Facebook

I spent a bit of time the other day in Facebook. It's quite interesting who you can find through it; I say through Facebook, not necessarily on it. I came to a list of people who were at my secondary school in the same final year as me. I think I recognised the names of three men; no women at all. As we're all in our 50s they will probably be on their second or third change of surname (through marriage, of course).
Living in Spain that sounds wierd to me. Here, women keep the surnames they were born with.
Children take a surname from each parent, for example: the president of the government's father's first surname is Rodriguez, his mother's Zapatero, so he is José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. My children have my husband's surname and then mine; I only have my father's, so I've got a bad deal!
This lovely modern system where women don't lose their surnames started as a pretty unpleasant device to check racial purity in the bad old days of the Inquisition, so that you didn't marry a new Christian (converted Jew or Moslem) because you could tell by the surnames!
Anyway, that's why I'm still Sally Bracher.

Spring

Easter's over, spring is here. At nine in the morning, the sky is blue and the sparrows are feasting on the grass seed in our back garden. From here I can see a big poplar tree which is covered in catkins. In a while they'll start releasing the fluff which gets everywhere and makes life a misery for anyone with a sensitive nose. The bulbs I planted in the autumn are in bloom; mostly daffodils but also grape hyacinths (is that how you spell it?) and anemones.
There are red kites which soar over the rooftops in the city. I wonder where they nest?

Memories

A couple of days ago in Zaragoza we saw some of the sites of the sieges of the city by Napoleonic troops in 1808 and 1809. Rafael remembers his grandmother telling him things her grandfather had told her about what he'd heard about the sieges. I think it's pretty amazing how far back you can take oral memories..
This is a building left as it was in the historic centre of the city.