A chara, – The current delightful correspondence on punctuality has reminded me that, as an official who spoke Spanish, I was invited to help out at a conversation in Dublin between the prime minister of Spain and the taoiseach in 1983 (unnecessarily because Garret FitzGerald’s Spanish, though not as superb as his French, was perfectly adequate).
Felipe González humorously bemoaned his own nation’s lack of punctuality; the taoiseach lamented that in neither Irish nor English did we Irish have an expression that quite conveyed the urgency of “mañana”. – Is mise,
MICHAEL
LILLIS,
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Dublin 6.