With the election well behind us, the government has admitted it might have been just a tad optimistic about the inflation rate. Which has just hit 4.4%

In the UK, life continues to converge in the direction of that of Spain. A staggering 53% of British men aged 25 are now said to be still living with their parents as . . . they know that Mum will wash their clothes and lend them the taxi fare for a night out, while she fills out their job application forms.

Talking of Spanish families . . . An ex deputy mayor of Palma, Majorca has been accused of spending €50,000 on prostitutes. As if this weren’t bad enough, the money came from the public purse and the whores were male, even though he is [was?] a married man with three daughters. But the affair did provide us with one of those lovely Spanish quotes – this time from his boss, the mayoress. Defending herself against the charge of dereliction of duty, she retorted “I wasn’t his mother!”.

I was going to add a paragraph about how many/few hours €50,000 would have got him - if he'd been otherwise inclined - with Ashley Alexandre Dupre, of New York, and then compare this with how many hours he might have got - in another world - with Mesdames Aguirre and Fernandez de la Vega. But, in the end, I decided this would be in bad taste.

The latest cosmetic surgery development is reported to be something called el implante en el plano subfascial. Apparently this is situated en medio del pectoral, which a Spanish friend tells me translates as ‘Just above the tits’. But I’m a little sceptical about this. And I still have no idea what it is.

Quotes of the Day

Up betimes, this being the first morning of my promise upon a forfeit not to lie in bed a quarter of an hour after my first waking.
Samuel Pepys in his diary, 13 March 1664

This day my wife begun to wear light-coloured locks, quite white almost, which, though it makes her look very pretty, yet not being natural, vexes me, that I will not have her wear them.
Ibid.

The Spanish have a talent for mockery and satire. Not to mention farce. Click here for a good take on the nightmare of dealing with the bureaucracy here. Even if you don’t understand Spanish, there’s an English transcript.

As my Catholic upbringing tells me we must be close to Passion Week, it’s fitting I should write that the favourite phrase of the Spanish to describe such bureaucratic challenges is un calvario. But, really, this is just a cheap and easy way to move to my update on the printer saga. Which is that Epson Spain has pulled the same trick as Carrefour and said that I had a limited time in which to be able to swap the rubbish I was sold for a new machine. However, they did say this was 30 days, against Carrefour’s mere 15. I've told them this is not the law and that, anyway, I started the dialogue with Epson UK within 30 days. From the HQ of Carrefour in France, so far nothing. The battle continues.