The last time the issue came up, my dad rated Percy Shaw as one of the 20th century’s most under-appreciated inventors, on the grounds that his cat’s eye road studs have saved more lives on British roads than any other single measure.

Ojos de gato or tachas reflectantes are not (widely) used on Spanish highways, and so it was that I was almost run over in a snowstorm on Montseny on Tuesday by a Senegalese cyclist who, to avoid accidents, was navigating quite rapidly along the side of the road.

He didn’t see me because his head was bowed to avoid ingesting snow, but anyway it is apparently a well known fact in Senegal that white people are invisible in snowstorms. So the imperialist was to blame.

We shared a couple of bananas because I was just about to eat one anyway and because he still had about ten miles to go. He thought snow was a far better invention than cat’s eyes, and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

More traditional building for Colin Davies:
Real stone is expensive and makes it hard to plug holes and to plaster, so in Spain@Disney you stick (pre)machined chunks or carpet tile-type stuff onto the concrete prefab with glue.
Chorus: Cladding imitates but also improves on reality.

So they’ve posted a report alleging Sir John Moore’s defeat by the weather, 200 years ago. It’s snowing a bit in Spain at the moment, but no signs of it turning into a repeat of 1829-30, when the Ebro froze, 1835-6, when eggs froze in their shells in Palencia, 1836-7, when it snowed on the Andalusian coast, 1844-5, when heavy snowfall in Barcelona at the beginning of December was followed two weeks later by devastating flooding, etc etc. (Thanks to MM)

Maybe someone can penetrate through my hangover and explain why Front Reusenc (sourced here), the drinking arm of lowly Reus Deportiu, identifies itself with the Union Jack, skinhead bulldogs, elbow webs, red shoelaces and braces, bovver boots, and bad beer, a collection of symbols traditionally favoured by British ultra-right racists, the National Front. (They’ve also got a Facebook group which uses the same image and whose 11 members include e-noticies fave and Elvis impersonating Reus councillor Ariel Santamaria.)