Finding myself alone at home at 9 last night, I had a choice between the Eurovision song contest and an hour or two of getting cat hairs off a duvet hanging in the garage. Despite an allergy, I plumped for the risk of involuntary sneezing over that of involuntary vomiting. Which was surely right as it would have been painful to see Spain’s entry come second-last. Even if it is rubbish.

It being the weekend, Sunday dawned just as wet and cool as Saturday. At 9.30 – the time of the start of the women’s triathlon – the temperature outside my house was 11 degrees and the rain was torrential. Not a lot better than last year. The men’s event started at 12.30, by which time the rain had stopped and the temperature had rocketed up to a life-preserving 13. Will they move the event to June next year? Or just forget about it? Meanwhile, I wonder what crowds they were expecting for the women’s race at 9.30 of a Sunday, a time when the only Spaniards up and about are those who haven’t yet got to bed after a night on the tiles.

Over in the UK, the scandal of British MP’s submitting any old claim in order to justify their ‘automatic’ right to 24,000 pounds a year on top of their salary has naturally led to some introspection on the theme of what it all means about the UK at large. As someone who’s banged on about the Age of the Bureaucrat, it was inevitable I’d be attracted to this sort of analysis – “There has been an inchoate sense for some time that Britain no longer functions effectively. Virtually every activity the law-abiding undertake seems to have become entangled in a web of energy-sapping orders from officialdom. What ails Britain is that we have allowed a bossy House of Commons to legislate our society piece by piece, to the point where modern life is excessively rules-based. In this obsessive culture of compliance everyone involved could point to boxes that had been ticked, to show they had followed the rules. The problem was not an absence of rules. It was that there were so many rules that they crowded out any space for judgment or the exercise of individual morality. Free individuals encouraged to act ethically are more likely to arrive at the right answers than an over-mighty bureaucracy.”

Which is OK but, absent religion, who’s to say what is ethical? And is Spanish society, on balance, a better place to live because – though generally less ethical than the UK – it has a matchless capacity to ignore rules? And/or because the morality of the Catholic Church still holds considerable sway? And/or because family life is still pretty sacred? Whatever the answers, is Spain now heading in the same direction as Britain? Or do I just feel this because I’ve been hit by speeding and parking fines for the first time in my life?

I say that Spain is a better place to live but one can overlook this when three people in a single week fail to fulfil their promises to call you back re work you want urgently done on your house. Prompting the most important existential question of the week – What on earth is the secret to getting things done here?

Finally, I now see that the hoarding next to the bus-stop-in-progress is of the blue, EU variety. Danke schön and Goodnight.