What a patchwork quilt life can be. And you never know whether the bit you’re on will turn out to colourful and vibrant, or torn and ragged.

Yesterday morning, I drove up into the mountains to lunch with American friends in a tiny hamlet not far from Monforte. The day was as bright as any this summer, the roads both excellent and empty, and the scenery magnificently verdant. All in all, a joyous motoring experience. An excellent curry lunch was followed by a pleasant stroll through a bucolic place where summer sees the standing population exploding from 6 to 14, when one-time residents return for their vacation. Invited to a coffee by one such, we were then treated to over an hour of riveting tales of power abuse by the local priests of 40 years or so ago - all delivered by our gracious host in the clearest Spanish I’ve heard in 7 years. In retrospect, though, I shouldn’t have accepted the invitation to a strong café solo at 4 in the afternoon. Being sensitive to caffeine, my daughters and I have learned to avoid coffee after noon. But I felt I couldn’t be ungracious. And that’s why, I guess, I’m writing this at 5am.

Saturday night, though, was an altogether different experience. Regular readers will know my house shares a wall with a family which has a remarkably tenuous grasp on the concept of excess noise. In fact, the paterfamilias, Tony, feels the need to shout when others would merely talk. Sometimes to just himself. Or to a tree in his garden. Anyway, retiring to bed at 11.45, my reading was soon disturbed by the sounds of a birthday party just beginning. Things got worse as the communal singing began on the stroke of midnight, followed at 12.25 by the spine-grating sound of someone struggling with a saxophone reed for the first time in their life. I went cold at the thought that one of the kids had just been given this as a present. Abandoning plans to finish my novel, I doubled up on my usual wax ear plugs and finally got off to sleep. Only to be woken at various times between 1 and 4am by Tony in Full Bawl mode. My Spanish house guests were not so lucky and so had to sleep in until 10.45 to compensate for sleep deprivation. Sadly, this deprived me of the retaliatory option of playing Mozart’s Mass in C at full blast from 7.30. Not that this would have had any effect at all, I suspect.

Strange to relate, over at Notes from Spain, a normally placid and positive Ben Curtis was clearly so disturbed by a Sunday driving experience far removed from mine that he felt he had to go to town on the subject of the maniacs that one sees on Spanish roads. He thinks the police don’t take a strong enough line with these and I agree. The one blot on my day was being regularly confronted by motorbikes coming round mountain bends at 45 degrees and at speeds well in excess of anything sane. As I know this TT racing happens every Sunday, I’d be prepared to bet the local police do as well. But they clearly have other priorities.

On the way back from Monforte, I stopped off to meet a British couple – Chris and Margaret – who run a delightful casa rural 20km or so outside Pontevedra. Click here for more details, if you fancy a vacation or a weekend break. Or if you want to book the whole place for Christmas, New Year or a special occasion involving a cast of dozens.

Finally, I’ve posted all my Feira Franca [Medieval Fair] photos to my Galicia page. I trust readers will be less offended by these than by my attempt at humour yesterday.