Dawn

Dawn

Monday, June 21, 2010

I read today that a Spanish singer (Iglesias Junior) had walked off the stage in the UK because of excessive noise from the audience in general and Amy Whitehouse in particular. A Spaniard upset by noise! What on earth is the world coming to?

I went to the Pontevedra Catastro today, to change the name in their records so they can bill me for the municipal taxes on my house in the hills. Needless to say, I was lacking a copy of one document so had to return twenty minutes later. Whereupon I found that – although it was an hour before closing time – a sheet of paper had been placed over the appropriate button on the ticket-issuing machine. Once this obstacle had been surmounted, I then came up against the problem of my tax number (NIF) being rejected by the computer. But my reserve identity number (NIE) did the trick and I came away feeling very satisfied I’d been able to get this simple task done in less than a day.

We had a total of three “No resources”/“No Home” mendicants on the streets of Pontevedra today. Must have been our day of the week. Which reminds me that I omitted our two ‘bag-men’ from the list of beggars I gave a week or two ago. One of these transports a phenomenal number of bags around the place, all covered by a huge sheet of polythene. If you’re visiting, you’ll normally find him in the main square, at the top of one of the narrow streets leading down to Vegetables Square. Where he stands all day rattling loose change in one of his hands, while extending the other. Unlike the ragged ‘musicians’ with sad-looking dogs, I never see him emerging from the gypsy settlement up near my house.

Well, the fence was not done today either. The funny thing about this is that, while I don’t have any kids who might fall the five metres to the concrete below, all my neighbours do. And yet they’ve shown no concern whatsoever. Quite why, I don’t know. I doubt that Spanish Catholicism contains any fatalism born of a belief in predestination. Perhaps a cultural hangover from an earlier age . . . As for the company which administers the community, I can’t help thinking they’d be a bit more concerned if anyone had a real chance of winning a negligence suit in an efficient judicial system.

But, anyway, summer officially started today. Though I thought it’d been around for a while, given the temperatures. And Spain has a must-win match in half an hour. Which I’m now off to watch. Though I’ve made alternative arrangements for England’s equally important tussle on Wednesday. Vaya La Roja! Or something like that.

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