You probably wonder where on earth I live when I describe some of the goings on here. Let's just say if you read Luces de Bohemia by Valle Inclan you might get a better picture. Never a dull moment round here despite the never ending restrictions and curfews. Without going into too much detail I have already had a difference of opinion with a police officer today who did that thing of trying to get me on board with his ridiculous comparisons of situations, gaslighting I think they call it. Trying to make out that we are all guilty at times of misdemeanours. I reminded him that right now I wasn't the mastermind of what was going on in our normally pleasant community and that I was in fact the injured party. I decided to continue the conversation using the aviation alphabet and he crumbled. Two can play at that game. I'm finding this skill or art of getting the other guy to have it my way is getting better as I get older and have nothing to lose.

Britain and Israel seem to be doing really well with their vaccine programmes. Yet what is it with some British people (journalists?) in the UK who have an incessant need to be in competition with everyone else? It's not normal this neediness to show or to prove to who ever can be bothered to listen, that it is all world beating or is the best in the world. It just comes across as needy and insecure.

I haven't been on here much lately. I have been too busy exercising my right to shut the f#ck up unlike you know who. At last I no longer have to listen to the volatile, crazed, you've been tangoed, incurably stupid, infantile, clockwork orange, unavoidable, fatuous, difficult to like gobshite anymore. What a feckin' relief.

Not that I plan on going anywhere at the moment but I am one of those people that has always been scared of death, or dying. Not that it will be the end, on the contrary, it might be the start of something new and what if I am not ready for it or don't understand it, that kind of nonsense, not to mention it would be easier to just not exist and then not have to be constantly anxious about all of this bullshit. On the other hand, if reincarnation exists, I've decided to come back and be an entomologist or park ranger. You know, focus on something other than myself for a change. 

We all get targeted by weird adverts online and ask ourselves ''why would I be interested in a Greek fisherman's hat being modelled by a woman in a gas mask and some pearls round her neck?'' The latest is something called Goodgame Big Farm. It's accompanied by the imperative to ''enjoy the country life and enjoy some chill time for yourself'' and a moving image of a bloke carrying a pitchfork with a stride that suggests he is about to storm Capitol Hill, which is, I guess, just another harbinger of our times. 

There is a minister who lied, allegedly, about the EU's "refusal" to consider travel proposals for British artists and musicians. Wait for it, his name is Lord True, AKA Baron True. Of course it is! Keep on trucking....

Mr van de Ven can't enter any establishment to get bread, lottery tickets and so on without coming out and finding me chatting to a homeless, abandoned or neglected person. ''How much money have you given them now?'' he will ask. Sometimes I give them a euro or two, or three or ten. It depends. Nobody seems to carry money anymore so I fill my coat pockets with shrapnel just in case I bump into someone who looks like they could at least do with a cup of coffee. I tell them to go to the refuge where they can sleep for the night but they often put their hands together as if to pray and tell me they absolutely do not want to go there. I don't just chat with homeless people, I chat with everyone. Well, within reason. It's a great challenge if you are shy but curious. I regret not talking to a lot of people because there was no time to stop. When I did stop I found out that Tomas was in the POUM, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, active in the Civil War and claimed to have shot nuns and priests. That Antonio spoke fluent English because he once had a job on an oil rig. And this evening with my limited French I found out the French guy with the German Shepherds who addresses me as ''Mister'', reckons his dogs are working for Interpol.