Round and round

I've thought of a wizard wheeze to keep the number of posts up.

It was Cruces de mayo over the weekend. May Crosses - shrines I suppose dominated by a cross and with an Andalucian theme. Obviously this is blog material even down to the brightly coloured photos. The trouble is I've done it before.

We also went to a sort of Mediaeval re-enactment up in the Castillo de la Concepción but that smacks a bit too much of the "dear diary" sort of blog.

One problem for your average ethno-sociological commentator is the unflinching cyclicity of Spanish life.The same things keep coming around. I've complained before about the posters for circuses and other shows which say "in the usual place" The fact is that, as a circus operator, you can save a bundle of advertising costs by printing just the one size fits all poster. The circus will be in the same place as it was last year and the year before that and so on. It's only the occasional outsider who will have to find out where the usual place is if they want to see the giant alligator wrestle with the voluptuous maiden. And should the usual place this year not be the usual place of last year it doesn't matter because in two years time the new, unusual, place will be the usual place.

Spanish chums told me where there favourite places were for the Easter processions along the lines of "We reserve a table in such and such a bar for this or that procession so we can see the whole thing whilst we get a beer and a tapa. We do it too. I remember our first Pinoso fiesta, Ian came over as Maggie and I looked on at all the stalls and attractions. Ian was an old hand, we were new to Spain. "It's not all here yet", he said. "There'll be a ham and cheese shop over there and this is where the Albacete knife man will park up". Best chips are in the van that parks by the park. He was right. And this weekend I'd printed out the list of where the Cruces de Mayo were and what was going on at each site. We never once consulted it. We just went to all the usual spots.

Back in class it was Monday and "What did you do over the weekend?" question time again. From a group of three two had been to a First Communion. On the way home from work the radio presenter started a piece "May - time for weddings, baptisms and communions" I bridled a bit at the thought of all those May baptisms - if your child were born in June would you wait eleven months to get the little one absolved of original sin? I know, I know, Benedict did away with Limbo but why take the risk? Communions though, absolutely- all mini bride's dresses and sailor suits. And if it's a June bride in the UK then why not May in Spain?

When I asked Maggie a couple of months ago if she had any blog ideas she said that the communion clothes were out in the shops. The problems was that I wrote that piece when we lived back in Ciudad Rodrigo and the truth is that I could reprint most of the post word for word with only a few price updates.

So that's the new plan. To recycle the blogs that only the very oldest of my readers will remember. So, get ahead of the game and read about the Night of the Museums now!

 If nothing else turns up to break the routine that is.