When we finally got there, after spending a fun-filled 5 1/2 hours hanging around Gatwick while Air Europa fixed the dodgy left engine on the plane we had almost left on (there’s only so much sock shopping one person can do, and 5 hours is pretty much the limit), we discovered that Madrid is a lovely city. It may be oppressively hot at times, but if you need to cool down you can always catch the air-conditioned subway whether you need to go somewhere or not. They even have TVs on the underground, which altogether makes it is something of an improvement over the Victoria line. Maybe I’ll move there; the commute would only be marginally more ridiculous, after all. If you’ll forgive the awful pun, Madrid is also a city apparently overflowing with fountains, which is always good for cooling down. Judging from the Plaza de Espana opposite our hotel, I wondered whether perhaps, if he’d been around today, Franco would be something of a Ground Force fan. Parts of the city seem to be one great big water feature.

The locals are also surprisingly friendly, like the chap we encountered selling (or more accurately not selling) cheap sunglasses on the street near the Palacio Real, who was more than happy to take group photographs of a succession of passing tourists without seeming to mind that none of them bought anything. Or, for that matter, the guy selling knock-off CDs near Sol who opened the (apparently) hermetically sealed plastic casing containing the memory card I had just picked up for my camera with his keys (one up from the pen that I had been struggling with). Comically, before opening the package, he pointed to the little picture of a pair of scissors and a dotted line that the good people at Kodak had seen fit to include on the back (perhaps to taunt those without scissors while explaining how to open things to the hard of thinking at the same time). It was all I could do to mutter “No tengo” and laugh. As if I’d be trying to open it with a biro if I did carry a pair of scissors around with me. Then again, maybe he thought I was just a bit thick.

On the other hand, they were probably all just happy that we weren’t the Policia Municipal, who seemed to have nothing else to do but harass street traders. On Saturday evening we were sitting outside a cafe in the Plaza de Santa Ana when we saw at least four or five police cars converge on the square as their occupants got out to start chasing street handbag sellers around. One of them dropped a selection of handbags, which were instantly seized as evidence by the crack Spanish police force, who, committed to the hunting down of the purveyors of shoddy merchandise to unsuspecting tourists, returned to drive round the square several times over the next hour or so.

It was all surprisingly entertaining, actually.