Mijail Gorbachov is coming to town. I presume it is the same Mikhail Gorbachev but who knows? The queue for tickets looked pretty dismal at five o'clock yesterday and not the normal weaving around the block whenever an outsider decides to visit. The queue of twenty looked perturbed as the Dutchman and I approached, as if we might push in and deny them the chance of a ticket. They had that desperate look that only people who queue early possess whether it is for the sales or a cheap seat to see an ex-president lecture us all on the theme of the year, water. All to take place in the new 'Palacio de Congresos' that set the townfolk back around 35 million, never mind that the road I live on doesn't have a pavement. Should we go? Might we be missing something? The next day the Dutch had told me of a dream he had where he had found himself in the lecture hall of said Palacio, much to his chagrin ,and had stood up and sparked a fierce debate with Mr Gorbachev/chov conducted in Russian,one of the languages he doesn't speak when not dreaming and which exasperated the dreamland translator and blew the minds of the locals. After which he stormed out and bumped into Boris Johnson ,slapped him on the back and said 'all right Yeltsin?' So, no need then.

Meanwhile, the presumed author of the murder of a mayor up in the mountains in a land not unlike that you might find in a scene from Deliverance, will be getting a professional tribunal as opposed to a public jury. I have no idea if this is good or bad for the accused or the family of the dead mayor. It doesn't seem long ago that most of the village's 37 inhabitants were considered suspects. It can get quite scary up in them there hills.

I was wondering about the pronunciation of Ike as in Hurricane Ike and have discovered that here in Spain it is the same as it is in English which seems a shame as I was hoping to hear newsreaders pronouncing it 'ee kay' as in 'y que' 'so what?' with an Aragonese accent. Hurricane So What? should be the first in a new line in names once we have run out of male and female ones.