I was passing a kindergarten yesterday when I saw a father blow a kiss to his baby strapped in the back of his stationery car. Very lovely, I thought, though the effect was rather vitiated when I realised that the man was leaving the car with the engine running while he went in to collect another child. At times like this I wonder whether the admirable Spanish capacity for pragmatism and the absence of a national fetish for safety don’t just shade over into idiocy.

Which reminds me – the hunting season started last weekend. As did the gun accident season. And yet there is no tabloid press screaming for action and no politicians insisting that ‘something’ must and will be done. Nor, I suppose, packs of lawyers scouring the country for someone to sue. Life in the UK used to be like this, as I recall.

I have a filter on my email to catch ads for Cialis. Sadly, it also catches messages with the word ‘specialise’ in. The perils of clever technology. This wouldn’t be so bad if the filter actually did stop all the ads.

While I’m moaning…. What a trivial world we live in when it’s big international news for Fidel Castro to fall over. If he had fallen on his sword, I could understand it but as it is.…

To end on a high note – Sturgeon fish have been reintroduced into the Guadalquivir river. I shall have to dig out my recipe for Blini pancakes.