Burger the calories, Yankee Noodle Candy has come to Spain

MY 2014 diet is already heavy going - and I’m only two weeks in. Hardly anything lost in the last week...but it’s not my fault I’m only marginally slimmer. Honestly.
 It’s those so-called friends who’ve been encouraging me to join them for meals at disgustingly inviting restaurants - and flatly refusing to take my emphatic ‘no’ for an answer.
Well, I’ve had enough of it so I have made an executive indecision (I’m a Libran).
The idea is to Name and Shame ANY individual or group who lure me into an over-eating session, or who encourage me to join them in filling my face with Chinese, Indian, Spanish, French, English or virtually any other kind of culinary delight. The only group I don’t need protecting from are the burger-the-calories  pot-bellied pigs - or fat Americans as they are sometimes called. As befits an aging journalist with a degree in headline pundamentalism,  my current favourite bathtime songs are I'm A Yankee Noodle Candy and New York New Pork.  Anyway, the 2014 diet started so well with my losing 2.5lbs during the first week. But this last seven days, two Chinese banquets  plus a Sunday special at the Portico Mar (everyone's favourite down our way) have  gutted what was becoming a concerted attempt to hit my goal weight in record time.
Anyway, the Shame Game lurks in wait for those still intent on leading me astray in the world of fine dining. Their only escape will be  to have a large box of chocolates waiting for me at the table.

YOU'RE ten years old, have just moved to Spain with your family, and it's your first day at school. To help you pick up Spanish more rapidly, no English is to be spoken during school hours. Problem is, you know very few Spanish words...and asking to go to the loo is not among them. A dilemma in any language...
The daughter of a friend of mine faced that scenario not so long ago. The poor child just sat there, minding her pees and Q's, until her mother whisked her home in the car ...to everyone’s relief. 

Airport parking costs THREE times as much in Britain - is it need or greed?

Car-park charges in the UK are enough to drive any motorist insane - and the rip-off boys are getting greedier and greedier. Particularly those who have a captive audience.

Like airports.

I returned to Spain last week after a three-week trip to Manchester knowing I'd be flying into Alicante's new state-of-the-art terminal, an amazing edifice which cost the cash-strapped Spanish well over £500 million in English money.

To be precise, he Madrid government invested €628.67 million on expansion works which will double the airport's capacity and cater for up to 20 million passengers per year.

When my daughter Lisa met me on my arrival in Manchester, she paid a whopping £12 to leave her car in the Terminal One car-park for two hours. (well, I forked out the money, actually - that's what parents are for after all).

RIP-OFF. Manchester Airport car-park rates

Fortunately Lisa didn't get carried away with emotion and hug me for an hour when we said our goodbyes last week or another £8 would have been clamped into the jaws of Manchester's money monster.

Instead, she just dropped me off and vamoosed, leaving me to discover my flight was being delayed for well over an hour for technical reasons.

We eventually arrived at Alicante half an hour late and by the time I plonked myself down in my friend Valerie's car, it had been parked in the airport's new 2,700-space multi-storey facility for an hour and a half.

At Manchester prices, that would have meant a fee of £8 just to pick up a passenger who had already paid a fistful in airport taxes as part of her air fare.

In the event, Val's 1 hour 38 minute stay cost me 2 euros and 95 cents. That's less than one-third of Manchester's rip-off tariff - at an airport whose owners must be desperate to recoup its massive investment as quickly as possible.

Exactly the same charge, based on a minute-by-minute reading which equates to just 70 centimos for the first half an hour, is levied at other major Spanish airports, including Madrid's main Barajas facility, Malaga, Barcelona and Valencia.

How refreshing that a nation in desperate financial straits should put the passenger before profit, unlike the greedy '' fleece 'em for as much as we can'' attitude in the UK.

Alicante's massive  new terminal cost a cool €628.67

When my sister flew to Manchester from her home in the Middle East recently, fellow passengers on a delayed Jet2.com flight consoled her by insisting the plane was ALWAYS late in order to ensure that family and friends had to park up for at least an hour and incur that obligatory £8 fee.

I understand that Stansted charge similar prices to Manchester, whilst Heathrow's initial £2.50 charge goes up to £4.30 after just half an hour (or at least it used to, though it may well have increased since those figures were reported).

Perhaps that's why Spain is in a worse economic pickle than Britain...the Zapatero government prefer to remain needy rather than labelled as greedy.

So carry on with the overcharging, Britain. Enjoy squeezing the public to the pip.

I'll continue to chill out on the cheap here on the Costa Lot-less.