The weathermen are looking a lot more relaxed these days. They don't have as much to do, just point at the little sun icons and smile and say 'hace calor'. In the last two weeks the weather map has gone from 'covered in clouds and maximum of 20C in the south, 15C in the interior and the north' to 'maybe a little shower in Galicia, sun everywhere else and temperatures from 25C (here in the chilly north) to 35C in Andalucia'.

It's like someone threw the switch marked 'summer'. The cafes have each sprouted a couple more tables outside, the men seem to be wearing pink and orange a bit more, the girls are all in halter tops and the streets are much more crowded than before. People have even stopped carrying umbrellas. On the big satellite overview of Europe you can see all the cloud heading north of Spain (smack bang into the British Isles) as the jetstream does it's annual migration. So barring thunderstorms and the odd bad day, I reckon the weathermen will be on short hours, kicking back with a cold beer on the roof of the Spanish equivalent of the Met Office building and watching Fast Show reruns (Scorchio, scorchio).
  ¶ 5:23 PM 0 comments

  Sunday was another walk, this time it was a Federation day. It was the day of Saint Bernard de Menthón, who's the patron saint of Mountaineers (I gather). The walk was planned by the federation of Asturian mountain groups, and was attended by a few hundred people. We arrived at a tent in some fog, twenty Km south of Oviedo, in the area called Morcín. There we collected some food (they provided a preñao (a roll stuffed with a chorizo) an apple, some water and desert cheese (a plastic dish filled with sweetened cream cheese). Then we stood around chatting for an hour while more people arrived. At last someone (Ignacio, I think, our group's president) said vamos and we vamossed.

The mountain is called Monsacro, literally sacred mountain, and is a Lakeland sized chunk of limestone, it's on the edge of the mountain range and is dramatically isolated. It was a steep ascent up to a pass in the middle of the mountain, and it was an impressive sight, a few hundred walkers snaking up and down, slowly ascending a 60 degree slope with many cries of 'they never said it was hard' and 'blimey that's steep'. At the top we got a cracking view to the north, from the industrial chimneys of Soto de Ribera and Oviedo itself with the cathedral and the palacio del congressos clearly visible, to the far north and the sea. It wasn't a completely clear day but it was clear enough to know that, on a good day, you would have unforgettable views.

After the summit we headed down to a high meadow, where there were a couple of capillas (chapels). These chapels were important to the Asturians because, when the Moors threatened, the two sacred relics which had arrived in 808 from Jerusalem via Toledo (in actual fact, two crosses, La Victoria and Los Angeles, one of which appears on the Asturian flag), were taken to safety from Oviedo to these chapels, or the sites that these chapels would later take. There they were looked after for 80 years until the guards got bored and took them back to Oviedo to find that while they were gone no one had done the washing up and the place had gone to pot.

So in the field, the devout went off to have a mass and bless the crosses, the less than devout stood around keeping an eye on the weather and drinking sidra, for in the field, in the middle of nowhere, the organisers had converted a stone barn into a bar. Which was nice of them.

After the mass we all trundled off down into Santolaya, a town to the north of the mountain. Trundled is perhaps the wrong word. Delicately picked our way down wet limestone on a steep narrow zig zag path, is a better way of putting it, although when we hit the road at at the end of the path we definitely trundled, and picked almost ripe cherries from roadside trees. At the bottom, in the town, they had a big barbeque set up so there was a little more sidra, some meat and then some music.

John, they said, you're the newest member of the group, that means you have to get up and dance. Tell me when, I said, although I'm warning you, I can't dance. What's this playing now, I asked. They looked at me like you would a child, that's the paso doble, they said, as though I should know. Eventually they took pity on me and Sabi, the woman who sorts out the photos on the web site, said, you have to learn some time, and showed me how to paso doble (well, actually she laughed a lot while I demonstrated two left feet) while a dozen of the others moved around with the skill that comes from many years experience. Then the music changed to a cumbia and I was very much out of my depth.  ¶ 6:44 PM 2 comments

  It's getting to the end of the academic year and it seems like there are more foreign students on the streets. Maybe it's just that they're venturing out now the rain has stopped. One of the places I get on t'web is Cafe Oriental. It's got reasonably fast wifi, it's big enough so you can loose yourself in the back with a small beer and the staff are friendly. As such it's a popular hangout for the foreign students. These seem to be in two main groups, the Germans and the Americans. The German students were in the other night with painted faces looking all expectant and then really unhappy as the football played out in front of them. It was unusual to notice the Germans because usually they're drowned out by the Americans.

I like Americans (with some noteable exceptions... Baaaahhhhb for one). They're usually unfailingly polite, friendly and open (too open sometimes). But there's one thing that I don't like and that's the way their voices seem to have an extra piercing quality. The Spanish can be loud, ear splitting sometimes, but the American students seem to posess some chalk on a blackboard tone to their voices which, even though they're not shouting, means you can't help but hear how they're progressing with their studies, what they think of Spain, how there's no decent food here (!!!) and how it's not like home (duh). I don't want this information, I don't want to know, I don't care, but I can't help but hear it. It irritates me, it feels like they're being boastful, proud and culturally riding roughshod over the rest of us... I don't believe that but it's what their voices do to me. I want to go over and tell them to shut up, to at least be a little quieter, to calm down. I won't though, for a start they'd look at me blankly and give each other WTF looks because most of what I'm feeling is in my head. Secondly I won't because, well, I'm English and we don't do that sort of thing.  ¶ 9:39 AM 0 comments

  I went to the Hotel Santa Cruz to reserve a room for my folks and the receptionist (owner I guess) started speaking in German, when that met with a blank stare she asked if I was English. Then she said I had a German face, which I didn't really mind... I'm not sure what it means. The only German I know is Hans in the walking group and he looks like an emaciated Alan Rickman (also he's been here since 1991 so he's practically Asturian).

Then she was very clear about how closed the English were. We got to the point where I realised the best translation was reserved, rather than cold, closed, dificult or any of the other Spanish words she used. I agreed with her and said that, for example, an English person would never touch your arm while conversing (two strangers that is). Whereas here, any time someone says oye (listen), mira (look), hombre (mate) they tend to touch you to reinforce that they're talking to you. If I were sticking to my culturally assigned role we'd end up with them chasing me round the room as I reestablished my personal space and they re-re-established a perfectly normal conversation.

I'm used to it now, but I never do it, I don't think I can. I can practice all of the little conversational tics to replace 'erm' and 'uh' but I don't see that I'll ever reach out to someone and tap them on the arm as I say 'well mate...'  ¶ 9:38 AM 0 comments

  I had some free time so I went to the flicks, not knowing what was on. I've seen the posters for El Incidente all over town last week so I picked that one. It's another M Night Shyalaman affair. And it's utterly daft. It starts in central park in New York and for some reason all the people in the park kill themselves. Not a drink-the-kool-aid kind of kill themselves but more a wooooo spoooky, look, they all stop walking and then they find gruesome ways to end it all. Okay, it's an interesting start despite the flakey stop still, take two steps backwards pre suicide dance.

The first half of the film is like a live action itchy and scratchy cartoon only with suicides. The remainder is pokey fake science, led by Mark Walberg's science teacher. He figures out what's going on by erm, thinking reeeealllly hard, even though his mantra earlier on was observation, hypothesis, experiment, observation... which would have led to some fun scenes of him sending hapless bystanders into danger until he figured out why they died. Instead it came to him in a flash of inspiration and he and his rapidly dwindling band of survivors were saved.

It was an airborne thing, which for some reason is accompanied by a dangerous breeze... oooohhh so you can see it coming and run away (like the laughable ultra-cold in The Day After Tomorrow). Still, that wasn't the worst thing about it. Even the ending wasn't the worst thing, although it was pretty damn bad, the Incident just stops and the reason it happened is explained by a TV scientist a few months later as 'one of those things in nature that we can't explain' WHAT! You couldn't even come up with a better explanation than that? Don't bother making the damn film until you can. That's what writers are for. That's as bad as, it's all a dream.

The worst thing was the boom mic. Maybe I missed something in the dialogue, but in half the scenes the boom mic was hovering around clearly in view. At first I thought it was going to be some clever meta-film or something deliberate because, well it's Mr shamalamadingdong and he does that sort of thing. Then as we got closer to the end I realised it was just plain rubbish film making. I wouldn't be surprised to see in the credits Boom Operator (deceased) it was terrible. And who watched the dailies? Because they didn't see it and it was soooooo obvious. It was even obvious to the ten teenagers who rather than watch the film, just talked all the way through it very loudly (that was the other thing I really didn't like but I can't blame MNS for that... or maybe I can, because if he had made a halfway gripping film they might have shut up).

By now I'll have downloaded the Mark Kermode podcast from radio 5 and I'm hoping for some quality Kermodian rantage. If you haven't hear'd any of his rants, the best are still available on the bbc website, and well worth listening to.  ¶ 9:33 AM 1 comments

 
When I started working I thought I'd have to spend a day in some queue waiting to get a social security number. I was wrong. The accountant at the Brooklyn school (the place where I have a contract, as opposed to the places where I work without a contract) took my address and passport number (English or Irish I thought... I went with Irish just for fun). A week later I got a letter from the social security people with my new number and directions to go to the nearest medical centre and register. Oh boy, I thought, that's where the queue will be. I was wrong again, I've just got back from the medical centre, it's round the corner. The receptionist took my letter and my passport, typed on her computer for a while and then handed me back the letter with a new sticker on it. 'That's your doctor,' She said, 'This is the phone number. That's it.' Yesterday my medical card arrived, no fuss, no messing about, no pointless queuing. I also have a library card, and that took none of the two proofs of address that seem to plague libraries in the UK. That's probably because they posted it to me. Now, isn't that a good way to prove your address.

So I apologise unreservedly to all Spaniards for thinking I would be lost in the bowels of beurocracy.  ¶ 9:00 AM 1 comments

  My usual choice of haircutting establishment is a barbers, I used Katie's Kutz in Stainland for a while until I tried the barber's in Greetland. They were both okay but in my hair cutting history there have been two standouts, Vic's in Liverpool, where I had my first decent flat top. He was an old feller who was the first to use a cutthroat razor on my neck (previously, as a callow yoot, my hair had been trimmed by family friends or the Formby unisex salon). Vic (the bic, although he never used a bic) was a rockabilly haven and it set the standard for the next fifteen years of hairstyle (I'd say hairstyles but lets be honest, I only had one). The second was the Jan's Polish barbers in Leeds, Michael began cutting my hair there in 1988 and gave me my last cut some time around 1999. Consistency is desirable.

I've had some less than great experiences: Vic's assistant once gave me an un-nameable horror when he was ill, Ged's in Headingley where Ged used to rest his massive gut on your shoulders (although you did get sherry and cigars at christmas).

I was getting a bit scraggly so I've been keeping an eye out for a barbers as I've been wandering. A couple looked promising but were closed each time I passed by. Today I went to Los Prados (The local mall, multiplex and stuff... they have free wifi too) to do a little shopping, and I passed a hairdressers, not a barbers, but the sign in the window said Cut/Wash/Dry €9.99 and I had time so...

It was huge, well it looked huge but in fact every wall was floor to ceiling mirrors. The staff probably have bruises from the times they get confused and smack into the walls. So I had a cut, a wash (I think that was actually the first time in 20 years I had my hair washed by someone) and... fine, the cut's fine, she used gel so my hair's all stiff now, but it really felt a little unsatisfying, she was quite tentative with the clippers, like she hadn't used them much and she was all but silent.

When we were in BA I ended up going to a barber just around the corner from one of the schools I taught in, we had a dialogue, he remembered me, he remembered what we chatted about (mostly I seem to remember him saying 'aren't Argentine girls wonderful'. This is an essential part of the deal. This is what I want in a barbers, faded posters and cardboard comb holders and old hands that use clippers like they were born with them. And mostly that means a male environment, someone who can turn out fifty OAP specials a day, someone who doesn't care if the mound of hair under the chair is deep enough to lose children in. A place where, if there's music, it's the local radio station on a mono cassette recorder with a broken eject mechanism.

I'll keep looking.
  ¶ 3:19 PM 0 comments

  I've been good. I've been limiting the amount of English I use in a day (with the exception of work). That means not too much Radio 4 and, not much in the way of English books (even though I've got a few hundred on my Palm) and I've restricted my TV piracy to Dr Who and nothing else (Arrrrr, pieces of eight and all that). I love to read though, which is a great impetus to keep working at the Spanish. At the moment I'm reading a crime thriller called La Reina sin espejo (literally the queen without mirror, although I suspect it means something slightly different). I'll read a page or two, and underline any words or phrases I don't get, then go back and reread it and try and work it out from the context. Sometimes that works, other times it doesn't which is when I use the dictionary. All the words I've had to work out I make a note of in a little notebook and every day I review that list and test myself (okay, I say every day but I'm not puritanical about it, I have days off). The only problem is that the book opens with an autopsy scene and I'm not sure I'm going to need to say sierra circular (circular saw), lóbrego (gloomy) and lúgubre (dismal) or la puñalada (the stab wound) too much, but in every page there have been at least a dozen new words, or new meanings for old words. My favourite so far is profano as an adjective meaning layperson or ignorant.

The other attraction of this approach is that any form of Spanish is fair game, radio 5 (all news), Los Simpsons, Futurama, trash TV and chat shows. I quite like buying translations of comics (The Authority is a current favourite, it was created by a British writer called Warren Ellis and the last ones I read were the adventures of Kev, an ex paratrooper who swears a lot and takes on some very neatly written superheroes (including a different version of Batman and Superman who are a gay couple, which, well, was unexpected to say the least)).

I still have some way to go, because I was watching a gameshow called pasapalabra (pass the word) in which the host speaks with the pace of a racing commentator on the final furlong and I couldn't follow him at all. It sounded like blablabienblablablablablapreparadoblablablabla. Understanding that is my goal, then I can move on to understanding Andalucians, who apparently have an accent as impenetrable as Glaswegians.
  ¶ 6:07 PM 0 comments

  It's been a very wet month here. In Cantabria there are floods and the news has had plenty of pictures of kids being rescued in inflatable boats. People have said that it's been a strange Spring. No rain between Christmas and Easter and then nothing but. It made the walk we did on Sunday less than spectacular. The plan was to go to Fuente De, where there's a cable car. There's not much else, Fuente De is really a meadow below an 800m wall of limestone, it's fantastically impressive and it's dotted with the odd old mine entrance. In summer, apparently, it's usually packed. Last Sunday, less so. We could see the rock, and at the top it was obvious that there was a fair bit of cloud. Once we left the upper cable car station we were in cloud for the next two hours, with people saying that there should be unforgettable views. Instead we formed a long line of umbrella carriers. The type of rain that seems so common here is the 'heavy mist' they call orbayu. That's not a Spanish word, it's Asturian (and often orbayu means that the cloud and rain will stop above 1500m so you should set out anyway and hope for the best), and the Asturian word for their own language: bable (pronounced bab-ley). So when I ask what they call this or that I often get Spanish, Bable, Galician and Catalan translations... figuring out which one you have to remember is a challenge.

When we finished the walk (in a bar, see, I like this walking group) a few of us ate our butties outside on an old dark wood chair in the porch of the bar. The chair raised some comments because it was like a church pew but with a table that swung down from above the seat back like an ancient version of a fairground ride safety bar. People said they hadn't seen one since their grandparents had one (and bear in mind lots of these folk are in their sixties). Unfortunately, the barrage of different names for it means I can't remember any of them.
  ¶ 9:19 AM 0 comments

  They say that for all his faults, at least Mussolini made the trains run on time. Mind you they also say he was a complete loon. One day I must find out who 'they' are, and if there's an open slot for membership. Milan central station is big enough to satisfy the massive ego of Il Duce, it's all roman columns and imposing stonework, and is just huge. All it needs is a balcony above the main entrance and you can imagine the dictator of your choice standing and waving/saluting and watching his military parade in front.

Still, for all their efficiencies our train from Milan to Padova ran 20 minutes late. But that's not what I want to say. I want to say thanks to the italians, who, unlike the Dutch or the Swiss with their to-the-second precision, have this very efficient system and have managed to make it just a little bit chaotic.

If you've ever caught a train in italy, you'll know this, and if not, well... it's not enough to buy a ticket. You have to validate it as well. On the platforms there are little yellow boxes that stamp a timecode onto your ticket. I'm really not sure what this adds to the ticket, in terms of validity, but it's essential. The first time I travelled by train in Italy I didn't know this and was subjected to a withering torrent of italian when the guard had to (the horror) write on my ticket. Other times I've been reduced to a mad dash to find a validation machine that worked, along with dozens of other desperate commuters, running from platform to platform only to be denied by an 'out of service' label.

This time I bought my ticket from Padova to Milan using one of the automated ticket booths. It printed off two cards, my ticket and my receipt. I splashed out for the first class, it was an extra €7 and why not, when it's that reasonable. I validated my ticket well in advance (I wonder how far in advance is too far) and used the handy train guide to find the position on the platform that would be closest to my compartment (something else we could use in the UK). The train arrived and I joined the others in a comfy six place compartment and we rolled out of Padova. Then the conductor arrived, I gave him my ticket. He asked for the rest of it. He must mean the receipt, I thought, weird. He took the receipt off me and studied it for a while. Then he sighed and told me (I assume) that I should have validated it and there'd be a fine. I stammered a few words of Spanish and he gave another huge sigh. Then he took out his pen and signed and dated the card.

So: any Italian experts (and I'm looking at you here Liz... ask your driver fellow)... why do they do this? Any other rail travellers... do they do this anywhere else?
  ¶ 4:56 PM 2 comments