Dogs and walls

I urge you to click on this pic to enlarge it - it's wonderful!

The Greyhounds have dug a big hole in the yard and put a small toy dog in it. Not a real live toy dog, a toy toy dog - a soft toy dog. What can it all mean?
Is it a message that we must not go away for two days? Surely not. Kim looked after them just fine.
Greyhounds, unless you want to hunt hares, are utterly useless. They just look nice. Some people think they are silent. Not ours. If I'm not up at daybreak, they come and howl. And wrestle and work on making the hole deeper. Maybe they will discover a Roman villa down there. And eat it.
Anyway, we went on the train to Avila for a jolly. Very nice it was. The wall is spectacular. The city is spotless, all grey stone. Grim in the Winter, no doubt, but beautiful.
We found a wine bar that boasted a wine list literally a thick as a phone directory. Reb spent ages choosing a wine for us. We should have had a drink while we were waiting. When she finally made a selection, wrong number. ''Haven't got that one right now.'' Tried again. Another wrong number. Same thing. Finally the bar suggested one it had in stock. It was OK.

Our hotel was once a synagogue. As we were leaving it, we had to fight our way through a guided tour group that was having the building explained to them.
Saint Teresa was everywhere. I looked for her hand, only to be told it's in Ronda. There is a finger of hers there, though, still with a snazzy emerald ring on it. Avila seemed to be struggling, economically. Although this is the high season, there were few tourists to be seen, and strangely few local people either. I would go so far as to put it, like Venice or the Grand Canyon, or Vegas, or New York City, on the 'must see' list.
Despite all its wonders, seems like the place could use a hand right now. One from Ronda, perhaps.

Pillar of the Church

People seem to prefer it when I write about local stuff, rather than ranting on about politics and the like. I don't blame them.

So. The church of Santo Tomas, in our village has been on my mind recently.

This Sunday, I took myself off to Mass alone, Reb being cheerfully flooded near Pamplona. (see her fine blog) As I entered, a neighbour grabbed me and said 'Go and see if you can help Don Santiago (the priest). So I did. He had a tall, scruffy old geezer in the sacristy with him, with shoulder-length whitish hair and a scraggly beard a foot long, at least. He looked very bogus to me.
'He's a priest, I think,' said Santiago.'Can you talk to him? He has no Castellano.' Well, no, I couldn't. The old fellow spoke only French. But somehow, we all agreed that he would 'co-consecrate, or whatever, the Mass.
It went OK, except, that at one point, Santiago handed him the book and he read the wrong bit very nicely and made us all smile. We suppose he was a priest. Could have been a Satanist, for all we knew. Oh, well.

It struck me that here was a good argument for saying the Mass in Latin, like when I was a boy. Except that I am greatly in favour of the Mass in the vernacular. Provided that it is in a foreign language.

On Wednesday, it was our turn to keep the church open during the day for the passing pilgrims. My task alone with Reb still away. A group of four French pilgs showed up in the morning. Perfectly polite. Wanted sellos. No Spanish of course. Alone among pilgrims of every nation, the French, when I pass them on the Camino and say 'Buenos dias,' stubbornly reply 'Bonjour.' Go figure. No good at football either.

The point is, the two men in the said party both were wearing shorts that were so brief they might have been swimming trunks. Oddly, the women were dressed OK. I must be getting older and crankier than even I suspected. I said nothing. But I thought it was near indecent. I am getting more Spanish by the day, I suppose. I even change out of my own shorts, that I wear within the sheltering walls of the house, into jeans to leave and go 300 yards to the bodega to get a bottle or two of wine.

Still, I quite enjoy the weekly stint at the church. Tim comes along and sits with me. When pilgs come in, he goes and sits by them and puts his head in their laps to be petted. They think he is a sort of holy dog, sent to greet them. But he and I know that once a pilg gave him half a sausage. Hope springs eternal in the Spaniel breast.

The Last Word

Re: The previous blog...
Here is a bit of film by Kim of Max in full cry. He is with the angels now. Probably jumping on their backs and trying to tear their wings off.

MAXED OUT: Requiem for a Heavyweight

Followers of Reb's blog will know that my adversary Max is now toast. The Peaceable is at peace again.

I feel bad about it, but not as bad as all that. He was literally tearing the feathers from the backs of the hens, leaving then bleeding.

I thought he was just nuts, but the neighbors tell me that is the way Gallos are. The last straw was him trying to peck Reb's trousers off the other day. God knows what would have happened if he had managed it.

In retrospect, a rooster was a bad idea, if you don't want fertilised eggs and then chicks, and we don't. Max was a decent name for him, but Benito would have suited him better. Apart from maiming the girls, he did sod all, except swagger about bawling his wattles off with his chest stuck out like the tin-pot dictator he was, and try to kick divots out of Murphy the cat.

But I will miss him - he had balls, all right. I had to take a broom into the run when fetching the eggs, to keep him at bay. Otherwise I had to kick him from one end of the run to the other, where he would pick himself up, puff out all his feathers, and wade back in for another basinful. Insanely brave. Got to admire it.

Justi, our next-door neighbour, will not miss him a bit. He didn't much care for the 5.30 am bellow of 'Cock-a-Doooooo', audible for a quarter of a mile.

Max never mastered Cock-a Doodle-Doo, but maybe his version was just the Spanish one.

So, basta con cockerels. We are thinking about some new hens. Maybe from Asturia. 'Asturiano, mal Cristiano,' they say. OK with me.

Heading Downhill

I'd better write a few words, at least to celebrate the splendid new header here. The work of Kim, of course.
I liked the chicken one from before, but this one illustrates the situation better. Me with dogs on Camino.
Watch this space for the movie. Seriously.

Lots of activity at The Peaceable these days pilgrims come and go and guitarists as well. Murphy joined in the frenzy by going missing for about thirty hours, which was disturbing, what with his track record. But then he showed up again bawling instructions to be let in, fed, let out, let back in, fed more, and so on.
Tim has a crittur in his ear and we are off to the Vet tomorrow. He isn't going to care much for the treatment, I suspect.

Reb is in the USA, which is not much fun for her, and no fun at all for me. And it is raining steadily. Wet dog smell. Muddy Una
.
Joder.

MISDEAL ... NEW HANDS ALL ROUND

Mixed bag of a blog today. First, my hand. Tuesday morning as arranged we went to the Hospital de Carrion to get my right hand fixed. One of the fingers had got all bent and needed surgery to straighten out. All set for the op at 3 p.m, but then an emergency by helicopter intervened. The medics started hacking away at 6.p.m. Over by 7.30. Longer than expected, said the Doc. Too late to go home now, so in a two-bed room with a clearly demented old loony who made loud noises all night through every conceivable orifice. Still, the surgery was excellent and there will be no charge directly levied on us for all this. The horrors (if one is American) of Socialised Medicine. I can dig it, as Reb says.

Not the most fun day ever, but infinitely better than it would have been if Tim had still been missing (see Reb's doggone Blog today with great pic)

And this morning Old Ma Nature dealt another weird hand.

Snow. Half way through May. When I looked out of the bedroom window, I thought, How odd, it looks like snow. Must be a trick of the light. Not so. Was snow.

Only a light dusting and gone by 11 a.m., but enough to elicit a scream of horror from Reb when she woke later, fearing for her tender little veggies in their immaculately white, icy, bed. Are they goners? Only time will tell. But the next plague, following on from volcanic ash, dog-losing and snow, is due to be a rain of frogs, then a fresh outbreak of Herod's Evil and Scrofula, followed by a Tory/LibDem Coalition.

We are doomed, I tell you doomed. Send in the frogs.

A Brief Course in Existentialism

We are born. We cut our toenails occasionally. We die.