Another poem today, this time much more lighthearted.
I wrote this when we visited a fiesta in a nearby village. It has a small population of two thousand people. The name Paradela means ‘A stop on the Road.’ It seemed appropriate.
Galicia is sometimes surprising.
Paradela
On Monday Paradela
is a sleepy little town.
On Tuesday Paradela
has nothing going down.
On Wednesday in Paradela
you can buy yourself a cow.
On Thursday Paradela
has a different feeling now
In a square just off the main street,
someone’s setting up a fair.
A sign’s up in the market
warning ‘pedestrians beware’.
Just beyond the town
a closer look reveals.
A farmer on his tractor
doing wheelies in his fields
On Friday Paradela
is getting very weird,
There’s a ramp, a row of buses,
And a lot of men with beards.
On Saturday Paradela
is a very different place.
Bikers clad in leather
are filling every space.
There are Hondas in the marketplace.
Ducati’s in the park.
And as for Kawasaki
they have built themselves an ark.
Yamahas are roaring
and drowning out the sound,
of the leather cladded DJ
on Benelli sponsored ground.
He is playing heavy metal
to the Royal Enfield crowd.
New models from Suzuki
will make their owners proud.
There’s a stylish BMW,
An antique Norton too,
And a row of ancient Triumphs
that served in World War two.
In pride of place on main street
is Harley Davidson
each one so well polished
they outshine the blazing sun.
On Sunday Paradela
is a town gone slightly barmy,
With stuntmen jumping buses
and a display team from the army
The market hall’s a restaurant
behind a giant bar
So the locals are as happy
as the people from afar.
On Monday Paradela
is a sleepy little town.
Just a few exhausted locals
taking all the posters down.
Abigail Thorne 