The transition from the Saturday into Domingo Veintiséis had very much taken place by the time we’d all returned to the villa, and ‘sleep’, that universal pleasure free to all humankind, was now at a genuine premium. Many of us simply gave up the night as lost and ploughed straight on into the Sunday, grabbing ourselves choice loungers and indulging in a wee bit of sun-worship. El Peor Novio del Mundo (PNM) assured us that this was by far the best course of action:

“I didn’t sleep Thursday, Friday or Saturday nights, and look at me…” He disrobed, revealing the alcohol-toned body of an early nineties cricket professional. “…fucken glorious, ain’t I?”

“No arguments here, old mate,” I agreed.

“Dang,” added Un Mono Ártico Gay (MAG), with feeling.

La Gata and La Arquitecta, saintly ladies both, at this point decided that some more healthy vittles for the gang might not go amiss. Accordingly, though not before spending a little too long gazing hungrily at PNM – long enough, in fact, for La Mejor Novia del Mundo (LMN) to get out her switchblade and start doing overt knife tricks – they struck out as a duo to seize the virgin day.

Hailing a taxi driver (who, assessing the pair, looked for all the world like a Spaniard who could genuinely not believe his luck) they made their way apace to a fancy store, to purchase many a fancy thing. An hour or so later they returned to find a villa exactly as they had left it – filled to the brim with the lost, the wretched and the dying.

Mercifully placing all judgement to one side, this fabulous double act, the pride of Hills Road, went to work on a brunch which might’ve made the angels themselves descend for a nibble. Fruits and vegetables actually played a role – I know, simply remarkable! – and they also, in their wisdom, topped up our supplies both of bro-sé and of beer.

One should touch, at this point, upon the rather tragic topic of ‘beer crimes’ and those who commit them.

[A beer crime, for those unaware of this particular sin, is committed when a can or bottle of beer is left approximately half-drunk and unattended in the heat of the day. Rapidly becoming undrinkable (Spanish beer, at the best of times, being unsuitable for human consumption at anything above 2 degrees centigrade) this poor, discarded beverage is now fit only for the sink then the bin. It is a crime against beer and against one’s fellow man. In short, it is a beer crime.]

As the trip ploughed on and the levels of Dionysian revelry not only hit the roof, but smashed straight through it and became a menace to low-flying aircraft, the beer criminal element at play within our number had grown to unsustainable levels: Gallons upon gallons of the fizzy golden stuff had been left in warm little packages in every nook and cranny of the homestead, with hardly a beer fully finished throughout the whole, dang holiday. Some of us, who took these things seriously, could barely hold back the tears at the waterfalls of liquid wastage; yet our investigations came to naught, and to this day we never discovered the identities of the worst perpetrators!

Rant over, your narrator and his pals whiled away a weary but pleasant day taking wee dips in the pool and attempting the occasional nap – though some, for unknown reasons, still proved quite incapable of sleep.

El Águila, however, was feeling markedly fresh and chipper. Despite his impressively decadent levels of consumption, he had not been struck by even the semblance of a hangover, and this good fortune had somewhat gone to his head:

“Haha, I never get hangovers, never!” he roared. “And as the Lord above is my witness, I never, ever will!”

He stalked around the pool, seeking out various beer crime-scenes and punting their victims over the garden fence with a practiced left foot. “I don’t mean to tempt fate,” he went on, “but I defy God Himself to prove me wrong! I shall never get my comeuppance! Cheers to me!”

“Haha! Cheers to y-!” cried PNM, jumping up to clash glasses with the glabrous one, but, at that very moment, emptying the last of his internal Australian petrol and falling face-first and senseless onto the nearest sofa (mercifully unoccupied at the time).

Finally at rest, he began to snore long and loud, and could not be roused, not even for ready money.

While necessary for the betterment of his corporeal being, PNM’s sudden onset of slumber came perhaps fifteen minutes too early, for it meant he could not bid a fond farewell to our dear friends Z-Unidad and MAG. This wondrous pair had places to be and flights to catch, and our parting was a sombre one indeed – though slightly undercut by our unconscious Antipodean cousin snoring like a chainsawed bear every few seconds.

El Águila, by this point far beyond polite propriety, found this emotional juxtaposition deeply amusing, laughing long and loud, all the while continuing to declare himself ‘bulletproof’ and ‘above the very gods themselves’. Little did he know, my friends, that which would befall him later on.

*

With the noble MAG and most charming Z-Unidad now beating their slow and fatigued way down the ol’ dusty trail, and with PNM clearly beyond the help of man or beast, our numbers had dropped just low enough to make the sourcing of a decent table for dinner not completely impossible. While the rest of the crew went about making another great success of cocktail hour, the crack team of the silver-tongued Plata and the gourmand La Arquitecta (ably assisted by some sterling Mansfield research and due-diligence) rung around practically every restaurant in Ibiza’s Old Town, eventually securing a hefty enough mesa at a spot called ‘La Bodega’ (“I love it already!” Plata rejoiced).

Once a good portion of the evening had been drunk and chatted away, we all grabbed taxis downtown. PNM, his sixth sense for the craic finally dragging him back to life, awoke just in time to heave himself in the final southbound cab, in which he fell straight back to sleep for another fifteen/twenty minutes of the dreamless.

La Bodega turned out to be a charming cocktails-cum-tapas joint just at the foot of the fortress. Here, sat between the incomparably personable pair of El Escocés and La Gata, I enjoyed as lovely an evening as a wretch such as me might ever expect to experience. The fare was expertly cooked and reasonable on the old wallet – the octopus and the meatballs particularly popular. Those onlookers who might’ve erroneously claimed that we, as a group, massively over-ordered were simply embarrassing themselves, and we paid them little-to-no heed.

My overall mood was so good that I let La Arquitecta place a luminous pink and yellow sombrero upon my head. My mood was, in fact, so buoyant that it couldn’t even be defeated by the grumpy embarrassment which necessarily descends when one’s traitorous friends arrange for a comically diminutive chocolate brownie with a solitary candle to be brought forth, all while they erupt into a sustained, very En-ger-lish rendition of ‘Happy Birthday to Tom’…

Aye, ’twas excruciating, and aye, the attractive Spanish people surrounding us no doubt made great mock of me. But I had a cake and they didn’t, and it was I, not they, who now sported a sweet-ass sombrero. They could, therefore, sling their collective hooks and ¡vete a la mierda!

Rolling out of the restaurant notably fuller than we entered it, we thought it wise to take a little stroll around the fort to help get the digestion motoring. Up at the top, we were treated to wonderful views all across the town and out to sea, heralding, inevitably, calls from the female members of our party for at least one hundred and seventy ‘nice group photos’ – in all of which I, again inevitably, managed to look perfectly ghastly.

It was then back to the villa for a moderately sized after-party, soundtracked exclusively by the peerless music of the 1990s. The last men and women standing on this occasion, for the record, were El Escocés, Isla del Hombre, La Arquitecta and, of course, El Águila – who continued to preach his invulnerability deep into the night, as the Craig David played and the strong liquor flowed.

All told, as ‘quiet’ nights go in Ibiza, it was really rather flawless.

***

It was on Lunes Veintisiete, in the month of August, in the year of our Lord two thousand and eighteen, that El Águila finally received his comeuppance.

“Wwwwwhhhhhyyyeee?”

“Hahaha!”

“But I barely drunk…oh sweet mercy…but I barely drunk a thing! We didn’t even…blegh…we didn’t even go out out!”

“Hahaha! Sux to suck, keiiiiiint!”

Fortunately, it was El Águila and El Águila alone who toiled in sin of his own making. The rest of the gang awoke in midseason form and could scarcely wait until the sun was over the yard-arm before making the necessary liquid preparations for what looked like being a truly día de cartas rojas.

Our first and perhaps most important stop for the day was La Veterana’s most favourite spot in all the land, nay – in all the world: an ‘Ocean Beach Club‘ of infamous renown, located in San Antonio and owned by one Wayne Lineker, whose brother apparently once played ‘football’ or some other such nonsense.

A striking venue, with its bright blue water, its glaringly white décor and the retina-searing orange of its cups, towels and parasols, ‘OBC’ certainly looked a picture as we were escorted by our somewhat pneumatic waitress over to our pair of white, circular ‘beds’. Here we proceeded to order not wisely but too well, lining up the jugs of frozen cocktails and generally ‘getting them in’ with the gayest of abandons. Our spending here might be summarised in two quotes from yours truly:

“Alright guys, we’re going to have to go pretty big today – the minimum spend attached to these beds is enormous!”

[Fifteen minutes later.]

“Okay, scratch that, the minimum spend is dead – we killed it, it’s gone now.”

Of our party, three – me, La Gata and La Arquitecta – hail from God’s own county of Essex. We may not necessarily sound ‘Essex’, nor might we look particularly ‘Essex’, but ‘Essex’ we are and ‘Essex’ we remain. Therefore, you can take it as gospel when we say that Ocean Beach Club, despite being in Ibiza; despite being over 1,000 miles from glorious Chelmsford, is the most ‘Essex’ place we have ever been.

This manifest itself most notably in the clientele with whom we shared the joint: neck tattoos abounded, and the violent blue of the pool was soon tinted orange and gold from the inches of fake tan the establishment’s female contingent had troweled upon themselves.

[NB. The love these ladies bore for ‘bronz-ahh’ was only equalled by their passion for squeezing their (often quite ample) frames into infinitesimal swimsuits clearly designed for the Taiwanese burlesque scene and the Taiwanese burlesque scene alone.]

Indeed, it was our fellow OBC-ers, rather than the place itself, which, both for me and for a good few of our party, turned much of our afternoon and early evening there into ‘Type Two Fun’ – that is to say, something one enjoys a lot more in retrospect, once one has survived it.

That being said, a certain bird, one named El Pájaro, was very much in his ‘happy place’. Despite being a Hertfordshire lad, he was born just across the border in Harlow, Essex – and this was, after his seventh strawberry daiquiri, beginning to tell:

“Maaaaaans-field!”

“El Pájaro.”

“This is the most amazing place in the world!”

“So it would seem.”

“And these fruity-ass drinks are amazing too! What did you say they were called again?”

“Daiquiris, lad, daiquiris.”

“Aaaamaaazing!”

“Shhh! You’ll wake the children.”

Just behind us, fast asleep on the nearby ‘bed’, lay El Águila and PNM. Folded in each other’s arms, surrounded by the remnants of two steak dinners, these two coves were not going anywhere in a hurry. Making her peace with this, MNM summoned to her side her cousin and her friend who were, coincidentally, staying just around the corner in San Antonio, and who were much more up for a drink and a dance than her slumbering husband.

As the tasty booze flowed without pause and various fine foodstuffs were devoured by various fine folks, OBC’s proffered ‘entertainment’ got more and more bizarre: A large crane heaved huge white pianos into the pool, with dancing girls and dancing boys hopping atop them to show the good people their gyrating wares; a band of increasingly poor quality came and went and came again, with their terrible key-tar player only beaten for shithousery by the lead guitarist, who hadn’t even bothered to plug in his axe and was miming away sensationally arrhythmically.

While most of the sculpted Neanderthals around us seemed to be enjoying this rare pageantry, one Scottish lass on the bed next door was having a genuinely poor time of it. She’d arrived a little after us and remained sat on the edge of her bed even as we left, come dusk – and for all that time, without pause for food or respite, she sobbed and wailed and bawled like a teething babe. One by one her friends came to console her; one by one they left perplexed, hopping back into the party and out of her private little prism of (very drunken) misery.

“You should go cheer her up, Isla del Hombre,” I suggested. “You’re the happiest man on the island.”

But Isla ventured forth not, preferring to laugh in my face at the very suggestion.

“How about you, El Escocés – she’s a Scot, she’s one of yours.”

“Faaark off – she’s not Scottish!”

“Is so, you can hear her foul accent between sobs.”

“She’s not Scottish, she’s just pissed off her skull!”

“I…I fail to understand the difference.”

“Right, you’re going in the pool.”

“Unhand me, you Celtic wretch!”

And so on. If I have enjoyed a more surreal, more nonsensical afternoon in the sunshine before, then I’ve most certainly forgotten it. Surrounded by an inner circle of great mates and an outer circle of the very worst folks the United Kingdom has yet sent forth, I lay back on round, white beds and let my final Ibiza day bop and dance its sun-drenched way into a warm, expectant Ibiza night.

“Well that was great!” we declared, as we dragged ourselves and our empty wallets away from this outlandish, adults-only amusement park, watching tattooed steroid-abusers rut and grapple over assorted plasticine womenfolk and giving these impromptu pugilists a sensibly wide berth. “Let us never go there again!”

*

Following some slightly sketchy but very necessary slices of street pizza, we required a more salubrious pallet-cleanser to our full-day dose of Ocean Beach tomfoolery. Word on the street (the more respectable streets at any rate) was that Pikes was the place to be of a Monday eve, so Plata, who can be impressively organised when there’s a decent night out on the line, called ahead and got our names down on the list.

“They asked if we’re all over twenty-five,” he noted.

“Well thank goodness for that – if I watch another nineteen-year-old from Dagenham fall out of her swimsuit today, I’m off to join a monastery.”

Following a slight disaster vis-à-vis the sourcing of and communicating with taxicabs, we eventually reconvened miles out of town and deep in the countryside, outside a vast stone mansion. It was somewhat deserted and fashionably low-lit, with a fabulous, vintage Mustang parked outside and a single doorman standing out front, happily turning away all and sundry for the crimes of ‘wearing flip-flops’ and ‘not looking right, mate’.

“Hmm,” I hmm-ed. The place boded.

At last our final taxi arrived and, as one, we marched towards the bouncer, putting on our serious faces and walking with the gait of those who had never even heard the name ‘Ocean Beach Club’. The doorman looked us up and down. The world held its breath.

He liked what he saw. We crossed the threshold. Our names were checked and our names, praise be to Plata, were ‘down’. In we went.

This sprawling, beautiful venue-slash-hotel, from one’s very first glance, was a much classier establishment than any we had visited to date – as might befit the favourite Mediterranean haunt of one Frederick Mercury; and as one would expect from, reportedly, the real-life location of the ‘Club Tropicana’ music video.

Unlike that fabled club of tropic renown, here the drinks were most certainly not ‘free’, though we did arrive in time to make extensive use of the last portion of the ‘Pikes Happy Hour’, which made us very happy indeed.

The Hills Road girls, La Gata and La Arquitecta, opting to leave the rest of the crew in a beautiful little side-courtyard near the bar, went for an explore deep into the private hotel, seeking out those fancier areas which, for reasons which escape me, random blokes could not access but which girls in nice dresses could enter without challenge or harassment. Plata and Yelmar, now deep in their cups, pinned each other up against a handy stone wall and proceeded to talk some ‘next level brown’ as a pair for a prolonged spell – ‘shit chat’ only beaten by certain tales of El Escocés which had me, El Pájaro and MNM rolling in the proverbial aisles.

We then bundled ourselves into a tiny adjoining club based in the hotel’s cellars and dungeons to enjoy an impossibly good set from the Mustang-driving, impressively-moustachioed DJ Harvey – apparently no relation to PJ Harvey but who knows, stranger things have happened.

Just outside this miniature rave, Plata, Isla del H. and I bumped into one Sara Cox, who looked just as delighted as one might expect to make our collective acquaintance. Better still, I was invited across to Ibiza Town with two, quote-unquote, ‘Instagram influencers’ from Lithuania – an invitation which I (perhaps foolishly) turned down, such was the quality of this Pikes party: As they say, my friends, a DJ Harvey in the hand is better than two Lithuanian birds in the…

“Come on, the door’s open again, let me show you the pool!” interrupted La Arquitecta, ruining my punchline.

Up a short flight of stairs and through a door we hustled, and there I was, at long last, in Club Tropicana proper – complete with glamourous people, a sparklingly azure-blue pool and a private, ever-so-fancy bar.

“It’s just like Barry Manilow said it would be!” I gasped.

“Mani-what?! Who?”

“You know, the ‘Club Tropicana’ guy.”

“You’re thinking of ‘Copacabana’, you idiot! Tropicana’s a Wham! song.”

She was right. She was so, so right: ‘Club Tropicana’, Wham!, 1983, peaking at #4 in the UK charts…

Wham! the original star-making, early-eighties vehicle for…

“It’s so good to see you again, Thomas.” He was there, there with me. Alive and well and wonderful.

I fell into George Michael’s golden, Greek arms, and there, in his perfect Ibizan paradise, he, La Arquitecta and I and all the others danced to the fabulous tunes of David Jonathan Harvey, deep into another perfect Ibiza night.

***

It happens to us all, eventually.

But why, why did it have to happen to meeeee?

Leaving Ibiza is a tricky business, even for more rugged and emotionally stable fellows than I, and it scarcely needs to be said, dear reader, that on the morning of Martes Veintiocho I was NOT ‘taking it’ manfully.

That being said, the process of extracting ourselves from ‘Van-villa Ice, Ice Baby’ (as absolutely no-one called it during the full five days, lamentably) actually went rather smoothly: A highly successful morning’s clean up, combined with the astonishing, miraculous fact that nothing of value had been broken all trip, meant that when our friendly Dutch dueño rocked up, expecting to find a looted and torched shell of a dwelling, she was met with nothing but perfection. She actually looked a little disappointed – we’d even put the bins out.

Formalities now completed, it was time to bid some fond farewells to La Gata, El Escocés, La Veterana and La Arquitecta. This conventionally attractive quartet were to be leaving the island slightly later on, and our parting was melancholic in the extreme.

Into one final Ibizan cab went now the fabled ‘boat boys’: Plata, Yelmar, Isla del Hombre and myself. As we drove away from our erstwhile HQ and deep into the heart of the island, mighty billboards to our left and right screamed at us that ‘Tuesday was the day’, the day of your Carl Coxes and your David Guettas, of your Calvin Harrises and even your St Craigs of Davids. All these masters, they all called Tuesday nights their home: ‘Stay one more day,’ the billboards sung. ‘Stay one more night and never leave.’

We all glanced side-eye at one another – and none of us clapped eyes upon spirit and vitality sufficient for one more additional rave. The cupboard was bare; the well was dry. It was time, despite Ibiza’s myriad, infinite temptations, to go home.

After a selection of lengthy airport queues (peopled, one must relay, with some of the sorriest-looking bastards I have ever seen) we reconvened with the Aussies and the birds, grabbing some food in O’Leary’s bar, bracing ourselves for the risible hospitality of a second Mr O’Leary – that’s correct, my friends…we were flying Ryanair that fell Tuesday morn.

MNM, classy lass that she is, had treated PNM and herself to ‘Ryanair priority boarding’ (apparently what one purchases in order to be treated like ‘livestock’ rather than like ‘pond-scum’). This left El Pájaro, El Águila and the boat boys languishing at the back of the line, looking around our fellow ‘pond-scum’ with concern, fearing who we might be placed next to by the foul hand of O’Leary.

After two, three years, we were permitted onboard an already rowdy, truculent and odorous aircraft. Isla del H. was soon joined by a skinny fellow, sweating copiously, who informed him that he had ‘just bombed all the rest of me ‘Ket’, mate, so sorry but this could get weird’; Plata and Yelmar, on the other hand, found themselves respectively one row in front and one row behind the weeping Scotswoman from OBC the day before. She was, true to form, still sobbing away merrily.

My seat, right at the very back, was not quite so accursed. Aye, I was surrounded by the dying and the dead, but at least they were expiring relatively quietly. I settled into my seat, knees up around my chin, my shins pressed hard against the seat in front, and exhaled. It was over.

As the blue-clad Ryanair harpies attempted to sell me scratch-cards and seat-belts and innumerable other ‘added extras’, the toll of the past five days hit me and hit me hard. The chocks were barely away and the wheels only just a-rolling when I fell into a deep, untroubled sleep. When I woke up in Stansted, the Ibizan dream was over. Our revels, now, were ended.

But oh, what revels they were, my friends. What revels they were.