There’s no bargaining with my wife

For me, one of the joys of going abroad is bargaining with the local sellers. They name an extortionate price; I make an insulting counteroffer; they threaten to walk away; I increase my offer by a fractional amount; they accuse me of not being serious, then name a price that’s fractionally lower than their opening bid, accompanied by elaborate hand gestures to indicate this is their absolute final offer; now it’s my turn to start walking away; and so on, until eventually we arrive at a mutually agreeable price that leaves us both feeling we’ve got the better of one another. In reality, of course, I’ve been ripped off, but I can tell myself I’ve struck a tremendous bargain.

Unfortunately, Caroline takes a different view. She believes the great benefit of foreign travel is that it often involves a transfer of wealth from the haves to the have-nots. A successful holiday means plenty of opportunities to hand over money to hotel owners, taxi drivers, restaurateurs, tour guides and – yes – local vendors. In her eyes, they aren’t grifters and hustlers using every ruse in the book to shake down credulous holidaymakers, but honest, hardworking folks doing their best to support their families.

As you can imagine, this difference of opinion often leads to awkward moments, which is what happened in Spain last week. I’d been invited to give a talk on free speech at the British International School of Marbella and Caroline tagged along, thinking it would make for a pleasant mini-break. And so it was, save for the moment an African gentleman wandered past when we were seated at a beach bar. He was carrying a bushel of Vilebrequin swimming trunks, saying: ‘Buy one, get one free.’