If Only I´d Known

On opening my Yahoo page this morning,the following headlines greeted me:



SURPRISING MARRIAGE TRUTHS

Learn seven secrets about married life that most people don't tell you.

Harder than you ever imagined



Well, thanks Yahoo, but it´s a bit late now.


THOUGHT FOR TODAY:(which has nothing to do with the above)
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
(Voltaire)

Year´s End

Well, there goes 2008. Bowing out miserably, not quite as sordidly as Bush in a hail of metaphorical shoes, but slouching none the less.
Una and I are slouching ourselves these days, limping, in fact. We possess a total of four good legs out of a possible six. Her left hind and my left are currently not up to speed. Tim jumped out of the car onto her and hurt her, and I damaged mine running after a donkey in bare feet (my feet, that is, not the donkey´s, she had shoes on).
All this was over two months ago, and we are still not OK. May never be. It´s the vet for her next week. I must be patient.
Still and all, things have not all been lame round here this year. We have a nice house to live in now, and we are starting on planting stuff like beans and peas, so we can eat when all money vanishes or becomes worthless - some time next week, I imagine. And we have our eggs. More chickens to come soon.
Bob the canary and Murph the cat are fine, though Murph is getting rather fat.

Resolutions? No, but I will give my liver a rest from alcohol during January, as I sometimes do. That´s enough for one year.

Regrets? That I did not get a chance to throw my shoes at George.

Happy New Year to all. You never know.


One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Best foot forward

An Iraqi man has thrown his shoes at Bush during a press conference yesterday.
A good idea, but it would have made more sense if he had not taken them off first.

Beasts

It´s been a busy six weeks since the last entry.
A dog has been and gone, two more chickens have arrived and a small cat has moved in.
And Tim has a mild case of fleas.
The dog was a puppy that we named Nobby, but turned out - a couple of days later - to be called Pancho. We found him running out of Sahagun one Friday evening. He was a terrier, and looked as if he could be a pedigree Jack Russell. There is a pic of him in Reb´s blog. We reported finding him to the Guardia, and his owner came on the Monday and collected him. Nobby/Pancho was a very smart little chap, with a wise, serious, old-looking face. It was a small sadness to see him go, but his owners were very happy to have him back.
Reb came home the other day with two more chickens, the same breed as before. The original three set about them and gave them a kicking. It seems that the pecking order is not only a figure of speech. An uneasy peace now prevails.
The cat -kitten really - is called Murphy. His pic is also on Reb´s blog. I must learn how to put pix on mine. Worth a thousand words, we used to say. Worth several thousand words like this, I am afraid.
But Murph is a another wonderful addition to the household. He is as handsome as a mog can be, and very friendly, which is surprising for a barn cat. He will not be allowed in the house as Reb is allergic to cats. But he is cozy upstairs in the bottle room, where he has his own personal loft and two squares a day.
Lucky for him, and us.
I´m working on Tim´s fleas. Reb thinks he might have got them from Murphy, but we can´t find any on the little fellow.

What´s new?

A meaningless title for today´s offering.

My tireless and industrious wife points out that I have not extruded one for too long (a blog, that is).

Trouble is, there is so much to do each day here, what with making chicken runs, finding the hen´s eggs (latest place an old wine box) reading books - Moby Dick (the whale, not the man, it turns out), a biog of Evelyn Waugh, Stone Roses by Llamazares: newspapers, (El Pais) magazines, Nat Geographic, New Yorker, Casa y Campo (Design the Lavatory of your Dreams´); filling up the bird bath (an old frying pan), watering the plants including the new fig tree; making up my own recipes for cold soups that have mint in them; walking the dogs, as well as washing, brushing, scratching, de-ticking, de-fleaing, stroking and shouting angrily at them.
Scant time left for bloggish reflection.

And, on top of all that, I find that we can now get uninterrupted live video stream from the world´s race tracks such as Saratoga and Newmarket. This could be ruinous as well as time-consuming, although I seem to have lost the urge to bet.

Another major consumer of time in rural Spain is shopping.
As house cook, I am often dispatched with the granny-style shopping trolley and a fistful of euros, ´..to get what looks good.´
It is, for me, a step back in time to the nineteen forties, when, as a lad of eight or so, I would go ´down to the shops,´ for my old Gran. Here, now - like then, it involves going into several different shops - butcher, fishmonger, grocer, baker - and probably standing in line in each.
In the butchers and the fishmongers, there are benches so you can sit in line and wait your turn. This is a good idea, as every order can be a lengthy affair. For one thing, if , for example, you want minced meat - carne picada - you will be shown the unminced pieces for approval first, before they are put through the mincer. Then if, say, a kilo is ordered, it is usual to ask the butcher to divide it into maybe four portions. No problem. If you want liver, come back Friday, as the animals are killed Thursday.
In the fish boutique, the chosen trout or bream will be gutted and cleaned in front of you. All this takes time, especially when the lady in front, who is ordering several very odd looking fishes in very small quantities, is also telling the fish lady - and everyone else in earshot -about her brother and his problems with his teenage son in Burgos.
The ironmonger can be the limit, even for me. Waiting in line, while there is an endless and lively discussion involving four men, about the wisdom of purchasing two washers, which cost 10 cents apiece, may be an authentic part of life as she is lived in Sahagun, but it´s a bit too authentic for me.

So, if I am going to blog more regularly, I will have to get up earlier.

The last refuge of a scoundrel

John McCain, in an Independence day outpouring of gibberish intended to get him elected President, lays it on the line:

¨Patriotism is deeper than its symbolic expressions, than sentiments about place and kinship that move us to hold our hands over our hearts during the national anthem. It is putting the country first, before party or personal ambition, before anything.¨

For Patriotism, read Fascism.

It is, as Shaw said, many years ago, ¨Saying ´My country, right or wrong, is like saying
My mother, drunk, or sober.¨

I have lived in more than one country for more than a few years at a time during my life, and I am of the opinion that, as Hemingway once remarked, ¨There are pros and cons to every fucking country.¨

Are we to suppose that McCain approves of the Afgans, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Israelis, the Pakistanis or the Palestinians, for example,
- to say nothing of the Russians or Chinese,
- holding the same opinions as himself?

Surely, he must. How can he logically not?

And where has that got us so far? And where is it going to get us?

In the unlikely event of any Americans still reading this blog, think about the implications of this a bit before you vote.

(Not that you should expect much more from Obama, his remarks for the Fourth of July were a little less crass, but not all that much)

And another thing..

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.
Said Charles Darwin.

I think I have written this bit below before, somewhere, but no matter.

Centuries ago, a Christian priest was trying to convert a Mongol leader.
´If you become a Christian before you die, you will go to live in Heaven forever,´ the priest said.
´How many horses will I have?´said the Mongol.
´None,´ the priest said, ´There are no horses in Heaven.¨
¨Then I don´t want to go,´said the Mongol.
And he was right. A Heaven without animals, with only people, would be Hell.



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