Dido and Hengist are remembered as early heroes of isoperimetry for having solved the challenge of maximising the area of a land grant made to them by stringing together strips of oxhide and using the resulting closed superthong to trace, respectively, a semi-circle at Carthage and a full circle at Kaercorrei. What was news to…
This has been on the back burner for a while, but, following the fine example of Untergunther, it is hoped that work will soon be resumed on recladding all those farmhouses whose profitable stripped-stone effect is unauthentic and causes them to fall down sooner. Sheep-dyeing (thanks MM) is not done, although if they have just…
Over Santa Coloma way, taking in Puig Castellar, which I’ve been doing informally for a while. Here are some photos: This is looking back over the river towards the bits of Barcelona no one visits. Badalona FECSA Badalona FECSA and Ryanair Barcelona There are other attractions, but the best bit about it for me are…
Mal aparcado posts photos of absurd and illegal parking. There are often so many cars and scooters parked on the pavements in Barcelona that the only place left to walk is the road. Barcelona shots include a nice one of three Mosso-mobiles illegally parked nose-to-tail to go snacking in a bar. Anecdote: The other day…
I’ve spent the past half hour helping a milliner source sinamay, the principal material used in the confection of hats. It is made using small quantities of silk and the fibres of the abacá, a species of banana from the Philippines. Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga (Estadismo de las Islas Filipinas, researched 1803-5) writes that the…
It’s bad enough that Vilafranca’s tourism department’s favourite translator doesn’t know his/her English from his/her elbow. Not being able to spell the name of this glorious town is surely a hanging offence.
From George Ticknor‘s superb History of Spanish literature … a Gothic remnant fled from the Moors into the Alpine Asturias, carrying with them race, name, creed, language, and country—scotched but not killed. In that rocky school, and amid storms and war, the infant Spanish language—eldest child and heir to the Latin—was slowly brought up; seven…
This afternoon I have been booked to appear as the Bishop of Myra. This is one of the songs I will not be singing, zoophilia being out of fashion in Barcelona’s Dutch community (but for how long?): Sinterklaas kapoentje, geef de kat een zoentje, geef de kat een likkie, trek hem aan z’n pikkie.
Bizet (2006), by Jaume Plensa (Barcelona, 1955), which went for around €12K + 20% government commission at Brok the other day: Hypotheses: Mr Plensa, a covert musicologist, has discovered extraordinary connections between Hector Berlioz, master of the grand and the imperial, and author of the works listed, and Georges Bizet, who dabbled in local colour…
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