No lemons were driven over in the making of this book. Some, however, were squeezed. Confessions from a Spanish inquisition. An unreliable memoir. Spain is no stranger to strangers. In the waxing years of the 8th century an elderly chap called Tariq Ibn al-Ziyad, possibly weary of the monochromic sands of North Africa, or the sapping demands of polygyny, or merely aware of the sands of time, African or otherwise, running out on him, cast an acquisitive eye northwards. In the dusk of his years, Tariq fancied a bit of Spain. Embarking from what is now Tangier, he and a few thousand of his equally restless men, just as keen as Tariq to expand the Mauritanian property portfolio, sailed from one Herculean pillar to the other and landed at Gibraltar.

Thus began the Moorish invasion of Iberia. On arrival, Tariq and his men found there were sitting tenants to deal with. A few centuries before, the Visigoths, having tired of Balkan winters and of submitting to the prod of Rome's spear, had cast their eyes west. Cutting a swathe through southern Europe they had crossed the Pyrenees with a roar, and seeing that vacant possession of some Spanish sun was available once a few more peripatetic Romans had been dealt with, had also decided to move in. After some toing and froing, the Visigoths, now submitting to the prod of Barbary's scimitar and no doubt having had it up to here with prods of any denomination, were banished. The Moorish invaders, now under a handful of leaders, subsequently settled down to a good seven centuries of internecine fighting whilst repelling various bitter antecedents of the ousted Visigoths and quelling rebellious forces of the indigenous kingships. Sandcastles in Spain is a dry look at three years of an aspirant writer, caught on the horns of artistic procrastination and expat mores. It is also the result of a man conceding to his limitations whilst trying to produce something readable to others before a future involving hover cars.