For the first 10 years of my life in Madrid, my home was a small apartment in the picturesque little Calle del Oso, in the centre near Tirso de Molina. I have very fond memories of it and sometimes still miss it, partly because I enjoy a bit of creative disorder about my dwellings and there's not too much of that these days, now I'm married. In Calle del Oso, inspired by Rachmaninov and Meat Loaf, I wrote my novel. I had some good parties. I broke two beds. I made love to countless women of many nationalities (though thinking about it, that might not have been me). Calle del Oso is famous as the street where Ana Belén, the singer, was born and where a gay hairdresser murdered his lover in the 1980's. And now it's back in the news again because (and this is where the creative disorder comes in), on 25th August the news stories reported the following:

"Operarios del servicio de limpieza del Ayuntamiento de Madrid han retirado, entre ayer y hoy, 2.000 kilos de basura del domicilio de dos ancianos que padecen el llamado "síndrome de Diógenes", y que habían acumulado en su vivienda todo tipo de desechos, lo que había motivado la denuncia de los vecinos."

Basically, 2,000 kilos of rubbish were removed in late August from the apartment, at no. 13 where I once lived, of an elderly couple with Diogenes Syndrome - a condition of extreme self neglect that generally affects people who live alone, often accompanied by a tendency to hoard rubbish (come to think of it, blogging is probably a form of it). The picture tells the story: apparently the rubbish had caused mice and rats to occupy the staircase up which I once trudged. I don't think I knew them, because they only moved in three years ago. The old woman, Felisa, could be heard screaming that everyone should be allowed to live as they wish. Up to a point.