Carrefour is not my favourite shop but I went there tonight to buy a bed, in advance of a houseful of guests at the end of the year. The girl was charming and the transaction was duly done but, along the way, she confided that most of the things on offer in the catalogue I was perusing were no longer available. As this was a loose-leaf binder, the rejoinder was obvious. But I never made it. Paying for the bed naturally involved the showing and photocopying of my ID card, which contrasted markedly with DHL’s not asking for this when they delivered my new passport this morning. I would have thought the latter was worth more than a bed but, on the other hand, maybe I look like the sort of person the packet was addressed to and the guy just took a chance. Or maybe there’s just no logic at all.

We may be deep into an economic downturn from which Spain looks like taking a long time to emerge but there’s no end to public works all over Pontevedra. Especially disruptive roadworks. It’s been like this for at least ten years and, given the slow pace of it all, my guess is the current works will just be being finished when the first post-recession round begins. Assuming Spain has solved its debt crisis by then and can borrow enough money to throw at even more civic improvements.

Talking of the parlous economic situation, you might have expected this to be reflected in reduced sales of tickets for the two humungous lotteries that take place here at Christmas. No chance, it seems. Hope springs eternal, even if numeracy doesn’t.

So, the estimable Franz Beckebauer thinks that the FIFA voting system – under which Russia and Qatar gained the most recent World Cup awards – is a mockery. Well, he’s on pretty safe ground there. There’s probably only about twenty people in the world – plus the populations of these two countries, of course – who are going to disagree with him.

Finally . . .I wonder why you can buy a Kindle e-book reader for 98 dollars in the USA, against 200 euros (around 265 dollars) in Spain. Possibly the same reason why ADSL prices, inter alia, are so high here. Though I don’t know what this is.