Early yesterday evening, my film director friend called to say that the ‘making off’ scheduled for yesterday wasn’t now going to take place. As if I hadn’t guessed. Instead, we would meet today at 10am in Vigo. When I asked for the location, things went like this:-
In Café Bangkok, in Rosalía de Castro street.
Bangkok? The Asian capital?
No, Bangkok, the painter.
Bangkok the painter? Could you spell it, please
V-a-n-g-o-g-h
Oh, Van Gogh!
Yes, Bangkok.

I wrote yesterday of Vigo in the context of the Civil War. These days, of course, it’s the centre of the Whore Wars between The C de E and a place which appears to be called Night and Day. Each of these promotes itself – in increasingly graphic detail – in the back pages of several local dailies. As I wrote a while ago, in its half-page ad the C de E stresses that it’s conveniently located next to the railway station. So, when I dropped someone off there today, I naturally took the chance to cast an eye around for it. Surprisingly, there was no standard garish sign in pink neon lights. But my suspicions were duly aroused by a 3 storey building whose windows were all painted bright red. I suppose it could have been the Communist Party’s HQ.

Car insurance premiums in Galicia are the highest in Spain. This is said to reflect the high weekend accident rate. So it’s not just indulgent parents who are paying for young men to embed themselves in roadside fixtures in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday.