watching the English

Cambridge is celebrating the Town Bumps this week, in which, unlike the College Bumps, local rowing clubs compete.




In a bump race a number of boats chase each other in single file, each boat attempts to catch ("bump") the boat in front without being caught by the boat behind. The race last several days and each day the boats line up bow-to-stern with a set distance of one and a half boat lenghts' between each boat. At the start signal each crew starts to row, attempting to catch the boat in front while simultaneously being chased by the one behind.

As the name suggests, damage to boats and equipment is indeed common during bumps racing!

Once a bump has occurred both crews pull over to the riverbank and take no further part in that race, it is easy to tell which is which as there is a certain gloomy air in the boat which got the bump whereas the ones who bumped show off their newly acquired status by sticking tree leaves in their hair or around their necks.



Now, honestly, is there a better way of spending your long summer days?

Morris Dance

Last Saturday on our way to a concert at Ely Cathedral we bumped into a sight of 'middle-aged men bedecked in ribbons and bells, capering and jigging and clacking sticks in the air' or, in other words, Morris Dancing aficionados. As Jemima Lewis claims from the pages of The Independent, 'Morris Dancing is not like other hobbies. It inspires a unique mixture of horror, hilarity and bewilderment. Why aren't they embarrassed? Don't they know how mad they look? All the characteristics that we now think of as typically English (self consciousness, irony, a certain cool) are subverted by this least beloved of national traditions.' But then in a stroke of genius she turns 180 degrees as she goes on saying 'Yet Morris dancers have much to teach us, not at least about ourselves' and as we read on we learn that the English were once, before bureaucrats rationalised and modernised the country, a nation of 'prancing yokels' and that Morris dancers are to be regarded as 'fifth columnists, defending English eccentricity from within, heroes of the ancient and anomalous, in the citadel of the bland.'

I did enjoy watching them and their display of awkwardness, they gave our daughter a badge and explained to her that with such a badge she could be naughty all day. She was delighted.

I wonder whether we, Spanish people, would have the same courage when it comes to analysing our traditions with a critical eye.

What do you think?

gay pride and Sotheby's

Saturday day in London, went to see the family painting that is going to be auctioned at Sotheby's to-day, the school of Seville 'Saint Joseph and the Christ Child'. Good to see the 'Old Masters' special two day auction, mainly built around a Velazquez that went yesterday for more than £8 million and a Turner's lot that went for 11 (yes, millions).

On the way to the exhibition we saw the gay pride parade, which made the whole experience seriously funny.

Indeed, there are as many Londons as we dare imagine.