33 fires in 24 hours, and near Kumanovo the flames reached the yards

On Monday morning the Crisis Management Centre put the number at thirty-three fires in a single day. Four are still burning, twenty-five are out. In Kičevo, in the Tajmište area, a mature beech forest is burning, and in Vinče near Kumanovo the fire took hold of houses. That is the point where statistics stop being a table and become somebody's roof. The numbers on the ground are held up by volunteer fire brigades and farmers who turn up with their own machinery, while the state performs the role of coordinator.

Eight defendants, 231 pieces of evidence, and one empty chair

At the Basic Criminal Court in Skopje, the "State Lottery" trial has begun, with damages of roughly 8.25 million euros. Artan Grubi, the former first deputy prime minister, took his place in the dock. Prparim Bajrami, the lottery's former director general, did not show up: he has been on the run for about two years. The charge is abuse of official position, an offence carrying a maximum of five years. Hearings are scheduled thick and fast through September and October, which counts as good news here, where big cases usually drag on with months of silence between sessions.

The highest rate in Europe, and the spraying has been going on since May

Macedonia has the highest rate of West Nile fever cases per million inhabitants in Europe: 43 cases, four deaths, around 20.3 cases per million against 15.1 in Greece and 5.3 in Italy. In the Skopje region 34 risk locations have been mapped, 13 of them high-risk. Mosquito spraying has been running since May, and the coordination meeting with Skopje's mayors took place on 19 August. The measures have been in place for months and the rate is still the highest in Europe, which means the problem sits somewhere else: in the standing water nobody removes.

Citizens on paddleboards enforcing Article 13

In Lagadin, people on paddleboards went into Lake Ohrid and physically redirected the speedboats towards the distance the Inland Navigation Act already prescribes. The banners demanded an anti-corruption investigation into the hotel being built directly on the shoreline. Not one of the association's demands is revolutionary: each of them describes work somebody is already paid to do. The lake is under UNESCO protection, and that status is precisely why the recommendations have been dragging on for years.

Drivers treated as tourists, so the protest heads to the EU

A professional driver who lives on Europe's roads in a truck gets the same ninety days out of a hundred and eighty as any tourist on holiday. Macedonian hauliers will protest outside the EU Delegation on 31 August, coordinated with Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. The question they are asking is why Turkish drivers get professional visas and Balkan ones do not. If the Brussels meeting on 1 September produces nothing, the next phase is a full blockade of the border crossings from 14 September.

Peppers, price rises, and a mine the locals actually want

The pepper purchase agreement in Strumica lasted four days: the farmers asked for written guarantees and got a press conference. Meanwhile global markets are signalling a further 11.8 percent on food, with the hit landing here in the autumn, in a country where half a wage already goes on groceries. In Ilovica, by contrast, residents want the copper mine, which is not the story you usually expect, though "full guarantee" is a heavy phrase in mining there too.

What did go right

The water in Skopje is safe: 412 samples, 47 measuring points, not a single deviation. An illegal building in Skopje Sever vanished by itself over the weekend once demolition was announced, which shows the announcement is sometimes enough. Two Skopje kindergartens are getting new wiring and floors after forty years without renovation. Parliament, for its part, denies paying for private insurance for MPs.

The lighter half of the day

Pelister knocked over Partizan in front of a full hall in August, and Ohrid took the trophy off Vardar in the handball weekend. Jokić personally talked DeRozan into coming to Denver, while Macedonia sets off for Vienna. And in Bavaria there is a town where advertising boards are simply not allowed, rebuilt stone by stone after forty percent of it was flattened in 1945.

When the mandate exists and nobody exercises it

The heavier part of the day keeps circling the same question. The Inland Navigation Act applies with or without citizens on paddleboards; the mosquito spraying has run since May and the rate is a record; the lottery indictment has been filed, but the central figure has been out of reach for two years; the fire line is held by people who go back to their own jobs the next morning. Every one of those mechanisms formally exists and has somebody paid to operate it. What changes every day is which people step into the place where the institution was supposed to be.