I’m currently in an air-conditioned hotel room avoiding 43 Degrees, and that’s not a tribute act consisting of a choir of black female singers, that’s the temperature. Even the locals seem mildly irritated by it. “It’s very hot,” is the opening gambit of anyone we talk to. “Yes,” we concur, a pool of sweat forming on the floor around us, “it is, very hot.” Jenny and I have stopped saying “it’s very hot” to conserve energy, and now squeak “hot” in a tiny voice instead. Hopefully we’ll reduce that even further to a raising of the left eyebrow.

I have a difficult relationship with heat, by which I mean I can’t f*cking stand it. So why go to Marrakesh? Answer: it’s by and large a freebie, in exchange for Jenny penning some gushing prose for the pages of a food magazine. Delving deep into the souk yesterday evening, we could be mistaken for thinking that all the locals ate was hard boiled eggs. Piles of them, everywhere. We wondered where all the chickens were, until we found a few dozen of them behind a stall, awaiting swift decapitation with a cleaver. I’m all for the harsh realities of food production being exposed to the consumer, but that made me feel a bit queasy. Although not as queasy as I’d feel if I saw a chicken actually laying an egg. Blurgh. Imagine, as John Lennon once sang, although not in reference to chickens laying eggs, obviously.

There is, famously, no official map of Marrakesh. The tourist office doesn’t have one. The Time Out guide has done a fairly decent job of cobbling one together. The one provided by the hotel is beautifully printed on high quality glossy paper, but riddled with errors, transposing important buildings, road junctions and indeed the hotel itself into completely different parts of town. Quite an achievement. On our way out of town last night in a taxi, I asked the driver in what direction we were roughly heading, so I could get my bearings. “Um… Yes, out of the town,” he said. “But what direction?” “Um…” “Might it be north?” I suggested, helpfully. “Yes, north,” said the driver, with some relief. I’ve since discovered that we were heading due south east.

We arrived at our destination, an absurdly luxurious and palatial leisure complex called Pacha, which holds two restaurants, a nightclub, two bars, a chill out zone, extensive gardens and an enormous outdoor swimming pool. But, apart from the staff, we were the only people there. Apparently, a few weeks previously, Pete Tong had played a blinder to a packed house. Tonight, we dined alone, surrounded by attentive staff eager to top up our glasses and whisk away our amuses bouches. “Why are we the only people here?” we asked, with some trepidation.” “It’s the end of July,” replied someone with a shrug of the shoulders. “It’s far too hot. No-one comes to Marrakesh at this time of year.” Amazing. We’ve come at the lowest of low seasons, but not because of the cold. Far from it. I would like to think I will now stop writing about the weather, but I probably won’t.