New quote, old story
“The tongue is the deadliest of all blunt instruments,” quotes Carlos Ferrero with ref to the Catalan media authorities’ new guide to banishing Spanish and all references to Spain as a country from our screens.
“The tongue is the deadliest of all blunt instruments,” quotes Carlos Ferrero with ref to the Catalan media authorities’ new guide to banishing Spanish and all references to Spain as a country from our screens.
Has migrated. It now does date/site sorts, and it would be easy to add language filters for folks who can’t be bothered with all this English stuff, but tralala…
One of the great things about cycling places is getting to drive through the centres of villages and stop at any bar that looks interesting. Friday afternoon I cycled up-country to do some stuff over the weekend and had a strange encounter in a village bar in the pre-litoral range somewhere between Montseny and Montserrat. [...]
“I think the sherry trade could learn a lot from their cousins in Portugal. But of course that’s only if the sherry trade sees any benefit in visitors to their bodegas. I often wonder if they really do.” It’s the old Spanish paradox of shops whose owners seem prepared to go to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid selling you anything, unless that something is guaranteed to malfunction at the first opportunity. Experiences recounted last night of finally persuading a well known department store to relinquish a sewing machine which immediately jammed, the replacement literally falling to pieces whilst being bagged. Why?
A double reflection makes up the man who was born on the thirteenth day of the moon, lost his
throne on the thirteenth day of the moon, and fought the battle of Waterloo on the thirteenth day of the moon:

I wonder if Josephine’s astrological babblings didn’t cause Napoleon’s natural military interest in the moon to be unduly romanticised.