Calle de la Fé

We are living on Calle de la Fé, Faith Street, in Madrid. Every street in Madrid has a little pictorial representation of the street name at each end. So how do you represent 'Faith' in a picture? A lot of nuns? No, apparently the best way is to have a heavily-armed Spanish soldier expelling a few Moors from the country. I like it here.

Thresher Shark

Stirling and Glasgow

We went to Scotland, before all the moving hassle. We were in Stirling, and took a day out to see Glasgow. Stirling has, as well as a conference on contemporary poetry, some interesting bird-life;

some tedious if tameish animal-life;

a Socialist Realist swimming-pool;

a folly;

minority-culture solidarity.

Glasgow has: a flat where Marian used to live

and a sense of humour, both inadvertent

and deliberate.

Quiz

It has terrapins, lots of terrapins.

And, the largest head this side of Ulan-Ude (which has the largest Lenin head in the world, as well as a mature drinking culture).

What is it? The main Madrid train station, naturally enough. Need you ask?

Madrid

I've been away for a while, for which absence, sorry. But now we have internet, and a house to put internet into, things should get back to, ah-hah, normal.

We're living in Madrid, in the excitingly multicultural and annoyingly one-volume Lavapiés area. Or is it excitingly one-volume? You never know if it'll be people practicing their drums, or having a fight, or setting their dogs on one another, that'll get you up at three in the morning.

This is in some senses the most Madriddy bit of Madrid, where people still celebrate their rich cultural heritage by making a lot of noise. Here are some authentic castizo Madrileños dancing the paso doble (loudly).


And that's enough of an introduction. If I were feeling stronger, I'd write down everything about our move from England, but you probably wouldn't believe me, and anyway, the facts are in the hands of my lawyer at the moment. Suffice it to say that by whatever means, we have got from this
to this,

and are much the happier for it.