Oh dear!

It’s the screams of children that really let you know that summer has arrived.  With their insistent assumptions that everyone in the world finds listening to their monotonous yelling charming and attractive they are the worst sorts of companions.  And of course, you have no option but to hear their childish noise.  I suppose it’s our own fault really, we should never have chosen a place which didn’t have triple glazing and air conditioning – both absolutely essential if small persons are to infect ones space.

            There.  That’s out of the way now: my first rant about living with other people in the summer.  There will be more.  I can assure you of that.  It is so nice to make a promise that one knows that one can keep!

            Tomorrow we go to the Estate Agents and re-sign our contract for the house.  Our agents have been astonishingly unhelpful about every aspect of living here, ever since we signed.  They have done nothing about anything.  Any request that we have made, which would have been a normal part of a rental agreement made in the UK has been treated as if we had asked for our taps to be replaced with ones of hammered gold.  The radiators don’t work properly.  Tough!  The water heater is not heating the water.  Tough!  The kitchen units do not have shelves.  Tough!  And so on.  They have done nothing except take the rent and respond to any necessary repairs with a standard response of “the owner will not do that.”  It might be interesting to find out what the so-called legal obligation of the mythical ‘owners’ are, apart that is from scooping in vast amounts of my money.  I am spiritually prepared for almost anything happening tomorrow.  The one thing that I will not be prepared for is a simple matter of signing.  I am just speculating about what surprises they will have in store for us.  Or perhaps (in spite of experience) I am just being overly pessimistic.  Tough!

            After torrential rain yesterday, today was sunny and bright, and I made full use of the Third Floor to rid myself of the unnatural pallor of my skin.  Now that I do not have to get up at unearthly hours and work indoors for money I feel that I should spend as much time as possible gaining the advantages from moving to this country in the first place.

            It might also be the time when I should consider buying a place of my own.  The housing situation in this country is one of a continuing disaster as the fallout from the chaotic housing boom continues to be felt.  Prices have dropped, but one wonders just how much further they can go down.  The laughable government that we have which is composed entirely of thieves and poltroons of the very worst sort mouth increasingly ludicrous lies about how things are getting better while they assiduously work their little arses off to shower favours on the rich and mighty so that they will have comfortable jobs when they are finally booted out of office.

           

There are, unfortunately sufficient numbers of the rich and selfish and the poor and stupid to keep these grasping cretins in power, although the rise of a party called Podemos (We Can!) is giving the established parties (PP- Conservatives and PSOE - Labour) cause for thought.

            PSOE have been lamentably weak in their attacks on the government, in spite of the fact that the television churns out damming revelation after crushing condemnation about the criminal activities of the political elite.  They have made no capital from the scandals that rock the government day by day, I suspect because they are terrified that their own skeletons will come tumbling out of the various closets in the seats of power.  Though that is a terrible mixed metaphor.  Podemos could be the party which will gain popular support (they already have 4 seats in the European parliament after the last election, after only having been formed for a few months!) and break the tyranny of corruption that comes with the concentration of power in lazily avaricious hands.  One can only hope.

            In this country the judicial system is too close to the political system and justice (an interesting concept in this country) is swift if you are small and powerless and strangely tardy if you are a corrupt politician having stolen public money.  God knows Podemos has made a good start, but whether they will have enough steam to forge ahead in the general election remains to be seen.  At the moment it is being publically vilified by the two established parties as they can see their future wealth being denied them by a party which has stated aims of removing corruption from the political scene.  One keeps ones fingers crossed.

            Meanwhile Toni does the lottery, which is the other way in which many of our present problems can be solved!