Month: May 2007

Champions League Final menu

In another bar in the village-over-the-hill aforementioned: Lettuce in fearsome red wine vinegar Little bony bits of baby goat wrapped in stomach in a mushroom sauce Intestines of baby goat stuffed with rice and lungs, kidneys, liver etc Roasted baby goat head Pudding made of milk from the mothers of new-born calves Red wine, coffee,…

Oh, please…

Asturias is not Spain, or at least not in Bray, Co Wicklow, and bottom right are the toys thrown out of his pram by the author in order to underline his point. For those who doubt that I took the photo in Ireland, here are two more of a microwave designed by Korean anthropologists for…
Asturias is not Spain, or at least not in Bray, Co Wicklow.

Ramón y Cajal

Good–though weird–to see pioneering neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal coming in 6th in Antena 3’s absurd Greatest Spaniard in History survey. He made his discoveries opposite the den of Barcelona’s guardians of legal memory, the College of Notaries on Notariado/Notariat, who were kind enough not to try to have the competition outlawed.

Therapy for grumpy one-eyed monsters

You could try Clínica Cyclops in Barcelona: They also have a tree surgery unit: Update from Dave: a Scottish tree without eyes or mouth that nevertheless eats bicycles.

Is cow an everyday term?

Someone said to me the other day that oh, of course, Catalan is nothing more than the language of the bureaucracy. That may be so, but it would be nice to have some numbers to back it up. Someone has had a very basic go at comparing register ghits for Welsh and English. (Via datblogu)

James Joyce: the Spanish years

Sorry. [ Alberto Lázaro has researched the effects of Francoist censorship on a number English-speaking authors, and there’s a good piece by him on Joyce here. He recounts Joyce’s trials elsewhere and then quotes testimony from the novelist Gonzalo Torrente Ballester and the translator Joaquím Mallafré as to the impediments placed in the way of…

Bird

I’m still not very good at birds, so, until I can do a vulture like this, here on the edge of some scree is a species unique to Iberia: it looks like a sparrow, has a call like a chaffinch, and the English name is spaffinch. Behind me to the right, under a small group…
I'm still not very good at birds, so, until I can do a vulture like this, here on the edge of some scree is a species unique to Iberia: it looks like a sparrow, has a call like a chaffinch, and the English name is spaffinch. Behind me to the right, under a small group of natural chimneys, you may not be able to see a trio of dopey goats.

Lola Flores takes English lessons

Anecdotal, from some film or other: Teacher: Agua, guoter. Lola: Agua, guoter. Y esto de guoter, ¿cómo se escribe? Teacher: W-A-T-E-R, váter. Lola: ¡Qué guarrada!, ¿cómo pueden bebérsela?

Singular and parochial

Whether you like it or not, the best Catalan writers write in Spanish and, with few exceptions, have done so for the last 500 years. Excluding them from the Frankfurt Book Fair’s celebration of Catalan culture (unless they pay their tickets and shut up) is like leaving Kafka out of a celebration of Czech writing,…