On hot, still nights in early summer, the Plaza del Salvador was an oasis. An old colonial plaza, with the worn wide steps of a magnificient church on one side and a cluster of tiny bodegas on the other three, the square was the centre of the Paseo - the nightly alcohol-fuelled social bimble through the streets of the city.

Now there’s a tradition I could happily adopt - wandering from bar to bar, meeting and greeting friends on the way, plans as fluid as the refreshments.

And what refreshment. The only thing to drink when the evenings are muggy and close is Tinto de Verano (summer wine):

Pop three ice cubes in a tall glass. Fill 2/3 with red wine. Cheap or expensive, doesn’t matter. Top up with 1/3 bitter lemon or lemonade (la gaseosa for preference, but anything will do) and add a wedge of lemon. Or not. Utterly orgasmic.

The plaza was fringed with orange trees, and the blossom was sweet and heavy in the evening air. We would sit on the sun-warmed steps, long into the evening, drinking Tinto de Verano and talking jilipoyas until out bums were quite numb, and watching the hippies toss fiery diablos high into the air.

There was a man in a scruffy suit who would nightly prowl the plaza, handing out leaflets warning against the dangers of alcohol.

Among the perils it warned of, were sick society, cirrhosis of the liver, destruction of the family, alcoholism, intoxication, death, accidents, dementia and harming innocents. From the line drawings on the leaflet, it looked like the innocents harmed would be mostly foetuses, though the sketch looked quite a lot like a potato.

But this leaflet didn’t just dwell on the negative effects - it suggested cures and alternatives for those afflicted by alcohol. And you know what they were? Steam baths and a diet of fruit.

If only life was that simple.

I found one of the tattered leaflets tonight, when going through a box of photos. I wish I was in Plaza del Salvador with a glass of tinto right now, rather than listening to drunk South Africans shouting at each other in the street outside.