69.7% turnout, not bad at all.
Goodbye Adrian Flook, hello Jeremy Browne (Lib Dem). Hope my proxy vote helped…
Similar Posts
Your cut-out-and-keep guide to my weekend
Yesterday: To the baratillo, James, to find a lucha libre mask for Fernando and a microwave oven. It was too hot by half, but I’m well fond of wandering round Mexican markets and can even judge which aisle to go down by casting an eye for obstacles such as women with prams, queues for birria and machete-wielding coconut salesmen. A half success of sorts. I found out there’s a lucha libre spectacular in the bull ring on Sunday that might be worth a visit, I found a microwave oven for 25 bucks, but when I tried to get back to that particular stand it had either morphed into a blenders and kitchen sink stall or been raptured up. Never mind, in the town centre they’re on sale for 45 bucks or so new. And they deliver, which is important because I had visions of being discovered passed out on the wrong side of town in the afternoon heat with a microwave on my chest. On the only day of the year I didn’t have health insurance…
DVD purchases yesterday included: El Mar Adentro (Spanish film about a bloke in a wheelchair), Zapata (Hagiography of the famous revolutionary), Sin City (seen it before (4 lulus or thereabouts), but could happily watch it again), Lucky number Sleven (mixed reviews for this gangster film) and Hostal (Tarantino’s latest outing). I’m not 100% on whether they’ll all work cos I found a 5 peso (Fiddy cent) (30 pee) DVD store with no TV to test them on, but at that price, I’ll take my chances. Sometimes I’m not convinced they’re really originals at all…
On the MP3 player at the time: Boagworld– Pragmatic Accessibility, Total Podcastrophe #11, Mark Kermode’s film reviews from Friday and CD1 of Massive Attacks’ recent Best Of. I’ve got some crappy short headphones with a cable that doesn’t quite reach my pocket. So I went round with the player stuffed under my T-Shirt on my shoulder parrot-style, affixed with the ‘gentle perspiration” of my skin. It’s a wonder it still works… Anyroad, my pedometer (pace counter thing, (pedo means fart in Spanish, cue marketing nightmare…)), racked up 22,000 steps yesterday which makes up for Saturday’s shuffling round the house and trip to the air-conditioned cinema when the heat got too much.
We also got a fan from Gigante and barbecued up a storm again in the evening. Chorizo is the new bacon. The VH1 were showing Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (4.5 Lulus). It was slightly edited, but even then was great to watch again. Such a powerful film, the kind that provokes discussion straight afterwards. If you’re not headed straight to bed… I read on the IMDB that the title is from when Anthony Burgess was in Borneo and saw Orangutans. Orang= man, Utan = of the forest. Hence clockwork man, which is what Alex ends up as when he’s reprogrammed. Seems plausible enough…
Today: Renegotiating terms @ see-nay-sco-pee-oh since I’ve finished the whole Camino Real thing. Jose’s round this avo for a briefing on how tomorrow’s photo shoot at centro nueva era’s going to happen. Life is good. Stu (click for nostaligic look at how site looked 2 years ago) complained that he couldn’t tell arse from elbow of what I’m up to from my blog. Something about cars breaking down and genteel ladies in photos… Give us a Skype and I’ll elaborate, Sr. Capstick. Him’n’Anne’re yoghurt weaving in a hippy commune in NZ right now… To each their own.
Test driving the iPAQ and getting to grips with public transport.
I’ve figured out a few more bus routes today with only one major mistake. The 37A is not the 37 just for the record and after leaving the house at 9:30 got back around 15:00ish. Luckily I have my trusty new gadget loaded up with ‘8 out of 10 Cats’ episodes and the hours flew by. I looked into Flash courses, caught up with a translation place, had a coffee at Madokas, perused the ‘Importaciones’ level of San Juan de Dios and checked everything was functioning as I left it 3 wks ago. Some of the areas in town were chock-full of parents and kids buying their school supplies for the new term. Thank diosito I don’t have any teaching hanging over me. (good luck Meg, btw).
The iPAQ camera is 1.2 megapixels, but the quality is far from perfect. It’ll do nicely though for quick snaps rather than full-blown photography outings with the tripod and everything. I even dared get it out in SJ de D, to the right is a barbacoa-style tacos al pastor stand, with fine tasting cheap tacos (3.5pesos each, =30 cents, 18p). Bargains every one… Too early to tell for the usual gastrointestinal side effects, but keep checking back and I’ll give you an update later. Another thing is my new tinted sunglasses make everything look like you’re looking through the orange stuff they put in post office windows/ chemist shops at the world and makes it very difficult to spot cars that look like their surrounding. And doubles the apparent amount of taxis in the road (white cars look yellow too…).
Friday’s Spanish-word-of-the-week day in theory, so let’s have a think… erm… “cotorrear” keeps cropping up. I rarely use it ‘cos I can’t roll my ‘R’s but it means ‘to chat’, natter, put-the-world-to-rights, catch up on stuff, sort of thing. Not so widely used in Spain if memory serves (charlar is more common), but the verb of choice round these parts.
