THE WICKER MAN

Even though he is dead Franco is still the adopted son and perpetual mayor of this town. It sounds a bit too much like our mayor who is becoming more like Lord Summerisle and The Caudillo's love child. To be fair he does have a passing resemblance to Don Quixote, our mayor, not Franco. So apparently the council has decided that Franco is not going to be any of the above and so have revoked all this. Seeing as the last time Franco visited the town was in 1953 and he has been a long time dead since 1975 I am sure he won't mind.

I talked about the Opus Dei recently and standing outside their church was not the first Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came moment I have had here. It was a lovely sunny Sunday in our first flat here and somebody upstairs was playing marbles or rather playing marbles Spanish style, for hours on end on a cold ceramic floor without any purpose except maybe drive the whole block insane. I have spoken of the acoustics of Spanish flats before but this one was the most surreal as you could even hear a workman making indentations on a wall with his thumb. Anyway, after listening to Henderson screaming his head off I went up to have a word. We didn't know anyone then and while I was waiting outside to have the word some other neighbours were peering round a door whispering to me in such a terrified way that anyone would have thought the Nazis were coming. 'Don't go in there' they were pleading but in I went and told them they were torturing my husband and would they kindly put a sock in it and shut the fuck up. When I came out the other neighbours bundled me into their flat and told me 'Don't ever go in there again, they are Opus Dei'. They then went on to tell me about the husband's shenanigans and the wife's depressing choice in underwear.

I guess The Opus Dei are the poor man's Masons or just another excuse for a bunch of losers who are bereft of some sort of class system. Being middle class is something new here and some people will go to weird lengths to prove they are not a peasant.

As a child I was surrounded by books and I was fascinated with two reference books, one on entomology and the other dermatology. I used to enjoy frightening myself by opening the page at random to see which insect or skin disease would shock me to my core. So it is now whenever I have the misfortune to hear the ITV news or pass the headlines of most British papers as they all seem to announce ' and there's worse to come.........' It makes me realise that most Brits wouldn't last long here if they think it is bad in Britain. Writing a complaint letter here just induces howls of laughter to the person you address it to.