Off the other evening to see Chelsea-Liverpool on a big screen in a village bar in another valley. Coming down from the pass on an old walled stone track, I turn a corner and there’s a flock of goats nibbling the hedges. In the middle of the path, the cloth-capped ruddy-faced goatherd in classic caganero…
“Basically, the old woodsy was fat and went running around in the woods with no shoes on. Someone decided that this was a bad message to send to kids.” This kind of stuff doesn’t bother the Asturian government, which has (mis)spent €6M on an unshod, fire-raising, drunken Yogi campaign featuring this astonishing piece of creativity.…
I’m not a big fan of his writing, but this is cool. Once somewhere similar I used to walk to work to burn off beer and pizza reserves and ended up going cross-country, cross ditch and thru hedge, to avoid car-bound colleagues who would stop and ask if I was OK.
‘Sídí Abú Yahya, who had been governor of Cordova, said of its people, “They are like the camel, which fails not to complain whether thou diminishest or increasest its load, so that there is no knowing what they like.”‘ (Gyangos, History of the Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain, quoted in Adolphus, Letters from Spain in 1856…
This autumn’s public walks feature barnyard comestibles as well as the customary tarantulas and bagpipes. Private requests are becoming increasingly obscure and bizarre, but I’m just fine, mum.