VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE

There are quite a few businesses going under here in the town and province but some of them probably deserve to especially the shops which have never heard of customer service and employ sour faced harpies who insist an old mohair shawl is a Pashmina. The usual screams and cries that have kept me awake for the past few years every Thursday and the rest of the weekend have died down for the first time and the absence of blood, shit and vomit is surely hard evidence that no one has got any money. I speak too soon as I hear the pitter patter of tiny hooves as a sounder of wild boar charge up and down the stairs next door and now I can hear the resident DJ or is he an MC? It sounds like a mobile roadshow Latin style which means unrecognisable shite for music and the DJ's muffled requests for Juanito to move his car out the way. None of them can hold their drink and after a few shandies we can expect the police to drive by and have a look at a muster of Ecuadorians stripped to the waist trying to stab one another and leave bloodied handprints up the side of the wall of the Hermanos Cruz Blanca. It's only a matter of time before I emigrate to New Zealand but then I would have nothing to write about.

Today is Saint Valentine's day so I shall try to be more loving towards my fellow man but it is difficult when you are surrounded by people and animals in more need of therapy and drugs than yourself. I could spread the love more if I were snowed in while staying at the hotel in the Balnearios de Panticosa up in them there hills. If this happens on the day you are supposed to leave you get to stay for free till they dig you out. It also happens to be Saint Cyril's day but I checked him out and was put off by the words devised Glagolitic alphabet.

Carnival looms and so far none of my pupils have decided to dress up as black people choosing instead to go as babies and managing to bag some incontinence pads from the hospital where their father works. The friend from London who often turns up for carnival was asked why he liked coming. He replied 'it is the sheer political incorrectness of it all'. This year I think Henderson and I will be found up in the mountains cold but happy away from the social row. The last time I dressed up I woke up in a house in London which used to be a monastery,the owner being the son of the man who invented Charlie perfume, dressed as some sort of female Robin Hood including tights. I shall never forget my efforts to get back to my flat unnoticed in Clerkenwell on a normally deserted Sunday morning and turning a corner and being confronted with the Italian community carrying the Virgin Mary and all the histrionics usually involved during this kind of scenario.