(Caption: You don´t work in the afternoon, do you? No, we don´t come in in the afternoon. When we don´t work is in the mornings.)

I know.  I groan and I gripe and I whine and I moan.  But how am I to do otherwise when, at every turn, the smallest, simplest daily activities are converted into trials of strength and sanity?  I´m just back from the bank, still clutching the five hundred euros I went to pay in. It´s summer, it´s hot and we want to use the Residents Club pool till September. So we got all the paperwork together – including a photocopy of the deeds of our house – and this morning at quarter past eleven I went to pay the membership fee into the bank.

And yes, there was a sign up, though I didn´t see it at first, but the bank teller pointed it out. Membership fees for the Club can only be paid in between half past eight and half past ten in the morning.

What?  Why, I asked.  It´s just our timetable, he said. He kindly suggested I get a bus to my own bank, pay the money in there, make a transfer to the account right in front of him on the computer screen and pay my own bank´s commission fee.

I´ll just go back tomorrow – between 8.30 and 10.30.  There´s no point in arguing, in asking to speak to the manager, in requesting a full explanation of why, in the era of global capitalism, during the worst financial crisis in living memory, I can´t pay five hundred euros into a bank account.

Seriously, what is wrong with this country?