Can it really be a week since I wrote my last blog? Friend from London has obviously gone back and we've returned to life in the 'big city' once again. I asked Friend from London what he liked about Spain and he reckons going to a bar where grave diggers, lawyers, surgeons and men with limps who managed to climb Everest rub shoulders and drink together. He also likes Carnival too and when asked why replied, 'it's the sheer political incorrectness of it all'.

Talking to a Spanish friend about bringing up children I realised there isn't really a word for this in Spanish as you have to say 'educar' which also means to educate. He agreed with me as regards teaching your kids basic manners and all the rest of it which I like to think most people around the world try to do but in the next breath started saying how expensive it was to 'bring up' your children and I realised he had missed the point. I dare not bring the subject up again after what has been in the British news the last few days regarding parents and their offspring except that the same sort of thing does go on here albeit without the Daily Mail to remind us which I am not sure is a good or a bad thing anymore.

Henderson arrived home in a state of shock and awe at the latest antics of his fellow citizens. He couldn't work out why there were so many people in the local Mercadona with queues going out the door. The supermarket were giving away free baguettes, you know, the ones you could stun someone over the head with the next day, and the locals were wild with excitement. Give them a free baked potato and a cup of hot chocolate and the same scenes will be repeated.

There is the annual tapa competition which starts tonight. I agree with Babi our local Citizen Smith that you'd think the Spanish had never eaten a tapa before the way they engulf the bars when this scrum is on.