There’s a clever new machine in the entrance to the Post Office which dispenses stamps according to the weight of your letters. As you might expect, it isn’t designed for a customer pushed for time. You have to go through 8 steps to get your stamp and, more often than not, you are then told no change is available. Call me a man in too much of a hurry but I wouldn’t have thought it impossible to indicate this before you went through the process. Especially as there’s a temptation to repeat the 8 steps to check whether the bloody thing isn’t lying.

Today comes another of those surveys designed to portentously tell us what anyone could find out from a one-night stopover in any city in Spain. This one comes from the University of Valencia and deals with noise levels in this fun-loving society. As the researcher puts it, “There are few opportunities to enjoy silence in Spain at any time of the day or night.” This is because the recommended decibel levels for each are comfortably exceeded even in restaurants never mind bars. Mention is made of a 2003 law designed to reduce this damaging noise pollution, with the rider that this has had no effect and that it will be a long time before anything changes. So, bring ear plugs. Or dine and sleep across the border in Portugal.

Quotes of the Day

Learn to like art, music and literature deeply and passionately. They will be your friends when things are bad.
Someone’s Grandad. Sadly, not mine.

I’m beginning to see that the brain counts for little but that character counts for everything.
Harold Nicholson, when a precocious 17 year old.

My mother never quite understood why we all insisted on treating life like a contest, when to her it was really more like the weather – there to be either discreetly celebrated or mildly regretted.
Sheridan Morley