Shipping news

Public auctions of wrecks in Barcelona, Pontevedra and Algeciras, with thoughts on how to reduce blogging competition.

Old Congolese joke

I’ve been translating quite a lot of elderly Flemish over the past few months. Here’s an excerpt from some manuscript memoirs found in the municipal archives of Ditverstaanzetochniet: An ivory trader on the Congo River has been suffering severe depression as a result of harrassment by an inquisitive steamboat captain speaking defective French. He decides…

Fishing talk

A new study, Fish intake during pregnancy in relation to offspring’s early cognitive development, shows that women who ate fish regularly during pregnancy had children with better language and communication skills by the age of 18 months. Interesting, then, that fishermen seem to be such silent ghits: communicative fisherman 0 uncommunicative fisherman 0 talkative fisherman…