Swapping the snow for sun in Seville

Faced with the freeze and dark, short, vitamin D starving days I’m saved by an invitation to spend a week in Seville with friends. I don’t need asking twice and I’ve booked a cheap flight faster than Michelle Mone can sell yachts. The warm night time air hits me on arrival as I descend the plane steps and I shed my Michelin man attire en route to the terminal building. Bliss.

Other people might need adrenaline-fuelled activities and entertainment but these Scottish travellers are happy just to sit in the sun outside a cafe, occasionally moving a chair to track the rays or dodge an orange dropping from the trees overhead, while fielding Youngest Child’s calls from home:

“I’m so cold, how do I make soup again?”

Even her “Now don’t be angry – no not a tattoo… or piercing – but you know that special vase you love…” is not met with, “For god’s sake, it might have cost pennies but it was a beautiful shape and colour and reminded me of being in Cuba, and I knew jigsaw party empties weren’t a thing despite the photos of you and your pals you sent” but instead I say, “how about some mother daughter kintsugi – that Japanese thing where you repair pots with gold to celebrate the beauty of breakages?”

“Er, Ok,” she says, and “so you fry some onions…”

But it’s not all sloth in the sun. Energised by the warmth our step count rockets as we visit the Moorish splendour of Seville’s Alcazar palace and gardens, take a day trip to Cadiz and watch surfers riding the waves, and another to Cordoba to where the architecture of the magnificent Mosque meets Cathedral renders us speechless (apart from one of our party referencing Tunnock’s Teacackes while gazing at the endless alternating red brick and white stone arches, which prompts another cafe in the sun stop where we inexplicably order salads).

Endless warm evenings are filled with the sound of flamenco guitars and the cries of the singers – sorrow, heartache, jealousy and revenge never sounded so joyful – and all of it is stored away to keep me warm until the sun returns to our part of the planet.

I hug my memories as my arrival in Edinburgh is met by a Baltic blast and scurry home. In the meantime we’ve got a pot to fix. What’s the Japanese for smithereens?