Franco remains; Equal opportunities; Infanta-ing; The Spanish; Toni & Sons; & Genetic progress.

A couple of people enjoyed yesterday's raft of Good News. It has to be said, though, that it'll probably be quite some time before they translate into a reduction in Spain's 26% unemployment rate. Or whatever it really is once all the fiddling has been taken into consideration.

From a TV news item on Saturday, I noticed there's still at least one street in Spain called Calle del Generalisimo. Which is odd as they've had almost 40 years to exorcise this homage to Franco. Maybe they've got a right wing mayor.

Spain really is an 'equal opportunities' sort of country. It's not just businessmen and politicians of both stamps who are processing through the courts accused of corruption but trade union leaders as well. I wonder if there's a gene for sticky fingers which has spread through the Spanish genome since the heady days of the Conquistadors. If so, is it related to the Italian or Greek genes?

Which reminds me . . . The ever-witty Spanish have invented a name for the condition which strikes the wives of men facing corruption charges, as a result of which most of their answers to the judge consist of !'don't know' or 'I don't recall'. It's called The Infanta Syndrome.

Talking of the Spanish . . . I spend most of my time thinking they're wonderful people (at least to me) and then I get hit in the thigh by the bike of a kid whose mother looks as me, silently, as if I had threatened to belt him. But, then, it happened in the crowd down by the flea market and this probably isn't the best context - anywhere in the world - from which to draw conclusions about people.

Talking about local people . . . Nice-but-Noisy Toni and his 2 sons had a yodelling contest next door yesterday. I say 'yodelling' as this comes closest to what it really was. Which was merely a yelling competition. I know it sounds impossible to believe but Toni likes to yell for no apparent purpose. He also likes to sing at the top of his voice but this, at least, could be said to have a purpose. Sadly, he's taught his 2 sons to emulate him, so that even when Toni's away at sea things stay much the same. As I've said, my only real solution is to raise the music or the TV to 11 and drown them out. Occasionally, this seems to shame them into silence.

But some good news . . . Scientists have completed the genome of a primitive horse which lived 750,000 years ago. This beat the previous record of 80,000 years by quite some way. Ironically, as Global Warming causes the permafrost to melt, more and more of these specimens are coming to light. Presumably, it won't be long before the skeletons of Adam and Eve can be analysed. Not to mention the dastardly snake.

The Environment

January: 31 days. On which it rained: 28 - 93% 


February: 24 days. On which it has rained: 24 - 100%.

So, 52 out of 55 - 95%.