'Normal' Service Will Now Be Resumed

Apologies for the radio silence during much of August. Already frantically busy going into the holiday, I landed myself with the additional task of finalising The Book of The Blog by 1 September. Fortunately, the patience of family and friends allowed me to finish the first draft early and I emailed it from holiday in Spain two days before my laptop packed it in...

The enforced social media lay-off was probably no bad thing. While I stand by it, the scathing vitriol I poured onto Ryanair now seems to have been Tweeted by someone far less relaxed - though some good old-fashioned personal service from AutosEstrellas helped exponge the few hours of misery. I should also add that the easyJet experience was definitively better than that of its Celtic cousin, even if everyone now seems to be opting for 'Speedy Boarding'. One of the staff said they're considering a move to reserved seating, so maybe that's why.

For what it's worth, I wholly recommend the beaches around Begur, north of Barcelona, and Illetes in Mallorca, including Balneario Illetas for great food (and a consistently good blues mix). Others from 'downunder' will laugh uproariously, but that's European beaches for you, unless you're well off the beaten track or on a boat and can anchor where you like.

The 'find' of the past few weeks, if you want to push the boat out for a night, is the Restaurant Pa i Raim in Palafrugell. But I don't recommend the 10km run at 8:00 the next morning to pick up the car before the Policia Local swing into action. A taxi would do just nicely.

Image from Blogxiliar.

Of Canaries and Turkeys

What drink would be "Wild Canary"?

I'm on holiday, which means being asked to explain whether there are canaries in the Canary Islands, or turkeys in Turkey. I'm giving you the benefit of my research, should you have similar need of it.

"Canary", as in the Islands, is derived from the Latin for 'dog' (canus, cani) on account of dogs (or sea lions, which apparently look like dogs to sailors) once found on the islands; while the English word for the country "Turkey" is derived from medieval Latin "Turchia", though "Turk" is also at the core of many other languages' reference to that area.

There are wild canaries in the Canaries (though not that I've seen), but the bird was named after the islands, not the other way around. It's a similar story with the turkey, though it was misnamed when mistaken for guineafowl, who were once called 'turkey fowl', being from Turkey, but get away scot-free every Thanksgiving.

Scot-free comes from the Old English for "exempt from royal tax" [that's enough etymology. Ed].

Plain Sailing Is Not Plain English

Just spent a windy week on Mardy Gras at Dartmouth Royal Regatta, helping a friend celebrate a 'significant birthday' with some former crewmates, under the name "X-Pistols". Through fair weather and foul we managed a creditable 10th out of 19 in the IRC 3 class, even with me scrambling around amongst the winches. Huge thanks for the extremely generous hospitality (Fingals is well worth a visit), patient child-minding and tutelage in all things nautical, including:

While I enjoyed the experience immensely, I confess that it's a bit of a challenge getting this post written with only a keyboard to steady the constant swaying of everything around me.

And it's somewhat of a relief to return to the ordinary usage of 'sheet', 'guy', 'kicker', 'winch', 'car', 'tack', 'gibe', 'kite', 'rail', 'head', 'boom', 'pole', 'header', 'knock', 'tail' and, last but by no means least, 'grind'.

Fortunately, I did not have to learn first hand the alternate meaning of either 'broach' or the dreaded 'Chinese gibe', which I'm assured is far worse than a taunt from a gentleman of the Far East.

Hitting the Surf

Just had a stonking 5 days in Cornwall, mainly sampling the seafood and some hugely generous hospitality on the Helford River. But on Sunday we crossed to the north coast for lunch at the Godrevy Café on Godrevy Beach, followed by a fabulous 2 hour surf lesson with Shore Surf School. It's been over 30 years since I last played around on a board (white polystyrene from Kentucky Fried Chicken, as I recall), but I managed to get to my knees half a dozen times and to my feet once during the session. I'll definitely be back...