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2004-06-02 - 2:15 p.m.

Not to generalise, but I do like the Spanish. The reasons are threefold. Reason the first: Like me, they have suffered from buttock-numbing amounts of Catholicism being rammed down their throats from an early age. This means that we are happy to let guilty pleasures drip from our chins like so much bad altar wine, though there�s the possible side effect of uncontrollable twitching if confronted by a set of rosary beads in a confined space.

Reason the second: There�s something to be said for a population that breeds as if looking to create a thoroughbred of its own race � i.e. the gene pool is relatively undiluted and they are a good looking people for it. I think the two extremes of gene pool expansion work well � either a rampant widening or total homogeneity. England is a wishy-washy semi-slag of a nation, and as a result, everyone looks like shit. Jude Law and Kate Beckinsdale are perhaps the only good looking people in the entire country.

Reason the third: The Spaniards I met expressed extreme distaste when I told them that someone who is widely considered to be an oily crawler is referred to in English as a �Brown Nose�. �Es muy grafico!� seemed to be the consensus. This from a nation which, when the rest of us would perhaps find occasion to admit mild surprise, e.g. when forgetting to add sugar to our coffee or some other piffling matter, eject such aural abominations as �I shit on my mother!� or �I arc thick ropes of jism onto the rotted corpse of the infant christchild!� and suchlike. What�s not to love about that level of inconsistency?

Spain was mainly thinking, though, about plans and changes and what, for instance, the kissing arrangements are when an Englishman greets a Frenchman in Spain? Should greeting kisses be exchanged at all, and if so, what format should they take? Presented with the actual scenario, I hung back and followed the Gallic lead. As soon as I realised that Anglo-Franco labio-facial interfacing was unavoidable, I went for a right to left movement combined with maximum puckerage so that my lips were a hard nub of formality rather than a fleshy betrayal of my being a girly Susan. There�s nothing wrong in kissing men, of course, it�s just another extension of my being a tensed-up little social amoeba.

First day back at work in a fortnight. Oh man, it�s bad to be back.

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