discarded. When first I came across these litter-pickers I was quite horrified. It made me think of the images we see of scavengers sorting rubbish on tips in third world countries. Now, however, I have been persuaded that it is a form of recycling, although I still think is is pretty demeaning to have to carry out such activities to make a living. For I assume that some of the better stuff they scavenge ends up being sold on flea markets. It's rather a sad indictment of modern society that some of us are throwing away objects that others can still make use of or sell on to earn a living. And that those others feel the need to do so!

What I have not seen here in Spain are the charity shops that abound in most towns in the UK. Maybe they exist in some cities but I have ot seen them here in Vigo. But even poor towns in the UK have plenty of them, run by Age Concern, Oxfam, RSPCA and so on. So what do people here do with the clothes and household items that they no longer have a use for? Is this what ends up being "scavenged" from the big green rubbish containers?

What I did see yesterday was a small white van with the logo "Banco de Alimentación" on the side. This is the first evidence I have seen of food banks, apart from the queues outside the religious establishment "Hermanas del Silencio" in the centre of town. And as far as I know, they give meals to down and outs rather than providing food packages for families. Is our society taking a step back in development if we need such establishments? And they do seem to be popping up all over Europe as far as I can tell.

On a more cheerful note, yesterday was April Ist - April Fool's Day! My Italian friend Ada had everyone worried for a while as she said she had decided to apply for permanent residency in the UK. Faced with a host of surprised, concerned comments about this, she reminded us all of the date. At least she can make a joke of whole uncertain situation of EU residents in the UK!

My favourite April Fool's day news report was this one in the Guardian:

"George Osborne has reignited the row over his multiple business commitments after it emerged the former chancellor is planning to launch his own clothing line.

In a letter to the House of Commons authorities, seen by the Guardian, Osborne told the advisory committee on business appointments that his new fashion firm would design “high-quality, hi-visibility industrial garments aimed at the multitasking CEO”. His ideal client, he said, would be someone who “takes note of fashion while taking care of business”. The firm has been registered at Companies House with the name “Georgio”.

Osborne said the idea for the new range came to him during his numerous visits to factories and production lines as chancellor, when he had been forced to wear “ill-fitting and itchy” luminous tabards, unflattering hard hats and “ghastly” steel-capped boots."

I thought it was quite relevant in view of my comments about famous folk and their career plans yesterday!

Career opportunities.

You come across some curious career moves. All around Vigo at the moment are posters for a film starring Scarlett Johanssen: The Girl in the Shell or something like that. It's not a terribly flattering picture of that young actress but someone must have selected it as somehow expressing the essence of the film. All of that is by the by. What I find more interesting is the fact that Ms Johanssen opened a popcorn shop in Paris last Autumn. She launched this venture with her then husband, Frenchman Romain Dauriac. She has since filed for divorce. Who gets custody of the shop? The shop is reported to serve gourmet popcorn.

I have some difficulty in imagining a shop that sells only popcorn, even if it comes in unusual flavours. And I have further difficulty in envisaging such a thing as gourmet popcorn. Who knew that such a thing even existed? Presumably the shop provides employment opportunities for someone. I don't suppose Ms Johanssen herself serves the gourmet popcorn. Now, that is quite an image: chic Parisienne ladies walking along with those cardboard buckets of popcorn, unable to eat it because it has been sold to them by a screen idol!

Such business ventures are the kind of thing you can do once you are rich and famous. You can branch out into all sorts of things. Actors become singers become fashion designers become gourmet popcorn sellers. More troubling for would-be authors is the trend for the already rich and famous to be given contracts for books by publishing companies.

This is not just ghost-written, or even genuinely personally-written, autobiographies either. The latest thing is for actors and singers and other such well-known people to plan to write children's books and receive quite huge advances on them. It has always gone on of course. I was never greatly impressed by "Budgie, the Little Helicopter" and felt that it was only published because it was the brainchild (if you can call it that) of Sarah Ferguson, when she was Duchess of York.

Writers are expressing their concern: “The massive advances mean publishers put all their marketing into making these books work in order to earn back the investment. So when they fail, not only have they taken money for publicity that could have helped the rest of us, but there is no money left.”

Of course, they are not all bad writers. I have heard quite high praise for the children's books written by comedian David Walliams. And I have to say that his books encouraged our grandson to turn from a reluctant reader to a fluent reader and occasional bookworm. Only occasional, however, as he still prefers his electronic games!

The main point is though that it becomes harder and harder for ordinary folk to break into these professions. Acting, singing, writing, politics - in all of these you hear of more and more cases of individuals getting on because of family connections or something similar.

 They are all becoming a closed shop - and not one that sells gourmet popcorn either! This is what the Spanish call "enchufe".

 Final note: I also heard that young Scarlett is considering a career in politics some time in the future.

Tourist thoughts.

Here is a selection of complaints, supposedly genuine complaints, received by a travel company:

 "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food."

 "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.”

 "The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room.”

 “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallartato close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during ‘siesta’ time — this should be banned.”

 “No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.”

 “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.”

 “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair.” 

“I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends’ three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller.”


 “When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”

I especially love the complaints about there being too many foreigners in foreign places. These claim to be genuine complaints. Some may be invented, of course. However, years ago we flew back from Santiago de Compostela to Liverpool (when such flights still existed) in a plane where the majority of the passengers were members of  the Crosby Cross-Denominational Pilgrimage Society. They had been on an organised trip to Santiago, a sort of pilgrimage by plane I suppose. Well, if you can do the Camino on a bicycle, why not in a plane? I earwigged on a conversation about their accommodation. One of them expressed her dismay at how little English was spoken by the staff in the pensión. "There was a suggestions box", I heard one lady say, " so I wrote, 'SPEAK ENGLISH'."

Those who crave for foreign parts to be just like home would not doubt be pleased with this headline from yesterday's Faro de Vigo:

" Starbucks desembarcará en Vigo La multinacional inicia el proceso de selección para su primer establecimiento en la ciudad."

Rumours have been flying around for a while, apparently, but now the multinational is advertising for a "store manager", who must have at least two years experience. And dozens of people have already applied to be part of the team of twelve who are supposed to be working there eventually.

Just what Vigo needs: a place where you can buy gallon-sized paper cups of vaguely coffee-coloured liquid. Oh, and probably get vanilla, caramel, cinnamon and goodness knows what other flavour of so-called coffee! It hasn't arrived yet and according to the article I read it will most likely be situated inside the big posh store El Corte Inglés. So all the "pijos", the posh folk, can go and drink Starbucks coffee.

When we first lived in Vigo we were advised to go to El Corte Inglés because they have everything - en El Corte Inglés hay de todo - just at rather posh prices.

We are not fans of Starbucks. One of the joys of visiting Spain and Italy is the number of small cafes where you can get a decent coffee at a reasonable price in a reasonably-sized cup. Costa Coffee is already in Porto airport, selling quite good coffee but in the usual range of small (in other words as big as a large breakfast cup of coffee), medium (getting on for 1/2 to 3/4 of a pint) or large (more coffee than you should sensibly drink over the course of a whole day). They also seem to sell the same range of cookies and flapjacks that you get in the branch on Market Street in Manchester. 

Curious!

 What happened to going to other countries to experience their culture?

Local food, local drink, local customs - all things that make your visit extra interesting.

And above all, don't complain because it's not quite like home!

Topsy-turvy stuff on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yesterday a young friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

 "On bloody Brexit day, I feel more European than ever: I'm in Malta taking part in a Mediterranean-wide conference with my Polish colleague Agata Mrowiec and Italian colleague, speaking English, French and Spanish."

 I think he's fairly representative of many of the young people I taught French and Spanish to, young people who went on to study languages at a higher level, took advantage of the Erasmus scholarship opportunities offered by the EU to spend a year in another country and often ended up, like him, working in some other part of Europe.

At the other end of the scale is a 68 year old fisherman I read about in Hastings, getting all enthusiastic about article 50 finally being triggered. Yes, I am aware that many fishermen feel aggrieved about EU fishing quotas and so on. He proudly tells of how his family goes back all the way to Hastings in the 11th century. “The concept of being governed by an unelected body would have been absolutely abhorrent to anyone in those days. It’s almost like the state has been lost. It was like another takeover, we relinquished our law and power to an unelected body,” he says.

Now, isn't there something a little wrong there. Did they have elected kings in the 11th century? I'm pretty sure that William the Conqueror, and good old Harold before the invasion, didn't give the people a lot of say in what went on in government. And we don't really seem to have a lot of say nowadays for that matter, despite our right to vote and express our opinion. And we seem pretty much divided about what we actually want. And the divisions are not just generational.

Here is an article by Clive Lewis in the Independent:

"The last twelve months have been deeply divisive for Britain. Our divisions have allowed Theresa May’s Government – with a small majority – to ride roughshod over parliament. A great irony of the EU referendum is that a cause which eulogised the sovereignty of our parliament has done more than nearly any other event in recent history to endanger that very sovereignty.

Today, Theresa May will trigger Article 50. Parliament has allowed the Prime Minister powers almost unprecedented in peacetime to negotiate what happens next. Unless MPs across all parties start taking their role more seriously, our constitution will be re-written without accountability to the people. We face a battle for our democracy and our rights, one that will define our country for decades to come.

Last month I resigned from the opposition frontbench. I did that not because I wanted to reverse the referendum result, but because in a democratic country, parliament makes laws and parliament holds the government to account. By allowing the government to trigger Article 50 without any expectations, any guidance or any effective veto over what they decide, we have allowed them carte blanche over a huge range of policies that will affect every individual in this country.

This is dangerous. At times of constitutional uncertainty and social division, parliament needs a greater, not a lesser role, in defining our future. We have our work cut out, because once Article 50 is triggered, the Government will announce a raft of legislation to reform our environmental and farming protections, our migration, trade and taxation systems.

At the heart of this will be the so-called Great Repeal Bill, which aims to transfer EU law into UK law. The purpose of the Great Repeal Bill is sensible enough – but the devil is in the detail. It seems almost certain that, in order to process thousands of pieces of legislation, the government will try to give itself unprecedented power.

Under 'Henry VIII clauses' – named after statutes passed in the English Reformation, and set aside after Henry's death – government ministers would get powers to repeal legislation without the approval of parliament. Given the quantity of EU law, this could easily include rights, protections and standards that all of us take for granted in our everyday lives.

That means equality legislation, workers’ rights, environmental protection being decided by the Government without proper votes or debates in the House of Commons. In most countries with a written constitution, such procedures would violate the basic principles of parliament. We have no such advantage. In fact, the way the Great Repeal Bill is debated and concluded will establish precedents which will far outlast this Government, and affect the powers of parliaments for decades. Today campaign groups Another Europe is Possible and Global Justice Now are calling on MPs to wake up to this threat to our rights. They are calling on the Government to release clear detailed bills as soon as possible, to guarantee decent time for public consultation and parliamentary debate, to curtail Henry VIII powers and impose strict sunset clauses when extraordinary powers cease, and to guarantee that nothing which could reduce human rights or equalities legislation will be delegated by parliament.

Parliament must do a better job at holding the Government to account than it managed in the Article 50 debates. This isn't just for the benefit of those who voted remain in the referendum – it's for everyone who cares about building a better country.

Today I call on fellow MPs of all parties, to stand up for the democratic rights the people of this country have  historically fought for and defended. If we fail, and allow Theresa May to assume the powers of a renaissance monarch, our divisions will grow and our future will look bleak. But if we succeed, we can emerge from this period of uncertainty and division, to make this country more democratic and fairer and to better protect and empower its citizens."

And here is Jonathan Freedland's take on it in the Guardian.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Trump seems dead set on undoing as much Obama legislation as possible. He has signed an executive order rolling back Obama-era rules aimed at tackling global warming. The order seeks to suspend, rescind or flag for review more than a half-dozen measures in an effort to boost domestic energy production in the form of fossil fuels. He doesn't seem to believe in protecting the environment.

Neither does he believe in interent privacy by all accounts as he was expected to sign legislation on Wednesday allowing internet service providers to sell the browsing habits of their customers. More Obama-era rules going by the wayside. I particularly liked this comment from congressman Mike Capuano: “Just last week I bought underwear on the internet. Why should you know what size I take? Or the color?”

What more can you say?

Wednesday around here.

So here we are; it's Wednesday. The day when Theresa May is supposed to send the fateful letter pulling the UK out of the EU. Any last-minute reprieve in sight? I don't think so. It will be interesting to see how things go over the next few months and years.

Apparently EU chiefs have warned airlines including EasyJet and Ryanair that they will need to relocate their headquarters or sell off shares to European nationals if they want to continue flying routes within continental Europe after Brexit. Car manufacturers are watching carefully to see whether they need to move their bases out of the UK. The law of unforeseen consequences strikes again!

But life goes on and we have to make the best of it.

There's a little pocket philosophy for us all!

Here everything seems to have returned to something like normal after the quiet of yesterday's día festivo. The workmen were back, drilling and hammering at eight this morning. There was the usual traffic jam up at the school. Everyone wants to park as close to the school as possible. Heaven forbid that their little Pepe or Marta should have to walk any further than absolutely necessary. And so they park on the designated pedestrian sections of the road - it's a one-track road without pavements - and on the pedestrian crossings, with no thought for those who do actually walk their kids to school. Dog eats dog!

On the subject of dogs, there are some impressively large dogs on the route I run in the morning. So before I even get to run the gauntlet of the school traffic jam, Ihave to be frightened out of my skin by an enormous German shepherd dog barking furiously down from one balcony/terrace and an even larger Saint Bernard running back and forth growling down at me from another. Heaven help me if they ever decide that they can leap over the low walls and down into the road.

Even the goats set up the hue and cry the other day. My route takes me past some plots of land where people cultivate stuff: neat rows of potatoes and greens. On one of these a goat appeared a couple of years ago. Last year there were two of them. This year there are three. If we stay here long enough there will be a small goatherd on that plot. As a rule they are very quiet but the other day the largest of the three, perhaps the original goat, decided she had to have a shout at me as I ran past.

It's a curious mix around here, more or less on the edge of town. Between the modern bits there are traces of small village life still around. At the end of the street is a tap, permanently running into its little basin, a source of fresh drinking water. I suppose it was a spring that has been channelled into this tap arrangement. Most mornings you see somebody filling up bottles with this water, no doubt preferring it to what comes out of their taps at home. And it appears to be free, unlike the bottles that so many people buy in huge quantities from the supermarket.

Within walking distance there are also a couple of the old public washing places where the women used to take their clothes and linen to wash before everyone had washing machines in their homes. Monuments to a different lifestyle!

Our flat is in one of a pair of high-rise blocks, about thirteen stories. Along the street are lower blocks, four or five stories, interspersed with individual older houses. Down the hill, on the next main street down, it is like a sort of corridor of moderately high-rise blocks, none of them very attractive. A friend of ours bemoans the fact that they have ruined a perfectly good area with indiscriminate building.

Between the two streets are vestiges of the area as it presumably was before all that building took place: individual houses, quite well-maintained and nice-looking, mostly with a bit of a garden, sometimes with a vegetable patch. Rather like the area where I run in the morning, there are roads leading into the place but between the houses there are only footpaths.

It must be particularly odd to live in the patch between the two main roads, a little enclave of a previous lifestyle, overshadowed by the taller buildings of another age.

So it goes.

Dressing up!

Today is the Fiesta de la Reconquista, celebrating throwing the French Napoleonic forces outt a couple of hundred years ago. They might well be doing a re-enactment down in the centre of town. However, they might be waiting until the weekend to do that, judging by a poster that a friend of mine posted onto Facebook.

However, there will almost certainly be a re-enactment. They like to get dressed up. Hallowe'en has been adopted here. Then there is usually a big parade for Three Kings Day in January. After that, along comes Carnaval. And in the summer you can hire medieval costumes and go along to the medieval fairs all over the place. And in some places you can get involved in mock battles between Moros y Cristianos, celebrating throwing another lot out of the country, this time the Moors. It's a bit like lots of local branches of the Sealed Knot Society. Any excuse for a bit of fancy dress!

As a result of the fiesta, the supermarket next door is closed. So is the school up the road. No traffic jams up there this morning! In fact the school was closed yesterday as well, "making a bridge" as they say around here. If a fiesta falls on a Tuesday, you take Monday off as well, and if it falls on a Thursday, you take Friday off, making a "bridge" to the long weekend. A very good idea!

It was all quiet down by the bread shop as well. The maze of pedestrian walk ways is still there but the chaps digging up the pavement and laying cables, or whatever it is they are actually doing, have clearly been given the day off. I commented on the quiet and the bread lady declared that she wants to work for that company. They too "made a bridge" yesterday. Not only that but they work very slowly. At ten o' clock in the morning they take a breakfast break (in fairness, they usually start drilling and banging at eight) which goes on for best part of an hour. And, she declared, she watched one the other day who seemed to do no more than shift the same bit of soil back and forth all day.

All in all, she is not impressed. If this work were going on in the centre of town, she assures me, there would be many more workers on task to expedite matters. Maybe so! The whole thing looks like a job creation scheme to me anyway!

So all is quiet. The sun is actually shining and there are relatively few clouds in the sky. Perhaps Spring has arrived after all. And we took advantage of the fine weather to take a walk up to A Guía, or Niño d'Aguia as I should now more properly call it. Along the nicely done Paseo Marítimo, paid for with EU financing. Oops! I wasn't going to mention the EU today.

So it goes.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a festive Tuesday, even if it does feel curiously like Sunday!

Getting the party logo around, among other things.

Like the Labour Party in the UK, the PSOE, the Spanish socialist party is having a bad time at the moment. Parties of the left seem to be having difficulties all over the place at present. Some say they have lost contact with their traditional support groups, their fanbase, as it were. Maybe so. They need to get it together again. I am not impressed with the support that UKIP managed to gain in the UK, although I still maintain that they benefitted greatly from rather over the top media coverage. And I find the rise and rise of Marine Le Pen in France very troubling as well. We live in strange times. 

However, even though the PSOE has been suffering, their 40 year old  logo has been doing very well. A range of T-shirts printed with the logo has been selling tremendously in the USA. The logo is a left fist clenched around a red rose and has been printed on T-shirts sold by the clothes store Urban Outfitters. The original designer of the logo, José María Cruz Novillo, is reportedly quite flattered but the PSOE is not best pleased and is looking into the matter. legal action has not been ruled out. In the meantime Urban Outfitters have stopped selling the T-shirts but it is still available from a company called Stussy for $32 (£25.65) in black, white, pink or purple. That's fashion for you.

In a news report about Turkey the other day, I was struck by this stray comment: "It’s also worth remembering that Erdoğan got only 52% of the vote at the last presidential election in 2014." Now, isn't that the percentage vote in that referendum last June, the voice of the people saying that should leave the EU? Percentages clearly mean different things at different times and in different situations. 

Meanwhile there has been a large anti-Brexit demonstration in London. And the EU's chief Brexit negotiator has apparently been saying that we should all be staying together if we want to combat terrorist attacks such as the recent one in Westminster. We shall see.

Uncertainty continues for EU citizens living in the UK. Here is something that was posted on the Forum for EU Citizens:

"Wish I had come to the march today.

I wasted my time with a job interview at one of the big supermarkets in a town nearby. It was a weird experience and I would like to share it. Probably just meaningless, but a bit annoying. What happened:

At the beginning of the interview, the interviewer, a young English lady, asked me if I brought my proof of right to work in the UK. I happily showed her my Dutch passport. She looked at it, over and over. 'Oh. Is this a passport from the Netherlands? Is this a real passport from the Netherlands?'

I said' yes, and this is proof of my right to work in the UK. I've been here for more than 9 years'.

'Oh. Well. I need to ask my manager if this is valid,' she said, and went away to speak to her manager. ;-) After a few minutes she came back, telling me that the manager wasn't sure whether a Dutch passport proved my right to work in the UK, and she disappeared again, to ask another manager. It was just a bit embarrassing for me.

Oh well. After 5 minutes she came back, and told me that no one really knew if a passport from the Netherlands was a proof of right to work in the UK. Without giving me the chance to explain anything to her, she went off again. To call Head Office, to ask them if I have the right to work in the UK with a passport from the Netherlands....

She came back again, phew, Head Office opened at 9 am and it was still early morning....she kept on saying that she wasn't sure.

I then gave her a short lecture about the EU, the Netherlands, the UK and 26 other countries in it. About Brexit, Britain leaving the EU, and that Theresa May will invoke article 50 on Wednesday 29 March. And that, in the 2 years after that, we will still have the right to work in the UK, with our Dutch / German / Romanian....etc. etc...EU 27....passports. It was so weird.

How is it possible that an (assistant) manager, who interviews people for jobs, doesn't know this? Don't they have a handbook in place? I mean, the magazine department of this supermarket is full of newspapers; how can they not know this? It's all over the news...

Anyway, I did not get the job. And I'm not sure if I would have accepted, if their staff don't even know these basic things. Never mind. Still have some applications for research jobs; hopefully something nice will turn up. I'm not really upset or in tears. It was just weird and a bit embarrasing.

Wish I had come to the march instead.

 Okay, end of rant. Thanks for listening and have a wonderful evening."

This is the sort of odd stuff that people have to put up with!