After the enthralling spectacle of Wales memorably winning both the 6 Nations and the Grand Slam, and without the constant presence of a Mother In Law to brighten up our days with her constant stream of Irish anecdotes, life was always destined to become more boring, and so it came to pass.

We signed up for more Spanish lessons with an enthusiastic Spanish woman called Gloria who, we later find out, knows half of Argentina and owns the other half. Quite why she's giving Spanish lessons at a few quid a pop is a mystery; perhaps she's fallen on hard times, more likely she's grown rather fond of the sound of her own voice. She certainly spends more time talking during our 'conversation class' than we do.It's more like being back at school than being at school was. 'Write this down' she commands, pointing her pen, hair flying up. 'Repeat three times' she insists, glaring through the glasses at the end of her nose as we glumly intone 'trabajaba, trabajaba, trabajaba' trying not to catch her eye in case we then have to parse trabajar into the future or the past continuous. So keen is she to make sure we get the point she frequently answers her own questions, making our presence a little superfluous, particularly when she grabs my exercise book and starts scrawling indecipherable words in it in thick red marker pen. Why are we still going to her you may well ponder. Well, she's cheap (thereby fulfilling recently introduced Draconian Economic Measure No. 14) and frankly we're a little too scared to stop in case she comes round with her big red pen and wild hair.

On Easter Saturday we went to Tigre, on the Delta, nearly an hour away from Buenos Aires to view a little plot of land we bought, speculatively, for the price of a small second-hand car that has never been serviced, two years ago on an island called 'Dos Rios' somewhere down a river round the back of another river. Well, actually when I say 'we', what I really mean is that I bought it when I was out here on my own, it's another of Dave's wizard wheezes, and Brian was more than a little surprised when I returned to the UK brandishing the deeds to Robinson Crusoe-land. It was the first time we'd seen it so it came as a bit of a shock to discover quite how overgrown and jungle-like it is, and how large. There is definitely a wild animal or two lurking in the interior, I think. I'm not sure the strimmer will be able to cope with the verdant undergrowth. The originator of the idea for the island community is an English man who now lives in Argentina. The Island has about 35 plots and already has a swimming pool and barbecue area. It actually all looks rather good and gets us thinking about building a little log cabin and messing about in boats. But then Brian reminds me yet again of the Draconian Economic Measures - and so we come to our senses.

We pottered around Tigre, which has a weekend Market tempting us to part with our pesos. We're all spent out though and starting to find the constant stream of cow-hide accessories and squashed Quilmes bottles rather tiresome. As part of our Thrift Drive we take the train back to the capital instead of a taxi, and it costs a whole 1 peso 10 centavos (about 15p) each. All that mingling with the common herd and having to cling onto my bag is rather tiring though, so we take a taxi from the train station at Retiro, wiping out 10% of our savings in one fell swoop, but we still feel quite parsimonious, and I have already planned how to spend the other 90%.