The novel is progressing. I’ve hit the 50K mark and plot and characters are showing signs of improvement, partly because I’m putting a bit more time into research and a bit less into peripatetic weird shit collection. One of the puzzles I’m working through at the moment is the lack of a sub-Saharan chiliastic movement [...]

Gerald Howson in The Flamencos of Cadiz Bay claims that the satirical periodical, El Codorníz (The Quail), once published a front page spread of Anglo-Saxon ladies in bullrings and remote mountain villages headlined, “WHERE DO THE ENGLISH SPINSTERS GET THEIR HATS?”

Here’s another l/r swap: loro comes from the Carib roro and was used to designate both (reddish) parrots and (again on the basis of colour) native American slaves, as in “vos fasemos merced de toda manera desclavos negros o loros o otros de los que en españa son tenidos por esclavos e que por razon [...]

I recently referred to Un deliri de mar, an abysmal novel–it’s about a dreamy descent into the chasms and crevices of a drained Med–by Josep M Miquel i Vergés. Un deliri was considered unpublishable by the author’s book-trade friends 50 years ago but, in the current rush of publicly funded patriotism, has been brought out, [...]

So the carbon’s going underground. Unfortunately they haven’t adopted my recommendation to use unemployed miners to bury it.