Second blog of the day – the one that’s not about the World Cup…

Deaths on the road over the start-of-the-holidays weekend were an impressive 52% down on last year. But then ‘displacements’ [as they’re called here] were 28% down so it’s not quite as good as it seems. But nonetheless very welcome. Statistics were assiduously collected over the first weekend of the new penalties regime and we’re indebted to this for the startling news that men commit far more motoring offences than women – with the ratio in Spain being in the region of 90:10

Today’s Spanish media announced we’re shortly to see a new program on TV. This will centre on some sort of contest between recently married couples and will be called “Till TV does us part”. Doubtless the inevitable break-up of a few fragile relationships will be justified as a valid social experiment. What a world.

Meanwhile, the UK appears to be disappearing up its own bureaucratic backside even faster than when I left it more than 5 years ago. Arranging a mortgage on her first flat, my younger daughter has been told by her lawyer that – because of money-laundering laws – she must prove the provenance of her deposit. Worse, the school employing her from next September have said they’ll be delighted to give her a copy of her contract once she gives them another clean bill from the Criminal Investigation Board[?] which checked a year ago whether she was a paedophile. This is despite the fact she’s been working in this school for a year and they might be expected to already have a good idea whether she’s a danger to the kids or not. Madness.

The Spanish frequently use the word ‘calvario’ to describe a painful sequence of events. It’s a pretty accurate description of my attempt to get a broadband connection. Almost 3 weeks after applying for it and after spending hours on the phone trying to get Telefonica and Ya.com to stop blaming each other for the fact my modem doesn’t work, I may just be getting close to having an engineer visit the house to look at and even improve the connections. I don’t expect to be operative in less than a month but I feel safe forecasting that I’ll get at least one bill for the this period of nil service.