Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, May 21, 2009

When I was in the UK in April, I moaned about the proliferation of police notices at the side of the road. More recently I wondered whether Spain wasn’t rapidly catching up in the nannying bureaucracy stakes. Well, yesterday I saw my first Aviso del inicio de un tramo de concentración de accidentes. Followed a kilometre or so later by Fin del tramo de concentración de accidentes. A long way to say Accident Black Spot.

And talking of convergence, I wonder when the day will arrive when the people of Britain care as little about political corruption as their Continental colleagues appear to. I guess it will be when the increasingly redundant Parliament finally shuts up shop, after all legislative responsibility has been transferred to Brussels, Strasbourg or Minsk. Which will be real progress. It reminds me of the old feminist joke that you will know equality has arrived in any particular country when there is an equal number of male and female incompetents in the government. Actually, on this basis, Spain must be way up there.

I mentioned yesterday that personal connections can lead to rules being ignored. And so it was I read this morning that a local policeman has been collared for cancelling the motoring fines of one of Galicia’s biggest drug runners. As if he couldn’t bloody afford them.

Well, I now see that Plan E stands for Plan Español para el Estimulo de la Economía y el Empleo. Brilliant. Now I can get back to sleeping at night.

Two of the shops that have closed in Pontevedra were called Better and Stop. Do I detect a pattern here?

You will forgive me if this post is even less coherent than usual. I’ve just received an estimate for attending to a buggered head gasket in my car and I am, as we say, drowning my sorrows. I don’t know what a puta head gasket is but I can appreciate the sum of 2,000 euros. But, hey, at least the pound is rising.

And the other good news is that the suspension of the work on the building site in front of my house means that I can now again park my car within 100 metres of my door. Or I could if I had a bloody car.

Así son las cosas.

Desafortunadamente.

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