Of a Sunday night at this time of year, it’s impossible to get anything on Spanish radio other than continuous pop music or football commentaries. The latter are delivered with varying degrees of Latin emotion but the best/worst is a gravel-throated chap who, at times, sounds rather like a chicken in the latter stages of strangulation. Even more bizarrely, he and his colleagues regularly break off from their commentary to parrot [or even sing!] the praises of some product or other. At times like this, I’m just amazed at what the live-and-let-live Spanish will tolerate.

You might think the bickering 25 members of the EU have enough on their plate without getting involved in even larger negotiations. But, no, they’ve all been meeting along with 10 other countries in a Mediterranean Summit in Barcelona. I suppose, if the Catalunian government had had their way, this would have been 11. Anyway, they were there to discuss the challenges of immigration and terrorism and they finally decided they were all against the latter. Or they would be, if they could only agree on a definition. You can tell just how a big a failure the event was from the conviction with which Mr Blair insisted it had been a huge success. I wonder if that man would now recognise reality if it jumped up and hit him in the face with a wet kipper.

An article in one of the local papers today was headlined Those Cursed Roundabouts and its theme was the high number of accidents on these new-fangled things. It ended with the peroration – Something must be done! I think I can safely say I speak for both Andrew and myself in suggesting that a good first step would be to teach all the driving instructors how to approach and exit them. Their pupils might just then stand a better chance of learning how to negotiate them. Then they could move on to the examiners, who currently seem to pass people who have absolutely no idea what to do when confronted with one.

Inspired by the Preface to Samuel Smiles’ book ‘Self Help’, I’ve started a new blog entitled ‘The Society for the Dissemination of Useful Information’. Anyone and everyone should now feel free to philanthropically and altruistically post there whatever they feel might be useful to others. Then, with luck, I’ll be able to philanthropically and altruistically sell the blog for several million euros in a couple of years’ time.

But, before then, is anyone able to tell me where socks go when they disappear from the washing machine?

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