She peppers the maitre'd with a series of rapid-fire questions, purses her lips while she listens to his answers, and then makes some crisp decisions. She wants to get the business with the menus out of the way before we talk. She hopes I don't mind sitting out here, where it's more pleasant. She's wearing a thin black T-shirt, off the shoulder, dark jeans, flat shoes. At last the maitre'd - tall, elegant, saturnine - strides towards me, beckoning with his pad and pencil, and I follow him through the restaurant and outside, onto a covered terrace that is bright and warm and deserted but for a small, dark-haired woman, sitting alone at a table for two, tapping on her phone. And a bobble hat.īlowing on my frozen fingers to keep them warm, I wait. And then I hope, as perhaps no man before me ever has, or will again, that Penélope Cruz will arrive for our tête-à-tête swaddled in multiple layers, with perhaps a thick scarf over a shapeless woollen jumper. I scrape the chairs about, positioning myself directly beneath the blast of icy air and moving the empty seat as far away from it as possible without seating my interviewee in the kitchen. Having arrived idiotically early - only shortly after the close of the 16th century - and been given a choice of tables for two, I've cleverly selected one underneath an air conditioning vent: surely the only place in southern Europe today where a diner might suffer frostbite.

It occupies a 16th century Castilian building, and is as traditional as that makes it sound: gnarled wood beams on the ceilings, faded tapestries on the walls, a hush that might have lasted since the Middle Ages. Happily, the restaurant is not, it turns out, all terrace. I'm sure Penélope Cruz wearied long ago of men reacting in embarrassing ways to her presence, but an Englishman assuming entirely liquid form while attempting to conduct a magazine interview with her might be a new one, even on her.

I imagine us sheltering from the scalding sun beneath a thin parasol, her cool and soignée behind mega shades, caramel skin glowing, while I roast and sizzle, beads of sweat trickling from my nose into my soup. From the website it looks like it's one of those places that's all terrace, idyllic under almost any circumstance - except, perhaps, in 40☌ heat. My appointment with Penélope Cruz is arranged for 3.30pm at a restaurant 40 minutes' drive north of the city. And I can think of many worse things to do with a working Wednesday, whatever the weather, than to have lunch with Spain's most celebrated daughter, a great star of contemporary cinema and - let's not be coy about this - one of the most beautiful women ever to appear in movies, or anywhere else. But I have good reason to be here, in the cooker. No doubt, the Balearics will be breezier. Anyone with the means to escape the furnace of the city has long since departed for cooler climes my best local contact texts to express his amazement at my turning up during the 'terrible heat', and to decline my offer of a cold cerveza: he's sailing around Ibiza. Madrid in the dog days of August, and in the ferocious grip of the heatwave they're calling Lucifer.

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