Vilafranca is a quiet country town, but the weekly market attracts an interesting range of pickpockets. Hopefully numbers will increase as the works in the main square are completed and the recession begins to bite. This lady put her hand into S’s pocket at a vegetable stall:

She works with another Latin American women with magnificent Indian features who she is calling to find out where she has got to. The stallholder says they are both newcomers. Neither had time for interviews.

Barcelona. Shop no 1 is closed at 11:30, well within its normal opening hours. The iron street blinds are down and there’s no message posted, so I walk across town to shop no 2. Yes, no problem, pay now and we’ll confirm the delivery date in a moment. The call comes a couple of hours later:
- That model isn’t available right now.
- When will it be?
- We may be able to tell you later this month, so to save trouble why don’t you just buy this more expensive model?
- No thanks. I’ll be over later to get my money.
- Oh, we’ll have to see about that.
I tend to try to buy through foreign suppliers and I pray for the day when the Chinese will be running everything. Call me a racist, but it keeps me out of the loony bin.

Man: What’s that?
Woman: A bank deposit guarantee?
Man: No, a saver?

It now seems that Iceland has defaulted, apparently believing Russia will be foolish enough to attempt to protect what’s left of its cod against ETA trawlers from Bilbao. Spain is not going down that road, at least not yet, but one of the more-quoted papers on the subject (De Paoli, Hoggarth & Saporta, Cost of sovereign debt) informs us that it did so thirteen times between 1500 and 1900. I rather liked this Punch item on steps towards a more united Europe, dated September 1 1860:

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SPAIN, put up by France and Austria, as a candidate for admission to the United European, has been blackballed by England, who declines to associate with an Uncertificated Insolvent. Spain is so frantic that she is half inclined to pay her debts, but will probably think twice over so rash an act.

The Dutch haven’t got any genuine armed forces, so they’re sending in the bailiffs to repossess office furniture from the Dutch Icesave, which has also done a runner.