Negotiating my way down the high street today, it struck me that all those scientists at CERN could have saved themselves a stash of money by simply attaching particles to Spaniards and waiting for them to smash into each other. Except, of course, they never would: they'd just keep passing within millimetres of each other.

There was a debate on the economy in the Spanish parliament yesterday. According to El País - It revealed that there are divisions in the Government and that the Opposition is bereft of ideas. The leader of the latter displayed a new talent for comedy when he asked the President why he'd bothered to turn up if he had nothing to say. Well, it made me smile anyway.

The big back-to-school issue this year has not been, say, the size of classes. Or even the Government's controversial new Citizenship subject. It's been the weight of the satchels the little dears are lugging to school. On the radio the other morning, there was effectively a competition to find whose child had borne the most ballast. I swtched off when it got to 14 kilos. The day can't be far off when you get a free child to go inside every new satchel you buy.

The Life and Insane Times of Modern Britain: Number 35.

The Life and Insane Times of Modern Britain: Number 36: My mother fell recently and broke her nose on the pavement. Having had to wait for 2 hours for an ambulance, she decided to follow the advice of the paramedic who attended her to write a letter of complaint to the relevant body. In response, she got a form which asked her to identify which of several racial groups she belonged to. Under the impression I might be able to understand these things, she asked what on earth this could possibly have to do with the merits of her case. I said it was possible someone somewhere wanted to rule out the possibility it was a racially motivated conspiracy to leave her bleeding on the pavement for two hours. And, who knows, in modern Britain this might just be true.

In his diary entry for 10 September 1665, Sam Pepys fleetingly stops worrying about the London plague [and about how much his personal fortune had risen] to record that:- Among other humours, Mr. Evelyn's repeating of some verses made up of nothing but the various acceptations of 'may' and 'can', and doing it so aptly and so fast, did make us all die almost with laughing. I guess it's too much to ask if anyone is aware of this potentially hilarious ditty. If only he'd had a mobile phone with a camera. It'd be on YouTube by now.

Galicia

Thank God it's almost a year to the next tourist season. For, after the news of potentially toxic scallops, comes a report that hostal beds along the road to Santiago are infested with bugs. The link, of course, is that the scallop is the symbol of St James and of the pilgrimage to his [possible] resting place. It's easy to laugh but I ask you to imagine retiring to a bug-ridden bed after a plate of shellfish and then coming down with the trots, or worse. You'd need faith in a benign god to keep you going. Though, on reflection, that's possibly not the best phrase I could have chosen.

Finally . . . At the supermarket check-out this evening, I noticed that the ad for Kit-Kat said it was New Creamy, Extra Crispy. Since something like this must have been claimed every year for many decades, you'd think it would now taste rather better than it did when I first tried it, 50 years ago. But, here's the surprise - the only thing bigger and better is the price.