We've just arrived back from the UK, took the train from Huddersfield at 5:32 this morning and arrived at Stansted at 9:55 for the 11:30 flight. So much more relaxing than driving down (as long as the trains all work). We went to WOMAD in Wiltshire and had a fine time. It was such a contrast to last year's Somme like mudfest. The weather was glorious and there was no mud, none, zero, we could sit where we liked when we liked and we didn't have to watch small children screaming for their mummy becuase their wellies had been swallowed up. WOMAD attracts a certain type, it seems, they read the Guardian, liberal with both big and small l, they call their children Demelda, Grizelda, Cain and suchlike and some of them consider good parenting making sure their kids can roll a proper joint. We learnt all this from the comfort of our tent, because our neighbours easily demonstrated why they are called the chattering classes. They do go on, and on and on. It didn't help that 99% of the accents we heard would have made a BBC announcer feel plebean.

Still, that's a minor quibble. The festival itself was great. One of the things I like about it is that you can discover so much new and excellent stuff. So; the highlights then. Well for me, the best band we saw was a French group called La Còr de la Plane who sang in Occitan. There were seven of them, five with tambourines (both with and without metal bits) and they got everyone up and dancing using nothing more than their voices, their drums and some clapping. Another French band was Babylon Circus who opened on the main stage on Saturday and had the place jumping with their Madness/Mano Negra/ska/balkan/punk stuff. Both Liz and I tended to head for the European acts, Paprika Balkanikus (a foursome who played gypsy music from Hungary down to Serbia) were excellent. Even the Austrian yodelling provided by Hotel Palindrome was a chirpy piece of entertainment.

The one band I had wanted to see, Son de la Frontera, didn't disappoint. They closed the festival and we got to the front (which at womad, involves turning up maybe 10 or 15 minutes before they start) so we could see their feet. Very important for flamenco. They were terrific, just two guitarist and three others who provided the clapping singing and dancing. The main dancer was fantastic, we had had a taster workshop on flamenco dancing the day before so we could have at least a tiny appreciation of how bloody hard it is. The only downside was that Pablo, the master dancer, unfortunately looked exacly like Henry Winkler... not HW as the Fonz in Happy Days, but how he is now (or was maybe ten years ago) and as soon as I mentioned that to Liz she started giggling. Still, it was a fine end to the proceedings.  ¶ 6:17 PM 1 comments

  On my way to work in the mornings I pass a chap handing out a free paper called 20 Minutos, it's a good little rag, short articles which help with the Spanish and a few bits and pieces of what's on. We saw that this weekend the interceltic festival¹ was starting in Avilés² . We'd driven past Avilés before. It's an industrial town and port, still full of heavy industry and the remains of heavy industry. We hadn't been to the centre though, and the draw of live music meant we thought it was worth a trip. We'll have to go back, because the centre of the city is charming. Its historic centre is much more extensive than Oviedo's, small streets and restaurants that were packed, lots of old squares and churches. We found where the concert was and wandered into a little place round the corner for a wine and tapa which, when it came was a mini fried breakfast: fried quail's egg and a slice of chorizo on some soft home made crisps all mounted on a slice of bread. We followed that with some smoked anchovies with really good cheese.

Then on to the music. The festival lasts all week, and features musicians from all over the celtic fringe³. Tonight was Scottish, kicking off with Fred Morrison, who was introduced as 'possibly the best piper in the world'. They weren't kidding, he was phenomenal. He looked like James May's dumpier brother (he of Top Gear), and played a couple of different pipes, both Irish and Scottish. But blimey he could pipe... it was like watching Jimi Hendrix do new and interesting things to the electric guitar, or that scene from Bird where Charlie Parker brings the rest of the band to a standstill. He was accompanied by a guitarist who looked all of sixteen, who occasionally looked a little desperate as Fred would pick up the pace of some fiendish stompy reel and smile and laugh as he played faster and faster. Mr Guitar kept up though, and provided some fine rhythm. I've seen some tunes knocked out with the inside of mammals but this guy really blew the guts out of it.

After that the stage was invaded by the Red Hot Chili Pipers. Three pipers (ex army from the look of them), a guitarist, drummer, pianist and two additional drummers (one being a two time world champion snare drummer). They were a party band (I imagine they go down a storm at just about any festival, celtic or not), lots of mixtures of rock tropes and pipes, pipe battles, pipe v guitar, drum battles, coldplay (shudder) songs, Hills of Argyll where they were joined on stage by a massed band of pipers also over for the festival. Great fun. If you ever get the chance, they're worth seeing. We nipped away just in time to catch the 2am bus back to Oviedo, the buses run through the night in summer so the Ovetense can enjoy the bright lights of the coastal cities.


¹The first c in celtica, the Spanish version of celtic, is an 's' which really puts me on the wrong foot... 'seltic' are the football team, we're Celts, with a hard C, oh yes... I was Irish today
²pronounced abbey-less rather than a-viles or ahveelez
³which is not the haircut Big Country used to sport  ¶ 4:38 PM 0 comments

  We got off the bus and started looking for the place. I walked past it at first, an unmarked wooden door, followed by a little ceramic sign: Sidreria Gervasio.

I had got a text message from Ana, the mountain group's secretary, inviting us to a meal to mark the mid year break in the group's activities. The espicha is the name of the tap used to pour sidra directly from the barrels in the cider houses where they make the stuff. In the past, the owner of a cider house would invite his neighbours to try a new barrel of cider, and he'd provide food so that they wouldn't just be drinking. Nowadays the word espicha seems to be more 'food with cider' than the testing of a new barrel.

We wandered into the place, it was a restaurant behind the wooden door but I couldn't see any of the group amongst the diners. The waiter asked if we were part of a group and when we said the magic words (Grupo Naranco) he directed us to some doors at the back. The group were in a big room, high on the walls there were old empty barrels but we were drinking bottled cider. Young waiters waited by a small table in the middle of the room, and when someone said 'culín' or 'culete' to them, they poured a sidra, using mostly good technique, one arm held high, almost at full extension, with the bottle, the other arm holding the glass at mid-thigh level.

Liz hadn't met any of the group before so they were all really happy to meet her, and of course I was rubbish at remembering everyone's names (it's even harder than remembering English names) but no pasa nada, no one minded and we dived in, chatting away. Two big tables were laid, and eventually, on some signal I didn't see, people started sitting down. The food with an espicha is not complicated. You never need to use a knife, it's all small pieces. You use a piece of bread to manage the food onto your fork and so each dish is perpetually accompanied by bread (as soon as it runs out there are shouts requesting more... it's essential). Throughout the meal the waiters, between bringing food, kept a weather eye out for people needing cider. The food arrived in bits, on small plates and we just chatted and munched and drank for the next few hours.

Among the food: Bonito escabeche. Bonito is pale, delicate tuna, from the north sea, it's a small fish and tastes wonderful. A couple of different sliced hams. Empanaditas, croquetes. Tiny pasties and cheesy hammy croquettes. Boquerones: Whole anchovies fried in batter. Merluza: Pieces of hake in batter. Chorizo in cider. Thick warm slices of boiled gammon. A couple of cheeses and then some tiny desserts.

Throughout the dinner we were treated to commentary about the food, about the different names, differing opinions of where to get the best cheeses or the subtle differences between one town and another. And every so often someone would make sure we were enjoying it. And we were.

We rounded off the meal with an oruxo (a grappa like spirit) and spent a while saying 'see you in September'. Then Enrique and his wife very kindly gave us a lift home as it had started raining.
  ¶ 9:51 AM 1 comments

  Bulls can slip really easily on cobbled streets.

You really don't want to be anywhere near a bull when it slips.

You really don't want to be anywhere near a bull trying to get back on its feet.

Some people have friends, others have people who throw them in the path of oncoming bulls to distract them.

You get live coverage of the running of the bulls on three channels

You get in depth analysis by an Alan Hansenalike wearing a red kerchief.

The in depth analysis usually is critical of the people who slip/fall/are pushed/get gored/are carried by the bull's horns.

Bulls seem not to like the whole thing.

These people are crazy.
  ¶ 11:35 AM 0 comments

  One of the nice things about the walking group is that you have the chance to chat to very different people. We did a coastal walk a couple of weeks ago, the last one until the middle of September... it's too hot in summer apparently (no photos because, despite the rest of Spain sweltering, we had a day of orbayu, the clinging 'heavy mist' that requires an umbrella rather than waterproofs), it was the 21st annual walk organized by the Peña Furada group. We were supposed to have a nice lunch of preñao, the bread, baked with a chorizo inside, at a tranquil beach called Frexulfe. Due to the weather we ended up in a sports hall in a nearby town, but there was a band of pipers and drummers (and tambourine players) so it was entertaining.

Most people assume I'm from London when they hear I'm English, or Dublin if they hear I'm Irish (hey, what can I say, I can choose, I've got both passports). I don't think anyone I've met so far has been to the North of England (and why would they, if England is London to most people, thanks to the tourist board, a couple of days there and you'd probably start thinking you couldn't afford to visit anywhere else).

As we were walking I chatted with a woman from the Basque country, and it turns out she loved English pubs and beer, we had a long chat about the different drinking cultures here and there and what made British pubs different. She's of the opinion that all of the Spanish bars are the same, all modern and they have no soul whereas a decent pub in the UK is full of character and warmth. We didn't get onto the Irish pub in a box or the chains or the vomit strewn city centres... I didn't want to dent her enjoyment.

Later I was walking with a Cuban chap, camp enough to be Cuba's Julian Clary, and he was complaining (in a lighthearted way) about the weather, then he said, 'When I went to Mexico, Hurricanes, in Cuba there's Fidel, here there's this rain, I can't go anywhere.'

Half the group decided to not bother with the second half of the walk, after lunch, but I was one of the plucky few ('call this rain?' I said, 'it's not proper rain unless it's horizontal'). One companion on the second half (which had stunning beaches, and great coastal scenery) stopped to use the public portaloos at the beach at Frexulfe. On exiting he began chatting about how clean the public loos were in London. I couldn't contradict him, but I did keep saying 'en serio?' with increasing incredulity.  ¶ 5:56 PM 0 comments

  I was behind an old chap in the supermarket checkout queue in my local supermarket (El Arbol). I noticed he just had three identical bottles of wine. This in itself is not unusual, it was 2pm and folk were heading home for lunch. Then I noticed the till said €3.60. At first I thought that the checkout person had made a mistake but she hadn't. Three bottles of wine for pennies (almost). It was young wine (joven), as opposed to the aged stuff (crianza) and probably tasted like ribena but it reminded me of how different the wine market is here.

In the UK I was used to a wine section in the supermarket being a mini world tour (with the exception of Asia) but here I haven't seen a single bottle of non-Spanish wine for sale. Oh wait, yes I have, a half bottle of Moet Chandon in a bar. When I asked a couple of my students about this they looked at me as though they didn't understand the question. Why would we want to drink wine from anywhere else? They said, Spanish wine's the best in the world. I kept my counsel, and didn't ask how they knew, if they never drank anything but Spanish wine. My Dad said, on his recent visit, that he hadn't had a bad wine while he was here, and this was with a slight note of surprise (not that surprising really, the difference between a Rioja on sale in the UK and what they drink here is marked). Even the first glass (white, in the Airport cafe, costing less than €1.50) was more than acceptable.

The other thing is the price. Wine here is cheap. Not that the wine tastes cheap, no. You struggle to pay more than €5 a bottle in the supermarket and the bars where they do wine rather than beer, even the expensive wines are €2 a glass, and that's often with nibbles. It's a fine sight to see in a bar, lunchtime or evening, blokes who, in England, would be on pints, sitting at the bar sipping a glass of something red and picking at a tiny dish of octopus.
  ¶ 3:55 PM 0 comments

  When I used to watch Star Trek, one of the things I really wanted was one of those nifty tablets that the short skirted PA used to hand to Kirk. I used to use my Etch-a-Sketch to pretend but it wasn't the same. Then when the Next Generation came along the tablets had gotten sleeker and I still wanted one.

Having read books on my Palm for the last four years I can confirm that the small screen and the back lighting make it a tiring experience, and the fact that I didn't have to lug a ton of books around was the only thing that made it worthwhile.

So I've been following the e-book reader market with some interest. I like the look of the Sony e-reader but it's not available, I like the iliad but it's a fortune, I'm not so keen on the Amazon Kindle, largely because it does too much, I don't need phoned updates and I don't want to subscribe to things. I just want to read books.

At last... the Bookeen Cybook gen3, which I stumbled across when I was doing almost random ebook searches. It reads mobipocket files (one of the palm formats I already used) it reads html and text files (and pdf files if they're more text than images). It weighs less than a 400 page paperback and the screen... oh my. E-ink is just lovely. This photo shows you the cybook on top of a page of photocopied text. The screen is legible, no backlighting so no flicker, no juice needed except to turn the pages (they claim up to 8000 page turns per charge).

It's not perfect, finding your book is slow if you have lots on your card, but the reading experience is a joy. The screen appears solid, just like paper, just with a slightly lower contrast ratio (more like financial times than a glossy fashion mag).

It's like being in the future, bring on the flying cars.  ¶ 5:53 PM 2 comments

  and that's no bad thing. I've had my parents visiting for the week, and we had a fine time, once the weather cleared up. I think it whetted their appetite for Asturias.

It did mean we ate out a lot more than I usually do, which gave us the chance to try a few new places and to return to a few old ones.
  ¶ 7:13 PM 1 comments