I had to deal with 2 Portuguese drivers within a 5 minute spell today. The first driver – recognising that, as you can see, I look very Spanish - asked for directions to a town along the coast. The second came within a few centimetres of killing me as I ignored my own rule of pausing in the middle of a zebra crossing to check whether the second lane of traffic is actually going to stop. Neither of these drivers seemed aware that asking me for directions and nearly running me down are both very much local, and not international, sports.

The reason I neglected to stop on the crossing was that I was engrossed in the manual of my new mobile phone. This can do amazing things of course but I was disappointed to find it can’t do the thing I most want it to do – take my dog for his daily walks. But it surely can’t be long before this is available.

My elder daughter is staying with me for a couple of weeks before – with excellent timing - flying to Cuba for a month. Last night she introduced me to a new phrase – ‘A 16/60’. In case you don’t know, this is a woman who looks 16 from the back but 60 from the front. We have quite a lot of these in Pontevedra. They seem to exist on cigarettes and thin air. And are probably around 40.

Regular readers will have picked up that I’m not a great fan of Spain’s ‘nationalist’ parties. So it’s hardly surprising I was drawn to these two comments in a Prospect article on resurgent English nationalism:-

The two vital elements that sustain national politics are self-righteousness and a sense of grievance.

The ingredients of a nationalist platform are:- a sense of injustice, a feeling of powerlessness, a mood of exploitation and the occasion for righteous anger.

I wasn’t aware that you could have a reactionary [Telegraph] and liberal [Guardian] reaction to unusually hot British weather but apparently you can. Under the former, you just tell people to use their brains and not to panic, whereas under the latter you give them detailed advice because the body starts to disintegrate when the temperature reaches 43 degrees. This should come as news to the inhabitants of Granada and Sevilla, where it frequently tops this in the summer. We even get it here from time to time.