An Irish Esqueleto

I went out for a walk around 8:00. I ended up walking behind a band clothed in ancient looking costume - white tight pants, red and black knickers and jacket, and really crazy looking hat with yellow on it. They were practicing for Semana Santa, as everyone seems to be doing. Earlier on I passed yet another group of men taking a break from their frame (not yet a float) which was parked in an alley with some kind of digital sound system resting on it, while the guys were inhabiting the bar across from it, with their towels or cloths still wrapped around their heads. Well, I followed the marching band down Cuesta del Rosario and into Plaza del Salvador, where the crowd of drinkers that usually fills the plaza parted for them. There were a pair of super-guapo guys I noticed ahead of me, who asked me to take a picture of them following behind the band. The band stopped and I somehow misunderstood that they were asking me to go for a copita with them, so I said, "Me? No." Not sure how I managed to screw that up, but it's probably for the better.

I went into the big round church in Plaza San Lorenzo when I got back, and there was already a band from a procession inside. It is a thunderous, grandiose, and maybe primitive sound. There must have been something like 20 trumpets. The drums don't follow an easily identifiable time signature, if they are following one at all. It's 4/4 time with an extra little bit thrown in every two bars, where the drums wind up for the next bit (unless I've lost all my ear training ability completely...)

I stood for a moment in the long church. They were giving mass and the Virgen way high up at the front was surrounded by a myriad of really tall candles arranged in a beautiful formation. Again the place was filled with incense.

Then I hung out in the living room with a whole bunch of classical music students, and one social work student. Two of the girls who happened to be pianists invited me to come with them to the Feria and dance Sevillanas. The one Sevillan girl was insisting that her friend from farther north get a flamenco dress (the skinny kind that you can hardly walk in). The social work girl, from Cadiz, told several stories at breakneck speed (which I pieced together), about her time in Ireland where her fellow language students were constantly doing stupid things. She spoke in a concerned yet tough air; not as a nasty gossiper, and in a serious tone explained how on Halloween a fellow student had appeared at her door the morning after, I think in a cat costume saying she really had a problem. Then the word "esqueleto" kind of clung on sideways in my mind and gradually gelled that it meant skeleton. She had slept with an esqueleto and in the end got pregnant. This was about all she knew about him, besides his name and that he had a job, when she wanted to go look for him around Belfast.