Category archive for Flocks and work animals (RSS)

Every pig has its Martinmas

Posted: March 28th 2008 11:45.

When Europa played over at Sant Andreu in November, the local Four Bar Squad, which has record, unveiled a banner showing another local saint, St Martin, in wolf costume slaughtering a pig dressed as one of Europa’s following (they believe they’re tigers, not pigs, but whatever):

Sant Andreu duly murdered Europa 3-0. The return is this [...]

Montilla, the Catalan Che Guevara

Posted: March 3rd 2008 09:54. Last modified: March 3rd 2008 11:41

History recalls Wolfie Smith as the British incarnation. March mare’s nest words for Jordi Buch Oliver: sciamachy, galimathias, amphigouri.
Mr Butler forwards some fine election propaganda. Just in case you wondered, sain is not homophonic with the English sane.
Another Spanish election contender has introduced the barbarisms brekindans, crusaito, maikelllason, robocoo in his campaign video:

Those in the [...]

Nativity scene, Santa Coloma de Gramanet

Posted: December 15th 2007 13:42.

None of the evangelists mention San José, electrician:

Here’s a lamb emerging from the tower blocks with which urban planners chose to blanket the lower half of the old market square, which has been jacked up to cover a huge underground carpark:

All on this walk.

Ancient circular enclosures in northern Spain

Posted: November 28th 2007 14:28. Last modified: October 28th 2009 10:31

Dido and Hengist are remembered as early heroes of isoperimetry for having solved the challenge of maximising the area of a land grant made to them by stringing together strips of oxhide and using the resulting closed superthong to trace, respectively, a semi-circle at Carthage and a full circle at Kaercorrei.
What was news to [...]

Goat

Posted: November 9th 2007 11:24. Last modified: November 9th 2007 11:30

I am building a bird table so I can catch tasty little birds with a net and fry them in bechamel for breakfast. Its leg consists sturdy spring, which will cause pigeons, goats and other creatures undesirable for this purpose to fall off before they get to the bait.

Grisly video footage of bullfight in Riópar, Albacete province

Posted: September 28th 2007 14:33. Last modified: December 2nd 2008 12:48

Village bullfighting is far more exciting and beautiful than the formalised crap on offer in big rings like Barcelona’s Monumental, but if the photo above gives some idea of the upside, the downside involves stuff like dwarf bullfighters cutting fillets off animals as they race past because they’re too short to plunge the sword in [...]

Useless allegedly Aragonese animal proverb

Posted: August 4th 2007 18:04.

Follow a donkey and you will find your village. Follow a goat and you will fall off a cliff.

Spot the donkey

Posted: June 26th 2007 16:16. Last modified: June 27th 2007 09:14

Spot is a dog. (Dear agent, I also do other barnyard animals, as well as goldfinches, linnets and horny pussycats.)

Spanish vultures snacking in Holland

Posted: June 19th 2007 11:04. Last modified: April 24th 2009 17:26

The crazy European regulation making it illegal to leave carcasses in the high mountains has led to reports of starving vultures attacking and killing large live stock in several parts of Spain. Now one of Nick’s wolfmen has sent news of several hundred griffon vultures from the Pyrenees having sought alimentary asylum in Holland, in [...]

Is your bitch laughing behind your back?

Posted: June 18th 2007 15:10.

This video shows her when she knows she’s being watched:

Move your monitor back and lie on your desk with your face touching the screen and your feet left to view the next fragment. It shows her still getting used to the Bulgarian military hip camera used in its capture:

Nothing much there, but check this:

“Ah! behaviourism!” [...]

José Tomás vs Manolete

Posted: June 18th 2007 14:31. Last modified: June 18th 2007 15:13

I’m different, says the former:

The death of the latter:
How camp! Did I mention that lunch in Bar Manolete in Mogón is excellent?

Communal herding arrangements in the Pyrenees

Posted: June 14th 2007 20:58. Last modified: June 14th 2007 21:05

The sheep and goats above have just arrived back in Plan from low pastures to spend the summer in the mountains, rather like schoolchildren coming back from a language exchange. Joaquín Costa’s Colectivismo agrario en España (1898), available in full on Corde, contains a number of accounts of communal herding arrangements in the Pyrenees:
The town [...]

Serbs barter cows for penises

Posted: May 31st 2007 21:14. Last modified: June 1st 2007 10:16

I recently had lunch with a Huescan entrepreneur who sold his dad’s cows in the 50s to buy a car, but this is ridiculous.
[
Update: D confirms that Srecko Djordjevic is not an anagram of for example "jive jerks cod cord" and points out that he has form:

A man chopped his own penis off with a [...]

Wolves/pigs

Posted: May 29th 2007 17:57. Last modified: May 29th 2007 19:11

Bit of fratricidal jollity from Ãngel Ganivet, Idearium español (1897): “Confronted with the spiritual ruin of Spain we must put a stone where our heart is and throw a million Spaniards to the wolves if we all do not wish to be thrown to the swine.” No national stereotypes, please. Just trying to think of [...]

Champions League Final menu

Posted: May 24th 2007 11:10. Last modified: May 24th 2007 11:20

In another bar in the village-over-the-hill aforementioned:
Lettuce in fearsome red wine vinegar
Little bony bits of baby goat wrapped in stomach in a mushroom sauce
Intestines of baby goat stuffed with rice and lungs, kidneys, liver etc
Roasted baby goat head
Pudding made of milk from the mothers of new-born calves
Red wine, coffee, tea and whisky
I think 15 goats [...]

Open-air CD and DVD library

Posted: May 14th 2007 15:24. Last modified: May 14th 2007 15:26

Those tree-hung disks aren’t really for scaring off the deer, silly. Take one home with you and, when you’ve had all you can bear of Hits of Hits or Dirty Dancing II, or when you figure that installing BitWare for Windows wasn’t that smart anyway, take it back and hang it on the correct tree.

Creative cartography

Posted: May 7th 2007 12:15.

I rather like the idea of going up the M6 one day and finding an elephant where Manchester used to be.

Sheep skull with bugs crawling in and out of its orifices

Posted: May 6th 2007 13:55.

Zazie thinks it’s OK to waste food. I’m still figuring how to cook this:

My head might have videoed it but my stomach definitely would not. Enjoy your lunch!

Real live caganer crapping in a field

Posted: May 4th 2007 21:42. Last modified: December 25th 2009 11:26

Off the other evening to see Chelsea-Liverpool on a big screen in a village bar in another valley. Coming down from the pass on an old walled stone track, I turn a corner and there’s a flock of goats nibbling the hedges. In the middle of the path, the cloth-capped ruddy-faced goatherd in classic caganero [...]

Escapee: carcass in field with not a bureaucrat in sight

Posted: April 28th 2007 21:37. Last modified: April 28th 2007 21:46

The EU says that you have to take animal carcasses found in the high mountains down to the bottom, truck them half-way across Spain to an abattoir to make sure they’re really dead, and then, to stop the vultures starving to death, you are allowed to bring them all the way back and leave them [...]

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On this day

Barcelona

  • March 21 1848 

    En Barcelona como en otras partes comienza hoy la primavera, que en honor de la verdad no suele ser aqui la estacion mas hermosa del año. Cierto que ya los árboles comienzan á echar hoja, y que la linda y olorosa violeta alfombra los jardines y ribazos, y que le hacen cortejo otras flores; per...

Josep Pla, Palafrugell (1918-9)

  • 21 de març de 1918 En aquest país tenim un costum molt curiós. Quan ens trobem, al carrer, dues persones, cara a cara, no tenim, a penes, res a dir-nos. Però, una vegada acomiadats i fets set o vuit passos, se’ns ocorren tot d’una una sèrie de coses urgents a dir a la persona que hem deixat fa un moment. [...]
  • 21 de març de 1919 Inici de la primavera. Biblioteca. Tot traduint Renard penso que és més important dominar un ofici qualsevol que posseir una curiositat dilatada, vastíssima. La curiositat es pot improvisar; un ofici, no. La curiositat és superficialment agradable, però deixa una certa buidor amarga per dintre. Un ofici és monòton i pesat, però té moments d’una voluptuositat [...]

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