Where are you going on your holidays?
Are you going abroad for your holidays?
Do you spend your holidays at home?
Are you back from your holiday(s)?
Did you have a good holiday?
Oh I do like to be beside the seaside:)
Happy holidays!
Northerners can’t understand the way people live in semi darkness in Spain during the summer and they feel the urge to pull up the blinds in the houses, open the curtains, let the light in.
Only later do they
realise that it is the blistering heat that is being kept out. The
cool floors and fans help combat the soaring temperatures until the
evening breeze finds its way through the slits of light in the blinds and
through windows that have been left ajar and the caress of the fresh air
restores your energy.
Abuelas (grandmothers) provide free bed and board for all their progeny in villages all over Spain. Many families return to the place where their parents or grandparents were born and it is a time of reunion. Industrialisation and uncompetitive food prices forced families to leave the land that they worked on and move to the cities. Their sons and daughters may not be able to afford a paid holiday and may have the option to go back to their villages (pueblos) if they are lucky enough to have a family home still. Many love going back.
These old houses
are surprisingly cool thanks to the thick stone walls held together with adobe
and where the ground floor has been built half underground on top of
the foundations. Rural Spain is an incredible contrast to the slick
coastal towns. Each region is proud of its own local produce and the food is
better there. The fruit is excellent in the summer, delicious yellow peaches,
red peaches called fresquillas, nectarine peaches, plums, paraguayas, the
juiciest cherries, the sweetest melon and watermelon.The tomatoes are
wonderful too.
In the summer, in
the villages you will meet people from Granada, Valencia, Bilbao, Madrid,
Barcelona, Vigo, Seville, Valladolid, people who have settled in these cities
but return every year to their hometowns. The youth of Spain draw on all the knowledge that travel brings but also on the strength of their roots.
We will see you
again in September.
Oscar Wilde’s reader pass or library card will be reinstated in a special ceremony at the British Library on October 16th, Wilde’s birthday.
Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland, and Rupert Everett who starred as Wilde in the Happy Prince, will give a talk at the event.
The attached article includes full details on the story behind the event and the publication of Merlin Holland’s upcoming book After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/jun/13/british-library-reinstate-oscar-wilde-reader-card
An acknowledgement to Aelish Patané for sending us this.
The wheels of justice grind slowly
In Northern Ireland we say ‘That’s wild,’ when something is beyond belief.
This gem is from Rickydrewapiccy.
Thanks to JO for sending me this card of Oscar Wilde which I absolutely love and which she found in a shop in Belfast and to Richard for allowing us to use it here.
June is a girl's name, just like April and May. They are very pretty names that evoke sunshine, flowers, soft rain and birdsong.
June is also a month that we associate with James Joyce and his novel, Ulysses.
Bloomsday is celebrated on June 16th, commemorating that same date in 1904.
Joyce's contemporary, Virginia Woolf said that surely the world was much more beautiful then, before the ravages of World War 1.
So when you see people dressed in their beautiful costumes on Bloomsday, think that they have set the clock back to a time when conversations were witty, challenging, highly amusing, sometimes outrageous and cleverly sprinkled with knowledge of the classics, a time before the terrible destruction of the two world wars.
They are enjoying a brief escape from reality.
In June we also have the Madrid Book Fair up until June 15th. Therefore you are still on time to visit the fair where readers and writers mingle and authors willingly sign copies of their books. And if you miss this year's fair, you can mark your calendar for next year.
Jesus has vouched to bring us a homemade treat next Wednesday which we are looking forward to, it will be a surprise. Something sweet apparently, and Laura will bring cookies from her shop the following Wednesday. Now that we have a kettle we can chat over a cup of tea.
People are making their summer plans and more or less we know that our last tertulia of the school year will be on 25th June. Sometimes the heat is so intense at this time of the year that we have to stop earlier. This year however, it has been raining nearly every day and grass is growing in the normally sandy parks of Madrid. The countryside is very pretty with the wilde flowers in bloom again. Trees have extended their branches producing new leaves and providing a very welcome canopy of much needed shade from the hot summer Madrid sun.
Happy San Isidro!
UNESCO chose April 23 to celebrate World Book Day as it is the birth date of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare. Both were born on April 23rd 1616.
It is also St George’s Day and in Cataluña it is their feast day, el día de San Jordi The
Catalans celebrate this day beautifully by giving a book and a flower to loved
ones.
In Spain there are book fairs in every town and city on this date. El Día Internacional Del Libro.
When we heard the news that Peruvian writer Mario Vargas LLosa passed
away on the 14th of this month it seemed somehow fitting that this
great writer will also be remembered at this time.
Hispano America gifted the world with Argentinian born Pope Francis who
also sadly passed away this month on April 21st.
In our weekly tertulia we had all this to talk about after the
Easter holidays.
Wednesdays 18:30 U.P. San Sebastián De Los Reyes
You have to give credit to Irish viticulturists for their perseverance and dedication.
From an article in The Guardian, 'Ripe for the picking', that we will discuss today, we have learnt that after many years of trial and error, winemakers in Ireland now produce a very acceptable sparkling rosé and red wine.
It has not been easy to to find the grape that will adapt to the terrain and climate. Also, a slight increase in temperature is helping.
However, vine growing in Ireland is still a major struggle.
Getting the vines to flower in the first place is a problem itself.
Then watch the weather until the harvest in the hope that the cold and the frost do not return.
It is a passionate pursuit for these pioneers!
Adh mór ar Lá Fhéile Pádraig!
Good luck! Happy St Patrick's Day!
A change of era.
An era of change.
Life continues. As do our conversations.
Wednesdays 18:30
Today is a holiday in San Sebastián De Los Reyes as it is St Sebastian's day. It is also a federal holiday in The U.S.A as Martin Luther King is remembered on this day.
It is interesting to note that Oscar Wilde discarded his own name and adopted the name Sebastian Melmoth during his exile in France. Wilde greatly admired the novel Melmoth The Wanderer written by Charles Maturin, his great uncle on the side of his mother, Jane Francesca Elgee.
In this poem Oscar Wilde remembers St Sebastian during a visit to Keats' grave in Rome.
The Grave Of Keats
Rid of world’s injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God’s
veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love
were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is
lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
A quote from Ravenna by a youthful Oscar Wilde:
We see that Death is mighty lord of all,
And king and clown to ashen dust must fall.
