Today’s papers report that the 9 year-old Spanish girl who won the Junior Eurovision contest on Saturday is being honoured by her home town in a number of ways, including having a park named after her. Meanwhile, the spoilsport Belgian press are querying the claim that she wrote her raunchy rap number herself. I wonder why. But whether she did or she didn’t, I fear we’re going to be seeing an awful lot more of this staggeringly self-assured and precocious moppet. I, for one, just can’t wait.

Isn’t it a bugger when you think you’ve invented a word and then find you haven’t? I combined ‘groin’ and ‘grinding’ to make ‘groinding’, the favourite shot of Spanish TV directors. And, although this doesn’t appear in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, Google comes up with 22 citations. Ignoring obvious typing mistakes and porn sites which seem to embrace every word ever invented, it appears to mean some sort of material. See this fascinating document – The Influence of Wheel Surface Speed on the Grindability of Groinding Material.

In a recent blog, I cited the latest offerings from La C. d. E. in Vigo as being “boats, limos and … planes”. In the automatic translation commissioned by someone in Spain today this emerged as “los barcos, los limos y … los planos”. I believe I’m right in saying that this is “boats, limos and … flatlands”. An intriguing prospect.