Life in Culebrón

I'm sure you've heard my theory before that you don't learn popular culture; if you're born somewhere then the culture is yours be that food, music, TV programmes or YouTube influencers. You can't help it. The talk at work, the talk at school, the stuff your parents tell you, the memes and gifs that turn up on your phone, the little snippets you read in the newspaper all help to make sure that you know what's going on. That's how, I suppose, I learned about MOTs, Trooping the Colour, Premium Bonds, the Boat Race, laverbread, the RNLI Lifeboats, Spaghetti Junction, Engelbert Humperdinck, driving on the left and how to make tea.  Changes in language are similar. Ordinary people are in charge. Words and phrases come and go. Some old academic bloke might argue that there is a perfectly good phrase to describe keeping a safe distance during a pandemic but everyone else is going to say social distancing whether he likes it or not. Somebody once asked me about how ...

Weeds are my speciality. Other people may major in roses or gladioli or even alpine perennials but I do weeds. Our garden consists principally of fruit trees, ivy and weeds. In good Mediterranean fashion we have a lot of bare earth but keeping it bare is a year round job. Rather than imagining that I am exterminating Martians as I hoe, (which I don't think has any relation to the word pair of hoeing and twerking), I amuse myself by listening to things on some wonderful, noise reducing, earphones that I bought from Amazon a couple of Black Fridays ago. My listening fare varies but I often download Documentos, a documentary programme, from the radio. I like the Selector too, a weekly bilingual update on New British Music. There are also a couple of language learning podcasts that I generally listen to each week. I sometimes listen as I cook too but gardening is favourite. Today I was listening to Notes in Spanish. I've mentioned Ben and Marina's podcast before. I usually ...