After 6 weeks of silence, Tony is home from the sea and back to his bellowing best. But it was actually a more female sound through the bedroom wall last night that alerted me to his probable return. To be honest, it’s not so much the noise from him [or even his wife] which is most disturbing but the whingeing of their 4 year-old, who turns into a relentless cry-baby when his father’s home from the sea.

During a trip to my bank this week, I saw they had a special offer of a dinner service for anyone opening a 3 month deposit account. I could hardly not notice – there were boxes piled up all over the place. The bank looked less like a marbled hall of finance than Spode’s seconds shop in Stoke. A little later, I passed another branch and saw a table in the lobby set with the porcelain on offer. This bribe of a single set of crockery for a term deposit seems truly pathetic to me. So when I roll over mine next week, I shall ask for several of them.

I chanced a purchase from the fish van this week, buying 4 “small pescadillas”. Not recognising the little creatures, I checked with the dictionary and found pescada to be hake. So what I’d bought were “small, little hakes”. I suspect the correct Spanish word for these is ilegal. Hmm. Incidentally, hake is revered in Spain but thought little of in the rest of Europe, especially France. I have a fondness for it born of the fact that one of the French words for it is colin.

Changing Spain?: I read occasionally of steps being taken to reduce the country’s high levels of ‘acoustic pollution’. This week, the Pontevedra council said it will introduce automatic control of noise levels in the hundreds of all-night bars that populate the old quarter. I struggle to see how they’ll actually do this; perhaps some sort of regulator on the hi-fi system. Meanwhile, the town’s Association of Women has been taken to task for booking their annual party in a bar which has been served with a closure order for persistently exceeding permitted noise levels. Perhaps the Chairwoman is the lady who told me ‘No noise, no life!”.