Discovering music

I have just discovered this sweet singer, Russian Red. Although she is Spanish she writes and sings in English. She is form Madrid and her real name is Lourdes Hernández.
Her dazzling voice makes you stop and listen to her music carefully. Her main song ‘cigarettes’ sounds fresh, original and with the simplicity of few instruments. I am very surprised.

Here you have, I hope you enjoy it!

Uncanny stories...?

One of the most unbelievable tales that I have never listened is about something related with a fire. This fire happened in a forest, in a natural and protected area in Spain.
To avoid this horrible and ecological disaster, a sort of emergency groups mobilized. Technical and human support, a large number of volunteers, professional firemen, 4 helicopters and a big hydroplane collaborated in the extinction tasks.

This labour of extinction needed one week to control the fire, and three more days to extinct it completely. Afterwards a technical team went to the affected area to evaluate the damage and find out the origin of that fire. Until now everything was normal, but the burned forest had prepared a big surprise.
All of a sudden, when they finally managed to arrive to one of the regions with a high difficult access they found a package similar to a lifeless body. One of the team components turn over the body and all of them realised that it suspect package was the body of a frogman, completely burned by flames, and fully equipped for the practising of scuba diving.














Anybody couldn’t believe their eyes. It was astonishing because the nearest beach was two hundred kilometres from there. What the hell he was doing there, and disguised in that way? The only answer to that unbelievable question was that the hydroplane.
When it flew to the sea to refuelling water for its huge water tank, and then empty it into the woods on fire, soak up the poor and innocent frogman who was practising scuba diving near to the sea’s surface.

I don’t know if it is an ‘uncanny story’ or an
‘urban legend’. In my opinion is more credible the second one, a tale that belongs to the nowadays folklore. What do you think about it?

See you my dear readers.

Moleskine ®, a notebook full of history or pure marketing

In my student days I was fascinated when I discovered the history that was hidden behind this simply notebook. A cleanly notebook yes, with a naked eye it seems a normal notebook with the only particularity that you can close it with an elastic rope. But behind this simplicity there was a good story to tell you.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)Notebook No. 53, June-September 1912,9 x 13.5 cmkept in the MuséeNational Picasso of Paris

All of this started when Bruce Chatwin made use of these kind of notebooks in all of his journeys, he always bought them in a stationery store in Paris, who was supplied by a stationer in Tours, France, until the stationer closed in 1986 due to the death of its owner who left bringing with him the secret of its manufacturing.
Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh or Ernest Hemingway used one of these pocket notebooks to write draw, etc. But it is not tested that they used the same notebook, the moleskine, (this word comes from the French spelling of 'moleskin', the cloth covering of it).
Some years later, an Italian company Modo & Modo, registered the name, the brand, and started to fabricate the product thanks to the description on B. Chatwin’s books.
The legend of this notebook probably started when the fabulous marketing campaign of this company, take this legend and started to buy this product more expensive than the rest of the same typology.
I have to confess that I use one of these notebooks. I bring it wherever I go, and I don’t know if it is for the legend or for the marketing effect, probably the second one.

Here's the notebook at present, Moleskine.