Heat

My morning ritual in Valencia was to get up early, as the sun rose - by far the nicest time of the day, before the heat began to build.  My morning cup of tea with my book (more on that later) on the terrace was very pleasant.  In fact, given this morning's weather here in The Liberties (overcast, wet, windy and decidedly cool), I'd actually swap for for those first couple of hours in Valencia.  Unfortunately the shops there didn't open until 9 and by then it was already blisteringly hot.  But off I would trudge, through the back streets until I got to a Supermercado where I could get provisions for the day.  Breakfast & lunch we would normally do in the apartment and a couple of times we cooked in the evening too (probably the best food we ate in the week, to be honest).

This was the small park en route to the shops and this park of it I snapped on the M6 with a Voigtlander 21mm f/4 attached.  Most likely with an orange or red filter - I forget which.  A little beaut of a lens it is, by the way, tiny as tiny can be - thankfully with a rather large focus pin to help people like me with fat fingers...

Morning in Valencia, on Ilford Warmtone RC paper

The book.  Oh yes, the book.  In recent times I've developed an interest in the lives and antics of some of our most famous despots.  I think it started with Stalin, then moved on to Mao but when in Spain I thought it only right and proper to tackle the Spanish Civil War and Franco.  The particular book I had with me was The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston.  An eye-catching title, for sure.  The subtitle is Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth Century Spain.  It's a meticulously researched book which documents the atrocities on both sides (Republician and Falangist/Francoist).  And there were a great many atrocities to document, that's for sure.  It's not an easy read.  It's a very uncomfortable read, perhaps because it's geographically closer to home than Stalin and Mao, and similarly, not that long ago.  By the end I was wondering if Spain at that time was inhabited by some sort of alien species, since the bloodthirstiness of a great many people was off the scale.  It made me grateful for being born and growing up here in Ireland - which for sure had (and still has) its problems, but nothing like Spain in the '30s.