Things I Thought I Knew (Part II)

Hacienda

I remember that there used to be a club in the UK with this name. I had always been pretty sure that it meant a big house out in the countryside. After finishing my Spanish courses in Ecuador I moved to Bolivia and the flat I stayed in looked out onto a busy city centre street. There was a nondescript building there which said Hacienda on the front. People would queue up from about 7 in the morning (obviously I never saw this happen but there was always a queue when I woke up a few hours later so I guessed the 7 o’clock bit). It certainly didn’t look like a countryside residence so I could only imagine that the famous Manchester nightclub had secretly moved to South America. Maybe the people went there so early to get tickets for the next Happy Mondays or New Order gigs. Anyway, after months of vaguely wondering about this I finally picked up my dictionary and discovered that hacienda can also mean a government finance office. Not exactly a place that is going to twist your melon but I guess it has its uses.

Canaletas

This is another word which I saw on the street. There was a sort of workshop I used to pass each day and it said this outside it. My dictionary seemed strangely devoid of a translation and I thought that maybe it meant small TV channels, since these are canales. I then forget all about it until I bought my own house here. When they were roofing it the architect told me that I needed canaletas but that he didn’t know where I could get them done locally. I had to admit that I knew where I could get them but that I didn’t know what they were. Now I know that they are gutters. My new ones look great, by the way.