The City That Likes Bikes

You Can Guess Where This Is Going, Can't You?
But before we trip lightly o'er the English Channel, down through France and over the Pyrenees - which are bleak and forbidding indeed when seen in person, I can tell you - to a certain city, I would like to abruptly change track and deal with  -
     Extrasolar Planets!
     The total of these objects has now reached about 4,000; there is a bit of fudging about criteria used to determine what counts as an exoplanet, so there's a lack of an absolutely definitive and positive total at present.  We'll definitely hit that 4,000 by the end of this year, as there are oodles of candidates gleaned by Kepler waiting to be assessed and confirmed.  Kepler being a satellite named after Johannes Kepler the astronomer, who has also somewhat confusingly given his name to several extra-solar planets.

The Rocky road

     The first ESPs were found back in 1992, with a long delay until 1995 before another candidate was discovered.  So, that's 4,000 planets in 27 years, whereas before 1992 we didn't positively know that any such thing existed.  The resolution techniques using new satellites and detection methods mean that it's possible to pick up small rocky planets the size of Earth, and, once the James Webb Space Telescope goes up, we may be able to get spectrographic analyses of ESPs atmospheres.  Which means we'll be able to tell if their atmosphere is water-bearing; or, conducive to life.

A "Hot Jupiter"

     Back at the beginning of the discovery process, it was easiest to spot massive gas giant planets, due to the relatively large effect they had on the amount of "wobble" imposed on their parent star.  Now - now we may soon be getting a view of our neighbours.
     Play nice, now!

Pyrrhus Of Epirus
I have alluded to Pyrrhus before, when complaining about the ridiculously difficult Codeword solutions being put forward in the MEN.  The usual connotation when you encounter this Greek king and soldier is "a Pyrrhic victory", meaning one that has been won at ruinous cost to oneself.
     Ol' Py has been rather traduced in this way.  Art?

Pyrrhus

     In fact, at the battles of Heraclea and Asculum, Ol' Py handed his enemies the Romans a right shoeing, suffering half their casualties and winning both times.  He then decided to go off and help the Sicilian Greeks get rid of their Carthaginian overlords - which is some cheek, taking on the two great powers of the Western Mediterranean at that time.
     He rapidly over-ran most of Sicily, but then alienated the Sicilian Greeks by demanding ships and crews to tackle the Carthaginian fleet, who were helping their last fortress resist a siege.

Lilybaeum a.k.a. Marsala

     There is a lot more, rather too much to go into here.  Suffice it to say that Ol' Py was a consummate soldier whom one took at at one's peril, and hardly the barely-competent duffer phrases would have you believe.

Now About Bikes
You've been patient for long enough.  Okay, one thing about Barca is that the city's residents like their mopeds and motorbikes, and there is no speed limit, so it is quite common to see some leather-clad biker doing 70 m.p.h. around the city centre.
     Contrarily, the city also puts an effort into providing bike lanes for cyclists.  Art?

Also communal bikes to go in those bike lanes

     This is one of the things that Sal and I sagely nodded at, saying "You couldn't do that in Manchester".  They tried, but the bikes were stolen, vandalised, thrown in the canal or put onto bonfires.  Ergo, no communal bikes in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.
     There are other variants of bikes - electric ones, which can go at a fair pace without the rider having to fatigue themselves by anything as mundane as pedalling.  Also innumerable electric scooters; we both wondered how they cope with hills.  Then there were Segways; Sal and I saw a convoy of them down by the Zoo, seeking safety in numbers.  Sadly gone too quickly for me to take a photo.  There was also a dude on an electric unicycle - I think, he was here and gone rather nippily.

Scooter, electric, one of.

     Take another look at that row of communal bikes, and tell me what's missing.
     No idea?  No rubbish.  Barca is amazingly clean for a major city, with absolutely no litter nor chewing gum all over the pavements.  The Barcelonans just seem to carefully put all their rubbish in bins.  This will be a stark contrast to my walk into work tomorrow, past puddles of vomit, broken bottles, discarded cans, cigarette butts and takeaway food wrappers for -
     NO!  Wait - Sal and I saw a paper tissue someone had dropped outside an expensive Barca hotel - there is hope for Manchester yet!*

Manchester, after a heavy night of it.

Finally - 
Let me introduce you to the Shrike.  This is a carnivorous bird with unlovely habits, which we will detail shortly.  First, if Art can put down his plate of coal -

The shrike in action

     These  birds have a habit of impaling their prey on spines and thorns and barbed-wire barbs, as a kind of open-air larder.  That way they can go back and finish what they started, once it's gotten a bit gamey.  Also, leaving toxic insects to rot a little means all the horrid toxins are thoroughly decayed by the time they get dined upon, so the shrike doesn't have stomach ache, the poor darling.
     Their name comes from Anglo-Saxon, meaning "shriek", for they have a strident call.  And - that's all.


     Right, time to hurl the motley into that geyser, wrapped only in raw bacon and salmon fillets!  And having mentioned food, it is time Your Humble Scribe went and made his lunch for tomorrow and got some sustenance for tonight.

Tally ho!


*  Maybe.

HoHo Joan Miro

"Where Are The Guardia Civil?"
I wondered.  "And who are these Mossos d'Esquadra blokes?"
     For we had been four days in Barca and nary a GC to be seen.  You know, those chaps who are brave enough to wear bicorne hats as a fashion statement.  Art?
                                        
                                                  I think those are flowers.
     It turns out one is linked to the other.  Some ten years ago the Catalan government swapped out the GC in favour of their own local police force, the "Mossos d'Esquadra", which translates (allegedly) as "The Squaddies".  Hence all those cars proudly sporting this name on their sides.  Art?

Jackets, too

     Sal and I did see a section of five MdE escorting a couple of ne'er-do-wells at the airport, quite low key without any swagger or noise, yet that pair were undoubtedly in trouble.  Your Humble Scribe, being inquisitive, wondered what would happen to them.  Doubtless nothing pleasant ...
     Anyway, that's nothing to do with today's title, which refers to the very influential Catalan artist Joan Miro and the Hop-On/Hop-Off bus that Darling Daughter and I took there.  Anyone not interested in art may - carry on reading.  If I'm going to take photos and write down their names, you can jolly well stick around and peruse said text.  Art!

The first artwork you see

     This wild and groovy set is "Self Portrait" and consists of a bold graffito overlaid on an original, much earlier sketch.  Just to show that Ol' Jo could manage detailed chocolate-box art as well as wild geometrical squiggles, here's "Mont-Roig Village and Church" -

Not quite chocolate-box.

     He did a couple of very large, cheeky pieces, one a great big canvas with a single dot over to one side - 

"Landscape"

     And a set of three very large canvasses with a very long title - "Painting on a white background for the cell of a recluse" -

Very - er - reclusive.

     Now for one of his in a more familiar style - "The diamond smiles at twilight", which sounds like a Hans Zimmer score title - 

Guess which is the diamond?

     I think that's enough modern art for you at this serving, can't having you getting all blase and jaundiced about it.  So!

<loud sigh>  No, Art.  Just - no.

     Time to dangle the motley by it's braces from the church's weather-vane - in a thunderstorm, of course!

"Passbook"?
Really?  I mean, really?  
     Before we continue with the exciting world of modern Catalan art,* allow me to fall back onto one of my staple whinges, that of the MEN's Cryptic Crossword clues.  It was along the lines of "It will be waited for with interest after another year".  The answer was 'Passbook' which Conrad had never heard of, despite being of considerable vintage.  Art?

I pass.

     I needed to look it up.  It is - or was, in this era of online banking - a book detailing the deposits of a person into their bank account.  No doubt it was an example of the white heat of technology back in 1932.  Not so much today.
     Bah!

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" By Jane Austen and Seth Graham Smith
Sorry for the long title, although it is accurate.  I think.  I've never read the original "P&P" so I shall have to take at least part of this on trust.  I did do "Mansfield Park" for A Level English Lit, way back when, and it's a Big Skirt Novel.  The lives of minor provincial gentry during Napoleonic times.  There - now you don't need to read it.** Art?

My edition

     I am about a quarter of the way through the novel, and have found some plot holes.  SGS alleges that the dead are rising from their graves, due to the 'Strange Plague', then wandering the countryside, eating any live humans they come across.
     How is this so?  Said zombies would need to have already been infected in order to get out of their coffins, wouldn't they?  So why not merely decapitate the already-deceased before burying them?

Thus.

     Or bury them face-down?  Or just pile them in a big heap and burn them?
     The response to said zombie plague seems rather too reactive, as well.  Conrad would suggest the old French tactic of "tache d'huile", or "oil-slick", where defended localities extend their perimeter outwards to other defended localities, gradually merging together.
     Admittedly, this did not work too well in Algeria, but zombies have considerably less intellect than the FLN.
     Also, why not just build a wall around each town or village?  Or even a stout fence?

Thus

     Of course, I may be over-thinking this ...

Finally -
Your Humble Scribe feels the need for some lunch, so we shall pause here for today.  Also, I need to travel into Royton for some more bread and bodywash, and perhaps a bottle of pop for the rest of the family, despite not feeling terribly healthy.  And there is nothing more pathetic than a man with a minor illness -

How I feel.

     Of course I look a veritable picture of health and happiness, thanks to a nice tan, so I shall get no sympathy from anyone, the dastards.


*  It is so exciting!  It is!
**  Thank me later.