Well, I arrived back in Pontevedra in the early hours of this morning, having driven three days from Liverpool. Almost my first thought on [happily] crossing the French border near Pamplona was that Spanish driving was more, shall we say, competitive than that of both France and the UK. So I wasn’t too surprised to later see an electronic sign, exhorting drivers not to treat the autopista as a racing circuit. Fat chance. God help us if the young Spaniard, Alonso, builds on early success and goes on to win the Formula 1 championship this year.

More of this – and other things – in due course but first I want to record the brief conversation I had outside my house just as I was about to drive off two weeks or so ago. You may recall that my neighbour, Tony, is a nice but noisy chap who likes to bellow just for the sake of it. So I naturally treasure the long trips he makes on his oil tanker. His (equally nice) wife, Amparo, had been summoned by another neighbour to move her car from the front of his garage entrance and was slinking back into her garden. So I took the opportunity to say I’d be away for a while. “Then I’ll be alone” she said, “as Tony went off on a long trip last night”. I was mortified at the prospective waste of at least two weeks’ silence. Still am.

Two very Spanish items awaited my return. The first was a new membership card from my health insurance company, delivered after the expiry of the old one. Happily, I hadn’t been aware that the card I was carrying in France and the UK was totally useless. The second item was a debit for 65 Euros from my account in the name of a company I’ve never heard of. A search suggests it’s a water company in Barcelona. So I guess it’s possible that my previous supplier has sold out or been taken over. Nice to have been informed. And to have received a prior invoice.

Oh yes, and Amparo had now parked her car across the front of my garage.

My thanks to all those who checked my blog in my absence. And to whoever it is who’s been trawling through the archives in the last week.