LAZY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, I GOT NO TIME TO WORRY.....

Although the ice thawed, communal warming is off again and I think I am entering an ice age with Mercedes. Her husband won't speak to me but manages to grunt an 'ola' when I pass him on the street. Whenever anyone says this to me I often want to cry 'ole!' but so far have managed to keep this outburst under wraps. When people say 'hombre!' when we meet after some time has passed between us I have to suppress an urge to cry 'mujer!' Anyway, the community meeting can't be far off and Mercedes is poised to be 'La Presidenta' for the coming year. This should prove interesting. I remember when the 'effing bleeder' next door turned up at one of the meetings pissed out of his head and ready to rock and roll because he thought he was next in line and the rest of the residents just chorused 'no way!' and he had to leave with his tail between his legs. Pissed but bolshy, he thought he was going to rule us all for 365 days but apparently residents can decide whether a person is fit to run things or not. The 'effing bleeder' AKA 'borracho de mierda' by the other neighbours has 'mucha fama' in this town, mainly for being an absolute drunkard and all the antics that go with, but also because he is supposed to have embezzled Santander Bank while working in one of their more rural branches. A man deprived of humour and possessed with such rancour that some of the male neighbours even suggested giving him a bit of a kicking at one of the many emergency meetings called in the last few years. I realise I have had a sheltered life as I have never really met anyone like this before. Someone who robs a bank while working in one and then buttonholes you in the lift to tell you that unlike him you still have to pay your mortgage off. He stole evryone's post by breaking into their letterboxes and then decided it might be fun to shed some clothes and parade around his balcony in his birthday suit. This was only the beginning of the end. All the residents denounced him or reported him to the proper authorities but getting 'multas' or fines didn't deter him, it only seemed to spur him on in his belief that he could do what he wanted.

And on that note I must stop as I feel too traumatised to continue without applying some eau de cologne to my wrists rather than slash them.