Costa Azahar Garden Party

Up early this morning, tidying the house, cleaning the garden furniture, getting tables and a gazebo tent out of the garage, ready for today's garden party. On the telly again this morning, an outside broadcast of the preliminaries for the St Fermin bull running fiesta, due to start at eight. I watched a little yesterday, as I did last time I was here, but it leaves me as bemused as ever. The style of the broadcast, with lots of vox pop interviews, statistics, glimpses behind the scenes, is much the same, whether it's a major sport event, a royal event, Semana Santa processions or other public party occasions. Being a TV spectator is boring if you've seen it once. The commentary becomes banal, even though the commentators make an effort to sound exciting and interesting. It's a second hand experience, so I soon settle for Radio Four Today programme, as usual, while I potter about or eat breakfast.

The team of four organising the garden party arrived at ten thirty to make sandwiches, and by lunch time the fridge was full of sandwich trays and cooling drinks. It was quite a hot afternoon, but we were blessed by a cooling breeze, flowing through the house, once all the doors were open. Altogether about twenty people came, from all three congregations. After socialising, drinking and eating, there was a prize draw, and then a game of 'Beetle' played, with bottles of Cava for six winners. When I wasn't chatting to people, I helped with serving drinks, clearing up and putting away, to de-clutter available space. By seven, everyone had departed, and the house was left clean and tidy. Having had my fill of sandwiches and cake, I felt no need to cook myself a meal, and was just able to relax.

BBC Four's Saturday evening Scandinavian drama of the day was about the hijacking of a Danish cargo ship by Indian Ocean pirates. It was scripted in a mixture of Danish, English and occasional Arabic, without subtitles too. and portrayed the difficulty and risk involved in communication both on board, and ship to shore in such a tense situation. Interesting too, that neither the criminals nor their victims knew each other's mother tongue, so they had to use English, imperfectly understood and spoken by most caught up in the crisis. Getting that right was a remarkable achievement for the script writer. Thought provoking stuff.