We have an annual Jazz and Blues concert here in Pontevedra during the third week of July. And excellent it is too. I’ve attended on each of the last three nights and will so again for the last performance tonight. Two of the three so far have been a little too “jazzy” for my tastes – if you know what I mean – but on Friday we had a stellar performance by an American lady, Madeleine Peyroux. Who’s rather like a cross between Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald. Terrific. Anyway, these are free shows and they attract a wide cross section of the local population plus, I suspect, a pretty large number of aficionados from around the country. It’s always interesting to see how long it is before a member of former group gets up to go and for the “jazzy” shows this was less than a minute. Truth to tell, they usually look like people whom you’d never perceive as jazz fans. So it’s rather more a question of why they’re there in the first place, not why they’re leaving after thirty five seconds.

Since they’re outdoor and free events, there’s never any request that people switch off their mobile phones. So, of course, you have to tolerate people near you chatting loudly to their friends, even during the quiet numbers. But I was impressed to see a new use for this modern necessity this year. If you can’t find the friend you want to sit next to, you just stand in the aisle and call them, regardless of how much this might disturb anyone. Impressively efficient, you might say.

Which reminds me . . . Is the fact that we’re blessed with several wi-fi cafés in Pontevedra an indication of local efficiency or evidence of inefficiency on the part of national broadband providers?

I mentioned our Club Nautico in yesterday’s post. When checking for errors this morning, two things occurred to me. Firstly, the word ‘club’ normally means brothel here in Spain and, secondly, it’s pronounced cloob in Spanish. Nothing strange about that, you might say. And I’d agree. So why is ‘pub’ pronounced paff and not poob? Perhaps a Spanish reader could let us into the secret.

There are two new links on this blog. The first is to a page (Our Very Own Compost Heap) of two young folk whom I know and who are making a go of life in rural Asturias. And the second is to a site called Tapas Bonitas or Nice Tapas. Looking at this today, I couldn’t help bemoaning the fact there are few of this type of tapa on offer here in Galicia. We have others, of course, and fine they are too in their own right. But some of us would really like to see more of the innovation that takes place in Bilbao, for example.

Finally . . . I was hoping to post today a foto of two metal vuvuzelas I’d seen in Pontevedra’s flea-market the last two Sundays. But, of course, I couldn’t find them today and, after ten minutes of trawling the market in 35 or more degrees of humid heat, I gave up and made my way back home. As luck would have it, though, I noticed this alternative picture in the hallway of some flats off the main square. Enjoy . . .