Talking of
virtually empty locations . . . I walked through Pontevedra station
this morning. Apart from the one offering junk jewellery, all the
shops are closed. As is the multiplex cinema which used to give life
to the complex. True, there's a Games place and a Chinese buffet
restaurant but, at 2pm, there wasn't a soul in either of these.
Devastation. No wonder the car park was empty.
You may
recall earlier mentions of Sr Fabra, the man who's won the national
lottery 7 times and who was responsible for, inter alia, the
less-than-useless airport at Castellón which is adorned with a
statue of said Sr Fabra outside it but which has never been blessed
with any planes or passengers. Well, Sr. F has enlightened us all
about this: "You just don't get it" he's reported to have
said - "This is an airport for people, not planes". In
other words, it's a tourist attraction. Well, I'll go to the foot of
our stairs, as my grandmother used to say.
As of now,
Sr Fabra is in court for the nth time. He's never been successfully
prosecuted to date - maybe he has friends or knows where the bodies
are - and his arrogant and disdainful attitude to the judge this time
suggests he's pretty confident of getting off the hook yet again. A sort
of poor man's Berlusconi, I guess. Without the sex. As far as we
know. Would he take his sunglasses off for this, I wonder?
Until this
week, I had wondered how the lottery-money-laundering scam worked.
It's pretty obvious really. Someone with money to clean gives you a
premium on the prize of your winning ticket and then claims the prize. So, the first thing you
do if you win is not tell your friends and relatives (who will all
want some) but call someone whose name begins with, say, F and ask
him to buy it from you at 150% of what you've won. Maybe offshore.
Then you keep schtum. And visit Andorra several times a year. Or
perhaps Gibraltar, if Spanish allegations are true.
Talking of
Gib, you'll recall that the Spanish government stopped the export of
Spanish sand and stones to the Rock. Naturally, Britain's oldest ally
Portugal was only too pleased to step into the breach and supply the
stuff by boat. So, the only losers? The Spanish companies who've lost
the profit on this business. Well done, Madrid. By the way, I can't
say I was surprised to read this week that the Spanish Foreign
Affairs Minister - Sr Motormouth Margallo - hadn't had any experience
of diplomacy before he took on the job. Two years later, he still
hasn't. IMHO.
Dining with
friends in Veggie Square yesterday, we were approached by an African
lady with the usual junk jewellery but also one of those table-mats-that-turn-into-a-fruit-bowl things. I'd already
bought one at €10, so I was rather knocked back by her opening bid
of €35. When I told he I'd already got one for 10, she reduced the
price to €32. So I politely suggested she peddle her wares
elsewhere, whereupon the price plummeted to €12. I bought it (for
my daughter) at this price, on the belief it was bigger than the one
I had. But it isn't. Hey ho. Mustn't grumble.
Finally . .
. Cambridge University has been researching
how Spanish students get on learning English. Among their findings is
that they spell the word because in 27 different ways. Almost as
many as my Oxford graduate daughter, who was off primary school the day they
did spelling. More here. On the Cambridge research, I mean.
PS: If you're
an affronted friend of my daughter's (I know she doesn't read my blog herself), this is
because she included me as an unsympathetic character in one of her
novels. Or she didn't.
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