At the end of my stay in Leeds, my younger daughter gave me some kitchen knives she didn’t want and I put them in the boot of my car. Asked by some sort of official at Plymouth whether I had anything dangerous in the car, I decided to tell him about these. We then inspected them together and he called his boss to ask how to deal with this potential terrorist event. The message came back that he should issue me with a formal warning about not taking them out of the car once I was on the boat. So he did and I went on my way. Quite how this achieves anything other than security of employment for a few civil servants, I’m not clear. But perhaps they’d have dealt with it differently if my eyes had been rolling. Or if I’d been passing worry beads through my fingers.

It will probably surprise Spanish readers to read that in the UK drivers are not obliged to carry either warning triangles nor reflective jackets. At least, I don’t think they are. Anyway, this might well be a good thing. A local driver was run down and killed by a truck on a motorway yesterday when he was setting up his rear triangle. And even though he was wearing his jacket. As it happens, I think the advice for anyone whose car stops on a motorway in Britain is to get far away from it as quickly as you can. Not arse about setting up triangles in front of and behind it. I can’t swear to this but it’s certainly what I’d do.

There’s been a bit of a brouhaha in the UK recently about a young woman of considerable size entering a beauty competition. She was quoted as saying that women needed to know they didn’t have to starve themselves to be beautiful. The response of one female columnist was that this was a ridiculous message to send out when the country’s main problem was one of obesity born of bad diet and insufficient exercise, not one of young women starving themselves into skinniness. And, to be frank, the evidence of one’s eyes suggests she’s right. Indeed, I suspect that – if you brought a Martian to both the UK and Spain – he/she would conclude that British women had a predisposition to obesity and Spanish women quite the opposite. This is not, I think, something that would have been said thirty or forty years ago. The other major change is that you don’t hear jokes about moustaches on women in Spain any more. Or, rather, you do but they’re aimed by the Spanish at the Portuguese. Which is not very neighbourly.

Galicia Facts

The university of Santiago says it’s going to give some exams in English so as to ensure graduates are fluent in the language. A local columnist suggests there might just be a few logistical problems, given how few of the university lecturers actually speak it. He then goes on the display his mastery of English spelling and punctuation by giving this version of the famous first sentence of an old school textbook – My Taylor is Rich. Possibly written by a Mr tailor.

Closer to home, not much has changed in three weeks. Still the same unfinished houses on the fore and aft building sites; still the same construction workers’ cars monopolising the street parking; still the same public works downtown making both driving and walking difficult. And guess which of the eight zebra crossings I negotiate to get into town I would have been mown down on this morning if I hadn’t stopped in the middle – why, the first of course. Actually, the passenger window was open so I was able to satisfyingly shout cabrón through it as the car flashed past. And best of all, Tony is back from sea and still bawling his way through each day. Starting at 7.30. . . But at least there’s still some bloom on the jasmine and its scent lingers yet. And the young waitresses in my regular bar/café were as welcoming as they are pretty. Nice to be back. Taking the rough with the smooth.

Finally – Yesterday’s post was very late, in case you checked earlier in the day.