Own goal

Think of Spain and what images come to your mind? A beautiful white beach? Ice-cold jugs of sangria? Handsome young men in shades? Okay, that last one might just be me, but the others will be there, along with, of course, a bright, shining, full-of-heat sun.

At the risk of annoying the Spanish Tourist Board, I have some bad news - in winter, there is no sun. Well yes, it’s there and occasionally teases you with giving off a small blast of warmth, but from November until March you can forget the usual images – at least in Madrid.

After freezing like a very dumb guiri for the last few winters, this year I decided to take action and got my mum to make me a nice, wooly scarf with matching gloves and hat (yes, I have stepped into that age bracket that puts functionality above fashion. But that’s the great thing about living in a foreign land - you can get away with wearing things you would never wear in your homeland. Honest, no matter what you don, you are always going to be strange and exotic. With perhaps a little more emphasis on the strange. There is a woman who lives next to us who always remarks how you can tell a guiri because their high heels “tic-tac” along the street in the way Spanish shoes don’t. It doesn’t matter to her that all my clothing is now from Zara and Mango and Sfera and so on!).

Armed with my protection against the cold - God bless you, mum - I suggested to Ged that perhaps the time was right to embrace Spanish football. Back when we first arrived, we’d tried to find a new team, eventually plumping for Atlético Madrid. But there was never that spark so vital in supporting a team. We watched them on TV, but going to the Calderón stadium never happened and my heart was never in my mouth the way it was with our beloved Hibernian back in Edinburgh.

But over three-and-a-half years, Ged had got to grips with all the intricacies of the Spanish leagues and come up with a possible choice - Rayo de Vallecano, a team in many ways like the Hibees: small, community-based and with a chequered past. Even better, their strip had once featured a giant bumble bee on the front of it. I mean, you’ve got to love that, haven’t you?

Remembering those chilly days in Edinburgh’s Easter Road, I got fully prepared for the visit to the Teresa Rivero stadium: thermals head-to-toe, check; jumper and jeans, check; thick socks and boots, check; and finally, hat, gloves and scarf - all checked and put on at jaunty angles.

It was on the metro that I first noticed a few looks at my clothes. I paid them no heed - as I said, foreigners are always noticed and I now wear my guiri-ism with pride. The excitement grew as we bought our tickets and headed to the stadium bar for an “aperitif” before the game (one of my favourite ways to describe having a drink in Spain! Sounds so much better, don’t you think?). It was busy, but hey, I’m a Geordie lass more than used to pushing her way through far busier pubs in the Bigg Market, so I squeezed an elbow onto a small patch of space on the bar and then manoeuvred my body in. Works every time.

Well, not this time. Every time I tried to order two cañas, a voice louder than mine wiped me out and I stood there like a goldfish. Eventually, a man wearing a bumble bee shouted my order across for me. I gave him “un mil gracias”.

“You’re welcome. Good luck for the game - although we are going to win.”

“Sorry?” I replied, but he wandered off to his fellow Bumblers.

I pondered on this as I made my way back to Ged, who was standing under a poster advertising the match and pointing at the opposition’s team strip - which was exactly the same colour as my lovely hat, scarf and gloves. My mum had turned me into the opposition.

Despite Ged’s protests that both sides in Spain mixed in the seats, I whipped everything off and hid them down the front of my jacket. I appeared six months pregnant, but at least I didn’t feel like such an outsider.

And so I still froze through the game. But it was great fun and we can’t wait for our next outing. Although I might ask my mum to get her knitting needles out before then…

Drink to me only

Well, that's the end of the holiday season. Not ours, you understand, that ended long ago, no, this is everybody else's holiday season – the season where having relatives in Spain is suddenly fabulous. Somehow they don't seem so keen during the bleak mid-Madrid-winter.

Don't get me wrong. I love seeing family and appreciate the efforts they make to come here (BA please note – get a direct route from the north please). But after three months of constant visitors we are left wondering why we don't just go the whole hog and open a B&B.

It has been fun, though, although a lot of that was unintentional from our guests. And mainly the guests from my side of the family. Two in particular - my sister, Marion, and her son, David.

Marion and David are an easy couple to please so long as the sight-seeing ends with some form of liquid refreshment (visitors after our own hearts. After all this time living here and countless visits to the city beforehand, we've still never quite managed to actually enter the Prado and see the art that has made countless tourists speechless. You see, there's a really nice bar close by and people-watching always appeals).

Luckily, Madrid has more bars per head of population than any city in the world. So, we did the Puerta del Sol (a pick-and-mix of bars), the old, deeply atmospheric La Latina quarter (bars with scrummy huevos rotos to nibble on), the Santiago Bernabeu (come on, it's a football stadium. You've got to have a drink there) and then El Retiro park (no bars. They're called terrazas here).

And that was just in the first two days.

By day three, Ged and I left them to their own devices. David could remember enough of his schoolboy Spanish to get round and they were confident that they could map-read sufficiently between the two of them not to get lost. Still, I spent the day worrying that at some point a friendly member of the Guardia Civil would roll up at our door asking if we knew these two people who'd tried to have a go at bullfighting in the Plaza del Toros, or something similar.

So when we spotted them making their way along our street at 6pm, we were pleasantly surprised. Although David was walking a little funny.

When he entered the flat, we realised why. His jeans were soaking wet.

“Oh my God,” I screamed, “You didn't climb into the Cibeles fountain, did you?”

“No,” he grunted, giving a sidelong, malevolent glance at his mum. “We were in a bar, having a drink, when the waiter brought our glasses. Except mine wasn't a glass, it was one of those white, earthenware jugs they use for keeping the beer cold.”

“It was an honest mistake,” butted in Marion. “The froth at the top was white and it was full to the brim and I thought the glass was upside down...”

“And so she turned it the right way up!” finished David. “The beer went all over me.”

“I told you to get another one.”

“I couldn’t - I don't know the Spanish for ‘another’,” he pouted back.

By this time, the giggles Ged and I had been struggling to keep in erupted into laughter. Marion was also biting her lips to stop herself joining in while David sulked into the bathroom to shower and change.

I’d never noticed just how silly our family can be until I moved away which is why I thought it best to give a few pointers for next year.

First, and I know this is a bit of a surprise, this is Spain, not Bognor Regis, so when sitting out in the height of the midday sun please don’t say, “By but it’s hot, isn’t it?” I can no longer be held responsible for Ged’s actions.

Two: don’t explain to the waiters the perfect way to make “a nice cup of tea” as you’ll still just end up with a cup of dishwater - only this time it will be delivered with a scowl.

Three: do remember to pay for your drinks when you leave the bar and not when the waiter shouts at you when you’re halfway down the street.

Oh, and last but most definitely not least, please don’t go on and on and on about Real Madrid when we’re in a bar surrounded by Atlético de Madrid scarves. I don’t yet know the Spanish for “the big man knocked out half of my teeth”.

Yes, it’s lovely to have family to stay - they make me look not quite so bad.