I went to Vigo by train today and at least on the way back no one was sitting in my designated seat. On the outward journey, the alternative empty seat I chose naturally turned out to be the one allocated to the anally retentive pedant who’d been standing in the doorway of the carriage making a mobile phone call when I got on.

But anyway, the real reason for mentioning this is that, as we pulled into Vigo station and I casually glanced at the awning above the platform, I was flashed back to Alicante in the early hours of a summer morning in 1971. The brain being what it is, I also got the smells of Spain of 38 years ago. But, believe me, none of these can be found on Vigo station in 2009. Or anywhere else in Spain, I fancy. Indeed, I suspect that, if one could accurately describe this yesteryear mixture of cheap tobacco, body odour, garlic, cooking oil, drains and whatever else to a modern Spaniard, they simply wouldn’t believe you. Especially if you’re British and so come from a nation regarded as irremediably dirty by today’s Spaniards.

We all have our own way of dealing with the modern blight of telemarketing calls. I’ve said before that I usually claim I’ve just died, which is very effective. But, with more time on my hands, I sometimes try a bit of stuttering or pretend I’m deaf. But I won’t have to do any of this in future. In theory, at least. For I’ve registered at the new service of www.listarobinson.es and this will stop me being bothered by unsolicited phone calls and emails. Unless it results in more of these because some bastard has sold my numbers. Incidentally, I’ve no idea why it’s called a Robinson List. Perhaps someone could enlighten us.

If you’re going to apply (on line) for this service, be warned that you might have to enter the security code quite a few times (in my case at least 10) before the system deigns to accept it. I suspect it’s got something to do with upper and lower case letters. So keep clicking for a new code until it’s all or nearly all just numbers.

The main reason I go on and on about the 3 or 4 speeding fines I’ve received in the last year is that I’ve been genuinely trying to comply with the limits. Which is not something I could have said earlier in my life. So I feel very aggrieved to have been caught in carefully constructed traps. And now they’ve only gone and added insult to injury by giving an extra 2 points only to those ‘good’ drivers’ who’ve still got the 12 they were given two years ago. These, of course, are those drivers who never take their cars on the road. So didn’t even need their original allocation. I guess it makes sense to someone.

Finally . . . Now that our elections are well and truly over, the government has stopped pretending we’ll be able to get to Madrid on the AVE high-speed train by 2012. Now they say it’ll be 2015. But I’m still prepared to place a large bet on it being 2018, at the earliest. By which time Spanish stations will surely smell like heaven.