Category Archives: culture

banda de la maria

07 Tuesday Aug 2007

Posted by in culture, music, sevilla, weird

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So, these guys are playing underneath my balcony right now,
Tuesday night at 10.30 pm…

Quite a nice surprise to come home to after the usual evening walk. I first came across these guys playing in a square near here last November. A fun (and very loud) mix of stuff – kind of a cross between a New Orleans jazz band and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Lots of horns and percussion, singing done through a megaphone. Very theatrical, like street cabaret.

Anyhoo, so much for watching Chinatown tonight . . . 🙂

Here is their website: Banda de la Maria

summer holidays

01 Wednesday Aug 2007

Posted by in animals & pets, blogging, books & writing, computers, culture, films, food & drink, friends, fun stuff, health & happiness, holidays, home, humour, life stuff, love, miscellany, music, musings, philosophy, photos, sevilla, television

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It’s August 1st and I am officially ‘on holiday’.

No classes until September. Yay! Well okay, no income either, but I’ve been looking forward to this stretch of time ahead of me not having to be anywhere or do anything unless I feel like it. It will especially be nice not to be woken up by alarm clocks (well, other than the pointy-eared variety).

When I asked earlier about what summer stuff everyone was planning to do I still hadn’t made any major plans, and then I realised that what I wanted most was a month totally without plans. So there. 🙂

Well, there are a few things I want to do like go to the gym in the mornings and do some stuff around the apartment. But mostly I reckon I’ll be reading and hanging out online (hence that particular thumbnail), taking evening walks with Nog, going out for our *emergency cold beer and air-conditioning sessions* and the occasional tapa, and also watching films and playing with floppy cats who – I am very happy to report – appear to be friends again. They’ve even started playing fighting again, with no pee in sight, which to me is even more of a sign of them being pals again than falling asleep together.

For awhile it looked like a recent bad back incident (comment 19) had put the kibosh on my gym idea, but after a couple days of anti-inflammatories, gentle stretching and lots of walking I think I’ll be able to start back mañana.

Meanwhile, Sevilla has pretty much turned into a ghost town already, which is always a pleasant change of pace.

So all in all, August should be a nice month for carping the diem.

How’s your summer been so far?

más magica

19 Thursday Jul 2007

Posted by in art, culture, friends, photos, sevilla

≈ 5 Comments

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We saw Norberto again this evening.

Some of you may recall when our friend Craig (aka zoomer on h2g2) was here visiting us last July we stumbled upon a little workshop still open around midnight as we were on our way home from having tapas … you can read the full story over here on the ~serigraph serendipity~ post. Anyhoo, Craig bought a lovely serigraph there for his daughter and had asked us to go back and take some photos of the workshop as it had been such a magical moment for him, but somehow it just didn’t happen – until tonight.

In fact, this was quite a serendipitous kind of day. For some reason nice and pleasant things just kept happening to both Nog and me all day long and then this evening we decided to go for a walk and a tapa (which turned into a whole meal! photos to follow) and then while wandering home I thought of Norberto as we were near his workshop and said to Nog that we should go and see if he was there. And he was!

He’s made a few changes to the workshop, including a very nice showcase window outside and a fabulous metal engraved Giraldillo that is also on the wall outside the shop. I told him it was a shame about the meterbox next to it (kind of spoiling the effect) and he said he had a metal plate that he was planning to put over it, but in the meantime he posed next to his creation using his head to cover up the meter thingy (see the pic above). 🙂

And so – finally – here are the photos we promised you, Craig. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge them …

norberto2.jpg norberto1.jpg norberto4.jpg

You can see all the photos in my Norberto album.

speak directly into the microphone…

15 Sunday Jul 2007

Posted by in culture, friends, health & happiness, home, life stuff

≈ 20 Comments

microphone1.jpg

Testing … testing …

So there is this bloggers interviewing each other tag thing going around. The most recent one I read was Aphra Behn interviewing Teuchter, and I thought I’d give it a go by asking Teuchter to interview me. This is a volunteer ‘tag yourself’ thing, so if you would like to be interviewed then just follow the instructions at the bottom of the post.

Warning! Some very long and self-indulgent answers follow. Read on at your own risk…

Continue reading →

bienvenido de nuevo!

08 Sunday Jul 2007

Posted by in culture, food & drink, home, photos, sevilla, tapas

≈ 8 Comments

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Welcome back Bar Giralda!!!

Back at the end of May I wrote this very sad post when I saw that the very best tapa bar in my street had closed. I later heard from the (ex)owner that it was going to reopen again as a tapa bar (not another Starbucks as feared) and I was very pleased to see that it had indeed opened again under new management last week.

Nog and I were finally able to get over there this evening for a tapa dinner and we were delighted to see most of the old staff working there. I was also happy to see that the new owner had repainted the walls creamy-white again (for some reason they were painted a horrid orangy-red last year that seriously clashed with the gorgeous old tiles).

But I digress. . .

Being Sunday evening, the joint was hopping. We finally got a table outside and it felt wonderful to know that we had our Bar Giralda back again. And the ‘new improved’ menu (basically higher prices for the same stuff … but at least it’s the same stuff!) also came with some extra entertainment value as the new English translations had us in stitches. I mean, ‘thousand leaves with pig’ was bad enough, but a variation called ‘thousand leaves if mushrooms’ almost had me on the floor.

Ah well, maybe you had to be there. . .

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~ Cervecería Giralda ~