Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.  

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

Living La Vida Loca in Spain 

• Last night I again ventured onto the Renfe site to buy some tickets in my daughter’s name. It wouldn’t let me do this via my account with them, so I had to go back and enter all the journey details again, plus all my personal and card details. And, when it came to having them send confirmation and PDF’s to my daughter’s phone, I had to go through the process 5 times before it worked. Is there anyone at the company who checks the usability of their site? Or cares about it?
• My favourite restaurant in Pontevedra - a Moroccan place - has risen to the top of the Tripadvisor rankings. So, I just need to say it’s now a terrible place. Please don’t go there, if you visit our fair city. Leave it to us residents to suffer there . . . 
• To my surprise, the city council’s annual guide to summer fun contains quite a lot of events. Though not our big Jazz and Blues Festival. Which, TBH, is rather more jazz than blues these days, to my disappointment. 
• María’s Chronicle Day 49: A holiness of virgins?   

The UK

• The rules are wildly confusing. And at some point people will simply shrug their shoulders and go their own way. As the message becomes more and more muddled, so confidence, and compliance, diminishes.  
• Between July 7 and 20 only one person had been fined for not self-isolating after arriving in England. A law flagrantly ignored without sanction is not a law. 

The USA

• This must have been a tough list to compile. 
• Part of a wider essay on populism in the USA: Donald Trump’s prodigious stupidity is not the sole cause of our crushing national failure to beat the coronavirus. Plenty of blame must also go to our screwed-up healthcare system, which scorns the very idea of public health and treats access to medical care as a private luxury that is rightfully available only to some. It is the healthcare system, not Trump, that routinely denies people treatment if they lack insurance; that bankrupts people for ordinary therapies; that strips people of their coverage when they lose their jobs — and millions of people are losing their jobs in this pandemic. It is the healthcare system that, when a Covid treatment finally arrives, will almost certainly charge Americans a hefty price to receive it. And that system is the way it is because organised medicine has for almost a century used the prestige of expertise to keep it that way.  . . .  American medicine is a supremely costly bureaucratic labyrinth.  See the full essay here.    

The Way of the World

• An ex of the defunct Epstein: After an experience of direct awakening at age seventeen, Shelley Lewis has been on the path of inner transformation ever since. Now as a wellness entrepreneur and inner beauty expert, living and working in NYC and London, she actively holds Sacred Space, helping clients heal from their past and envision their future.
• To my astonishment, people are paying up to £12,500 for ugly dogs such as Pomeranians, British and French bulldogs and pugs (with which it’s hard to tell which end is which). Is it any wonder there’s quite some fraud in the puppy-selling industry? 

English 

• Some of the consulant-ese (over)used by the current British government. About itself and its policies, of course:-

- World-class

- World-beating

- Best in class

- Cutting-edge

Newspeak?  

English/Spanish

• Three more refranes:-

- Spring is in the air: La primavera la sangre altera.

- The chickens have come home to roost: Aquellos polvos** traen estos lodos 

- The child is father of the man: Lo que se mama de niño dura toda la vida. [??]

Finally . . . 

• Definitely the last mention of my garden . . . 1. I cut down more than 80 shoots/suckers on the bougainvillea, one of which was more than 150cm(5 feet) long and the width of my little finger. 2. The volume of Virginia creeper I pulled off the rear wall of the house was astonishing. Though not very heavy.
•  

 * A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.

** Meaning here ‘dust’, not ‘a shag’.