“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?

Easy: in a country prone to civil war it’s important to have something everyone can agree on, regardless of their local ethnic and linguistic allegiances. The Balkans form the obvious comparison: chronically incapable of even vaguely democratic self-government, they imported German princes in the nineteenth century and are now erecting statues of Bob Marley. So I suppose you could say that when sweet young things stop asking you at parties whether you like the Beatles, it’s a sign either that base and superstructure have moved on or that we’re in for interesting times.

[
During this walk the other day with the man who threw his underpants at Tom Jones and his gorgeous new missus we had a bizarre bar conversation with another man who, thanks to the intervention of the Mustangs and someone else, got in free to the Beatles concert in the Monumental bull ring in 1965. The merits of each of the fab four were expounded, and the conclusion reached that John was the leader, Paul the creative, Ringo the loony, and, finest and strangest of all, Jordi Khárison, Catalan guitar god.

]

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.

José M Camarero@ABC: En principio, la mayoría no pensaba que lo que ardía era precisamente un avión incendiado… Pero fue la caravana de ambulancias que pasaba por delante de sus casas, en la autovía M-14, la que les puso en alerta. «Esto me huele mal», llegó a decir Manuel a su mujer. «Aquí ha pasado algo gordo». Y, en efecto, así fue. Por eso fueron de los primeros en avisar a los servicios de emergencias.” Duh.