Vigo

Sitting in his office, the station master finds it difficult to understand me, as I try and get used to lisping my c's but end up just lisping. This is the least of my problems with the Spanish language yet I always feel if I crack it I'll be mistaken for a native in no time.

On television no one's mouth moves when it should, the dub is well and truly on. American programs are no surprise but even Jamie Oliver chats to his friends with remarkable fluency. Gone is the loveable cockney, replaced by a smooth-tongued foreign extra from El Dorado.

The next morning the window in my basement room turns out to be a sham, as it is bricked up. I thus wake late in darkness. I flood the bathroom and then head out to find a cafe. Later, after an excessively long lunch, the result of my ordering two group portions in hopeless Spanish, I waddle back towards the hotel. Spying some stylish old barber's chairs, I am reminded of Sweeney Todd and enter on a whim. The proprietor jumps up from reading what looks like a Spanish version of Hello! except the women on the front is incongruously topless. He cannot speak a word of English so I make what I believe to be the international gesture for "A little bit off the top and sides", my index finger and thumb a short distance apart, pointing at my head.

As I sit down, tightly wrapped in three layers of towel, apron and absorbent neck cloth, another customer enters and picks up Hola! to read. Only five minutes, my barber assures him. I too am reassured because surely only a trim would be possible in such a short time. Five minutes of frantic snipping later I realise I was wrong, both about the international comprehension of my hand gesture and about the speed at which my curls could be dispatched. At times the barber moves so fast that he cuts at empty air for several snips before changing tack and plunging back into my tousled mop. Except it is a mop no longer. Just when I think my follicle count is a low as it will go, the barber flicks open a proper old cut throat razor and test the blade with his thumb. Having witnessed his speed with scissors and remembering the chair on which I sit I cannot help a twinge of worry that I have somehow stumbled upon El Peluquería Diabólica. However, he prcoeeds only to shave the back of my neck and round my ears, leaving my throat well alone. Ten minutes after walking in, I leave hurriedly, a post-Delila Samson.