Good Friday

Good Friday is a perfect day to bring this blog up to date. It's a little bit rainy, but not enough to deter the masses on the streets, who are massing about the way masses do. Today sees the height of the Semana Santa frenzy, with two different sets of processions. We've already survived those of 'la Madrugada' and are bracing for those of La Noche. Those women of a certain age are all decked out in their costumes de mantilla. It's impossible to move on the streets outside.

So this particular introvert is delighted, not to say relieved, to be deep in the bowels of the internet café. Only the soft cursing of the crazed internet gambling addict at the next terminal (online poker, by the looks of things) disturbs my concentration. But I've grown to kind of like the guy - he's always here, and if I end up spending four hours here today - which is possible, between figuring out the assorted software to maneuver photos in cyberspace, keeping up with e-mail, paying some bills, and writing something here - I can always delude myself that I'm not wasting my life in idle cyber-pursuits, becase - I look to my left - it could be much worse.

As I glance through the notes I've made myself in the hilariously pretentious "Moleskine" notebook (www.modoemodo.com) that I bought in the Smithsonian gift shop last trip to DC (¡hi PB, Katie and Adam!) , I find the following mnemonic list:

• Pomegranates
• Rain
• Mezquita
• Umbrellas
• Beethoven
• Estella
• Perseverance
• Routine
• Piano
• Coronel tapiocca
• Kafka con Mentos
• When is a train not a train
• RENFE cleanliness
• Mikado
• Tremlett on youth
• Pacify that bebe
• Mosquitoes

Needless to say, I no longer have any idea what half of these clues to myself might mean, but I will attempt to include as many of them in this update as I can. This update, which I will now split into a number of separate posts. This is largely due to my own perception that blogs with enormously lengthy posts are somewhat forbidding.