Low Revs on Top Gear

Now please don't get me wrong; I am a staunch Top Gear fan and so much of a petrolhead that I had to give up smoking so that my brain wouldn't ignite, but I have to say that episode one of the new series was just a teeny bit on the tired side.

Taken from the Top Gear online magazine

They seem to have fallen into the trap of rehashing old ideas - something that I fear is what happens when TV programmes run out of steam, or in this case torques. The Pagani Huayra feature was classic TG while the rallying Bentley was excellent.
Unfortunately however, the P45 feature was flat, flat, flat. Nothing could ever come close to the original Peel P50 video. I remember  I laughed so much I feared I was going to have an asthma attack. This revisiting left me cold. Why bother? The usually wittily clever news section was pitiful as Hammond seemingly got his adolescent jollies from reading a child's book on tractors. Much "hilarity" was also wrung from the fact that now the VW Touareg's name does not exactly seem to be a wise choice.

I suppose there are only so many ways that you can pit a fast car against a man in a jetpack, helicopter, bobsleigh etc. Apparently there are only three types of joke. Let's hope that the spark of originality shown in the Bentley feature becomes a bonfire of enjoyment in the rest of the series.

Strange Beasts Take up Residence in the Shed

Laying the eggs for bookworms?

 Last night one of the three most beautiful women in the world sashayed into the shed to stay the night, bringing with her three strange beasts, one of which took residence on my wall, impervious to a good swatting with a rolled-up newspaper. Could it have anything to do with the fact that it's made of coconut shell?

On the wall and staying there. 

I have commissioned at least three of these ladybirds and plan to have them beetling across the wall, like the plaster ducks that used to be so popular in times gone by. I seem to remember that in Coronation Street the Ogdens had a set of them flying across their parlour "muriel". I have now taken delivery of the green one; the red one is the artist's and resides in her bedroom. As the supply of raw materials depends on someone else's ice-cream eating habits, the collection will, I feel, grow slowly.

Breakfast for the excessively
sweet-toothed

It is always a pleasure to spend time with your children, especially as they grow older and have their own interests, circles of friends etc. (see my previous blog  All I have is a photograph). We chatted for a while and then went off to sleep.

The following morning, bright and late, we went out and walked to the metro station where my daughter took the train back home to study for next week's exams.

It was a brief visit (at least it spurred me into cleaning the bathroom!) but we both enjoyed the time together and I'm looking forward to seeing her again in the next few days.

Pay me later.

Small businesses like this will never expand and

dominate food distribution, but they are 

the bedrock of the real economy and 

of local life

On BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday at 07.22 there was a report on the concept of fairness in chimpanzees. It was a fascinating interview and has something on what I want to comment on today.

This morning I went shopping in a local fruit shop, only spending €2.80. When I handed over a €50 note (a thing of great beauty and extremely rare in stricken Seville - almost unicorn-like I would venture to say), the greengrocer told me to pay him next time I was there. He waved away my suggestion to hold onto the goods while I went back to the shed and told me to pay him next time.

€2.80 is neither here nor there, so this might not seem worth writing about. But it is. It was only the second time that I have been there; the last time I went was over a month ago. Also it shows at the most basic level that all human relationships are based on trust. Neither must we forget that many a mickle makes a muckle. 

Good, honest produce at affordable 

prices (6kg of oranges 

for €2.50). Unlike horseburgers passed off as beef,

apples and pears are easily and  visually distinguishable 

from each other.

Abuse of that trust leads to the economic situation that we find ourselves in today. This really does not affect the financial masters of the universe who have dropped us in it - after all they are still getting their bonuses and making money hand over fist while the wealth gap between them and the rest of society yawns ever wider. They have been doing the equivalent of buying in the local shops with an unchangeable €50 note then reneging on the deal while asking for another €5 note so as not to break into the fifty.

Yet the key to social cohesion is that normal

people still trust each other. My greengrocer, you Dear Reader, our friends and I myself,  when I pay the €2.80 that I owe, are the true unsung heroes of humanity. I think we all deserve a pat on the back.

Why Growing a Beard is a Good Thing

As the hair recedes from the top of my head, it sprouts from my chin. Initially, MBWNMI, or my beard was not my idea (very bad joke, sorry), but I soon warmed to it as I weighed up the disadvantages:
1) It makes you look old.

2) You dribble soup on it. Here's a solution
3) Ladies, be careful not to annoy people with long Monty Python sketch quotations (See 1 & 2 below).
4) It can drive you crazy at night if you fall foul of the "beard inside or outside the sheets?" conundrum that so exercised Captain Haddock in the Tintin books.
5) At first it itches.
6) It needs trimming.
7) It frightens children (though this is not necessarily a disadvantage).
8) Birds nest in it - I believe that some old gentlemen in Switzerland boast impressive cuckoo beards.
9) Some beards just look stupid.
10) People might mistake you for Jesus.


And the advantages:

From incrediblethings.com

1) Nowadays it's an equal opportunities facial adornment.
2) If you're a woman, you can wear your she-beard and pretend you're in The Life of Brian stoning of the adulteress scene. Or if you have a real beard, you can hide it behind the she-beard.
3) Soup dribbled onto your beard doesn't stain your shirt, but you might have to pick out the bits.
4) It's economical. Razors and shaving foam last longer because there is less face to shave.
5) You can use the razor economies to shave your back and, if necessary, the palms of your hands.
6) It's cosmetic. If you have a double chin, it may help disguise it. Not my case, I hasten to add.
7) If you're wanted by the police, you can shave it off and look baby-facedly innocent. Ditto.
8) You can play with it when you're bored.
9) And if you're lucky, seem very intellectual too.
10) People might mistake you for Jesus.

11) You can pull individual strands out and use them to tickle/annoy your partner or children - this is best done on their neck or back or up their nostrils when they are half asleep.

12) When it gets long enough, you can stick part of it in your mouth and disgust family and friends (best done in private), but don't forget to wash it afterwards. I think that as far as disgust-your-family activities go, it ranks second only to tricks with false teeth and glass eyes.
13)  When it gets even longer you can have an impressive goatee.
14) When it gets even longer than that, you can plait it and pretend you're a Viking.
15) When you plait it, you can attach little parachutes to the end and let it stream out behind you when you're on your motorbike (not really recommended at high speeds and when you've got someone on the pillion).

That is why, on balance, growing a beard is definitely a Good Thing.

A Sunday Stroll...

... is a good way to arrange your thoughts, enjoy a good read in a park and prepare yourself for the rigours of the working week.

It can also be full of surprises, good or bad. This Sunday's surprise was indeed a pleasant one. The Nervión quarter of Seville is a mix of the modern and the traditional as far as architecture is concerned. There are areas of low-rise houses and others of the usual modern dreck, all jostling cheek by jowl.

To get to a local park I decided to walk parallel to the modern avenues, through the smaller, turn-of-the 20th-century streets and found this:

Once a carpenter's, now a restaurant 

 As we can see from the tiling at the top of the façade, the ground floor was originally a carpentry. Probably the other floors were flats occupied by the business owner's family. This was quite common in Seville - a whole bourgeois family building, owning and occupying a large building with the commerce on the ground floor and the others being given over to accommodation. In fact, I have a friend who is the member of one such family. This hearkens back to the medieval days of the merchant living above the shop with his whole household of family, servants and apprentices.

This particular business was built in what is known as the regionalist style - a reinterpretation of the traditional Andalusian / Moorish architecture - hence the arched windows and the square-roofed tower to the right. On the left we can also see a smaller, domed, tower - the dome being covered in tiles.

I did not go in, but I assume that the restaurant will occupy what was once an open courtyard with a fountain in the middle

A rather grand entrance - and probably 

eminently practical when the carpentry was in

operation.

Surprisingly, the building is in a narrow street  that is only  wide enough to allow a single lane of traffic and had it not been facing another perpendicular street, I would not have been able to take the picture of the whole façade. 

Strangely enough, the street has no name on Google  maps. If you are interested, it is the street behind, and parallel to, Luis de Morales and is called Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

Apophis 2029/2036: WE ARE DOOMED!!! - a rather knotty problem.

I remember not so long ago hearing about a sect here in Seville, that, based on the famous Mayan bits of string, predicted that the Earth was going to be destroyed by an exoplanet called Colibobulo, or something similar. At that time, according to the High Priest of Colibobulo, it was hiding behind the Sun getting ready to pounce upon us in a most uncivilised manner just when we got round the corner, rather like a celestial footpad.

The High Priest of the sect persuaded his victims to hand over their worldly goods in exchange for salvation (can you name any religion or sect that doesn't?). Oh, how we laughed last December! Now it turns out that there's a 300-metre diameter asteroid called Apophis that came quite close to us last night. You can hear an interesting talk about it on BBC Radio 4's Material World  here. 

Apparently the asteroid comes back in 2029,  2036 and at a later date that doesn't concern me because I'll be well dead (providing I survive the other two dates). I'll be rather miffed if we get hit in '29 or '36 considering the amount I've paid into my pension, but at least in that case my kids won't have to pay for my cremation - or indeed theirs!.

PS. According to the pattern in my Fair Isle sweater, the world will run out of custard in 2134. HORROR!!!!

January 6th

Here in Spain children get their presents on January 6th which jolly well may be a  good tradition but it has its drawbacks. Classes usually begin the day after. This year Spanish children have two whole days instead of one to break their toys / drop their iPhones down the toilet / complain that Juanito has got a better present than they have etc. etc. etc..

The obvious advantage of having an English father and a Spanish mother is that my kids get two opportunities to break the presents and / or complain. Luckily now they do neither - these days it's me who breaks the prezzies, but  who could ever complain about the presents that our children give us? When children realise that Father Christmas / the Three Kings do not exist, they start to buy or make and give their parents presents. Such things are to be treasured for what they represent - filial love and loyalty.

Last year I was given a Kindle by my three. As a bibliophile and reading addict, they could not have thought of a better present. It is my constant companion on train rides, flights etc.

With children, it definitely is the thought that counts - even if they give you a diamond-encrusted Rolex. I once had a rather bitter, twisted workmate who thought that his children owed him everything. After all, he had given them the greatest gift of all - life, hadn't he?. Sadly for him, he never did realise that, emotionally, children give far more than they receive. The fleeting seconds of orgasmic pleasure are nothing compared with the lifetime of love and satisfaction that children, whatever their age, are capable of giving their parents. My three, like yours, are no exception.