On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:58:17 +0100, d4g4h4@yahoo.co.uk (David Horne, _the_
chancellor (*)) wrote:
>B Vaughan wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:02:29 +0100, d4g4h4@yahoo.co.uk (David Horne,
>> _the_ chancellor (*)) wrote:
>>
>> >> >"...then (in the 50s) it was filled with dark little shops selling
>> >> >oil, wine and olives and formidable-looking corsets to peasant women
>> >> >with long black dresses. Donkeys were the main traffic. It was
>> >> >intensely Spanish. Now, it could be just about anywhere. The shops
>> >> >have that international chic I associate with boutiques in big
>> >> >international airports.
>> >>
>> >> Should peasant women have to continue to wear formidable corsets in
>> >> 40 degree weather, world without end, Amen, so that British traveller
>> >> writers can get some great photos? Or is this lament just fuel for a
>> >> sneer at those who never saw it all when it was worth seeing?
>> >
>> >He was saying neither of those things. I'm mildly surprised that you
>> >took that attitude towards it- it seemed like a perfectly fair article
>> >to me.
>>
>> You certainly get the feeling that he mourns the passing of the
>> corsets and the black dresses.
>
>Hm.. even then, not quite. Remember that he's there quoting what he said
>when I was just born! As I read it, the point he was making was that it
>had changed _then_ and continues to do so now. Yes, he claims "I was
>lucky, I knew her at her best." Well, it's hard to disagree with that,
>in that most of us probably like places where no one else is, and mile
>after mile of unadulterated coastline is more attractive than when it is
>built up with hotels.
>
>> What on earth do they have to do with
>> the ruining of the Mediterranean?
>
>I think the point, as I read it, was that places like Torremolinos which
>had previously been "intensely Spanish" had then become like "about
>anywhere" and that the resultant changes lead to a problem. I don't
>think he was saying that women in black dresses maintained the
>environment, just that they were around in a time when less people were.
>
>> I can see where I live that some of
>> the quainter old types are the ones who are throwing plastic bags in
>> the ditches and burning trash, and it's skinny young women with their
>> belly buttons bared who are recycling.
>
>It's hilarious that you write this now! Yesterday morning, we took the
>bus from Dorgali to Nouro, and at a stop before the last, a 'quaint' old
>woman, in _black_, got off the bus, and as she walked away ripped her
>tickets into bits and desposited it on the grass in a small park-
>despite a bin being right next to her. It was then, that I wondered if
>the abundant trash that I noticed in so many places we went on the
>island weren't actually down to tourists or careless youths...
In Italy it is definitely the locals who dump there rubbish on the grass verges
and on lay byes just as it is in UK.
--
Martin
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