What's your favourite?

She approached us with a wide Canary Islands smile, a slim, attractive lady in a summer-bright dress. Much more ominous was the cloud of nine-year-olds swirling around her, each clutching a little piece of paper.

Friday evening. We're seated outside a café on the pedestrian main street, chilled rosado wine catching the last of the sunlight to paint glowing blobs on the table. Couples stroll, toddlers tumble, old folk sit on benches complaining about politicians, Real Madrid and their arthritis. Newly-arrived tourists trundle their suitcases far too fast, still anxious from the journey, they'll take a day or two to relax... We're just sitting here watching it all, nothing really, people doing what people do.

'Excuse me, are you English?' The youthful cloud has arrived, wafted towards us by their smiling leader. She speaks excellent English with only the mildest of accents. She's a teacher. We fear the worst.

We are, we admit, English. 'Ah, I thought so!' The children swirl closer, gathering around our table like pigeons spying peanuts. 'These children want to practise their English. Do you mind if they ask you a few little questions?'

'Err...'

'It won't take long. They're very easy questions!' She's got a lovely smile, and the kids are standing there meekly with their little pieces of paper... Oh okay, fire away then.

'Thank you very much!' She points to the first girl in line, over on our left - 'Yolanda!' The back of Yolanda's paper is decorated with mysterious squiggles in coloured crayon. The front of it holds her list of questions, which she's going to ask in what she believes to be English. We wait for her to select one.

Yolanda plunges in confidently: 'Do you like La Gomera?'

Got it! 'We love La Gomera!' J responds, and everyone smiles. Going well so far.

'What's your favourite colour?'

Tricky. J's favourite colour is not one of the rainbow seven. 'My favourite colour's blue,' I offer boringly, giving time for J to plump for the honest response: 'My favourite colour's turquoise.'

Teacher helps: 'Ah yes, that's turquesa.' See, not difficult. Yolanda nods and consults her paper, getting into her stride, but it's time to move on to Ricardo fidgeting beside her. Ricardo wears scruffy jeans and will undoubtedly want to get his eyebrows pierced someday soon. He wishes to know what we like for breakfast. Prompted by a wink from teacher we give him the works, full English, fried eggs and bacon, sausage, tomatoes and the rest... lots of good vocabulary in there, not that Spanish kids really need to learn 'baked beans'.

Ricardo scribbles something on his paper then goes for the big one. 'Do you like football?'

This is aimed directly at me. I haven't the remotest interest in football. And look, I'm not going to lie about it to these kids, they need to know the sad realities of life. 'Umm, not very much.'

Teacher chuckles nervously but it's okay, Ricardo interprets my response as too ridiculous to take seriously. He carefully articulates his follow-up: 'What's your favourite football team?

I grab a name from the fog: Arsenal. Ricardo looks bemused. Try again: Manchester United. That's more like it! He nods and writes it down. Every boy across the entire planet has heard of Manchester United.

There are about ten of these cheerful little interrogators and soon they know everything there is to know about us - favourite colours, favourite island, which fruit we like best, which pudding. It all reminds me of the long-gone days when, briefly, I taught children of this age in a primary school. Get them involved and they'll plunge into anything up to their armpits, they're very rewarding.

My vino rosado is getting warm and teacher wisely hurries things along so as not to drain our goodwill. After Sandra has rounded things off with only the tiniest hiccup - 'Do you like best... Do you like cats or dogs best?' - we're invited to visit them at school whenever we want. We exchange names, all of us. Not going to remember any of theirs for long but maybe they'll remember ours, greet us in the street one day soon, hello Janine, hello Peter, what's your favourite sandwich?

Arturo, the café proprietor, has been watching from the doorway. He grins as the teacher wafts her students away, waving. 'They gave you a hard time!' No they didn't, we rather enjoyed it. How often do you get the chance to spend ten minutes talking exclusively about yourself, with an attentive audience noting your every word? Short of being Prime Minister, this is as good as it gets.