Traffic on the motorway slowed, the cars in front of us stopped, so did we.
The car behind us didn’t, or at least not soon enough.
There was a screech of brakes then a bump.
We pulled over as close to the side of the road as we could and a moment later the driver of the other car came up to see if we were okay. We were and so was she, her husband and their baby who were travelling with her.
The cars weren’t quite so lucky. Our bumper was torn and scratched but the car was still drivable. Their front bumper and wheel rim were mangled and a tyre had blown.
We filled in the accident report form which is mandatory in Spain and while we were doing it the driver kept saying, Lo siento, lo siento.” (I’m sorry, I’m sorry).
I replied, “Son solo coches, no personas.” (They’re only cars, not people).
It’s a little difficult to comprehend cold when it’s at least 30 degrees outside, but in sympathy with those of you at home, this Friday’s poem is Robert Burns’ dirge on Winter.
Winter
The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.
“The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,”
The joyless winter day
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!
Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest; they must be best,
Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want—O do Thou grant
This one request of mine!—
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign.
Some 30 years later the prize pool is worth more but the seriousness with which the contestants take the contest hasn’t changed.
And with good reason because the contest tests their intellectual and physical skills, public speaking, farming and general knowledge, personality and sense of humour.
One of the strengths of the contest is the way it moves around the country and involves the community which hosts it. Another is that it gives a taste of the physical and intellectual skills which modern farmign requires.
The Streatham Portrait, discovered at the beginning of 21st century, is believed by many to be among the first posthumous portraits of Lady Jane Grey.[1]
New Zealand lambs are usually killed at three to six months.
In Spain they’re only a few weeks old, so small it takes a leg to make a meal for one.
This one was cooked over a fire at our favourite cafe in Vejer de la Frontera, La Brasa de Sancho, served simply with rice and baked potato and it was delicious.
Among the signs advertising beauty treatments in Singapore was one promising to lighten skins.
That struck me as strange, but perhaps people from there regard our desire to gain a tan as just as peculiar.
In spite of years of warning and repeated exhortations to slip, slop and slap, a tanned skin is stil regarded as more attractive than a pale and pasty one.
My generation spent most of its childhood outdoors. Summer Sundays at the river always finished with the application of Q-tol, that pink, sharp smelling liquid which I don’t think is available any more, which took the sting out of sun burn.
When I was a student I spent two summers as a pool attendant in Taupo, wandering round with as little on as was decent and only after my nose blistered did I start applying sun screen.
I’ve paid for it since with a couple of skin cancers. They were basal cell carcinomas, which don’t usually spread and were spotted by my GP and removed and in the wake of that I am much more careful about limiting sun exposure.
David Farrar has given his usual intelligent and considered response to Labour’s submission on electoral finance at Kiwiblog.
The only thing I want to add is a very loud no to Labour’s self-serving and unprincipled suggestion that the taxpayer should fund poltical parties.
We have a very low hurdle for registration as a political party – just 500 members. The idea that any other organisation with as few members as that and as little accountability as most poltical parties have would get taxpayer funding as of right would never be countenanced and there is no reason why political parties should be treated differently.
Democracy is supposed to be of the people, for the people by the people not of a party, by the taxpayer for a few political groupies.
. . . isn’t nearly enough when it comes to a foreign language.
My first attempts at learning Spanish were by correspondence. I had no trouble understanding the lessons but instead of doing a little each day I tended to do a fortnight’s work at a single sitting and then forgot everything I’d taken in by the next time I went back to it.
Studying at Otago University was more successful but learning the theory gives you skills in the opposite way from which you acquire them by total immersion. If you learn a language by living it you learn as children do, to understand what you hear first, then to speak and later to read and write. Learning it formally, reading and writing usually come first then speaking and finally listening comprehension follows.
Three months total immersion at language school in Spain did more for my language skills than three years at university could have, but that was four years ago. Teaching night classes has helped me retain the basics but I’m very rusty with anything more advanced.
That’s one of the reasons we’re back in Vejer de la Frontera where I’m spending mornings at La Janda language school.
It attracts students from all over the world and while we learn the language we also learn about the Spanish culture and a little about the countries and cultures of our fellow students.
Es una experiencia muy especial, y día por día, poco por poco, estoy aprendiendo más. (It’s a special experience and day by day, little by little I’m learning more).
They’ve been playing in shorts for six years. but that is now being questioned.
Ms Walden told the Standard “there is no story here”, as the team was still allowed to wear shorts.
Ms Walden said no decision had been made on what the team could wear next year, but she wouldn’t rule out a ban on shorts.
There shouldn’t be a story here, but there will be one if the local administration, which has the right to make its own rules, doesn’t make the sensible decision which will make the issue go away.
What is it about a little bit of power which blinds people in authority to common sense?
Riverstone Kitchen, one of North Otago’s best restaruants has a new website.
Buy local, think seaonal, eat well is Riverstone’s motto and it practices what it preaches, serving delicious, fresh food which includes produce from its own garden.
The website includes some of chef Bevan Smith’s recipes.
He has been providing recipes for the ODT. I can recommned his hazelnut shortbread.
The announcment that Marion van der Goes has been appointed Otago’s new Department of Conservation conservator makes much of the fact that she’s the first woman to hold that role in the province and only the second in New Zealand.
She appears to be well qualified for the job and I wish her well in it.
But being female or male isn’t important in this role and it’s illegal to discriminate on the grounds of gender.
Does the fact a woman gets a particular job is newsworthy mean that legal equality hasn’t translated into real equality?
Or is it time to stop the fuss about women’s appointments because all it does is reinforce the idea there’s something out of the ordinary about ordinary appointments just because a woman gets it?
The foreshore and seabed issue ought to have been a simple one of property rights but it was complicated by racism , politics and ignorance over customary title.
The ministry review panel has recommended that the Act which took the right to go to court from Maori be overturned.
Racism and politics will try to complicate what happens next. But Sir Douglas Graham has done his best to remove some of the ignorance with his lay person’s guide to customary title in today’s Herald.
A tap delivering spring water outside Speights brewery is used by hundreds of Dunedin people a day in search of something superior to the city’s supply.
But now the city council has put pay and display parking metres in the street and people are worried they’ll have to pay while they fill their containers with water.
The chances of getting a ticket in the few minutes it takes to fill a bottle or two aren’t great. But you’d think a council which knew its city would have had the wit to put a five minute free park beside the tap.
Vejer de la Frontera is on the Costa de la Luz, the Coast of Light, west of the straits of Gibraltar where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean.
This coast is the windiest place in Europe which is why Tarifa, about half an hour’s drive from Vejer, is a mecca for surfers.
It’s also an obvious place to harness the power of the wind and one of the features of its sky line is windmills old . .
. . . and new:
Wind generation has been controversial here, what interested us was there are no pylons leading from the windmills which presumably means power is transmitted underground.