Poser: Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same date but not on the same day. Discuss.
Along Princes Street, up the Bridges, down the Mile and listen for ‘the tat’. Renditions of Dumbarton’s Drums and Scotland the Brave, with Highland Cathedral and the more saccharine Skye Boat Song announcing the presence of yet another retail opportunity. There to purchase a fly-weight bri-nylon kilt so you’re properly attired to walk the West Highland Way, possibly with the satirically sartorial addition of a tartan tammie to blend in with the locals, or a hairy heilan’ coo and its close relative, the stuffed green Nessie. Not to forget the inevitable Braveheart rubber duck and the omnipresent unicorn. All ‘real, genuinely authentic, 100% pure’ Scotch souvenirs that have sailed in a steel container halfway around the planet. Geegaws garnering a pestilence of emissions all to perpetuate a mystical myth of Scotch-land.
Never fear, you’re not alone Edinboorg, the same manufactory has despatched all the blades that adorn the tat-emporia of Toledo, the trinkets of fridge magnets in Segovia, the pottery glazed bulls of Madrid and the Quixotic paraphernalia of La Mancha.
The density of knickknack stores in any European city would serve as a useful barometer for measuring levels of visitor visibility. More accurate than counting tour guides’ umbrellas, totalling accommodation’s key-safes or decibel reading the rumble of castor-shod suitcases.
Toledo has its own raison d’être; the sword, historically renowned for their production since Roman times.
Once its narrow pasajes were befouled by equines’ by-products as they hauled charcoal and metal ores up through the convoluted, narrow passages and into to the reek-filled foundries. There to be mixed in a secret, near alchemic, recipe to create the sharpest, strongest blades known to Western Europe.
Today there’s only two artisanal families left, supported by the interests of re-enactors and the Netflix industry’s lust for historical bloodfests. In direct contrast to the many employed in the sale of repro-BLS… reproduction, blade-like-substances. Samurai, claymore, gladius, machete, falcara, rapier, falchon. Arranged in fan displays, at prices that say no local craftsperson has come anywhere near their authenticity. The knives in serried ranks, filling whole frontages of shops’ windowpanes. Pare, clasp, carve, cleave, bowie, bougia, navaja, fillet, falcón. All come with a backdrop of plate-armoured mannequins, designer chain mail, embattlements of shields, schildrons of pikes and lances. Unfortunately, I can find no evidence of a windmill.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, tax collector, soldier, convict, slave, scrivener; the man with the credit for writing the first modern novel. More importantly, the mind that conceived a memoria of iterations, that of an emaciated melancholic knight and his portly side-kick, one on a knackered nag the other on an ass. Chasing knight-errantry and long departed causes, chivalristic jousting with a giant’s familiar: the windmills of La Mancha. Don Quijote astride Rocinante, with squire Sancho Panza as his foil and voice of reason. (Forbye mistaking windmills, he confused sheep for advancing troop reinforcements. Easy to do; Edward II did the same at Bannockburn)
Today, that conception has led to assemblies of marble monuments in plazas, musters of models in shops and a euro coin-crusher in every Spanish railway station. Every city has a street named for him, every property he was associated with is credited with a ‘slept here’, the universities he might possibly have attended claim an ownership. Such that Sn. de Cervantes and his creation ‘The Don’ have evolved in the popular imagination into a near single identity. Yet most will not have completed part one of his eponymous book, many don’t even get past page 79.
So did the bard of Stratford meet the ‘el autor primero Latino’? Did they share the same space? Why any might want to ask such a question is a wonder, but take a wander through brainrot.com to find some who find it a compelling possibility. But, one was a propagandist for a Protestant Queen, the other a struggling civil servant to a Catholic administration. So to that question: highly unlikely, verging on totally improbable. However, they did manage to share an equally problematic death date.
That posed question: First consider the history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Forget the present day one hour difference between Europe and Britain, back then it was eleven days. Why? It wasn’t Brexit, but it was a similar sentiment. Instead of blaming Brussels, it was Rome, and a devilish papist plot to tinker with sovereignty and defraud The Great British Worker, to remove eleven days from their lives. That deep-thinker, ‘The Will of the People’, voted by rioting. When in reality it was a scientific correction, for up to this point there was a recognition that a year was actually six hours and 365 days long. What was missing was a puckle of minutes. (0.0025hr). The calendar had got out of kilter with planetary reality.
It would need a bit of fiddling around with that extra day in February and then a further seventeen decades before Britain would admit its error. Probably a sobering reminder for Brexit ‘remainers’; the memory lifespan of an egregious error.
