At the end of today, Spain will close down for a month. This blog will be one of the few things functioning throughout August. So, if you live here, you’d be well advised not to get ill for the next 4 or 5 weeks. Things will pick up in September and then go back to idle mode for another month in early December. It can’t do much for productivity figures.

On Sunday, I spent a very pleasant six hours over lunch in the magnificently sylvan garden of a gorgeous stone house up in the hills. I doubt there are many people in the world who are more welcoming to a stranger than the Spanish. Provided, I guess, you have that all-important personal link with a member of the group.

But, just when I was thinking so positively about Spain, along came one of those incidents which drive me to the brink of violence. Sitting in my own garden, I received yet another promotional text from my bank. So I called them to say I didn’t want any more. “I’ll need your identity number” said the girl at the other end. “I don’t have it and why on earth do you need it?” I asked. “You know the number of this phone and I’ll give you the number of my mobile to correlate with it on your screen.” “I can’t do anything without your ID number”. “Do you really think some other foreigner is calling you to ask you to cancel texts to my mobile?” “I can’t do anything without your number”. Expletive and abrupt end of a conversation I knew I never should have started in the first place. I don’t know whether this obsession with one’s identity number is unique to Spain. French friends tell me it doesn’t happen there, even though they have an identity card system. Perhaps unfairly, I view it as a hangover from Spain’s long dictatorship under Franco. Time to let go of it, amigos.

Well, here in Galicia, July finally decided to get really summer-like in its last week and temperatures have been in the 30s for a few days now. Like most Gallegos, I prefer it a little less warm. But, mustn’t grumble. Especially as I had the pleasure of attending a string quartet concert in another lovely garden setting last night. I’d have enjoyed this even more if it had occurred to the mother in the front row that her daughter’s dancing and singing in front of the stage might just be interfering with the ability of the rest of us to concentrate on the music. The rough and the smooth of Spain.

Finally, July’s short list of odd arrival routes to this blog:-
spanish actress big lips
big breasted british tv presenter
british scum