Going for a paper and meeting Winston Churchill

I generally buy a newspaper each morning. I get it from a small shop called Juanjo in Pinoso which sells a whole range of household items as well as the daily press. They are really nice to me in that shop. I think it's partly because I buy a Spanish language newspaper but mostly because they're nice people.

The traditional "costume" for this part of the world is a smock. It looks a lot like a short version of the academic gown worn by university students except that it buttons up at the front. Next week there's a festival in Pinoso that celebrates local traditions, it's called Villazgo. During Villazgo people wear the smock. I thought I might get one too.

This was the sign for the owner of the shop to be even nicer than usual. He sold me a smock. He told me he'd been the Pregonero (the person who delivers the speech to open the festival) back in 2001 and he autographed a copy of the booklet he'd written at that time as his contribution to the fiesta. Then he pointed to the Pinoso coat of arms on the front cover of his booklet and said that it had been painted by a local artist back in the 1940s. This chap had sent one of his paintings, a picture of a bull, to Winston Churchill. Winny had sent a nice thank you note back to the artist and I got to read the note.

This sort of thing didn't happen when I bought a newspaper in Huntingdon!