Once in a while, when the sunset drowns my little kitchen in purple, curious light, throwing innocent, familiar shapes across my carpet and up the wall, and the sounds that spill through the back doors seem to bring their own time with them, that's when I feel the most at home.

This morning started late, as I let the hours slip by, my mind far from home. I'd dreamt of a beach I'd once visited, in the early years, where we'd waited out the evening and the night had brought the magic of the camp fire and a sill of rock had poked up through the sand to provide seating for our adventure.

We'd dug a six-foot sofa into the soft sand, solidified with sea water, and even finger-traced picture frames onto the walls, and we sat there for a while, three heads at ground level, watching the sea and the stars, and the people watching us. I found some seaweed and threw it on the fire to see if it would pop like I thought it should. It didn't, but the fun was in finding out.

The bay had been separated from a narrow, dusty road by a foot-high dry stone wall, and the other side was lightly built with a post office and a few cottages, some trees and nothing more I can recall. As kids, these adventures had been kind of rare, so they were even more special because of that. We'd sat round that fire, making up stories to explain the lights we could see across the water. I only remember the one about a land of glowing, nuclear people, whose very bodies could be seen from miles away, on clear nights like these.

When Burtdad took us to these places, a harmonica was never far away, and he'd always sing songs from his own childhood adventures, which somehow connected us and added more wonder to everything. Even the mundane reality of schoolboy pranks inherited an element of fantasy, at least in my mind, and I retold them when I returned to school after the spacious summer breaks between the school years. My friends, too, inherited some of the fantasy and it even extended so far as to bring us closer, despite none of us having been there at the time. I guess that's why I tell these stories.

A knocking brought me crashing back from my day dream, and I realized just in time that I'd been expecting a visitor; A new friend I'd made along the way, who'd been eager to talk to a foreigner and learn something new. I grabbed a few stitches to throw on and answered the back door, to the shock of my eyes, mal-adjusted for midday - my mosquito net had kept the rolling manor in half-light that I'd mistaken for the less intense morning sun. I'd long ago abandoned all care of keeping time, waking and sleeping as and when I'd felt the urge, and happily adopting the mid-afternoon snooze in an attempt to fit into Spanish life.

I poured tea from my impressive collection and we dealt cards and rattled about this and that for an hour or more, until my visitor had fancied a long walk. Personally, I had preferred to remain in the luxury of my docile mood and declined to join. I spent the next few hours watching the world go by, made a thick stew and slurped it casually from a camping bowl I'd acquired some time ago. It was appropriately decorated with tomatoes and basil, both of which were present in the feast, and I watched the sun go down from the porch, legs dangled over the back bumper, doors wide open and nothing but time for company.

When night rolled around, I fed, watered and sat, soaking up the antics of happy people as a strict, but casual, observer. The place I'd been calling home had accepted me and I could tell. But somewhere in the moment lay a sort of careful sadness for moments that had been and gone, and I saw them off as passengers on a ferry, as I sat in my own silhouette on that doorstep, waiting for the night to tug at my eyes.

Barcelona's sandy beaches feel different from those in my childhood, and their playfulness invites a different kind of play. I guess I'll just let it be.