The house down the hill that’s taken almost 5 years to build must be nearing completion; a host of mature palm trees has appeared in the garden. The owner is said to be the head honcho in Opus Dei in the town so perhaps they arrived, like St James of Santiago, by magic boat from the Middle East. Just as likely, I believe.

I asked my piano teacher whether pupils in his native Argentina regularly failed to turn up for classes, as they do here. On reflection, he rather ducked the issue, answering that he’d found the Galicians to have an attitude summed up by the phrase ‘Búscate la vida’. As this literally means ‘Find yourself a life’, I thought it was yet another way of saying fun came first. But I’ve since been told it really means something like ‘You’re own your own, mate’. Or, in the vernacular, ‘Tough shit’. So it’s a riposte to make to someone who finds your behaviour unacceptable.

Localism again. One of the region's papers today complained the history of Galicia only merits 5 to 10% of the content of school text books. They should be so lucky; the complaint in the UK is that the history of Britain is no longer taught much, never mind the history of England or one of its regions/counties.

I wish I’d said that

Considering the obsession of our young men with fast cars and motor bikes, awarding the Prince of Asturias Prize to Fernando Alonso for winning the Formula 1 Championship is like giving the Nobel Prize for Medicine to the Marlborough cowboy.

Letter to one of the local papers.