I see there is classical music at 8am on both national and Galician TV at the weekend, rather confirming my suspicion it’s something to do with quotas.

Only 28% of Spanish women are said use the pill, against 49% in France, for example. This is said to reflect ‘myths’ from the 60s that have proved remarkably persistent. Though I guess lingering Catholicism might also play in a part in a country which has nothing like the tradition of laicism of its northern neighbour. Its western neighbour is another thing.

One major difference between the feel-good times of a boom and the feel-bad times of the inevitable down-turn is that one is rather more conscious of the constituent bits of the latter than of the former. For example, we’re told – not to any great surprise – that the town halls will be seeking replacement revenues by having the police clamp down on the requirements to have various things in our cars. And on all other motoring offences. Not perhaps as important as the collapse in your savings, a reduced pension, higher inflation, tougher credit and loss of your job. But still irritating.

On this, it was interesting to note north of the border last week that the French are only now introducing the requirement to have a fluorescent jacket in your car. This has been a Spanish obligation for a couple of years or more. Fractionally more interesting was the news that the Spanish government is thinking of abolishing the requirement that we all carry a back-up set of light bulbs in our cars. The depressingly valid rationale for this is that modern cars are so bloody complex no one has the slightest chance of being able to change a bulb on a highway in the middle of the night.

When the euro replaced the peseta, prices were usually quoted thus – Uno con diez. ‘One and ten’. My impression is things have since changed and that the Anglo use of ‘One ten’ is now common. This raises one obvious question – Am I desperate for things to write about?

And just to prove I am . . . I’ve realised this morning that the owner of my local café/bar is unlikely to think his business will benefit from the installation of WiFi. He may have been willing to invest a huge sum in setting up a separate, properly vented no-smoking area but he’ll probably take the view that his core clientele of grandmothers who bawl simultaneously at each other while pretending to read the papers isn’t going to grow on the back of free internet access. And who could blame him?

Finally - Interesting weather times. Yesterday's temperature at midnight was 20C and at 8 this morning, before sun-up, it was still 19.6, with 27 forecast for the day. Shame about the storms in the eastern two thirds of the country.