It’s lovely to return from abroad the same weekend as the Pride Festival. Everywhere is so colourful! There’s a big arch of multicoloured balloons outside Robert Dyas hardware, the Metropole Hotel is festooned with rainbow flags, the giant fibreglass prawn outside the whelk stall has been given a festive feather boa for the weekend and the charity shops have all done their bit with colour-coordinated junk in their window displays.

Of course alongside Pride there are the usual hen and stag parties, plus other people down for the weekend in the hope of prolonging that Ibiza spirit for just a little longer, so the promenade is a real sight to behold. And, because everyone seems to be wearing costumes within a limited number of themes: cowboys, policemen, princesses, nurses, kittens, Brazilian carnival dancers, fairies, lumberjacks (perhaps this narrow range is to preserve tradition and promote a sense of belonging?) it makes it quite difficult to spot who’s here for which reason.

By the time I passed the Palace Pier I was due for a mug of tea so I decided to stop off at the Madeira: Greg’s chip shop and café, where I was delighted to see his daughters had also put on a bit of a show for the customers. Greg and I soon fell into conversation. He told me it had already been a good weekend for him and, though they were all tired, it was worth going the extra mile. Plenty of people would be coming off the beach soon and a lot of the parties were still going strong up the road. I asked him when he thought he might stay open till. “On a night like this? If and when the mood changes…” he replied.

Given where his restaurant is located, and the many different comings and goings he must have seen, I had this sudden vision of a man as able to read the changing faces of the crowd every bit as well as a sea captain could read the changing nuances in the weather.