At last some good news fron Catalunia . . . A bar owner in Barcelona has been sentenced to 4 years in prison for making the life of nearby residents a misery by ignoring not just the regulations but also the court orders imposed on him. His defence included the statement that lorries and ambulances make a lot of noise as well. A cartoon in one of the national papers showed a man with two thought-balloons on either side of his head. One referred to this development and the other to the ETA permanent ceasefire. A third bubble contained the comment ‘Some days are just unforgettable’. So it can’t be only foreigners who think Spain is a terribly noisy place.

Which reminds me . . . Tony is home from the sea and has resumed his practice of bawling and singing from the minute he wakes up until the time he retires to bed, often after 2am. I must find a way to deal with this, short of assassination. Or tongue-ripping.

Francisco Umbral Section

I’ve started recording the names [or at least those I know] which crop up in his obscure articles. Here’s a couple of samples…
‘Parents’ - Agatha Christie, Bono, Marilyn Monroe
‘Miss Catalan Nation’: Andy Warhol, Manuel Fraga, Princess Margaret, Earnest Hemingway

So, nothing if not eclectic.

Quotes of the Week

The grey squirrel was the first in a series of unpleasing [American] imports which have undermined the essential Britishness of our island. These include Mickey Mouse films, jazz, and the nauseating fast food that has turned our working classes from the whippet-thin, pale sex maniacs so lovingly drawn by D H Lawrence into obese, shell-suited monsters of solipsism, scarcely able to waddle through the empty pizza-boxes and discarded fried chicken wings that litter their over-heated flats.
Tongue-in-cheek[?] comment of a British columnist in the Sunday Telegraph, a once-serious newspaper which has contributed to the decline of British culture by turning itself into something of a comic. Pity we can’t blame the Americans for this. Only a single Australian. Albeit one with US citizenship.

It isn’t only cream that rises to the top.
Anonymous. But a propos