The heatwave continues and you can forget Brits abroad: Brits at home are priceless. Following a week in Spain, the second half of our annual holiday involved a staycation – and what a week to pick! After seven days on the beach here are the top conversations I couldn’t help but overhear:

1) A family spent a good half an hour setting up towels, sun umbrella, dispensing sun lotion and blowing up a lilo before the mother declared ‘right kids, 10 minutes and it’s time to go home to get ready for Jasper’s party’. Why oh why.

2) A father repeatedly telling his daughter to ‘stop moaning’ while complaining loudly and laboriously to his wife about various office politics. I can’t imagine where the daughter gets it from.

3) A mother and father hopping from foot to foot on the shore and shrieking ‘come back, come back’. I had to look up at this one, imagining a child barely able to keep his head above water as he was washed out to sea. The child, kitted out in a wet suit, snorkel, flippers and an inflatable, was in the shallows just two feet from the shore while the father was practically apoplectic. And that was it: the poor child wasn’t allowed into the water alone again.