I spent much of yesterday in and around the resort of Maspalomas, Gran Canaria’s answer to Blackpool.

Masplaomas brings together an area of outstanding natural beauty

with tat

I spent more time in tat, than beauty and deliberately so. I was with people I did not understand and did not understand me, but we were linked by some common bonds, beer. sun skin and the bawdiness of the Brit abroad.

Part of being away in the Canaries was to put some perspective on my very parochial existence in London. I seem to have spent much of the past two years with people who – whether they agreed or didn’t , were thinking in a paradigm I felt comfortable with.

Occasionally, as when i spoke with Nigel Farage last week, I sensed an awkwardness that I felt acutely yesterday.

I really worry that I have neither the language or the imagination, to talk with many people with whom I share much (nationality being one thing). If I cannot share the way they think or understand what lies behind their thinking, how can I dare opine on how they should manage their money.

If this sounds like middle class angst and liberal had-wringing- well it is. I am genuinely shocked about how little I know about the lives of people who come to Maspalomas on holiday.

Perhaps i should be a little less haughty in what I have to say and a little more careful in how I am saying it. For yesterday was a lesson for me in how little I really know.