Well, I am back from the UK and have regained control of my computer from the bloody Sasser worm, which hit me on Saturday, before anyone apparently knew much about it. Ruined my weekend. Be warned – it doesn’t come via the email and, if you don’t have a firewall, you need the MSN security update to keep it out.

A quintessential Spanish scenario – I went today to meet a local businessman, having made the appointment for 10.30 when we met yesterday. Or ‘first thing’ as he called it. I had naturally taken a book to read so, when he polled up at 11.05, his first comment was not ‘Sorry’ or some such namby-pamby offering but ‘Ah, I see you are taking advantage of the situation’. Then we went for a coffee without further comment.

The new socialist government has hit the ground running. Or stumbling some would say. For those with long memories, they appear to be part of the George Brown school of public relations – First open your mouth and then put your foot in it. Last week they laid into the previous administration for their failure to prevent the Madrid bombings of a month ago. And yesterday, they caused widespread consternation with a suggestion that all preachers – not just rabid Islamic ones – would be vetted in advance for contentious content of their public addresses. In a still largely [if nominally] Catholic country, this did not go down well.

Ah, the dangers of idiom. As we sat in a plane at Lisbon airport last week, the pilot advised us that Portugalia [an excellent airline, by the way] were sorry for the fact that we were not yet disembarking. The problem, he said, was that we had landed a few minutes early, the company’s new agent had not yet arrived and so we were waiting for them to remove the finger…… After a second of two of studied silence, the Brits aboard broke naturally broke out in raucous laughter.