What can I say? Seven people have visited my blog site today and it’s still only early evening. Obsessed? Moi?

Bit of an irony this as I had decided only half an hour ago that, if I really was wasting my time writing for no one but myself, then I might as well waste it on a grand scale and write my novel. On the other hand, I am sitting facing a cartoon in which a man of about my age is saying to a woman over dinner – “I think I’ve got a great book in me. But it could be wind”. This needs more thought.

Talking again of the plague of noise in Spain, here’s a tale which may amuse my Anglo-Saxon reader[s] but leave any Spanish readers nonplussed by its lack of noteworthiness... There is only one café in Pontevedra lacking a TV blaring away in at least one corner. This, of course, is an oasis, visited by the likes of me who just want to either read the papers or have a quiet conversation. I was there this morning when a trio of young women came in and sat right next to me and my companion. Two of them had babies in pushchairs and, naturally, these began to cry and then scream. Despite the obvious serenity of the place, the women blithely ignored this and simply raised the already high level of their conversation in compensation. This, in itself, would not be worthy of comment, even by me. But when I suggested to my companion that we move to another table, she blanched and indicated that this simply wouldn’t be on. I didn’t ask why because I didn’t need to. The right to shout without the slightest consideration for people near you is so absolute in Spain that it is considered an insult to show that you are offended by this. Nice, eh? You are entitled to be inconsiderate in making noise but not entitled to be inconsiderate in showing that the noise offends you. I am beginning to lose confidence that my strategy of playing Wagner at maximum volume is going to have its desired effect on my neighbours. They are never going to ask me to turn it down so that I can then do a deal around their habit of bawling at each other.

Who would have thought that Katherine Hepburn would have been the one to sum up the Spanish in only 11 words? Viz. ..‘If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun’.