It’s always intriguing how cultures [all of them] can be wildly inconsistent. In Spain, for example, it’s perfectly OK to be a bit economical with the truth, buy illegal CDs or unlawfully download films from the internet. But you can’t wrap up the piece of cake they give you with your cup of coffee and take it home. This is ‘ignoble’. Or, worse, ‘the action of a gypsy’. Being both Anglo-Saxon and greedy, my younger daughter ignores this proscription.

Talking of gypsies, I read that in the UK they are adopting a new strategy – buying up large plots of land and then illegally installing drains, roads and houses, defying the local authorities to do anything about it. This is common practice in Spain and helps to explain why even the rule-shy Spanish are rabidly anti-gypsy.

Olympic gloom around a low medal tally is not confined to the UK [‘Well, we are almost on page 2 now’]. Spain has so far only managed a single medal. The national despondency has been the perfect accompaniment to the rain that has fallen on the northern half of Spain for 18 of the 19 days so far this month. But this afternoon the barometer has risen and the sun has forced its way through the clouds. This could be the start of something big. Summer, for example.