There’s nothing more delicious than a table for one

I was invited to speak at a conference in Barcelona in the late 1990s. At the end of a very long, hard day, my genial Spanish feminist hosts invited me to dinner, telling me they would meet me in the hotel lobby at 10.30 p.m. I almost went into some sort of traumatic shock. I was aware of the Catalonian reputation for eating late – sometimes as late as midnight, at weekends – but I was having none of it.

I bade my colleagues farewell and found myself a gorgeous little tapas bar that was open at 7.30 p.m. I ate bread with deep green olive oil, deep red tomato and roasted garlic, octopus salad with waxy potatoes, jamon croquettes, and a plate of marinated anchovies. As I sipped my ice-cold, bone-dry sherry I felt relieved to be alone.