Ryanair at it again

So Ryanair take huge subsidies from provincial government and local business associations to run relatively successful Granada-London and Granada-Madrid services, cancel them without any consultation, then hold the city to ransom, demanding an even bigger bung to reinstate the flights. If I didn't loathe Ryanair already, this would swing it.
Si sabes castellano, puedes leer el artículo aquí.

Ross offends abuela shock

The local press in Granada is doing its dinger today because Jonathan Ross, recently back in his BBC job after the Andrew Sachs affair, has been insulting old ladies in Conchar. Ross was doing a phone interview with a British resident of the town, who joked that he was building a wall to keep out the supposedly randy eighty-year old lady who lives next door. The presenter suggested that the Brit "give her one last good seeing-to before she goes to the grave". (I'm translating from Spanish that's been translated from Estuary English, but I think that's fairly accurate.) The lady in question has Alzheimer's, and her son is livid.

The Alpujarra on BBC4

Rageh Omaar, the BBC journalist usually seen wearing a flak jacket in a war zone, was in Granada and the Alpujarra on BBC4 last night in the final episode of his mini-series “An Islamic History of Europe”. It seemed a pretty superficial exploration of a vast and infinitely rich subject to me - apart from anything else, how can you do a whole history of Muslim influence in Europe without mentioning the Ottoman Empire? - but he did get to sit on Chris Stewart’s terrace drinking mint tea, and that's not far from our house and so worthy of mention on this blog. The cheerful evocation of ancient battle at the Moros y Cristianos enactment in Velez de Benaudalla was fun. Apparently nobody wants to dress up as a Christian because the Moors have better swords, and the town enacts two battles with contrasting outcomes during the day of the fiesta, so that everyone gets to win at least once.

Here's a picture of the Moros Y Cristianos from our own village:

The power of now

When I check the visitor stats for this blog, I find that on average, about eight people look at it each day. That includes me and, most days, Annie. Two days ago, though, I mentioned Radovan Karadzic (while he was on the front pages of the broadsheets) and got 82 visitors (Tuesday) and 53 (yesterday). Clearly Bosnian Serb war criminals are a bigger draw than stray dogs and rabbit stew. Sadly though, Karadzic has nothing to do with Juviles so he won't be back on a regular basis. And none of these 135 new visitors is interested in booking our house, or even clicking on my ads, so he's not contributing to our wealth. Perhaps we should take up alternative medicine; it clearly earned Karadzic a few dinar.

Comedy priest found alive

We've had enough animals here for the time being, so today I'd like to celebrate the discovery of Father Ted actor Dermot Morgan(left) near Belgrade. He was a fine comedian and reports of his death saddened us all, so the revelation that he's been been alive and practising alternative medicine in the Serbian capital all these years is great news.

Strangely enough, he reminds me just a bit of that Radovan Karadzic, the war crimes fellow.