I haven't commented much on what was a long term bugbear of mine, namely the pedestrianisation of part of our barrio. I walk through it every day and the workmen seem to be doing a grand job but it isn't without the usual complaints from the bar owners who were dreading the financial mess they would find themselves in as if the work to improve this area was only going to affect them and their pockets. I have heard people mutter and complain as they pick their way through the work in progress but I must add that said work with all its dust, drilling and inconvenience hasn't put folk off from dining and drinking out. The place is heaving and I even found myself with H having a vermouth while a man sawed into concrete and sent a cloud of dust into the atmosphere just to keep in the spirit of things I guess.

Meanwhile, that other bone of contention, the Palacio de Congresos is in the news again. The builders are after more money, a quarter of a million, or is it half? Who cares? it was going to cost 15 million but in the end it is something like 35 million or as the paper ended the article on this white elephant the other day, hasta ahora.

On the subject of bete noirs, poor old Mr C hasn't left the bulding for quite sometime now. His wife still goes on the piss and seems to be revelling in his downfall with her coming back drunk three times a day and giving him more hell than she ever did when he was drunk wit her. She has been screaming that her life is an infierno and repeats this and other disastrous aspects of her life over and over again and now he can't drink and has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's she seems to be either losing it or getting her kicks from his non responsive behaviour. I have seen him on the balcony several times eating bananas and the street below is littered with the blackened skins driven into the road by the passing cars. Yesterday we managed to get the number of one of his brothers as something needs to be done about these two as they gradually lose it completely . Nine years of letting the police, social services, the courts and Lord knows who else know of the situation has done nothing to help this couple as they surge along the road to hell.