Okay, there's a question. I went to see The Dark Knight at Oviedo's IMAX screen, actually the smallest IMAX I've seen. I saw the film in the UK and wasn't as impressed as the hype led me to believe I should be. However, watching it in Spanish, I wasn't as annoyed by Batman's distorted voice as in English, and I enjoyed the spectacle of it all a little more. I did have a couple of niggles though.

Batman's riding his bike, no mudguards and cape flapping. There's a massive wheel just behind him. Isadora Duncan time surely?

Harvey, Two Face, Dent speaks very clearly for a man with no lips and no cheek on one side of his face. You try saying anything at all with a P or an M while holding your lips apart... and where's the constant leakage of saliva?

These are only issues because the rest of the film seems to have gone to such lengths to present a realistic world (albeit where there are caped crusaders and the like).

Oh and dancing? Well Isadora Duncan was a dancer, wore long silk scarves, in open top sports cars in the 20s. Silk scarf, spinning axle...

  ¶ 5:26 PM 1 comments

  We had planned to go on the Friday, but due to the rain we postponed it for a day and so on Saturday we poled up in the bus to Ariondas (gateway to the Picos) ready to do a descent of the river Sella by canoe. A few thousand other people had the same idea.

The descent of the Sella is a classic of Asturian tourism, it's also what they do for an international canoe race the first Saturday in August, when Ariondas becomes a bacchanalian nightmare (or a really good weekend out, depending on your tolerance for drunks).

It's also really easy, there's no white water, just a couple of slightly faster narrow stretches in the 16Km run. We set off amongst hundreds of others in similar plastic, non sinkable, practically indestructable brightly coloured canoes, our belongings in a white plastic tub at my feet.

It was really nice, not too hard, although after 10km we could feel it in the arms. There were plenty of places to stop for a picnic, and most of the Spaniards opted for a couple of them where enterprising folk had set up speakers (for summer Europop) and served cider. We, on the other hand stopped at the quieter stretches.

It was a good choice, to postpone from the Friday, becuase the weather on the Saturday was glorious. The steep limestone mountains gave us a nice landscape to look at and the antics of the less able canoeists gave us a laugh. We only had one issue, when, with my view blocked by Liz, I paddled us straight onto a rock in one of the faster sections, leaving us teetering. I had to get out and push.

Great fun, and available all year, they provide wetsuits in the winter though.  ¶ 6:28 PM 0 comments

  Like most of Southern Europe, Spain takes its holidays in August, and seriously. A lot of the shops are closed at the moment with signs in the windows saying 'closed for holidays, back on the 2nd of September' or some similar date. I can't imagine that happening too much in the UK, especially not in, say, the principal city of a county. Some of my students have said it's evidence of Spain's culture of laziness, or it's backwardness, but usually after we discuss things like holidays and lunch hours (or the lunch 19 minutes last time I looked) they end up not really wanting to head down the English route. When you calculate it properly, most Spaniards have similar annual holidays to the UK, 25 days or so, some more, some less, it's just that they take them all in August.

I like it, it says to me that there are more important things for these folk than working every day, that a month on the beach, in the country, with family or friends is essential.
  ¶ 6:50 PM 1 comments

  Before the summer timetable at the academy I'm working in, I was able to head to the swimming pool for their opening at 9am. Now I have classes at 10 so we had to pick a different time. Fortunately I've got a decent break between morning classes and evening. Even so I was a little wary, it's the summer holidays, would the pool be full of yoot? Would we get a decent swim?

I needn't have worried. We went to the pool in Parque Oeste (West Park) and because it was after 11am the outdoor pool was open. They have two 50m pools, one inside and one outside. And there were only two lanes in use, and a half dozen sunbathers lying around the edge of the pool. As soon as I dived in I realised why. The water was a tad chilly, we were only in July and I guessed it would warm up.

Now, the water's a lot warmer (well a couple of degrees, very important degrees) and there are a few more people, so many that Liz and I have to share a lane (with each other!) Still, the outdoor pool is fantastic, crystal clear. It feels like a private pool, there are so few folk. The lifeguards have the easiest job in the world, because almost all of the swimmers are proper swimmers, no old ladies three abreast yakking, last time we went there was only one chap who wasn't doing crawl, and that's because he was with his two sons. There are plenty of other pools in which messing about is the norm, and of course, there's the sea too, so it's really nice to have a place where you can actually get your head down and just swim, without worrying about collisions or splashing the blue rinse brigade (giving rise to the immortal Halifaxian quote: Oy, we don't need no channel swimmers around here).  ¶ 5:07 PM 2 comments

  So, with the weather being nice, we wandered to Gijón this morning for a swim. Here to be exact.


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It was lovely, the water was 21C and the beach was packed but civilised.  ¶ 6:59 PM 0 comments

  I don't think it's had a UK release yet but when it does Tropa de Elite is a must see. It's a Brazillian police thriller, directed by the same chap who made Bus 174 (and if you haven't seen that one yet it should go on whatever lists you keep of films to see, if you don't do lists, start one now and put these two at the top, round them off with City of God and Carandiru for a four parter that will stop you ever wanting to visit Brazil, or at least the favelas).
It's got that handheld grittiness and the oppressive heat of good Brazilian cinema, the action is horrifyingly believable and the characters are more than the cardboard cut out good and evil that seems to infest Hollywood. The story follows a couple of police lieutenants, friends from childhood, who learn the hard way about police corruption before joining the BOPE, the elite police squad under the command of Captain Nacimiento. Nacimiento is looking for a replacement as he's had enough, his wife is pregnant and he wants out.

The structure is nicely split up, with a long flashback after a kinetic opening sequence allowing for some aha moments as we realise where we are the second time. There's a couple of heavily charged political scenes involving rich students who hate the police coming face to face with the anarchy they actually have. I fully expect this one to be in the list of Best Foreign pictures come oscar time...  ¶ 5:18 PM 1 comments

 
We were in a cafe (what's new) the other day and Liz saw in the paper that this weekend was the sardine festival at Cándas. So of course we had to go. Cándas is a small seaside town that used to be a fishing village and now is a tourist town with a smattering of hotels and a good few bars. Every year (for the last 40 or so) they've had a festival to celebrate sardines.


We wandered up to the fiesta and had a good look round, there were five stalls, each run by a different local restaurant or bar. According to the paper they would each be grilling 5000 sardines each day of the festival. We could smell it from some way off. We picked our stall based on two things... one we knew the restaurant and two there were the shortest queues. So we went for the dozen sardines and a bottle of cider, for the tradition is to accompany the sardines with cider. A very friendly chap behind the bar gave us some pointers on more advanced cider drinking, apparently you have to pour it down your throat, rather than gulp it down, you have to be smooth (mas suave he said). After that he sold us on the corn bread rather than the white bread, and he was right, the slightly sweet corn bread went really well with the sardines. Liz asked for cutlery only to be told to use her hands and to be given a small demo on how to eat grilled sardines with your fingers.

Oh my they were delicious, absolutely fantastic, and as we dug in, a couple of the folks behind the bar, including the grill chief, came over to see how we found them (muy ricas, we said). Friendly guy behind the bar kept pouring the culetes of cider, he was trying to get us smashed I'm sure. In the middle of all this a few dozen vespa riders came past in formation and we ended up chatting with a few of them, they got free sardines for being part if the parade but they were from Madrid so they didn't know sidra, and we all ended up drinking a fair amount as we polished off the fish (and I cannot stress enough... they were absolutely gorgeous, there was much finger licking (a mix of lemon, cider and sardines mmmm). Then the friendly chap forced us to pour our own... Liz's expression is a mixture of frustration and cider fuelled giggles.

The upshot was, we were both a little tipsy and full of oily fish as we got on the bus back to Oviedo.  ¶ 6:31 PM 2 comments