Pimp my ride

Sam Delaney has something to declare

“This is just embarrassing,” my dad mutters to himself, staring hollow-eyed into the distance. We are in a rickshaw, riding around the narrow streets behind Barcelona’s La Rambla.

“I’m not getting on one of those things, we’ll look like bloody tourists!” he’d insisted about 10 minutes earlier. “But we are tourists!” I beamed while bundling him in. The truth was, we had been walking for hours, were lost – and I could hear his asthma starting to play up something chronic in the muggy afternoon heat. There were no taxis in sight, so hopping onto an impractical pedal-powered tourist trap being driven by a white Australian with dreadlocks had seemed like a good idea. But it doesn’t seem like a good idea any more.

Garth the driver has taken a wrong turn down a narrow pedestrianised street. Crowds of shoppers gawp at us as if we are some sort of mobile Victorian grotesquery sent from foggy London town for their amusement. “Mire a los monstruos ingleses!”, they seem to say with their eyes.

We manage to reach the end of the street and hang a right. I prematurely assume that our sorry procession of indignity may be over. But it’s only just begun. “Hola hombre inglés atractivo!” barks an ageing prostitute springing out from the shadows of a doorway. She gently caresses my father’s right cheek. “No thank you!” he says firmly, brushing her hand away. “Get us out of here, Garth!” I shout at our driver. “I’m peddling as fast as I can, mate!” he says. A second prostitute is meddling suggestively with his handlebars while he tries to manoeuvre us out of the alleyway. Meanwhile, a third concubine has approached me on the blind side, leaning right into my ear and whispering something about “una experiencia apasionada”. I practically leap into my dad’s lap. He pushes me off. Clearly, he blames me for all of this.

This was supposed to be a weekend of relaxation and culture – Picasso, Miró, Gaudí, San Miguel and exotic seafood served in tiny dishes. A grown-up and refined way for a man to spend time with his father. It hasn’t really worked out that way. “What do you wanna do tonight? Outdoor theatre?” I ask dad once we’re clear of Vice City. “Let’s just go back to the hotel and order some food in,” he says to my relief. “I’ve got Sky Sports in my room.”