One of the regular criticisms made of foreign language teaching in Spain is that there’s far too much emphasis on grammar and too little on verbal skills. Imagine, then, how disappointing it is to read that, back in the UK, the oral test is to be removed from the GCSE examinations kids take at 16. This is said to because it's too ‘stressful’ for them. Poor little things.

This reminds me – It’s not 20,000 native English speakers that the next Zap government will be bringing from the USA, Ireland and the UK but 120,000. The mind boggles at the ambitiousness of the challenge. I hope they all like low salaries and noisy kids.

It’s reported that Spanish university students fail – for one reason or another – to attend 40% of their lectures. Nonetheless some of them manage to graduate. And a University of Santiago survey tells us that, five years later, ‘Technical’ graduates are earning an average of €21,600 a year, but ‘Social’ subject graduates only 14,400. This puts Spanish graduates some way down the European list, even when salaries are adjusted for purchasing power. Germany ranks first, the UK fifth and Spain, at twelfth, falls between Estonia and the Czech Republic. Asked various questions about what they would do if they had their time over again, 0.3% of Dutch graduates and 3.6% of German graduates said they wouldn’t bother going to university. But the highest percentage, by far, was Spain’s at 8.6%. Looking at the financial rewards, perhaps this is understandable.

I don’t know whether things are much different in other countries but Spain seems to suffer from an inordinately high number of kamikaze drivers – people who drive down the wrong side of the road. Sometimes deliberately but usually unwittingly. In 2007, 24 people were killed as a result of this. But this year we’ve already had 12 incidents and 6 deaths. Or one a week, roughly. Half of these were at night, meaning that six drivers took the wrong road in daylight. I can’t help wondering whether they belong to the same fraternity of drivers who forget to put on their lights at night and who also seem to comprise a significant percentage. At least here in Pontevedra. These are far more dangerous, I guess, than idiots like me who leave their lights on after leaving an underground parking.

On page 23 of El Mundo yesterday, there was a report on the arrest of some women bringing cocaine into Spain in the form of black plastic mouldings in their bags. On the facing page there was an offer from the paper of some luggage which looked remarkably similar. This could be an even bigger scandal than the regular ads in their Sunday edition for the many dangerous slimming products of the fraudulent company down in Andalucia!

Another rainy day, another lost umbrella. This time it was one I carelessly left hanging on the bar in my regular café/bar. As I’ve been taken to task for implying – when citing my regular umbrella losses – that the Spanish are a lot of thieving bastards, I should stress this was not technically a theft; more of a not-handing-in. That said, I certainly wouldn’t want to give the impression all Spaniards are thieving not-giver-inners. Just some of those who go to the same places as me. Only joking.

But yesterday ended well. Noisy-Tony-next-door told me that – after 4 years of it – they won’t be doing any more of the marble-tile-cutting in the front garden which suffocated my wisteria with dust a while back. “So you can now safely buy another one”, he added. With all my own money, it seems.