Today was a holiday in Spain. From a religious standpoint, it was the feast of the Virgin of the Pillar, whatever this means. But, as this celestial lady is also Spain’s patron saint [patron virgin?], the lay celebration was of National Day. As ever on holidays, few people were to be seen on the streets at 10 in the morning and the traffic was very light. Nonetheless, I’d only been driving 3 minutes before the other car on the roads failed to stop at a junction and almost drove into the front of me. Fortunately, one of us had a St Christopher medal on our dashboard. I guess.

It’s been a favourite theme of mine for a few years that, thanks to the unholy alliance between an unprincipled, populist Prime Minister and an amoral, tabloid media baron, government of the UK has increasingly come to resemble mob rule. So imagine my pleasure to see this theme developed this month in, of all things, the left-of-centre Prospect magazine. Or, to put it in the words of the author, Michael Lind, “The decline of mandarinism [i.e. an impartial civil service] in modern democracy has profound implications for political power and cultural authority. If I am right, the informed ‘mixed constitution’ of mandarin democracy averted the formation of the mass society that liberal thinkers dreaded. But even though it failed to materialise in the liberal democracies of the 20th century, the nightmare of mobocracy may come to be in the 21st”

This afternoon I drove up from Ponte de Lima in Portugal on the old road that was the main thoroughfare north before the nearby autopista was built a few years ago. Just outside town I encountered a series of solitary stonemasons who appear to make a living carving statues [or whatever takes your fancy] on little plots at the side of the road. A craft industry, in other words. Apart from their tools, all there was to each site was a pile of granite planks and the odd example of the particular mason’s skills. I rather felt I’d been transported back at least a couple of centuries.

I finally took up with my cleaner her habit of leaving the shower head [or ‘telephone’ in Spanish] cradled on top of the taps, rather than in the socket on the wall. After a good laugh, she promised to change her ways. This lasted less than a week so I’m now wondering whether to go to Stage 2 and ask her to leave the shower curtain inside the bath. Probably not.

For new readers – If you’ve arrived here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra, you might find my non-commercial guides interesting – at colindavies.net