Once again, I have not written much on my blog recently. Just at the moment it is difficult to keep up a diary about nothing in particular while Nothing in Particular has been elevated to the level of national and international discourse, and the base, the trite and the plain rude have now become the … More The view from El Parral
The Spanish national dish – if there is one based purely on popularity – is tortilla con patatas (Spanish omelette), and it is simply a matter of whisking a few eggs and frying with potato and onion, so what’s the big deal? The fact is that you take pot luck in any Spanish bar or … More Tortilla de patatas
I am very glad to be wrong. Or to put it more exactly, I am glad the prognostications of the largely conservative Spanish media were needlessly pessimistic and quite ignorant in their understanding of what preparations had been made by the socialist leader Pedro Sànchez before the sudden surprise demolition of Mariano Rajoy’s government last … More Spain can still surprise us
It is time to leave behind my share of the sense of collective shock of the past week in Spain, as described in the previous two blog posts. In this country they celebrate funerals the day after the death. Then Spaniards move quickly on with life. I haven’t written very much here on the blog … More Time to celebrate Spain
Once again, I shall try to summarise the political situation in Spain, and then we shall return to normal donkey blog mode with great news from Ireland (no, not the Irish referendum but the birth of rare twin donkey foals.) For the few people interested in reading this blog for an interpretation of the unexpected … More A slow motion car crash
13.45 Today in Madrid the showdown has begun. The euphoria that Spaniards experienced last September – cheering and sending columns of Guardia Civil and Policia Nacional along the autovias of Spain to put down the Catalan nationalists – has now turned once again to cynicism and confusion. This blog post is not polemical and has one … More Spain at the turning point
Today I had a very good meeting with a kind and helpful bureaucrat. In these times such a contradictory statement is like saying, “I had a pleasant encounter with a traffic policeman who stopped me on the motorway”; or “I just enjoyed afternoon tea with an amusing axe murderer.” The meeting was arranged for me … More Getting to grips with the manure
When I was a child, it was the family tradition to race across the room to turn off the radio during the first few bars of the theme tune to The Archers, and I still do the same today. For readers of this blog in the USA, I refer to a long-running BBC radio drama about country life … More Oh no! Not The Archers…
A great deal of information is available on the Internet on the subject of donkey care, but my Rubí Tuesday blog today is about the less well-known topic of caring for your peasant. Our particular peasant was recently sacked from his part-time teaching job, so he is now a full-time peasant and spends more … More How to care for your peasant
It has seemed for the past few weeks as though my broad-ranging life has been crammed into a narrow funnel in which I have been stuck and struggling to squeeze through to the light at the end. A rather stupid metaphor illustrated in the photo by yet another piece of plastic which will end up … More Light at the end of the funnel
