Dawn

Dawn

Monday, September 13, 2004

Life in the UK is, for the most part, rather quiet and humdrum. In contrast, the denizens of the popular soap operas live in a world of constant noise, adventure and incident. The same sort of inversion operates in Spain too. Everyday life here involves a great deal of noise, much of it coming from people who talk constantly, loudly and simultaneously. In contrast, actors in the soap operas spend a great deal of time in silence, simulating deep emotions via laconic movements of their lips, nostrils and eyebrows. And when they do talk, this takes place in whispers and one by one. While all this non-activity is taking place, a piano or violin plonks plangently in the background, rising to a crescendo during the periods of agonised silence. Until, as this morning, some reality intrudes and one of these troubled people stops emoting and plunges an axe into the back of another.


I know I said I wasn’t going to report any more T-shirt sightings but I can’t resist recording that I saw a chap coming towards me today with POST MO BILLS emblazoned on his chest. Fleetingly, I wondered who Maurice Bills might be and why he would need a letter from me.


Needless to say, Word’s spellcheck doesn’t recognise ‘plangently’. But then it doesn’t recognise ‘spellcheck’ either.


In Catalunia, several dozen local mayors have chosen not to fly the Spanish flag at some major ‘national’ celebration this week. And the Catalunian President has suggested that Spain agrees to Catalunia ‘divorcing’ itself from Spain and becoming, I guess, a discrete unit of the EU. Where will it all end, I wonder? Meanwhile, it does seem that the new Spanish President is reaping the harvest he sowed when he showed himself sympathetic to secessionist aspirations when he was nestling in the comfort of opposition and must have felt he had very little chance of being invited to put his money where his mouth had been. But the Madrid bombings changed all that.


Meanwhile, back here in the sticks of Galicia, the President of the Xunta, Manuel Fraga, has opined again, this time to remind us that all the best bullfighters die in the ring. And he has stressed that he certainly doesn’t manage a one-man show. There is room for everyone, he said. Especially – and perpetually – him, it seems. Oh yes, and his daughter.


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