You don’t have to be religious to regret how much the worship of commerce has replaced that of God in British society. When I took my mother and younger daughter to church at 3pm on Good Friday, we had to fight our way through the traffic heading for the shopping centre across the road. And I see that, at least to the young, Easter Sunday no longer goes by this name. Sandwiched between the bank holidays of Good Friday and Easter Monday, it now seems to be called ‘Bank Holiday Sunday’.

English is heading, we’re told, for its millionth word. But – quite apart from ‘Easter Sunday’ – it’s also losing a few. My younger daughter, who teaches in Leeds, tells me her pupils no longer understand the word ‘dozen’. Ironically, this isn’t true for the more metric countries of France and Spain. But, then, their words for ‘dozen’ do share a root with the word for twelve.

Ryanair did manage to get me back to Oporto last night without taking me via Stanstead. I’m now engaged in the challenge of getting my expenses repaid for the cancelled flight to the UK two weeks ago. I wonder if I should add a claim for the nuisance caused last night by my adjacent Portuguese passenger. This young man seemed to lack any understanding of the niceties of travel and finally got himself arrested for smoking in the toilet. Tellingly, none of the Ryanair crew or staff on a flight between the UK and Portugal spoke a word of Portuguese. In fact, I’m not convinced they even knew where they were heading. When we landed, they wished us ‘a pleasant stay in the local area.’ I guess they say this to all their passengers. Thank God for autopilot.

The headline in the local paper this morning had a mournfully familiar ring. An unlicensed 18 year old youth, driving a black sports saloon, killed 4 motorcyclists when overtaking at 140 on a 100kph road. He himself walked virtually uninjured from the carnage. But not his mother; she died when one of the bikes hit the passenger door. My guess is the youth lives at home and has financed the car by not paying a bean for his keep. The wages of parental indulgence are often death in Spain, though it’s not usually one of the parents who pays the price. Except in life-long grief.