One of the things I love about Spain is the attitude to public space and architecture. OK there’s Castellon airport without any planes and a few fields full of Calatrava roofs too expensive to finish, but there are also places of staggering beauty. A perfect fountain in a tiny square round the back of everywhere else. Or a grand scheme finger in the face of austerity that says you are here, you know you are here, you could not be anywhere else. Like Valencia’s Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias.

Doncaster felt a bit Spanish the other night. I emerged from an alley of boarded up shops into this warm space in front of the new venue CAST. A stunning building, an empty square, sun, fountains, the corner shop closed, the library not open, workers from council offices all gone home. It felt as if the town had decided to adopt early evening siestas.

The only people in the theatre cafe were two women taking photos of each other holding a toy lapdog. I hung around until the black aproned barista appeared in the distance and ambled towards me through late afternoon shadows the long way from doing something else to making my coffee under a blackboard of Tapas with a Yorkshire Twist. The box office guy sat on his counter strumming a guitar.

A good warm place under glass to while away an hour and prepare my workshop, waiting for the town to wake up.