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'*  

Covid 19   

• I suggested a week or two ago that we'd all surely by now have been in contact with  someone who was infected. And I wondered why, therefore, there weren't more cases and higher rates of both antibody incidence and national infection percentages. Putting this another way, why is even Stockholm in non-lockdown Sweden still very far from the famous 60% necessary to achieve herd immunity? All this at a time when death rates had plummeted. This video from an old friend might provide some answers to these queries.   
• Do we have to accept that the virus is to be lived with, not eradicated? As this Times columnist writes: Uncertainty is a global phenomenon. Until last week, New Zealand looked like the world’s great success story, a status attributable either to Jacinda Ardern’s visionary leadership or the small matter of being miles from anywhere. While the rest of the world wore masks, endured temperature checks and stayed at least one metre apart, New Zealanders were gleefully yodelling, ostentatiously licking each other and holding pepper-sniffing competitions. Then a handful of cases popped up in Auckland, and the city went back into lockdown. It was the clearest sign yet that without a vaccine, the coronavirus is something to be lived with, not sent packing.
• Meanwhile, as reported, the USA's death per million rate passed that of France a week or so ago and is now heading rapidly towards Sweden's. Today's US and European numbers:-

France 466

USA 521

Sweden 572

Italy 585

UK 609 (after revision downwards)

Spain 612

Belgium 857 Something of an outrider . . .

Living La Vida Loca  

• After our current (attenuated) Peregrina fiesta, our next big event should be the impressive Feira Franca of the first weekend in September. Followed by our own version of the Oktoberfest in, well, Octubre. But will either of them take place? I rather doubt the first one will, meaning I won't enjoy my annual buey(ox)-sandwich. Actually, 2 of them, as I always go back for another one . . .
• Bad, sad news for our vineyards.  Good news for wine prices?  
• Which reminds me . . .More than 100,000 Barcelona fans has a massive stroke of luck this week. Locked out of  their stadium, they weren't subjected to the 2-8 humiliation inflicted on their team by Bayern Munich. Well, excluding those who watched at least some of it on the TV. And, if this were at home, at least they could openly weep.
• Here and here are a couple of excellent potted histories around Spain’s Islamic invasion and its aftermath. Those Moors were certainly battle-prone.     

The UK 

• The levying of fines finally seems to have begun.     
• The UK government has swung from paralysed fatalism five months ago to something bordering on zero-risk, when such a policy has already been overtaken by events and by advances in science.

The USA 

• The Republican Party continues to ignore the country's still high Covid death rate, in preference for stressing the far-less-relevant percentage increases in European cases from a low base. Sophistry, of course, but very possibly a good strategy for none-too-bright Fart fans.
• Said president Fart claims that deficiencies in postal voting - which he's reported to be doing his best to maximise - will make the USA the 'laughing stock of the world'. That ship has sailed, mate. If you were really concerned about it, you'd get off our TV screens, one way or another. Preferably via suicide. Political or actual. We don't care.

Quote of the Week 

• From the Times columnist cited above - Helen Lewis - Life is short: every tomorrow is a bonus. When you think like that, uncertainty becomes more bearable.

English

• New OED words;.

- Nomophobia: Fear of being without your mobile phone.

- Jafaican: A white English person speaking in the manner of a Jamaican. 

English/Spanish

• Three more refranes:-

- Things often happen when you least expect them: Donde menos piensa el galgo, salta la liebre.

- Time and tide wait for no man: El tiempo pasa inexorablemente.

- Time doesn't stand still: El los nidos del antaño, no hay pájaros hogaño. [A re-appearance]

Finally . . .  

• Last year I installed a phone system (telfonillo) at my front gate, at a cost of around €150, as I recall. It has regularly malfunctioned and now I'm told the bell won't ring because an underground wire is bust. I can either pay for much of my concrete garden path and garage to be pulled up or buy a new system ('Of only 2 wires, not 6’) at a cost of another €250-300.  I can't wait to move to that flat where I can hassle the landlord/lady . . .

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