I feel the gentle warmth of the sun on my face and in particular just underneath my eyes. It could be a result of tiredness too and not simply the heat. The chatter from the students is constant. A tourist drags his Samsonite luggage along the cobbled path. I close my eyes and for a moment I am somewhere else completely. I am in a place of pure heat with the pleasurable innate knowledge that tomorrow and the day after that and all the foreseeable days will be drenched in sunshine too, and my body jerks forward as if I am a street drunk. But I’m not a drunk caught out in the early summer sunshine, I am somebody who is thinking about being in Spain. I could almost fall asleep.

I ask Joey if he is capable of hobbling to a café that I have spotted a few doors down. He maintains that he can and Mikey and Maeve give a cheer. He stretches one of his arms up to my shoulder and the other up to Maeve’s. He uses our body frames as human crutches. He wants a whole load of attention on account of his accident. I feel strangely compelled not to provide him with it. Perhaps I am just feeling too tired.

The coffee shop is full of sounds. Murmuring voices, heat, coughs, jazz, the angst-squeaks of children. Cool baristas exchange gossip, conversations about their good nights out. Music. High rifts of conversations flake as they become more ghostly, or move again with increased intent, mightier now, veering away going their own distances, developing their own themes. There are dangerous flirtations being played out between customers, between the waitress and a customer, between a barista and a customer. There are croissant flakes on the display table left over from the breakfast rush. Saint Etienne is playing in the background and it is this that makes me feel old. Old yet happy. I am part of something interesting.

I order tea for myself and a longish piece of twisted pastry which has been dipped in chocolate at either end and sprinkled with pistachio nuts. The children take forever working out what they want. I don’t blame them, the choice is overwhelming. There are flaked almond croissants and Gur cake on a pink plate beside an artificial poinsettia which looks completely out of place. Unrecognizable cakes spill out of baskets set in the window. An overloading of icing and holes pressed into the dough. The ‘Sorry We’re Closed’ sign is on the inside of the door and it has sticky finger marks all over it but this unhygienic detail doesn’t put us off.