The great update

So, you're all no doubt asking what you've missed...

Quite a lot, actually

Mostly SPAIN - I went for a week to stay in a villa with its own pool just south of Javea in SE Spain, south of Valencia. Wonderfully relaxing and a lot of fun as well. Lots of late night swimming and stupid games. Met some cool new people and was also great to catch up with some old schoolfriends.

One really interesting thing I noticed was the graffiti on the road signs - Javea had been daubed out and replaced by Xabia - the Valenciana dialect name. It's interesting that right now regional issues around language should be raising their head - I had assumed most of that was in Catalonia and the North, and that this area would just be a mix of Catalan and Castillian, but obviously not. The 'Xabs' are on the warpath. Funny thing was that they all sounded like they were speaking Castillian, unlike in Barcelona where the Catalan sounds more French than 'Spanish'.

I wonder if this process is being replicated all over Spain? It must have pretty dire consequences on things like National Curricula, universal texts, publishing etc. Imagine if every part of the UK had different spellings or even a language like the Welsh. Blwdy hel!

The other confusing part of this was that Jesus Pobre, the nearest village, seemed to be immune to the J-X process that Xabia implied. Maybe the Lord transcends language? Actually it's lucky he does otherwise it would be Xesus, or Chees-us. I don't think the Church would be happy about Christ being incarnated in some form of cheesy (but not actually cheese) snack...