It was only the first day of our holiday but my wife had already overdone it bit the night before. But I was ravenous so I went to breakfast alone and I was hungrily tucking into the Spanish idea of bacon and eggs in the busy dining room when a weird, skinny bloke crept up and asked if I minded if he shared my table. I gulped queasily at the sight of him and froze, fork poised in mid-air. He was an ugly b*gger but I couldn’t justifiably use that as an excuse to say no and so indicated with an lordly wave of my hand that yes, he could sit down although I wasn’t entirely happy with it but was a generous sort nevertheless.

The bloke was almost hypnotically unsightly – not only was he gawky, blotchy, sweaty and twitchy but he also had such slick and shiny hair I thought at first he must have just stepped out of the shower. Then I realised with dismay that his hair wasn’t wet or indeed recently washed, but was in fact greasily plastered to his sweaty pale forehead. And from a truly horrifying pair of outsize old-man shorts dangled two pale, scrawny, hairless legs. As soon as he took his seat I begin to regret my benevolence. Firstly he began obsessively arranging his cutlery and food, he then painstakingly smeared a nauseatingly thick slab of butter and then a large dollop of jam on one end of his roll and noisily bit off a huge chunk. Staring vacantly into space he then chewed enthusiastically in a sort of sloppy, clicky-clacky manner, not quite managing to keep his mouth closed. I looked away. Every nerve ending in my body was now clenched and alert. I lost the ability to swallow.

He repeated his sickly butter and jam spreading routine and took another noisy bite. I looked around in desperation, wondering if I dare get up and move to another table. Myoy, myoy, myoy, he said, clicky-clacky, myoy, myoy. In my delicate condition the contents of my stomach suddenly had the urge to search for a tiled floor. Get a grip, I told myself, its just some sweaty, repulsive bloke and I’m hungover. I took a keen interest in a painted fresco on the wall to my left: Would you look at that - lovely windmills, and there’s a cute little chap in a sombrero on a donkey look but this still didn’t prevent me from overhearing his gooey mastications: Nyum nyum nyum. By now I was getting agitated and tried humming a bit to cover the noise of his chewing. Why me? I wondered, I only wanted a quick bite of bacon and egg, and now this.

They say there’s a life partner for everyone somewhere in the world but at some point in his life this unfortunate geezer must have combed the entire surface of the planet to find his, for to my intense astonishment, another vision of ugliness now appeared - his sickly, pale and badly-drawn equivalent in womanhood. As I stared in slack-jawed incredulity she nodded hello at me through a curtain of long lank hair and placed her breakfast on the table - a jiggling plateful of boiled eggs. I went Hbbbbbrrrrrr inside and surrendered, abandoning my breakfast and leaving them to it.

I considered appealing to someone in authority; after all, they had dress standards in there, why not appearance standards? They don’t allow men to show their hairy legs or sweaty fat bellies at dinner, they ask them to get properly dressed so why not just slap a blanket 24hr ban on this greasy ugly bloke? And his unsightly missus. Can’t they have people on the door? They could at least send them away to wash their bleeding hair. But you couldn’t expect a Spanish waiter to understand.

I am fleeing in horror, I thought, I have to face the fact that I am of a delicate, over-sensitive disposition and may even be a bit of a jessie. But I vowed that no stranger would ever again share my breakfast table. How exactly I would put this into effect I didn’t know but I might start by throwing my shampoo bottle away.