A few months ago my brother and his wife came to live here in Spain. They’d been planning the move for a couple of years, but I knew nothing about it until they were about to move. I thought it was a bit strange that they hadn’t talked to me about it, seeing as I’ve lived here for a while now, but decided they must have been getting advice from somewhere else. To cut a long story short, they’ve decided to go back to UK. I know they’re just “saving face” but it really got my back up to hear them slagging off this country and its people. Being a foreigner in an adopted country makes you part of a very transient community, people are coming and going all the time. It’s such a shame that almost everybody who decides to return to their country of origin takes the attitude that any blame is levelled squarely anywhere but on their own shoulders. The insult to injury is the inevitable “if you had any sense you’d do the same thing” comment. The poetic justice is that my brother left England because “there are so many foreigners there now, and they walk in without a word of English and get all the help they need from the authorities”. They are leaving Spain because the language was a problem and they felt nobody helped them. What a shame.

Is anybody else having trouble opening certain blogs? Every time I try to open either “Lynne” or “Billy Ryan’s” blog I get the banner and nothing else. I’ve spoken to Lynne about it and she says everything is working fine at her end. If the problem is at my end (all other web pages open as normal), can anybody suggest why it might be happening?