LAGRIMA

That is the title of one of my guitar pieces by Tarrega - beautiful instrumental - and means 'Tears'.

Alors, across to the epicentre of the island's gossiperium for lunch at one of mama's posh pals.

Having spread the word around that I'm lonely and hungry and hugely keen on spongeing, I am now reaping the benefits. As my hostess whispered, "My dear, it's so hard to find a single man these days who isn't over-the-hill, gay, or a pervert with form."

That rather sounds like a hat-trick to me but I kept my counsel.

Lovely lunch, chatter straight out of Brideshead Revved, and I leave on time.

I really must stop thinking of these types as the twittering classes: you don't get to amass (and retain) that level of wealth by being a mummy's boy dilettante wastrel.

Correction: Dilettante mummy's boy wastrel. Nuthin' dilettante about my wastrelism, no sir.

So I'm driving back and the sun's on my arms and the VSOP in my belly and I'm wondering if it's chicken and egg: I arrive and twitter away and they think, "OK, so it's that level. Into Idiot Gear and brain on auto-pilot". Because this vaporware chat gets on my nerves after a while.

Sun glinting off the sea and the clouds are cotton and the tourists are looking hot and bothered and broke. I press the button on the radio/CD/tape and there's a tape in there, from the Beeb archives, Lord Reith being interviewed about his austere youth.

Then one Leslie Hardman comes on, Jewish Chaplain to the Second Army, broadcasting from Belsen in 1945 and in 1945 accent.

"My listening friends, I would like to give this message to you all.

If all the sky was paper, and all the trees in the world were turned into pens, and all the waters in the ocean were ink, we would still have insufficient material to describe the horrors and sufferings these people here underwent at the hands of those foul, bestial and unhuman beings called the SS."

I pull over very fast because I am losing it. There's a tourist lookout point over the bay and a bunch of them snapping away in their holiday gear and holiday mood and their nice holiday hotel room and nice holiday food. I get out and I just stand there, leaning on the door, blubbing.

Wow, talk about out of left field.

They notice and stare; one of them even snapped me. This freak we saw on holiday.

I take some time to be safe to get back in and drive, and I'm thinking "Don't *ever* again talk about your hard life of drinking martinis and watching the sunrise and the intolerable burden of fending off 'twitterers'."