Seeing the headline in the Culture section of a national paper that the bullfighter El Juli had won the Escapulario de Oro, I instinctively thought he’d been awarded a golden spittoon. This is because the Spanish for ‘to spit’ is escupar. Turns out, though, that un escapulario is an item of clothing - ‘scapular’ in English. Usually worn by priests, I believe.

Talking of words . . . I see that the Spanish Royal Academy had dictated that ‘rock and roll’ must now always be written as rocanrol. How quaint.

There was a flier in my mailbox today for a training course in car mechanics. Its main selling point was the one that seems to appeal most to Spaniards, viz. that you can gain a qualification without putting in a great deal of effort. I get the impression there are a lot of these courses around right now, all aimed at the unemployed young whose parents can be expected to foot the bill.

Following on from my admission yesterday that I’m not overly interested in the Wikileaks brouhaha, I was impressed by an article by Janice Turner in today’s Times. Because of the paywall, I can’t cite this but here’s a sample which demonstrates her stance . . . Julian Assange is a glamorous Macavity of the internet, who has seduced more than young women with his piratical mystique. Although WikiLeaks’ latest revelations have been little more than low-grade diplomatic tittle-tattle, he is catnip for the knee-jerk Left who see the forces of American imperialism everywhere, and have not reconstructed their politics to take into account other malevolent forces at large in the world.

When you have three international airports in your region but no Easyjet flights – plus the prospect of losing our Ryanair services from January – it’s a tad irritating to see that Bristol merits a flight to Fuerteventura. And it’s just as annoying to read that Spain and France will soon be connected by high-speed train when it will be at least another five years before we’re linked to Madrid. Or even to Oporto, just down the coast in Portugal.

Finally . . . (very) local news:- 1. They’re still cracking granite eight hours a day on the building site behind my house; 2. After nearly five years, they’re still finishing off the houses; and 3. The Great Wall of Poio remains uncompleted. Roll on the building bust in my neck of the woods. Which reminds me . . . for a negative view of the Spanish property market, click here. Just what I needed, as I seek a buyer for my preciosa house in the hills.