I had the pleasure of watching half an hour of a South American soap opera this afternoon. Despite the background music of crashing cymbals, strident violin chords and a frenetic flamenco guitar, I could just about make out what was going on ….. Beautiful young woman marries older, rich owner of large hacienda; shortly after the ceremony in the mansion house, new bride slips away to have it off [or slips off to have it away] with her real love against the fence of the adjacent bullring; sister of new husband emerges from the shadows, denounces the lovers but then collapses into the sand before she can tell the rest of the wedding party; expiring from some unknown fatal illness, she begs the couple for help but is promptly suffocated by the new bride in front of horrified but static lover; the bride then ululates with manufactured grief, bringing everyone else into the bullring; as they mill about in sorrow, a nasty looking cove with a pigtail tells new bride that she would be well advised to pay him not to inform her aristocratic new husband that, apart from being a murderess, she is [worse] the daughter of a famous whore. At this point I had to leave but I would be happy to bet that our heroine’s day got even worse. Possibly one of her legs fell off.