Dawn

Dawn

Friday, May 22, 2009

I wondered out loud earlier this week where the next municipal revenue-raising scheme would come from. Well, here’s one candidate - a tax on noise during the dead hours of the Spanish day. Not to mention on sex in the street. In Granada at least.

How can one hope to understand the power of the internet when one reads that a video of a baby laughing has been seen by 83 million people in two years? I wonder what the numbers would be for sex in one of Granada's streets.

There’s been bad blood between the neighbouring cities of Pontevedra and Vigo for centuries now. Indeed, you can read about it here (Chapter XXVIII) in George Borrow’s wonderful 1840 book about his journeys through Spain while trying to flog the Protestant Bible. The key to the conflict is that Pontevedra city has always been the capital of Pontevedra province but Vigo has progressively grown to be almost four times its size and surely now merits this honour. The new Xunta has recently made some sort of tiny step in this direction, resulting in a violent reaction from Pontevedra dignitaries. Including the mayor who is sitting on the next table as I type this. The result is that the economic crisis, massive unemployment and even this week’s violent metalworkers’ strike have been shoved off our front pages so that we can all appraise ourselves of the minutiae of this local distraction. God help us.

Anyway, down in said Pontevedra I see there’s a kids’ clothing shop called Neck and Neck. Ignoring the obvious question of Why, exactly?, I wonder if this will be the next place to go bottom-up, after Better and Stop.

Something else seen while walking into town today – Did I mention I don’t have a car? – On the wall of an empty plot of land guarded 24/7 by a solitary husky, someone has spray-painted “Would you like to live like this dog, if things were different?”. Being a border collie, my dog Ryan was able to respond with a heartfelt No!.

Finally, if you thought the scandal of British MPs being overpaid was bad enough, click here for a shock.

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