Can I coup my horse here?

PP senator Carlos Benet has said that Pavía entered Congress on a horse (during the 1874 coup), Tejero with a pistol (this is the 1981 coup that failed), while Zapatero arrived by suburban train (the reference is to the Al Qaeda train bombs before the elections two years ago). I don’t think Pavía actually went…

Happiness…

… is an extremely drunken Russian musician careering down a street mounted cowboy style on a wheeled drafting plotter. Fortunately no one was killed.

John Triggs

It says here: He was left for dead along a lonely New Mexico road, and another time he broke an elbow. But little things like that didn’t stop John Triggs, 54, from completing his 13-month, 17,300-mile bicycle odyssey over the backroads of the connected 48 states, Canada and Mexico. Just had a glass of wine…

Christmas dinner in church

I know where I should be grazing this Christmas, thanks to the Archbishop of York: We are so lucky in this country to have churches that are nearer our homes than most supermarkets. I encourage you to take advantage of that this Christmas. Unfortunately there’s no way he can be referring to the Queen’s churches,…

Bus

Here are photos of the Wiebe bus. Can I have this side, please? (Here‘s the Stroadlfest brochure, for if you’re in Oldenzaal 31/12.)

Japanese recreate Sant Pol restaurant

I already knew that Sant Pau in Sant Pol de Mar (walk) was a damn fine restaurant (Carme Ruscalleda has just bagged her third Michelin star). What I didn’t know is that, since April Fool’s 2004, aeroplane-averse Japanese have been able to patronise a replica in Tokyo. I hereby offer to fix their English in…

So why shouldn’t I wet my appetite?

I know it’s banned in English, but it seems perfectly natural to me, just as natural as wetting one’s whistle: if it don’t rain it won’t grow, and the road to the kebab shop is awash with Blairite pub extensions. Gordonio, a medical treatise published in 1495, is against drinking between meals but recommends they…

Cycling on Spanish motorways

Des von Bladet links to the story of Anna and Ulf Ström, who have cycled all the way from sunny Sweden to snappy Spain and say that poor Spanish road-planning has sometimes forced them to cycle on motorways. Contractors are actually obliged to build service roads along at least one side of motorways if there…

The N340

The notoriously dangerous N340 highway takes survivors halfway round Spain. How come no one seems to have written a cultural history?

Spanish Galway

Someone has been trying recently & kindly to hammer into my thick skull the nature and depth of early Irish ties with Iberia. Here’s a bleeding chunk from a piece called The City of the Tribes: Italian Memories in an Irish Port in a recently cited James Joyce anthology (Occasional, Critical, and Political Writings): The…