I still recall a Sunday afternoon as a child. Sunday was a lazy day, a family day and every family in the terraced street where I lived (in the east end of Newcastle) followed suit. It was a day off work/ school and sometimes a lie-in, more often than not a three-hour game of football in the lane or park. At twenty five past one we’d run home and when the kitchen door opened, my nose locked on to the delicious smell of roast beef or chicken cooking in the oven. I can still smell it to this day.

And every Sunday followed the same pattern, not once did we deviate from the plan. Then another ritual would follow, one that I could never quite understand. My father would head off to bed… I used to ask myself why? This was dad’s only day off, why waste it in bed?

Dad was a hard-working train driver on the east line goods trains. A six-day, sixty-hour week was the norm, taking trains up to Edinburgh and down as far as Doncaster. He got one day of rest, what was he doing in bed? Even on summer days when the family headed to Whitley Bay or Tynemouth for a day on the beach, dad would spend every Sunday afternoon asleep.

Looking back on it now I suppose it was his way of recharging the batteries, ready to begin the working week again the following day. No matter, I still thought it one big waste of time.

I’d heard of - and experienced - the Spanish siesta, way back as an eighteen year old on my first foreign holiday in Benidorm. I couldn’t quite understand why everything seemed to close just after one then open up at four again. I remember being frustrated by it all and once again thought it a huge waste of time. I thought the custom a little antiquated, I thought it was time for them to move on; the modern world does not work like that!

Then I moved to Spain three years ago, and like most newcomer Brits I still thought the bloody siesta was a nuisance. I couldn’t believe it still existed! Okay, maybe in the height of summer after a heavy lunch, forty winks were excusable, but every day? winter, summer, rain or shine? … no way Jose!

Now, I am sad to say I have perfected the art of the siesta. Am I ashamed? A little I guess. I am wondering why I’m telling everybody on a blog. I guess I associate it with old people, something the peasants of Spain perfected many years ago. I have a vision of an old Spanish man lying asleep on a shaded terrace after one vino too many, perhaps a cigarette hanging from his mouth, unshaven, the remnants of his lunch hanging from his whiskers.

It actually happened by accident this summer, when my sister was over from England. We shared some lovely lazy lunches by the pool, catching up on the gossip from home. Naturally, my brother in law - being on holiday - liked to wash down the tortilla, prawns, bread and meats with a few cold cervezas. And then it happened.

On one particularly warm and humid afternoon, after perhaps after one beer too many, the most natural thing in the world was to close your eyes and knock out some zzzzzs. And so it started. It felt good, and long after my sister went home, it continued. I found myself taking two or three siestas each week. I questioned my Spanish friends, successful business men, electricians and builders, and it seemed I was not alone, it was nothing to be ashamed of.

The good old siesta was alive and kicking! They explained that a forty-minute siesta is the ideal. Anything longer makes you feel worse and anything shorter doesn’t do any good. Forty minutes only … remember. It was time to come out of the closet, be proud of your ability to kip in the afternoon, call it a power-nap if it makes you feel better! I read a report on the internet by the World Health Organisation; they documented the benefits of an afternoon nap. It works … it’s good for you!

I run a publishing company and I also write books for a living. My day starts at about seven in the morning, answering the unopened e-mails from the day before. My working day is at least twelve hours at the moment as I’m on a book deadline. Most of those hours are spent doing as I’m doing right now staring at a computer screen bashing away at the keys. In the bad old days, I would just soldier on through the afternoon, skip lunch or have a quick sandwich whilst still working at my desk. The fatigue would kick in early afternoon and the writing would suffer. Not now.

I take lunch and enjoy it, I make it last. After the magical forty minutes snooze I walk the dogs through a forest near my house. It’s the best two hours of my working day and I wonder why I have waited forty years to discover this wondrous thing. My working days are a pleasure once more, not a chore. Now I know why the Spanish take siestas.
Oh well … It’s that time of day again, when in Rome!