If the sentence “Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever” does actually mean a cessation of drug dealing, beatings and other criminal activity, then the IRA have scored today’s big news. However there are still plenty of bad people in the world. Pedalling along this afternoon, on my way to see hear fellow-biker…
Of course it is the fault of those damn Muslims: The Marchenero is one of the oldest pouter breeds, and it is a breed that was developed in Spain in a period of time covering almost on thousand years. In order to understand the beginnings or ancient history, a brief history lesson is in order.…
Two old people were arguing this afternoon under the memorial to Joan Amades on Calle Carmen in the Raval about whether the pigeons should be fed. The argument proceeded along roughly the same lines as in the 1950s Parisian skirmish recorded in Juan Goytisolo‘s Señas de identidad (1966), in which the old man is determined…
This cemetery photo was taken near the beginning of an as yet undocumented walk which culminates in a bath in a 30m waterfall. It’s interesting because the flying beast rather resembles a dragon in dove’s clothing. Offhand I can’t think of any dove dragon myths, but there are plenty of references to pigeons and dragons…
In the Middle Ages anyone of any commercial talent (and his/her mum) had visions and stored some human bones in the new toilet chapel extension of the pig shed nave of the temple next to that handy spring holy source on the hillside. Here, extracted by moderately cunning device from Amazon, is the relevant part of the ToC of Eileen Gardiner’s (not completely exhaustive) Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook: