I’m not really a cat person. And neither is Ryan, my border collie. Which makes it all the more surprising that we've been adopted by a kitten which hid in the engine compartment of my car and then cried the street down. One reason for my antipathy to felines is that I’m allergic to them. But in this case, the tables seem to have been turned, as the kitten goes in for a lot of sneezing. Either that or she has a cold.

By the time a Spanish woman gets to be a grandmother, she’s had a lot of practice at getting her voice heard above the competition. The two basic rules for this are 1. speak at the same time as everyone else, and 2. be louder. So, you can imagine what it’s like when 5 or 6 of these harridans get together, after Mass on Sunday for example. I doubt that Attila and his hordes made much more noise as they rampaged across Asia. The best of them can actually read the café’s free newspapers while they are bawling their banal thoughts. This all goes down well with me, of course.

The Tower of Babel: The Spanish government has sent two identical Catalan translations of the European Constitution to Brussels. One is from the government of Catalunia and the other from the government of Valencia, down the east coast. The purpose of this nonsense, I suppose, is to ensure recognition of separate identities. It’s as if North Wales and South Wales sent identical translations in Welsh. How satisfying, then, to read today that the people of North East England have roundly rejected the opportunity to set out on this crazy road by having a huge ‘regional assembly’. Perhaps they took stock of what has happened nearby in Scotland since they got their own parliament.