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.

So it turns out that hangovers, in one’s thirties, really don’t mess around.

For me, Sábado Veinticinco began with an almighty wailing and a fairly significant gnashing of teeth, as I woke up into a pretty sizable maelstrom of pain and self-wrought agony.

That being said, at least I had slept. Others, who shall remain nameless, filled to the brim with Ushuaïa-inspired excitement, had slept not a wink, and had instead chosen to stay up all through the night listening to a great medley of ‘tunes’ and generally ‘putting the world to rights’. They were still going, albeit quite slowly, once I arrived from my pit with a great thirst in my throat.

“Waart-ahh…” I croaked.

“Nothing doing, birthday boy, we’re all out.”

“Out of…waart-ahh?”

“Fraid so – precious little mixer left, neither.”

“Boll-aaaaahcks…”

I stumbled over to the sink and addressed the taps. The taps addressed me back, in a rather Chaucerian manner: “Fuck ye off, you mewling quim,” they seemed to cry.

“Blugheg?”

Now, readers, the water available from the foulmouthed taps one finds on the island of Ibiza is truly not fit for Anglo-Saxon consumption, it being drawn directly from a well of broken dreams and thrice-damned souls. This much had been stressed to us, at some length, before we arrived. Therefore, that we had somehow managed to rinse through our entire stash of bottled H2O in a day and a half was not the news I’d hoped for.

Placing my brain in cold storage, my hands began to do their own bidding. My shaking left reached out towards the faucet; my right, vibrating similarly, held an empty, tea-stained vessel beneath its cursing mouth: “Off with ye, thou half-cocked jester; off thou witless cun-wooooooshhh….” The cool, sparkling water poured forth into my mug. I lifted it to my lips. I paused. I prayed. I drank deep.

Suddenly my phone began to ring, startlingly me significantly and sending the aforementioned mug crashing, at some pace, into the kitchen’s ceiling, showering the place with damp, cheap china.

“Ye-yes…?” I stuttered down the line.

“Hello!” cried La Veterana, fresh off her flight and, of course, dropped off by her cab a good couple of caminos away from the correct avenue. “Help, I can’t find the villa!”

A brave and loyal soul, I wandered, with nary a moment’s hesitation, out into the fearsome sunlight of the mean-spirited day. I then made my stoical way towards La Veterana’s hollering, albeit very much at the pace of an aged snail with advanced osteoporosis.

“There you are! Happy birth- why are you so wet? And why are there bits of tea-cup in your hair?”

“At sink…drinking wa-…you scared…”

“You were drinking the tap-water?! Thomas, what did I expressly tell you not to do?”

“Drink…drink the tap-wartahh…I’m sorry La Veter…”

“Hahaha, not as sorry as you’ll feel a bit later!” she chuckled, a cruel, amused expression crossing her face. “Now come on, where’s this villa and that idiot boyfriend of mine? I called him three times to ask where the place was, can you believe that? He didn’t pick up once!”

I escorted her back to our glorious orange suntrap and ushered her through its mighty gates. Once inside this seasoned Ibiza campaigner gave the joint a quick appraisal: “This place is weird – I love it! Look at all the…Yelmar, what are you doing?!”

There was a Hibernian yelp and a loud crash, as a second mug of tap-water hit the ceiling (it was proving a poor morning to be a mug, in more ways than one).

“My love…”

“Er…yes, La Veterana?”

“Why are you drinking the tap-water?”

“I…I was really thirs…”

“Wait – why are all of you drinking the tap-water?!”

I looked out into the living room and through the glass doors to the beaten-down sofas and sun-drenched poolside. At least a half-dozen further party members were guiltily tucking quarter-full glasses, mugs and flagons of suspiciously clear liquid behind their backs.

“Oh, for the love of…right, we’ll need to get some food into all of you – what food’s in the fridge, Mansfield?”

“Er…nada?”

“Damn it, Thomas! Alright, we’re going to the shops.”

Grabbing the nearby Isla del Hombre and Plata by the earlobes – and stopping only to prove love eternally blind by planting one on Yelmar – La Veterana marched her unfortunate young charges out into the street and away, gone almost as swiftly as she arrived.

I sat down with a few of my fellow water-drinkers, feeling a little like some poor Tommy in the trenches, who’d been shot at by the Hun and missed by mere inches.

“Can any of yous feel your dragon toes?” I enquired, earnestly.

“Outside tiers should only hop around the apple trees when the roe deer have passed,” posited Z-Unidad, her eyes beginning to cross and uncross as she levitated slightly above the sofa cushions.

“Ah well that’s good,” I sighed, watching the paint begin to run off the walls in neat, tidy rivulets. “Glad it’s not just me then.”

*

The birthday breakfast of La Veterana truly came at the nick of time – though her decision to take two of the most guilty water-sippers of the group had certainly delayed her: Plata, as we well know, can be a liability at el supermercado at the best of times – and these were not, by any stretch, the best of times, my friends.

Ably assisted by El Pájaro – who refuses to drink anything other than high-calorie protein shakes and who, thusly, had dodged all the morning’s water-based dangers – La Veterana put out quite the mid-morning feast, and slowly but surely we all began to feel a little bit more normal.

A few hours later, eggs and chorizo deep in our bellies, a sustained and collective postprandial nap took hold of the entire villa – one which was only brought to an end by a polite, little ‘cough’, a little after half past two.

“Um…hello? The gate was open, so…”

It was La Arquitecta, the latest arrival to our now rather somnolent group. Eager for the Ibizan craic, she had clearly not expected to be greeted by the sight of eleven exclusively unconscious revellers, strewn around various sofas, sun-loungers and large inflatable birds. Thus she was now looking at us all, if not ‘askance’, then certainly with some concern.

“La Arquitecta!” El Águila and I rejoiced, dragging ourselves from the grip of Morpheus and bundling upon our old school chum with a clumsy bonhomie. “Why don’t you have a drink yet, my dear?”

“Why don’t we all have drinks yet?” demanded El Peor Novio del Mundo (PNM), who leapt from his siesta, instantly battle-ready, much like a noble Masai warrior (albeit a noble Masai warrior moonlighting as an inebriate Australian with a non-vocational PhD).

Suddenly the impromptu slumber party was transformed into an impromptu…er…’party’ party: on went the music and out came the beers; introductions were made and games were played and fun and companionship reigned quite supreme. La Arquitecta, charm personified, swiftly stole not one but several hearts (though this may or may not have been to do with the aforementioned consumption of tap-water) before taking impressive charge of the villa’s BBQ, marshalling her newfound troops with the casual authority of one who, in a previous life, had quite literally done this shit for a living.

Food was served just as another idyllic evening swung itself into gear. Impeccably cooked, it was washed down with liberal quantities of rosé (or, when consumed by men as ruggedly masculine as El Pájaro or my good self, ‘bro-sé’). For a most pleasant hour or so, some element of civilisation descended upon our sprawling orange abode, and a little corner of a foreign land was turned forever England. The Spanish lark was on the wing, the Ibizan snail was on the Mediterranean thorn; Dios was in His cielo, and all was right with the world.

It could never last.

“How da actual fuq have I lost again?!” I wailed, as Yelmar and PNM pinned down my arms and Un Mono Ártico Gay (MAG) poured another wretched concoction from the central vessel down my sorry oesophagus.

“Sux to suck, keeeiinnnt,” suggested PNM.

“Hahaha, exactly Tommy! Plus, it’s your birthday, so of course you’re losing!” laughed La Mejor Novia del Mundo (MNM).

It was at that moment that I knew I was toast – when MNM is in agreement with her beloved PNM (a rare enough occurrence, truth be told) then there really is no arguing.

“But…but I’m old…” I spluttered.

“Another round!” demanded La Arquitecta, looking for all the world like a lass making up for lost time.

“Yeah…yes, yes…another…another round…” agreed Z-Unidad, stroking La Arquitecta’s hair, her face rapt with concentration. “You know, you really do have the most wonderful…um…hair…”

“Thank you!”

“Er…my hair’s pretty great too, eh Z?” noted MAG, a Welsh eyebrow now raised sky-high.

“Quiet now, Mono – deal out another round, would you?”

“What have we here, then?” bellowed a rich, Scottish brogue, prompting happy cheers from the Essex contingent: La Gata & El Escocés, our final party members, had arrived.

At this point it was imperative that two things occurred: Firstly, that La Gata, friend of my youth, and El Escocés, pride of posh Glasgow, at least attempted to catch up with the drinking peloton; secondly that I thanked each and every one of my good pals for making the trip out and for coming so far to celebrate the birthday of a Mansfield so wretched.

I therefore passed a full bottle of gin to the newcomers and leapt up upon a nearby chair, missing it comfortably and crashing down onto the unyielding ground. Getting up gingerly, I attempted to mount the chair a second time and, with some kind assistance from La Gata, made it up unsteadily.

Now, I cannot actually remember what I said during my birthday speech, but witnesses have described it as some kind of twenty-first century Gettysburg Address, only with a few more gags and a good deal more belching. It was, in short, hot stuff.

Faced with such peerless oratory, heartfelt and true, was it a surprise that there was hardly a dry eye in the villa by the final time I raised my glass and dedicated the whole voyage to the memory of Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou? No, dear readers, no it was not. My friends are all human, after all – even Yelmar, despite him having the torso of a malnourished elephant seal – and no human soul could hear such sweetness without the lower lip giving the occasional wobble.

As I stepped down to rapturous applause, the clock struck 1am. Final, high-proof drinks were downed and ridiculous, colourful outfits were donned. It was finally time for our night to begin in earnest. A night, my friends, named ‘Elrow’.

*

I should preface my forthcoming description of Saturday night at Amnesia with the following simple statement: Elrow is, bar none, the single greatest club night I have ever been to in my life.

While the following account focuses more on somewhat juvenile subject matter, such as vomit in bags, enormous erections and semi-fictional hallucinations, let it be known, on the record and for posterity, that it is an absolute banger from soup to nuts: practically flawless music, and a decor and attention to detail which has to be seen to be believed. It is, for my money, the one indispensable Ibiza experience, should you ever be lucky enough to weekend there.

Fabulous, now that that has been made quite clear, back to the usual Mansfield nonsense.

“Mate, look what the water’s done!”

We were deep in the throng of Amnesia’s most psychedelic room, a high-ceilinged, bustling affair covered all over in wonderful, swirling and luminous painted shapes. Huge streamer and glitter cannons exploded all around us, and the music boomed out loud and wonderful. The tap-water, dormant until now, had seemingly been reactivated by the sensory overload, and all of us who had partaken that morning were starting to see it ‘quite exceptionally big’.

Also ‘quite exceptionally big’ was the absolutely raging panhandle that the fellow was rocking beneath his shorts. To lend further credence to his claim, he grabbed my hand and planted it upon it.

“See?! It’s been like this for hours!”

“Bloody hell, old mate – you could poke holes in a cheap door with that!”

“I tell yer, it’s that tap-water from the villa, it must be!”

“Hmm, not so sure – I drunk a good mug-full earlier and the Mansfield piece has vanished like an insect in December. Er…any chance I could have my hand back, laddie?”

Fortunately, this biological reaction was not shared by all of us who had oh-so-foolishly drunk from the Ibizan well. Other reactions were at play: Z-Unidad – sporting one of my Primani monstrosities and looking far, far better in it than I did in my own lemon-strewn ensemble – was wandering around in something of a waterborne daze, reading people’s minds with uncanny accuracy; MAG and PNM were summoning beat-drops and streamer explosions at will, conjuring forth the glitter with the power of their spirit; and El Águila…well, El Águila…

“Did you know, Tommy, did you know that me and El Águila got up to the VIP area? It’s crazy up there, mate, and we were there for aaages – you wouldn’t believe what it’s like there!”

“I thought you didn’t drink the tap-water, El Pájaro?”

“Nah, just a protein shake or two in the morning, then vodka and rosé-”

“Bro-sé.”

“…then vodka and bro-sé all day.”

“Then why, bud, have you told me on seventeen separate occasions that you and El Águila went to the sodding VIP area?”

“Ah mate, but you wouldn’t believe what they’ve got up there in VIP…”

“Say VIP one more time and I will slay you.”

“…”

“So help me, my avian friend, I will murder you where you stan…”

“The thing that’s so great about the Vee Eye Pee section is…”

I lunged at the lad, missed him by at least two yards (I blame the tap-water) and suddenly apparated out into the club courtyard – a place to which, to my knowledge, I had never before been. “Where on earth… Hey, Yelmar! La Veterana, over here!”

I stumbled over to a large, knotted tree, beneath which sat this pair of fine friends – neither of whom looked particularly healthy.

“Yelmar would you please button up that crazy-ass shirt of yours?”

“Look Tom, the shorts match the shirt, do you see?!”

“Indeed they do. What’s wrong with you, La Veterana?”

“Blurg.”

“She’s been sick in my bag.”

“Because you won’t do up your shirt?”

“No…‘cause she tried the tap-water.”

La Veterana burst out laughing and started to float towards the lowermost branches of the tree, only to be hauled back in by her partner in crime.

“I thought it was a gin and tonic!” she explained, giggling happily. “Can’t even practice…can’t even practice what I preeeeach!”

“We should go dance again,” proclaimed Yelmar, leaping up to his full and not inconsiderable height. “Dancing, dancing, dancing! It’s time to dance.”

“Er…you gonna bring in that big ol’ bag of sick with you, old sport?”

“Yup, it’s my bag and it’s her sick. Can’t stay out here.”

“But that’s passing vile, pal.”

“Not to me – I love her, so I love her sick!”

And in the face of loved-up logic like that, my friends, what can any man say? ‘Sling your sicky hooks and fuck off’, perhaps? No…no, my friends, not this time, not there, in that place – I was far, far too touched by it all.

Gradually, but with a bittersweet inevitability, as the music built itself up to a fevered crescendo, this wonderful, magical night began to wind itself down: One by one the couples and the lovers left us, with full hearts and fuller bags of vomit. Then the single folk begun to break away, wandering the half-mile or so back to the villa and towards some well-earned rest. Morning broke, as it often does, but suffice to say that those of us who remained deep inside that luminous room scarcely noticed – dancing and swaying and smiling into the new day as we were. Come seven-thirty or so, when the Elrow staff came around with platters of morning melon and polite eviction notices, it was only a brave quartet – MAG, Z-Unidad, El Águila & myself – who still stood tall, eager to eke out every last iota of Amnesia from an ironically unforgettable night.

“Well that was just great!” announced El Águila, pointing out the pleasantly obvious like only the truly eagle-eyed could. “What should we do now?”

“Back home, I guess,” offered MAG, throwing his arms over our shoulders and steering us in the approximate direction of the villa. “I could use a bite to eat.”

“Yeah, and I’m thirsty,” added Z-Unidad. “I’m glad we decided that the water’s fine to drink here, I’m going to have a barrel-full!”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “It just goes to show, that when it comes to Ibiza and its tap-water, you really can’t believe a word you read…”

Arm in arm, the four of us strode past the snaking, infinite taxi queue and down along the deserted highway, the sun rising proud behind us, our feet scarcely touching the ground.

The morning of Viernes Veinticuatro , such as is was, treated me much, much more kindly than really I had any right to expect. I was up in the second floor ‘flat’, at peace and all alone in a comfy double bed – ‘alone’, chiefly, because Isla del Hombre had felt, the previous eve, for reasons known only to himself, that the large oval sunbed outside in the garden had been the ideal place to rest his weary night-time head.

One by one our battalion began to emerge: Yelmar, in famously terrible shape, appalled us all by stripping down to his kegs and detonating himself into the pool; fair Z-Unidad and the lovely La Mejor Novia del Mundo (MNM) followed suit, infinitely more gracefully, taking up positions A1 atop the two avian inflatables which Plata had not already destroyed in his rage.

[Said avian inflatables, it must be noted, from the very moment they were plucked from the shelves of [Insert low-cost commercial fashion/accessories chain here], were dead swans/flamingos/toucans floating. Accordingly they took their violent deaths with a poignant magnanimity.]

This pleasant scene of aquatic calm was not to last, however, for Isla del H., ever the romantic, had recently allowed himself to be ‘up-sold’ a handful of tickets to a ‘booze cruise’ by a blonde vision of sketchiness of indeterminate income:

“She says it’ll be great!” he rejoiced.

“Yes…did she say this before or after you’d handed over cash monies unto half your kingdom?”

“Both! I think I love her, Tommy!”

“Hmm…”

As it transpired, the trio with the lowest brain-to-body ratios – that is to say, The Three Supermarketeers from the day before: Plata, Yelmar and myself – ended up being co-opted into this venture…but only after steeling ourselves with various late morning cocktails of eye-watering ferocity.

The remaining half-dozen (El Pájaro, MNM, Un Mono Ártico Gay (MAG), Z-Unidad, El Peor Novio del Mundo (PNM) and El Águila) opted for the far more ‘adulty’ choice of taking the bus into Ibiza Old Town for spot of gentle sightseeing and a nice seafood lunch.

“But that sounds fabulous!” I wailed, as the six of them wandered from the villa down towards the highway and awaiting bus stop. “I fancy a nice seafood lunch! I fancy a spot of gentle sightseeing!”

“Hey…’ey now…looook at me,” growled Isla del Hombre, fixing me with a mildly crazed and bloodshot stare and planting upon his head a smart white cap with a black peak and golden trim. “I am the cap-tain now!”

“Where did you pull that captain’s hat from, old boy?”

“Ne-ver you mind, I am the capt-”

“It’s awfully smart.”

“I AM THE CAP-TAIN NOW!”

“Fine…but will you let me wear it on the boat?”

“…”

“?”

“No.”

*

Our taxi at last arrived and the four of us jumped in, our shorts short and our t-shirts slung over our shoulders like Cristiano Ronaldo five milliseconds after any given final whistle. We all looked as gods – save Yelmar, who, as always, looked just horrible with his shirt off.

As we turned onto the main Ibizan autobahn, we noticed to our great delight that our compatriots still languished by the roadside, glaring at the posted timetables and quarrelling loudly. As one, we each wound down our windows, and the joyous cry of “BUS WANKERS!!” echoed across Ibiza’s roadways and villas and sun-parched hills.

The Captain’s beloved – the aforementioned ‘sketchy-ass’ blonde beauty – had told him that our ‘party boat’ could be boarded at 1pm from the jetty near ‘The Albatross Bar’, right at the very end of the Playa d’en Bossa. Once in situ, however, I must confess that my quiet reservations grew from ‘myriad’ to ‘absolutely bloody legion’.

“Bllagghk” quoth the maiden fair, squatting by the steps of The Albatross, being violently ill.

I am not sure how seven and a half gallons of vomit could hasten forth from a six gallon girl, but there, my friends, did you have it.

Isla del Hombre hopped over the bituminous river of sick without fear or a backwards glance, much like, one imagines, noble Caesar once forded the Rubicon:

“Better load up on the water now, boys,” declared our captain (oh our captain). “As on the boat the booze’ll be flowing and it’ll all be free!”

“Aye, but which boat, mate?” enquired Plata, looking all around, the midday sun shining brightly off his cropped and argent locks.

This was a fair question, for ‘party boat’ after barely seaworthy ‘party boat’ was swinging by the quay, depositing/acquiring unruly crowds of increasingly insalubrious revellers, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

“Hmm…I think it’s…that queue.” Isla del H. pointed at a line of what can only really be described as ‘Euro-trash’ a little way from the bar. “Yeah, that’s our gang there.”

“Ye gods…” muttered Yelmar.

“Put a shirt on, Yelmar, you’ve made that poor girl throw up.”

“Seriously guys, it’ll be great!” our captain assured us, as we took our places at the rear of the snaking line. “My lass said that there’s a full open bar, a bit of food, some jet-ski rides, two floors with two DJs, erotic drinking games…”

“WHAT?!” Plata, Yelmar and I cried in unison.

It is worth highlighting at this juncture – and being a modern, Guardian-reading fella I take no pleasure in so doing – that the most noteworthy thing about the clientele of this particular ‘booze cruise’ was that, while the gentlemen were all exceedingly well put together (with the obvious exception of Yelmar, who has the body of a melted wheelie-bin) the ladies were, well, I mean to say…

“Erotic drinking games? With them? They all look like tight-head props!” posited Plata, perhaps unkindly but not inaccurately.

“I have a girlfriend,” noted Yelmar, crossing his slender arms.

“Ah yes, me too,” said Plata, relief and colour washing back into his previously ashen countenance.

“I…I…” I grasped vainly for a similarly ironclad excuse.

“Heyy, are yous larrds from Englarrnd?” asked a group of nearby Ulsterwoman, each one the size of a mid-range family hatchback.

“Noheoh, I thinks theys from Oooreland toos,” suggested another.

“No es así, todos somos de Zaragoza, pero gracias por preguntar,” rattled off Yelmar in note perfect Spanish.

Disappointed, they trudged away, up and across the (buckling) gangway and onto our wretched boat yonder. Only then, when they were safely out of earshot, did we speak again.

“Yelmar, I never knew you spoke Spanish!” said Plata, notably impressed.

“I don’t. I think I might’ve been speaking in tongues.”

“Quakers can’t speak in tongues,” I pointed out. “That’s strictly a Church of England thing.”

“Then fucked if I know – let’s get onboard and get ourselves a drink, lads…”

*

And drink we did. Once out onto clear blue water, the music kicked into gear and the bar opened up wide. It being Ibiza, the jobbing DJs aboard were really rather sensational, and the rums and the vodkas were nowhere near as ghastly as one might have expected.

Slowly but surely, with the sun shining and the music playing; with the salt spray spraying and the ocean breeze a-breezing; and with great company (in our immediate circle at least) and with never-ending, complimentary rounds – everything eventually combined to usher my foolish reservations away. By the time we dropped anchor by a tree-covered little spit of an island, I was, it pains me to say it, actually having quite a lot of fun.

Better still, the collective will of the people (well, the collective will of those people with Y-chromosomes in any case) manifest itself on the itinerary and the ‘erotic games’ were summarily cancelled. This gave more time for jet-ski rides, which made for great viewing – the pilot thrashing his craft about like it was a rented mule, throwing his charges into the Mediterranean surf with a rare, sadistic glee.

“I’m getting on,” announced Plata, laying down his hundred and twenty-first gin. “That pendejo won’t buck me off.”

“Think you may have missed the boat there, lad…”

“AHAHAHAHA!!!” roared all within earshot. Goodness me, but I’m hilarious.

“Thank you, thank you, you’re all too kind. But yes,” I continued. “The fella over there said that that blonde chica getting on now is going to be the last rider.”

“Then I’ll get on with her.”

“Er…not sure she…oh, fine, he’s off.”

As it happened, “er…not sure she…” didn’t cover the half of it. But Plata, most unlike the poor cat i’ th’ adage, was never one to let ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’. His will, as we have seen, can oftimes be as iron, and soon enough the last ride of the day sped away with a silver-headed Englishman very much amongst its final number.

“She really doesn’t want him on there with her does she?” remarked Yelmar.

“Nah, she ain’t happy,” agreed Isla del Hombre. “Look she won’t even let him hold onto her…”

“He’s making a good fist of it though,” I noted. “He…wow…oh…well, I guess that solves that problem, then…”

Plata, having no intention of tumbling from his rapid, scarlet and aquaplaning stallion, and not being afforded any real purchase upon his hostile fellow passenger, decided that his only recourse was to lob said hostile fellow passenger bodily into the sea and affix himself firmly to the pilot himself.

Following this act of twenty-first century chivalry, the bronzed jet-ski fellow, try as he might, simply could not shake off our liquored-up limpet from South London. Thus, a short while later, our sterling friend returned in triumph.

“Well played, Plat…”

“Run,” he suggested, ripping off his lifejacket. “He’s going back round to get her.”

“Er…

“She ain’t happy.”

“That’s what I said!” laughed Isla del H.

“Run, you idiots!”

“But I’m the capt-”

“Fly, you fools!”

We dashed across to the bow of the boat and hustled up the narrow stairs to the top deck, where morons lounged on the most over-priced ‘beds’ this side of Saturn’s sixty-two moons.

“I reckon we’re safe up here.”

“Well then, cheers!” announced Isla, producing a half-full bottle of cava and four plastic flutes.

“Where on earth did you pull that from, Master del Hombre?”

“Those girls over there gave it to us.”

“Which girls..? Oh mate…oh no…oh lawd help me, no! What have you done?”

Reclining magisterially on their (reinforced) four-poster, looking for all the world like an all-beluga whale production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, lay our Northern Irish friends.

They beckoned us over with hungry fingers.

Trudging like the condemned to the gallows, we heeded their silent summons.

*

“Mate, I’ve been to Ibiza before, this is definitely the right way.”

“Yes, you said that two miles ago. Let’s ask someone.”

“No need, no need!”

Plata was adamant, but we’d had, by this stage, quite enough.

“Ah, finally, a taxi!”

“Mate, it’s just around the corner, I swear…”

“Hola there, chico, could you take us to Ushuaïa, por favor?”

“Ushuaïa? Qué? So why yous walking that way for?”

“Damn it all, Plata!”

A significantly lengthy taxi ride later (in, it scarcely needs to be said, very much the opposite direction to that which we’d just been walking) we arrived at the colossal, shining white edifice of Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel. The grand, rectangular court of his huge guesthouse contained one of the most famed ‘day clubs’ on the island, you see – and it was here that we would be meeting the rest of our companions; it was here that the day’s ‘partying’ would begin in earnest.

“I like your tattoos,” I lied. It is always best to keep the gatekeepers sweet.

“Thank you! Yes, ‘Mansfield’, this is your name here, you can go on in.”

“They’re on your head and face and everything!” I added, perhaps unnecessarily.

“Yes…yes they are…right, well in you go.”

And in we went, stumbling only slightly as we danced up to the nearest watering hole. Forgetting that we were no longer in the land of the free (bars), we were all promptly bankrupted to the tune of four rum and cokes.

“Well this is alright, eh?” Yelmar announced, swinging his noodle arms around. “That pool’s huge, and look at the stage! I reckon we must be a bit early, there’s not so big a crowd about…”

“It’s because you’ve scared them all off, mate.”

“Seriously, Yelmar, I will pay you to put your shirt back on…”

“Hello guys!” cried El Águila, who announced his timely arrival by punting my 20€ rum and c. off the floor and thirty, forty yards away, into a group of surly looking Italians.

“Ah.”

MAG then hobbled by, seemingly limping. “Sorry, can’t stop just yet guys, something’s seemingly gotten stuck in my shoe, really painful – need to go sort it out…”

“Er…okay…”

“Maaans-FIELD!” PNM had arrived, and he instantly struck one as a fella who’d had quite enough ‘adulting’ for one day and who was now, to coin a phrase, ‘bang up for a rager’. “You don’t have a drink! Why the [expletive deleted] doesn’t this beautiful [ruder expletive deleted] have a drink?! It’s his bloody birthday in a few hours!”

I glared at El Águila who, to his credit, looked as sheepish as a bird of his vintage can look. I then glanced over his guilty shoulder. “Er…what the hell is that?”

A huge procession of dancers and partially painted actors, all yelling and screeching; all dressed unspeakably strangely, broke into the massing scrum on the dance-floor, forcing their way through the crowds, screaming this and that about a ‘fallen society’ or some such rot. Glitter cannons and smoke machines began to belch forth all over the gaff, and red lights began a-flashing with abandon, turning the late day’s sun into a weird and troubling dusk. Fridays at Ushuaïa were themed ‘Dystopia’ – and apparently the powers that be had decided that things needed to get a mite more dystopian.

Soon after this sea change much silliness began. A half-naked Plata, spotting near the stage some very oddly garbed dancers with golden colanders on their heads, decided to join their troupe, with mixed success; MAG was back and back with a vengeance, his sore foot now a thing of the past and with a grinning Z-Unidad on his arm – the pair bustling around telling anyone who would listen that “This is a banger…no wait, this is a banger!” El Águila, his rum-based sins now very much forgiven, was suddenly in possession of a brand new outfit of sparkles and glitter and rainbows; and Yelmar, still shirtless (worse luck) had stolen a gargantuan ‘U’ sign from somewhere or other and was holding it proudly aloft, shouting “You…no…You!” to astonished passersby.

All of this nonsense was soundtracked by DJ Koze, the first of two ‘Grade A’ headliners that evening. If I’d thought that the music up until this point had been ‘good’ – be it at Privilege or back on the booze cruise – I had, as they say, ‘ain’t heard nuthin’ yet’. This was the good stuff. This was the real deal.

It was all, in short, going very well indeed.

*

Just as the Rt. Hon. Koze Esq. shuffled off to rapturous applause and his place on the stage was taken by Luciano – another music maker who truly ‘knew his trade’ – my general feeling of boozy, bass-y contentment left me, and unpleasant unpleasantness manifest itself deep in the pit of my incomparably toned stomach.

Koze finished at 11pm…Luciano took us to midnight…into the next day…into my birthday…

I wasn’t ready, I simply was not. I couldn’t be thirty, I’d accomplished literally nothing to date!

I staggered away from my group, losing myself deep in the pestilentially young and nubile crowd. ‘Where was my wife and family?’ I lamented. ‘What if I died here? Who’d be my role model, now that my role models were PNM and MAG, who’d just popped down an alley with some…’

“Hey there, ese, yous looks like yous going Paul Simon loco, homes!”

I turned around and saw a diminutive Spaniard with a large, black moustache and an oversized guitar tucked under his arm.

“Why do you sound and look like a Mexican supporting character in a Michael Bay movie?”

“Because yous really got no idea how to convey Spanish people on the page, homes.”

“Ah.”

“And also I think you’re like, closeted-ly racist, ese.”

“Ha – and sometimes it ain’t even that ‘closeted’, my friend. Well, thank you for breaking the fourth wall, now if you wouldn’t mind slinging your hook and fuc-”

“You need one of these, gringo,” he interrupted, holding out his palm and showing me a small and curious tablet.

I picked it up and held it aloft, examining it closely in the blinking lights of the stage. It was heavier in the hand than I had expected, luminous orange in colour, and very obviously cloud-shaped.

“That’s a soundcloud, bro – that will set you riiiiight, man.”

“Da fuq is a soundcloud?”

“It’s a one-way ticket to your dreams, ese!”

“Get copyright permission for this, did you?”

“Man, yous talking ‘copyrights’ now? Yous turning thirty in a few minutes, Mans-field, yous got bigger problems!”

“True…wait, how’d you know my name? And how do you know that I’m turning-”

But he had disappeared – vanished into the lights and the music and the heaving crowd.

The world began to wax and wane, revolving in front of my eyes like spilled paints on a swiftly spinning canvas. My skin felt strangely alive; it fizzed and crackled in the cooling night air. Various friends appeared in front of me, their lips moving but their yelled communiqués lost in the mounting squall. Still the soundcloud sat heavy in my hand, throbbing gently in time with Luciano’s incomparable beat.

Suddenly, I was seven feet higher than I strictly should have been, thrown upon the shoulders of mighty Yelmar, high above the cheering crowd.

This I did not like; it was too much, I needed help, any help, any assistance, any salvation.

I looked at the tablet. The tablet looked back at me; into me, into the very core of my being. My hand moved slowly towards my grimacing face…

“Don’t do it, mate.” George Michael was there, his lion’s mane magnificent, his beautiful Anglo-Hellenic face split into a gentle, supportive, beatific smile.

“I…I know I shouldn’t. But…but I’m so tempted, George.”

“Remember this,” he tapped at his shining white top, CHOOSE LIFE emblazoned upon it, “and know that I love you.”

“Thank…thank you George. I will, I will.”

And without further ado I heaved the so-called ‘soundcloud’ up into the inky black of the midnight sky. It glowed and hummed as it rose, clearly furious with this turn of events. No real problem though. Soon it would return to earth, to the crowd, and to another weak and worried soul it could readily consume…

Before the tablet reached its apex, however, a large gull swooped down and devoured it mid-air.

This couldn’t end well.

“Get me down Yelmar!” I shouted.

“What?”

“Down! Now!”

One flap, two flaps, three flaps, then ‘Boom’, the seagull exploded in a vast orange conflagration which illuminated the furthest reaches of the club. One or two charred, glowing feathers fluttered down. The rest, instantly incinerated.

The crowd screamed, then ‘oooh-ed’, then cheered as one, clearly assuming this to be an elaborate accompaniment to Luciano’s majestic set.

“Did not know they were going to do that…but that animatronic white dove clearly represented the peaceful future we were promised,” suggested one of the colander-wearing dancers who stood close by. “That it exploded in a horrible ball of flame is obviously emblematic of the neoliberal dystopia in which we all dwell…”

“Bollocks,” I countered.

“Qué?”

“Bollocks: firstly that wasn’t a dove and it wasn’t anima-whatsit, it just an idiot seagull, and an idiot seagull that couldn’t handle its pills at that. Secondly…”

“Er, whatever asshole, I work here, I think I would know…”

“Well then sling your hook, love, and…”

The clock struck twelve. Luciano brought proceedings to a spectacular climax, with strobe-lights and canons exploding into life and vast showers of confetti covering all and sundry. Friends and bosom companions descended upon me from all directions, arms outstretched, their smiles wide.

“…and fuck off!” I finished, as a mass group hug began in the middle of the Ushuaïa dance-floor.

I was thirty now. I was far too old for that kind of horseshite.

It happens to us all, eventually.

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

Turning thirty is a tricky business, even for more rugged and emotionally stable fellows than I, and it scarcely needs to be said, dear reader, that I was NOT ‘taking it’ manfully.

The run-up to August 25th, 2018 had, in fact, seen umpteen tantrums, crises and prissy-cum-hissy-fits, my aging fists forever balled up tight and pounding at my ancient temples; my pursed and wrinkled lips forever uttering cruel and blasphemous curses at time, the Creator and mortality itself.

Getting old was, in short, proving to be ‘a bit shit’.

Fortunately, however, I had one last ray of summer sunshine left to warm me as I shuffled into the planned obsolescence of my early thirties: sixteen of my dearest mates along with yours truly were, as the eternal lyric went, ‘Going to Ibiza’.

‘If one has to go down’, I thought, ‘one might as well go down swinging’.

*

As it happened, however, by Jueves Veintitrés, the fateful day of our departure, my august yet inchoate band of brothers and sisters had already suffered some lamentable casualties:

• Casualty #1: Infierno. The beauteous and sage Infierno had, the weekend previous to our jaunt, thought it wise and expedient to take a massive header off a galloping caballo and had, accordingly, somewhat marmalised her drinking arm.
  • While it is possible, of course, simply to switch the limb with which one throws one’s libations into one’s gaping maw, the lady felt a-raving and a-misbehaving might be a stretch too far for one so crippled, so she handed us the proverbial mitten with much mourning and regret. Seventeen, as easy as falling off a log/horse, thereby became sixteen…

• Casualty #2: Genialver. The mighty Genialver, tempestuous, hot-blooded Celt that he is, had chosen the very day before we left to tell his (by all accounts odious) bosses where exactly they could stick their ‘so-called job’.
  • This was admirable work to be sure, though far from commensurate with jetting off for potentially rather pricey Mediterranean blowouts. An extended phone-call, a period of morose reflection and two, three unsuccessful appeals later, sixteen had thus became fifteen…

And as if this double tragedy were not enough, the attendance of one further comrade hung by the proverbial hilo: Chico Francés, poor soul, even as the first merry band of us quaffed pints at Heathrow and excitedly planned out our first couple of Ibizan days, was trapped in a Gallic-wrought cage of unending bureaucracy. His flights booked from Brussels, he languished in central France, imprisoned in his own garlic-scented Kafka novel. Not so long after our own plane touched down on Spanish soil the axe of reality had begun to fall on the lad, and by the morning of the second day, it was confirmed:

• Casualty #3: Chico Francés. Fifteen down to fourteen.

*

But my friends, my friends – let us dwell no longer on the fallen, but on those who made it through the fire. After all, this is their tale, our tale, and while all too short in duration it will live long, we hope and feel, in the telling.

The first group, flying out BA darling, contained myself, Plata, El Águila and Yelmar – all veterans of another wonderful trip, as it happens; one immortalised in Straight Down From Chicago (available in no good booksellers).

Alongside us, sipping upon good, British G&Ts, were La Mejor Novia del Mundo, El Peor Novio del Mundo and Un Mono Ártico Gay – protagonists loyal readers may well remember from We Go to a Land Down Under – scandalously passed over in 2017’s Man Booker Shortlist.

Last but most certainly not least came El Pájaro, Isla del Hombre and Z-Unidad – all three new, original characters, never before seen in these blogs, added, chiefly, to inject some long-overdue sex appeal.

As soon as wheels touched tarmac I sprinted to the nearest baño to don the first of a great many ‘Primani’ tops which were, without exception, shithouse. This opening salvo however – a sky blue, skin-tight T-shirt with IBIZA emblazoned on the front – provoked genuine outrage: The fury of El Águila, for example, knew no bounds, and the usually affable El Peor Novio del Mundo (PNM) – himself no stranger to truly terrible tees – announced “I hate it, I fucken hate it” at the top of his voice and attempted to rip it off my shoulders with his bare, Australian hands.

These were exactly the reactions I’d hoped for, and smugly did I smile. Yet swiftly said smugness gave way to self-doubt: Now obviously everyone on our LHR-Beetha flight would get the ironic comment at the heart of my garb – it went without saying; our brains are large down south, full of nuance and wit. However, arriving at the baggage carousel at the very same time, came a mixed and rowdy Ryanair party hailing from Leeds-Bradford, that is to say, Mordor.

These orcs could most certainly not be trusted to ‘get’ the joke. What, dear readers, if they looked upon me, if not as one of their own, then perhaps as the humble goblin of Barad-dûr might gaze up at a foul and strapping Uruk-Hai – that is to say, if not as kin then at least as kith?

It simply didn’t bear thinking about. I hastened out into the blazing sun.

The queue for the taxi rank out in the oven-like heat was gargantuan – and it was made longer still by our Leeds-Bradford friends, many of whom were now stripped down to the loincloth and coked up to the nines, and who decided that waiting in line was simply ‘not for them’. They promptly barged their way to the front like true Britons, flying the flag of the nation and the standard of Her Majesty.

Eventually our crew, divided three-ways, found three likely looking hansom cabs. Plata, the sole Spanish speaker in our number, did his best to direct the stout taxi-men towards our awaiting villa and then we were off, racing away past Ibiza Town and towards San Rafael and the heart of the island.

Ten minutes in, the cab containing Plata, myself and Yelmar left the open road behind and ground to a comely halt in front of a sprawling supermercado. Inside its cavernous halls, Plata, the very moment he entered la bodega, proceeded to go a little ‘tonto’. Throwing enough booze to sink a mid-sized paddle-steamer into our creaking, bending trolley, he worked with a frenzy which struck me and Yelmar as practically diabolic. Yet the madness, it seemed to me, had a little method in it.

Meanwhile the other would-be revellers had been dropped off on very much the wrong street and were completely unable to find our villa. Morose and cursing, they sat on their bags in the baking sun, sweating their youth away.

Back at the store, Yelmar, being roughly the size of a small sycamore tree, had managed to drag Plata, by this stage frothing slightly at the mouth, away from the off-licence. We now had approximately ‘no minutes’ left to seek out the other comestibles we needed – and sure enough, by the time our dueño for the week arrived to pick us up (and finally show us all to the prodigal villa) we had lain our hands on at best 15% of our ‘food list’.

“Liquid dinner…” muttered Plata, as we eased him into the back of the car and piled him high with rums and whiskies. “‘S…’s all we…all we really need…”

Aforementioned dueño, a friendly dutch lass who had, when it came to Ibiza, ‘tried to get out but they dragged her back in’, drove my companions to the homestead to begin lugging seventeen thousand standard units towards the fridge.  Leaving them to it, I hopped out of the motor a short distance before the turning to our road, and instead jogged along a parallel, godless avenue, over to the semi-conscious and dangerously dehydrated segment of our troop. Once there I was greeted with relieved yet truculent invective:

“Where even is this bloody villa you bloody-well booked, you infinite, sexless cretin?!”

“And how long d’you want to take, you sheep-faced fugitive from hell?!”

“Maaaate, you’s a fooken keint maaaate…”

I placated them with the balm of my smooth words and ushered them around the corner to our orange-painted citadel of refuge, the villa of villas, the Eden of Ibiza.

*

In truth, as villas went, is was a wee bit odd and a wee bit tired; a hodgepodge of strange orange apartments, all ‘smooshed’ together like pound-store presents in a huge game of pass-the-parcel. And yet, for all that, it was really rather charming: The pool was cool and the rooms were plentiful. Air-con and fans abounded, and – to the technically minded – there was a very serviceable sound system. While the young Netherlander did attempt to strike fear into the hearts of myself and Plata with tales of break-ins and new safes and complicated locking systems, it stopped not the others from exploring around the place, staking claims to beds, singing the new gaff’s praises, and clambering up the foothills of Plata’s alcoholic Alps.

Once our fell and frightening dueño… dueña? …had finally ‘done one’, it was time to throw ourselves into the pool and into the holiday proper. On went the tunes and out came the cured Spanish meats (two half portions) and odd-tasting Spanish cheeses (one and one third half portions); in went the cocktails and up came the stars, our first Ibiza day merging softly and imperceptibly into our first Ibiza night.

The first round of what turned out to be many ‘Rings of Fire’ was proposed and agreed upon, and I proceeded to lose quite spectacularly. La Mejor Novia del Mundo (MNM) – who was ‘more disappointed than angry’ that the ‘shopping boys’ had failed so abjectly to furnish the dwelling with any real foodstuffs – heroically managed to source ten large pizzas, yet they came too late for many:

Isla del Hombre, for example, was already gone to the world, living out his own special, foodless existence, moving very slowly and only occasionally falling into the pool fully clothed; others – including myself – were well-oiled enough to believe that opening our account at Privilege, a mere ten minute walk down the road, was the correct way to go about things.

Thus, a short while later – but not before the Privilege doormen had relieved each of us of a fair number of our genuine, hard-earned Euro – a few of us found ourselves experiencing an impromptu and eye-opening Ibiza gay night.

In fairness, it was not until a few days later that we discovered that Thursdays at Privilege sees the island’s biggest ‘gay-friendly’ night hosted. However, the splendidly male-centric gender ratio ought to have been a clue; similarly the glitter-clad, gyrating dancers up on the vast and shiny stage. That several gentleman present were literally falling over themselves to speak to El Pájaro and Plata, arguably the prettiest of our number, would also have been a clear sign to those not quite as deep in their cups as we were. However, these signs all passed us by, as the heavy rumbles of the techno began put the ‘tin’ in tinnitus.

“Let me buy you a beer,” I roared to Un Mono Ártico Gay (MAG) over the cacophony. This Welshman true had insisted on paying me into the super-club as an early 30th present, and I felt I needed to say a liquid ‘thank you’. I therefore grabbed him by the arm and bundled him through an unguarded fissure in the VIP area.

Here, finally, womenfolk.

Like lobsters in pots and pescado in bottle-necked fish-traps, girls were ushered into this pen at the front of the dance-floor, never, seemingly, to leave again. Men, however (save those who had actually paid for the privilege (haha, puns…) of feeling ‘VI’) were swiftly yanked out of this pleasant little pool like the sprats and minnows they were, before being heaved back into the manly mosh of the wider club.

On this occasion, however, we had actually made the bar and I’d managed to source us a pair of eye-wateringly dear Heinekens before the first bouncer arrived…

“Pulsera,” he growled. ‘Wristband.’

“Hop it, lurch,” I suggested.

“¿Qué?” ‘Y’wot?’

“Sling your hook, and fuck off.”

This brazen approach might, might have worked, had a second, more Anglophonic bouncer not arrived to grab me by the seat of the Mansfield trousers and throw me bodily out into the great unwashed.

After this point the night began to get a little hazy, and one by one our crew wandered back to the villa, ears ringing and eyes drooping. I was, I believe, the last man standing in this regard – by this point very much enjoying both the crushing rhythm of the music and the limited, but still enjoyable, success I was having using Google Translate to ‘chirps foreign birds’.

All told, not a bad way at all to begin what was to prove a real, no-holds barred, fiesta of a holiday.

Given that March ’19 will see the #willofthepeople satiated at last, with our borders tightly closed and the beauteous ‘garden county’ of Kent turned into the globe’s largest parking lot, now is surely as good a time as any to venture (for perhaps the final time) into la belle France, to sup on French whatsits and gaze upon French thingamajigs.

Venturing dangerously from the well-trodden path, however, The Old Man, on this occasion, opted for Brittany not Burgundy as our destination française. Why, one does not know. ‘Tis not for the likes of us to delve into the dark recesses of that cavernous, inexplicable mind. Either way, ’twas towards Nantes, not Dijon, that I flew to out of Dublin on the Lundi – the third separate flight I’d managed to book out of that fair city, but that’s a story for another time…

The weekend past had been a pretty fruity one – a three-day wedding binge over in South Dublin and picturesque Enniskerry – so a fella was feeling ever-so-slightly fragile as mon avion touched down at Nantes and I breezed through some pleasantly lackadaisical Gallic security. I felt a wee bit more chipper, however, when I met the Old Man, Si-Moan de Beauvoir and Cousin Abercrombie, who were waiting for me just outside the arrivals gate, cheering my name and waving homemade placards.

This warm feeling of familial bonhomie was short-lived, however, as once we’d shoved the Mansfield bag into the boot of The Old Man’s Audi and once three-quarters of our party had successfully gotten into said deutsche car, The Old Man promptly ran over Si-Moan de Beauvoir’s foot.

This, as can readily be imagined, did not go down well at all – neither did his decision, in the midst of the understandable yelling and caterwauling which had ensued, to neither move the motor forwards nor backwards, but simply to leave the dratted vehicle parked square upon Si-Moan’s big toe.

Eventually I forced him bodily to ‘Reverse the bloody thing, you sheep-faced fugitive from hell!’ and a shocked, irate sister was able to limp into the car (uttering various Chaucerian swearwords in the direction of her weak-witted father as she did so).

Once we’d all concluded that, while liquefied, the toe would probably not require amputation, we managed to escape the labyrinthine Nantes parking lot and make our way to the beautiful town of Vannes for dinner, en route back to Lorient, where we would be laying our heads this trip. We ate at a popular, colourful joint called ‘Le Coq & Folks’, which leant itself easily to jests and served up very tasty fare indeed: I thoroughly enjoyed some salmon ceviche, followed by some very fine cod and some good local cheeses; Cousin Abercrombie opted to eat his entire body weight in moules, which, curiously, he shelled to a man woman and mussel using the carcass of one of their number as organic ‘pincers’ before devouring the whole lot en masse by the fistful. Eye-opening stuff, truly.

My benefice knowing no bounds, I stood us a round of post-meal glaces from a nearby ice-cream slinger, and we wandered around the adjacent quay (well, three of us wandered, one of us limped and cursed) before heading back to the car, getting pleasantly lost along various cobbled streets. After gingerly hopping into the automobile – ensuring that The Old Man was a good five yards from the driver’s seat before we did so – we all cruised back to our rented homestead in Lorient. Being a trifle wrecked, I marched straight to my apportioned quarters and, despite the close, pressing heat of the evening, fell straight into a dreamless slumber.

*

Mardi matin proved to be a leisurely one, beginning with croissants the size of a baby’s head for breakfast and including a thorough explore of the idiosyncratic mansion in which we now resided. Clearly a dwelling for Bretons of an older vintage in the very recent past, the furniture, legion as it was, was chiefly of a very high quality; the artwork which adorned the walls, however, was frankly bizarre – ancient oil paintings of diabolic wee kiddies, black and white photographs of random, severe nuns, ceramic ducks, odd self-portraits and many an assorted charity shop-style knockoff abounded. Much of the meat of the house, as it were, was taken up by an over-sized, sweeping staircase, polished to within an inch of its life, and the bathrooms couldn’t have been more seventies if they had been fitted by ABBA themselves. The kitchen and garden, however, were top-notch, and it was here that we spent the majority of our time, getting outside good bread and cheese, and drinking those moreish little lager beers they are so partial to out here.

In an attempt to be somewhat productive, I began writing up a selection of belated Shanghai blogs from earlier in the year, before knocking that lark on the head sharpish and accompanying the others on a jaunt out to a Chesil Beach-style headland for some sand and sun (The Old Man, inveterate twitcher that he is, went bird-watching instead). After a sunny age, during which Cousin Abercrombie, Si-Moan and I had invented two sports: competitive rock stacking and quick-fire pebble pétanque, The Old Man returned and we shuffled along to the very end of the spit, where we wandered around the small village of Gâvres and sunk a beer at the imaginatively named ‘La Taverne’.

Back at HQ, Cousin Abercrombie and I cooked up a veritable steak storm, to be eaten al fresco with some rather good wines. Si-Moan, showing rare good sense, had left her veganism back in Suffolk for a few days, and while she could not be tempted by the fillet, did rustle up some very fine potato salads and other vegetarian side dishes to accompany the fine flesh.

During the cooking process, however, I smelt burning:

‘Akk, what’s burning?’ asked I.

‘Your hand’s on fire,’ noted Cousin Abercrombie.

‘No time for silliness, squire, something’s getting charred!’

‘No, seriously, you’ve set fire to your oven glove.’

‘Nonsense, I…wait a tick, my hand’s on fire!’

‘Nothing gets past you mate…’

‘I should probably run screaming to the sink, eh?’

‘Certainly couldn’t hurt.’

Flames eventually doused, comestibles thoroughly ‘comested’ and our tissues thus restored, we all played a few rounds of ‘Cards Against Humanity’ – The Old Man, to our shock and delight, played an absolutely filthy game of CAH, but I still managed to secure a famous victory; Si-Moan de Beauvoir crying foul at every juncture, but to no avail.

*

The Old Man, as is his wont when en vacances, was up with the Mercredi lark to go ‘birding’, en route to picking up Moan of Arc from Nantes Airport. The remaining trio got down to various toils and schemes at the house, Cousin Abercrombie, for example, having various ,voracious English students roaring at him from all corners of the internet for his Anglophone wisdom and instruction.

Once Moan arrived – and after she had provided us with an extended, accurate critique of how ‘weird as’ our holiday home was – we all enjoyed a sunny afternoon together at said madcap pile. Cousin Abercrombie and I, much to our sorrow, managed to break our ball upon the rose-thorns, but following this tragedy I finally finished and published the aforementioned long-overdue selection of Shanghai/Borneo blogs – and, as they say, one cannot make an omelette without breaking a few plastic yellow footballs from the local supermarché.

But where, my friends, to dinner? Answer: Le Vivier in Lomner, down past Ploemeur and right by the seafront, where we all guzzled a fabulous, fishy dinner by the bay. My choices (that is to say, the correct choices) were the tuna tartare first up, then the lobster & apple tartin, and then grilled brill with miniature clams (puddings and/or desserts, I feel, in these kind of set-ups, being solely for suckers – especially when there are multiple starters to be had). Some kind of crab/melon melange and a cheeky selection of petit-fours rounded off a seriously fine feed indeed – fancy, aye, but delicious all the same.

*

Another morning, another fine breakfast. While breaking said fast the idea of a Jeudi trip to a nearby island was mooted as we pored over a map of the area, seeking out ‘the craic’. However, this idea was then discarded, after it turned out that there is simply ‘tap all’ to do out there most weekdays and that the ferry servicing it was slower than a recalcitrant sloth with three gammy legs.

Instead, we cooked up a lovely lunch à maison of eggs, sausages, bread and various salads, then headed off to Fort Bloque (pronounced, by me at least, as Fort Bloke) and Guidel-Plages for some sunbathing, bird-watching and other beach-based jollities. The Old Man found himself a likely looking nature reserve and was lost to the world for a prolonged spell, during which Cousin Abercrombie and I attempted some ‘bouldering’ on the beach’s cliffs, to very little avail, as said cliffs were made not of stone but earth, and routinely threw us back onto the course sands, large portions of seemingly ‘safe’ handholds still held tight in our fists.

Once The Old Man eventually returned to sender, we dusted the sand from our collective feet and grabbed a round or two of drinks, crepes and ice creams at Les Pieds dans l’Eau over in Guidel (though not before The Old Man had taught the French a thing or two in ‘parking like a fourteen year old Dutch girl).

We then sourced a massive amount of cheese and bread at a local supermarket and beat it back to the mansion, where said fromage et pain was dispatched with great prejudice and where further hands of cards were played (by all) and lost (chiefly by me). The Old Man, toning down the filth by at most 10%, put together a untouchable run of CAH, leaving Moan of Arc blushing like a nymph startled while bathing; Si-Moan de Beauvoir, however – usually cursed with exclusively poor luck at the card table – proved nigh-on bulletproof at whist, though once the 3.80 EUR bottles of Alsatian wine began to take their toll normal service began to be resumed. Safe to say, many a beer et beaucoup de verre de vin met their end that night.

*

I rise a wee bit earlier than might be considered typical and help The Old Man pick up the Vendredi pastries and drop off the impressive collection of empties we’d accrued over the past few days. Just as we returned to the homestead and to the refreshed and rising troops, it began to tip down with rain with serious gusto. In response, I start typing up my latest French blog post – the blog post, in fact, wot you are currently reading, me old mucker – and spend some time watching The Old Man refuse to be beaten by the elements: sheltering under a sodden parasol, reading a moistened book and drinking a rain-diluted lager, he displayed all the symptoms, one must admit, of mild-to-middling derangement.

Outdoor excursions therefore put on hold for a spell, we opt to use up the rest of the edibles and throw together a varied, mishmash luncheon, washed down with the final bottle of wine – described by various parties as ‘dusty’, ‘heavy’, ‘corked not corking’, and ‘shite’.

Eventually, the weather remaining stubbornly ‘pants’, we set out regardless into the midst of the maelstrom, back to charming Vannes for an evening’s soggy festivities. We start things off in a very drippy Le Gambetta, dodging water droplets the size of quail eggs and feeling particularly sorry for a large, depressed looking wolfhound which seemed to act as an uncanny magnet for every leak and drip going spare. Next was ‘Daily Gourmond’ across the quay, where we had a swift half and a fabulous baked camembert, but which we had to leave as they offered n’a pas des moules, if you’ll excuse the française risible, and Moan of Arc, you see, wanted her some mussels.

Lastly then, and despite them technically offering a lassie no moules neither, we had our main bit of grub and a bottle of curious white wine at L’Atlantique. Moan and I both ordered the seafood marinade – which, praise be, did include the odd mussel or two – and a selection of high-level ices to finish rounded things off nicely.

[A point of note, I’d managed, somehow, to navigate this entire crawl without slipping the Mansfield hand once into the Mansfield pocket – nothing short of a miracle, considering the famous parsimony of my splendid sisters. I began, however, to sniff a rat. Tomorrow – that is to say, Saturday 28th July, 2018 – would see us all driving back eastwards… and the French are famously capitalistic when it comes to their best highways… In short, ‘thar be tolls in them thar hills’ – and the smart money, given the Friday evening’s record and what I know of my nearest and dearest, would be on ol’ Tom payin’ them all.]

Back then, through the weakening rain, to HQ for a final tidy, a final glass of dodgy vin rouge, and a final type-up of all and sundry wot’s been occurin’ over the last handful of Brittany days. I hope you’ve appreciated reading it all as much as we’ve appreciated…er…experiencing it all. Who knows – say ‘Brexit’ doesn’t go as phenomenally poorly as it probably will; say Mrs May finds a little courage and common-sense deep in her knicker drawer; say Johnson, Rees-Mogg et al perish in a happy conflagration  – perhaps…perhaps then, dear reader, there might be future French trips and future blogs française for us all to enjoy. But until then, my friends, this is sadly not au revoir; this is, and it breaks my heart to say it, goodbye!

 

 

Saturday 5th May

Once The Old Man and I finally returned to his fancy Shanghai apartments early Saturday morn – following a flight about which the less written the better – it was, more than it ever had been before, ‘nap time’.

Once somewhat refreshed and restored, we ventured out to grab a spot of lunch at Nene’s, a quite ludicrously expensive French Concession pasta joint, whose prices seem to have been set as some kind of elaborate, Italian ‘dare’. We navigated the menu much like a Cambodian might wander across an unfenced field, picking our steps with infinite care, ever-fearful that our next decision could be our very last.

After a quick pit-stop at the flat, I bid farewell to The Old Man, who (nominally) ‘had work to do’ (but who actually wanted to lie prone and supine in front of indeterminate televised sports, pretending he was earning an honest crust). For me, it was ‘out’ out – once again meeting up with Portlandia to head to interestingly named spots such as ‘B&B On Fire’ and ‘Barbarian’.

As these wretched places refused point-blank to accept my good, British credit cards, Portlandia offered to foot the bill. This, obviously, was cause for some concern, as I had previously learned back at ‘The Hop Project’ that if a Shanghai lass pays for the evening, she clearly considers you but two steps up from pond scum and/or low-grade algae. However, reflecting that New England and Shanghai are not massively similar, be it in culture or in climate, I attempted to put such upsetting thoughts to the back of my mind.

Following this slightly uncomfortable bout of internal self-flagellation, the American faithful reconvened upon us for another Cantina night – this time for a rather unexpected-cum-downright odd ‘Cinco de Mayo’ party, replete with many a novelty hat and questionable drinks deal, yet despite there not being a solitary Mexican in sight.

This being noted, however, as internationally-based, inexpertly delivered, but exceptionally ‘good craic’ evenings go, it did sum up the Shanghai expat nightlife scene very much to a tee – and proved a fitting final night for a trip which, no matter which way one cuts it, must be considered ‘bloody great fun’ from soup to nuts.

 

Sunday 6th May

What left was there to do, but to pack up ones bags, say one’s fond goodbyes then catch the unspeakably swift Maglev over to the airport? ‘Work’, that fell, alien concept, called to me from the rapidly incoming Monday, and it was time, alas, to drag myself back to Albion.

I shook The Old Man firmly by the hand and we wished each other well, in firm, steady and unmistakably English tones. It had been one hell of a jaunt, and I had – budget, overbooked flights aside – reveled in every moment of it. Each morning, noon or evening had, I reflected, as I handed the airport fella my proud burgundy passport and demanded that he, ‘Got me home and got me there sharpish’, flown by more speedily than the last; be they long, adventure-filled Borneo days, or, indeed, sleepless, fun-packed Shanghai nights. Not, in conclusion my friends, too bad a fortnight at all.

Sunday 29th April

The smooth as silk taxi ride to the Hilton hotel, where The Old Man and I would be based for the next five nights, simply couldn’t have been more in contrast to the cramped and bumpy four-hour nonsense we’d just endured. Spring Air, my friends – avoid it like you would a murder of ‘chuggers’ (charity muggers) on any given UK high-street.

My first impressions of Malaysia were good: They drove on the left, spoke the Queen’s, and boasted UK-style plug sockets. These three things are all I ask of foreign climes. Malaysians also seem a notably friendly bunch, happy to converse even when the hour’s passing late. The lass working the hotel reception, zum Beispiel, even offered to upgrade our room to ‘premium’ following our first night, which seemed damned good of her.

We reached our assumedly ‘non-premium’ room just in time to switch on the over-sized television and watch the Arsenal ‘Arsenal it up’ against Atletico before bed – resulting in The Old Man punctuating his regular snores with muffled sobs and somnolent curses about ‘that plank Welbeck’.

 

Monday 30th April

To say Monday began with a ‘big breakfast’ really does no justice to the sheer amount consumed this fine day. Heaped combinations of global breakfast offerings were recruited and dispatched with great prejudice, and I left the table twice the man, in metric terms, that I was when I’d first sat down.

It was then time to show off my newly bloated ‘rig’ at the hotel’s rooftop pool, which was as fine a sun-trap as ever could be hoped for, and which ended up being a regular haunt of mine during our stay here in Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of the Sabah (the northernmost part of Malaysian Borneo, don’t yer know?)

The ‘KK’ weather dances between endless blue skies and celestial bath-time rainstorms, so all told a nicely epic climate to accompany our retreat. This day, for its part, saw nary a cloud sunder the virgin sky.

Pool time done and dusted for now, we went to change rooms and ‘get our premium on’, though found that the room we left behind and the room we later gained were practically identical in every possible way, save that the view was ever-so-slightly upgraded from ‘a dual-carriageway’ to ‘a convention centre’. It is, one assumes dear readers, the thought that counts here.

The Old Man’s lust for the hunt meant that the afternoon began with a walk along the beach in search of various small, nondescript birds – almost all of which had decided it was far too hot to fraternise with Englishmen, so had ‘done one’ for the shade. I took this opportunity to lobby successfully for some sort of alcohol-based fixture, and the pair of us stumbled into the Shangri-La seaside resort – most likely the swankiest spot in all of KK.

Beneath the high roof of the resort’s celebrated ‘Sunset Bar’ we, along with perhaps two thousand Chinese tourists – the Chinese, as a people, clearly of the opinion that Borneo is very much ‘the goods’ – watched a bashful yet beautiful sun knock it on the head for the day, all the while sinking G&Ts with admirable gusto. We then, again with innumerable Chinese hordes, hot-footed it over to the heaving seafood restaurants near our hotel, picking out ‘Welcome Seafood Restaurant’ – a humble spot, yet akin to the Beatles’ in the mid-1960s in terms of raw popularity – which had been suggested to us back en Chine by Portlandia.

Welcome SF, like many of its peers, is notable due to the way one goes to point out the fish/crustacean which you would most like to consume from amongst his/her tank buddies. This ill-fated fellow/lassie is then whipped out of the milling waters of the tank, ushered backstage for their last rites, and then appears on your plate with a pleasant ginger garnish not five/ten minutes later. That is, my friends, ‘as fresh as it gets’, and the process does give one the pleasant feeling of being ‘Judge Judy and executioner’, as big Nicky Frost might say.

Back at the hotel, now very much filled with the fruits of the South-China Sea, we found a rather odd ‘Full Moon Party’ knocking along by the pool, replete with dodgy DJs and somewhat incongruous Malaysian fire-eaters. We imbibed a couple of ‘Full Moon Beers’ and wandered among a real mishmash of the KK great and good, before deciding that this wasn’t really ‘the Mansfield scene’ and calling it a night at a reasonably respectable hour.

 

Tuesday 1st May

I made the executive decision this morning to skip breakfast for a little extra slumber – The Old Man having kept the whole hotel awake the previous night, snoring like a chainsawed bear. Once I’d managed to bag a couple more hours of necessary shut-eye, we wandered into town and down to the waterfront. The whole place has the air of a city which is almost, almost about to take off, but hasn’t quite made the leap yet. Buildings remain unfinished in the baking sun, billboards advertise future hotels and fabulous, non-existent facilities – all dormant, all waiting for southbound Chinese dollar to reach critical mass.

We eventually make it to Jetterson Point, the key tourist ferry port, to check out the available boats for a mooted Friday trip to one or two of the picturesque little islands – Sapi, Manukan, Sulug, Mamutik and Gaya – which lie just off the coast to the west-by-northwest. After a cooling, restorative beer, we braved the fierce sun again, heading over to the leafy eastern corner of the city and to KK’s Wetlands Centre, where we had a very warm wander around the mangroves, again spotting very few birds of note.

Heading back to the hotel, more sweat now than men, we wondered whether a pattern was emerging here, and that the feathered denizens of Borneo were making an especial effort to avoid our company entirely. However, having cooled a little by the pool, restoring our collective humours, we decided this unlikely, and heaving ourselves out of our funk and our heatstroke, we popped off to Sri Melaka restaurant for some splendidly fiery local fare. Be warned – Malaysian curries are fine things, but they seldom ‘mess around’.

We then went looking for what KK could offer a couple of lads about town of a Tuesday evening. Answer: not a great deal. We were, at one point, press-ganged into ‘Cowboy Bar’, as sketchy a ‘sketchy-ass dive’ as ever a true Christian found himself in, and we downed our beverages and fled the place apace, without a single backward glance. In its stead, being, one regrets to relay, ‘those kind of blokes’, we hastened back to HQ for a glass of very nice red and a frankly unnecessarily fancy pudding.

 

Wednesday 2nd May

Continuing the theme developed late on the Tuesday, we spent much of the day by the hotel pool and in the hotel restaurant, enjoying a notably western-style lunch and various western-style drinks. Then come the afternoon, it was time to go ‘full tourist’. We were picked up by a big bus full of sightseers from all four corners of the globe and were driven away for some manner of ‘boat safari thingy’, far from the city, amongst the jungles and the trees.

It was, one must say, very, very wet. The rain, when it came, was so apocalyptic that it delayed the start of the river voyage, our guide having no great desire for his prized ‘tour boat’ to be transformed by the heavens into a prized ‘tour submarine’. Instead, we had a bit of a feed and waited impatiently until precipitation-levels fell from ‘It’s the End of the World as we Know it’ to ‘Why Does it Always Rain on Me?’ Once aboard and motoring, we immediately clapped eyes on some exceptionally damp proboscis monkeys, who, huge, pendulous noses aside, looked much like I felt.

This augured well, I felt, for these PMs were the major natural history draw of the area, and spotting them so swiftly suggested that it might still, despite it all, be ‘our day’. Low and behold, the rain promptly buggered off completely and the sun followed suit, giving us boatmen an uninterrupted and spectacular firefly show, the palms which lined the riverbank transformed into wonderful, vine-clad Christmas trees, sparkling away merrily in the dusk. All on-board, one is pleased to relay, had plenty of happy memories to mull over, during the subsequent long and damp drive back to Kota Kinabalu town.

 

Thursday 3rd May

Thursday saw a prohibitively early start – The Old Man wasn’t taking his lack of Borneo birding success lying down, and had booked us both on a pre-dawn tour up Mount Kinabalu (reportedly the highest mountain in Southeast Asia, and the peak from which KK takes its name). ‘Twas a good way uphill, even at the ridiculous pace set by the bastard-mad driver, but the views, once sunrise had gotten its act together, were pretty darn magnificent, one must say.

Once at sufficient altitude we commenced a lengthy bird watching tour on foot, and finally, finally, The Old Man had some success: Two out of the area’s three ‘Whiteheads’ were spotted before lunch – Whitehead’s Trogan (a sizable red beauty with a long black tail) and Whitehead’s Broadbill (a particularly rare, iridescent green jobbie). Whitehead’s Spiderhunter would have to wait for another trip, as would Whitehead himself, conspicuous by his absence.

The proffered lunch was middling at best, however, and I found the afternoon’s jaunt, after the happy successes of the morning’s stroll, a bit of a drag. For the younger Mansfield, a wee bit of twitching goes a long way, but The Old Man showed no sign of fatigue whatsoever. So on I trudged, heroic in my stoicism, thinking deeply of beer.

Finally, some hours later, I sat alone by rainy hotel pool, clutching my lager to me like a child saved from the labyrinth. The Old Man was in the room, happily adding dozens of new birds to his list, and I didn’t wish to disturb him: troubled, addled souls when in such frenzies should be given time and space, I’ve always felt.

Once his revels at last were ended, we headed back to Welcome Seafood Restaurant for an overdue encore. The food was just as good as before, though this time cruel fate (that is to say, the cruel, unthinking waitress) had seated us between two over-sized familial units, replete with snarling infants. Such torment could weary even the stoutest of hearts, and I subsequently turned in for a relatively early night, once another fine bout of fish and prawns had begun to work their magic on the Mansfield tissues and spirit.

 

Friday 4th May

Time to pack up the old room and then stash the big bag, as the final days of Borneo had arrived. Once checked-out we hailed a lightning quick taxi to Jetterson Point, before, more by luck than judgement, boarding a chaotic water-taxi to Gaya Island via a number of other smaller, more tourist-dense islets. The craft’s pilot obviously had a pressing engagement of some kind to attend later, as he clicked the engine-dial past ‘fast’ and ‘unnecessarily rapid’ right over to ‘light speed’, and threw us across the chopped waves at roughly one million knots, at points achieving Michael Jordan-levels of perilous airtime.

Once at Gaya, legs still shaking slightly, we embarked (perhaps unwisely) on an unaccompanied jungle trek, right across the tall spine of island, in theory in the direction of a settlement on the far south-eastern edge of the island. There were birds aplenty here, along with a number of troops of sizable, muscular monkeys and the odd startled bush pig, and soon one felt that we had found a proper wilderness, much like those forests which welcomed the first British explorers, back before the days of colonial Borneo.

This feeling didn’t last: We stumbled out of the stifling forest onto very much the wrong beach, straight into the middle of the exceptionally swish Bungaraya Island Resort – our brief illusion of adventure ushered away by a heady mixture of snorkeling, expensive drinks and general high-livin’. This was, in all seriousness, probably for the best, as the going had been exceptionally hot and tricky during parts of the climb, and a second wander back to catch our return boat may well have slain The Old Man dead. Rather, we pretended, quite successfully, to be Bungaraya residents and, after the snorkeling and suchlike was done, managed to get ourselves on the much more sedate Island Resort Boat back to KK.

After celebrating our famous escape from the jungles of Gaya with some sunset drinks at the top of the (not particularly grand) Grandis Hotel, we returned to HQ Hilton for one last time to pick up our bags and grab a final Borneo dinner. It was then time to stiffen the old sinews and summon up the old red stuff, for Kota Kinabalu Airport and a second abysmal overnight(ish) Spring Air flight beckoned us like Charon on his fateful ferry.

As I folded myself into my Shanghai-bound seat, however – blocking out the anguished screams of myriad Chinese infants stationed all around my berth – I reflected that this present hell was, undoubtedly, a price well-worth paying for an excellent, action-packed quintet of fabulous Borneo days. My time remaining in Asia – and the third and final blog post – was not destined to be lengthy, so I was determined, no matter what was thrown at me, to enjoy every moment I was afforded completely.

Tuesday 24th April

I arrived in Shanghai with the Chinese lark, feeling far from fresh, and promptly leapt into the wrong cab. The Old Man, you see, true Briton that he is and given the earliness of my arrival, had been good enough to send one of his tame drivers over to Shanghai Pudong to pick up his firstborn. Said firstborn, that is to say, ‘me’, had spotted a likely looking fellow with the name ‘Thomas’ scrawled upon his pad:

“Thomas Mansfield?” I enquired, giving the ferryman a beaming, hopefully ingratiating, grin.

“Er…Mr Thomas?” he responded, giving his prospective passenger the friendly nod of a fella who, while clearly lacking in no other single quality, spoke not a word of English.

“That’s me, I guess,” I replied, admittedly considering that no-one really calls me ‘Thomas’, and that the fell surname ‘Mansfield’ was nowhere to be seen on his A4 sheet…

“Mr Thomas!” he agreed, however, and we were off.

It’s a fair old poke from the airport to the French Concession – the charming, leafy quarter of the metropolis which currently accommodates The Old Man and Katzenjammer – a journey sufficiently lengthy for the friendly driver fellow to field many a dozen frantic phone calls and to look back upon me anxiously and repeatedly.

Eventually, after a good few dozen kilometers, he flung his mobile back at me in something of a frenzy. Upon placing said telephone to the Mansfield ear, a polite but clearly concerned Chinese voice on the other end asked me, though not in so many words, ‘who the [*expletive*] I was and what the [*expletive*] I was doing in their car.

I shrunk visibly in the back seat, disappearing deep into the leather. The cab hung loose about me, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief. This was not my motor. This was the motor of a Mr. Tomas, a Dutch businessman in town for some kind of achingly boring conference thingy. My ride, if ever it existed, was still waiting for me some 50km back whence I had come.

The car was already turning back in the direction of the airport, my driver cursing under his breath in blue-tinged Mandarin – yet either side of the road stood the proud, familiar trees of the French Concession. I was so close, if only I could leap from the car…

A red light. A red light a mere stone’s throw from a metro station! Out of the car I threw myself, suitcase in hand, offering hurried thanks and apologies to a nonplussed driver as I slammed the door shut and dived down into the air-conditioned bosom of the Shanghai underground. A quick (read: ten minute) examination of the map told me my route, and within a heartbeat (read: longer than I’d care to say) I was at last strolling towards the fifty-plus storey monstrosity which now housed mon pere.

The Old Man’s new place was well-appointed and palatial, but all I cared for, at this juncture, was my bed, which opened its arms to me and hugged me close like a long-lost accordion. Having caught nary a wink of shut-eye during my four film flight, I napped and napped long, waking just in time to conduct a sub-standard telephone interview with some university or other – I forget which it was. Needless to say, they offered not unto me ‘the gig’.

Midway through this thankless audition, The Old Man returned. To celebrate this reunification of Mansfields, and also because I was, post-slumber, ‘Hank Marvin’, we hastened out for vitals and lubrication. We opted for a decent nearby joint called Azul, which served up Spanish/Peruvian taps, and then onto La Pétanque for French beers and a spot of dessert. The evening was rounded off at the Tipsy Fiddler for a couple of cheeky Guinnesses with Katzenjammer, who had been studying Chinese of an evening, bringing the total number of party-members who spoke a word of the language to a grand total of ‘one’.

Back at the flat everyone hastened to Bedfordshire – though for me ’twas but a preparatory nap. I had promises to keep, and miles and miles to go before I slept: that is to say, AS Roma had a 3.30am appointment for an unholy spanking at Fortress Anfield. Suffice to say, I’m very glad I stayed true to my beloved Liverpool FC, as they walked the first leg of their Champion’s League semi-final with frankly embarrassing ease, strolling it 5-2 while I drank silent, delighted beers and gobbled up late-night potato salad with significant relish.

An elongated, eventful first ‘day’, aye – but a highly enjoyable one all the same.

 

Wednesday 25th April

Having thoroughly destroyed my normal sleep patterns, a long, fitful night was suffixed by a lie-in of Herculean proportions. Like the teenager, I rose to eat the afternoon air, promise-crammed, luxuriating around The Old Man’s castle in the clouds, reading the occasional spot of Shipman and generally feeling as relaxed as that white glove your man banged on about, to which, at dawn, a brisk hand would return. Or something along those lines at any rate.

Once the wage-earning adults returned it was time to wash-up, brush-up and heave out the glad-rags from the glad-suitcase. We were hitting the town, or, to be more exact, we were hitting the Bund. Up we went to Mercato, a favourite Katzenjammer spot, for some seriously sublime Italian fare and quite sensational views over Shanghai Tower, the Pearl Tower and all the other #1 hits thrown up into the sky by Shanghai’s sky-high Pudong District.

It really says something about the mid-season form of the chefs that the food served matched the vistas afforded us by our window-side table, the moon beaming down, shining like a bus-driver’s trousers; the pastas and pizzas exploding in the mouth like tasty little parcels of nitro-glycerine. It’s gastronomic times like these which makes one thankful that one’s cave-dwelling forbears decided ‘this huntin’, gatherin’ sutff’ might be more than just a phase, and should probably be explored a wee bit further.

Once back home following a genuinely five star I binge, I attempted to sleep through the night like the angelic infant I assuredly was, nearly three decades ago. Needless to say, in this I failed, grabbing myself precisely zero hours of the dreamless. But then, my friends, who needs dreams when one has already eaten from the assorted bruschetta of the Gods?

 

Thursday 26th April

My unfeasibly early rise this morning was not at all in the script. However, having lain sans slumber from dusk to d. and choosing not to let ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’ like the poor cat i’ th’ adage, I decided to get on up, fit for treason, stratagems and spoils, among other things.

Having bathed, shaved and clad the outer Mansfield, and keen to get my bearings, I ankled along through French concession, attempting to connect the dots in my weak mind and place The Old Man’s new pad in relation to The Old M’s old p., where I had once spent an enjoyable November, back in 2016. Eventually, I found the former kingdom, and celebrated with a very early ‘lunch’ at nearby Joe’s, breaking my fast with a slice or two of New York-style pizza before about turning and heading homeward, walking back briskly in the sun, flying, if you will, much like the youthful hart or roe, o’er the hills where spices grow.

Later that day saw Round #2 at La Pétanque, seemingly a favourite haunt of The Old Man, on this occasion with a Malaysian-Chinese fella by the solidly Saxon name of ‘Brian’. He’s one of those merchant princes which scoop it up by the sackful out here in the East, and was good enough to stand a bloke a pint or two of strong Belgium beer, so in me he soon had a fan.

As aforementioned Brian had to shuffle back home to his apparently innumerable children, and with Katzenjammer again hitting the Chinese textbooks with Teutonic assiduity, I took the opportunity of shepherding The Old Man into a likely-looking restaurant named Yuan Yuan for what is technically termed ‘a succulent Chinese meal’.

[Top Tip: It’s always good, in these situations, to offer to foot the bill when a.) there are no Michelin stars knocking about and b.) the numbers of feasters are kept to a minimum. In this way one might hope to disguise the fact from one’s hosts that you are, in many accurate ways, somewhat parasitic.]

After some excellent eating (and quite skilful ordering, one must say) we popped over to ‘The Hop Project’, where we met another pal of The Old Man’s – a British Council Johnnie by the name of Matt – for a pint or two of the hoppy stuff. It was here that I learnt that Shanghai lasses, when on ‘dates’ with young men with whom they have no real interest in arranging ‘date number two’, will make their lack of interest abundantly clear by whipping out their phones as soon as the bill arrives, and paying for the whole dang lot using ‘WePay’ or ‘Apple Pay’ or some such wizardry.

This strikes me, a fella of limited means who has weathered more than his fair share of unsuccessful rendezvous with uninterested ladies, as a quite sensational practice which should be brought into the London dating scene by swift act of parliament.

Back at HQ I tried to ‘sleep’ sleep but ended up just ‘napping’ sleeping, waking up between three and four in the AM, just in time to watch the Arsenal stink the place up against a 10-man Atletico Madrid side. Sometimes, readers, it seems that ‘absolute mares’ beset both the sleeping and wakeful alike.

 

Friday 27th April

Another lengthy lie-in heralded the coming of the trip’s first Friday, the most impressively lengthy lie-in to date, taking a fellow almost up to cocktail hour.

As it happened, the first notable occurrence of the day was, indeed, booze-based, as I followed the crowd to a bar called ‘Abbey Road’ with The Old Man, Katzenjammer and her colleague Portlandia, who hailed from New England and was something of a Shanghai veteran.

Drinks at AR were followed swiftly by dinner at The Bull & Claw. Here the food on offer proved very fine indeed, though its signature claws of lobster were, as always, mesmerically difficult to access – especially after the various shots and aperitifs with which the joint’s owner had plied us. Thus feeling particularly well-fed and exceptionally well-watered, we hasted on, against our better judgement, to Sasha’s and then, foolishly, to Zapatte’s, for many unnecessary drinks.

Keen to impress Portlandia, who seemed to know her stuff, I demanded from the waiter “a bottle of the best from the oldest bin”, yet received various tequilas of low to very low quality. Proving, if proof were needed, that my Mandarin is still far from perfect. Either way, The Old Man and Katzenjammer were soon sent packing, as this was Big League drinking, and, as such, was the sole purview of those born in the nineteen-eighties.

In the end, it was a fiercely-fought contest, won by Portlandia, and I ended very much ‘one over the eight’, fated to crash out that night on the victor’s sofa avec Luna, the victor’s cat – a feline who struck a fellow as notably over-familiar. The following morning, I feared, as sleep took its hazy hold, was likely to be tricksome one.

 

Saturday 28th April

As it happened, thank the Lord, the next morning – and indeed afternoon – was notably relaxed in nature. Cruel reality back west obliged me to venture online to pay a few bills and to chase down 老鷹 for his rent money, but other than that and catching up with a spot of cricket, not too many clouds of toil crossed my idle skies. Later I enjoyed a splendid, simple dinner of Katzenjammer concoction in the flat, accompanied with a healthy percentage of a nice bottle of red – one of, it gives me no great pleasure to relay, the few ‘non-corked’ bottles which The Old Man had received from various acquaintances out east.

After this brief, peaceful sojourn, it was back out to tame the Shanghai whirlwind with Portlandia, who had been kind enough to offer a fellow a rematch, and some of her fellow ex-pat Yankees (not to be confused with The Yankee, of Straight Down from Chicago fame, of course).

Firstly we went to drink myriad beers and provide bloody sustenance for myriad mosquitoes up on the rooftop of Daga Brewpub. Then we hired ‘Mo-Bikes’ – yellow, app-based bicycles with the turning circule of the QE2 – to spirit us across to Catina Agave, where it was, apparently, ‘happening’.

After this things got a wee bit hazy for yours truly, but once again a fellow was woken up by the rough tongue of Luna, that most friendly of Bast’s children, at what many a gentleman would consider ‘an unearthly hour’ – evidence, perhaps, of another night well wasted.

 

Sunday 29th April

It being a Sunday I was forced by weak-witted convention to consume not breakfast, and not lunch (and most certainly not both), but brunch, mid-morning, at a popular spot called Liquid Laundry, which I had, I realised, mid-eggs, visited on my previous trip out east. The fare was, in all fairness, very good indeed, though I waddled out feeling at best 60% as healthy as I had done when I had strolled on in.

This particular Sunday was, in fact, the very day The Old Man and I were scheduled to hop across to Borneo, for a ‘lads tour’, as it were, to a former colony and current ‘top birding spot’. (Regular readers will remember that The Old Man is a keen twitcher and simply lives for our feathered friends.)

We therefore had a ‘chilled’ afternoon before hot-footing it to the airport, where we enjoyed a couple of eye-wateringly expensive but absolutely necessary pre-plane Stellas. Once aboard our ‘Spring Air’ flight, it looked, for one magical moment, as if we had struck gold and had been given the much-coveted emergency exit row seats. This would, dear reader, have been quite the boon, as Spring Air is much like Ryanair, but without western levels of leg-room nor its rude Celtic charm…

Sadly, lamentably, tragically, an accursed air hostess simmered over to inform The Old Man that he couldn’t read ticket numbers, that we were, in fact, in the row behind the emergency thrones, and that this flight to Borneo – and to the next blog post – would be spent with our knees around our ears. Damn, as they say. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

It’s a solid nine hour flight from Sydney to Hong Kong – proof, if it were needed, that Australia is just a comedically long way away.

While I personally was able to grab a wee bit of kip (between some films of very variable quality), sleep simply would not come to Chatham House Rules, or to The Eagle, or even to a Gay Arctic Monkey. This airborne insomnia, in combination with the intellect-sapping heat and humidity we found in ‘Honkers’, might go some way to explain just how difficult we found it to navigate from the airport to our hotel.

Buses were missed or not even found and incorrect train tickets were sourced and a general hash was made of most everything. Eventually, stressed and flushed, we bundled ourselves tightly into the first of many a bright red HK taxi and, bags spilling about everywhere, finally made it across to our final place of rest – the Kowloon Harbourfront Hotel.

This hotel is an interesting mix of the average and the ever so slightly above average – a typically Chinese phenomenon where lofty ambitions sit side by side with clear, easily remedied failings. However, Chatham HR, he of the silver tongue, managed to talk us into an upgraded room with a fine view over the city’s central waterway, meaning that, just about, on a split points decision, the hotel came out triumphant.

Once showered and unpacked, we braved the heat and the wide river’s unspeakable odour and wandered across Kowloon to the Spring Deer – a restaurant which came highly recommended from a good buddy of mine back home. Oh, and what a recommendation! Perfect Peking duck, wonderful ‘shredded beef’ and, of course, plentiful dumplings made for a very, very satisfactory first Hong Kong meal, washed down with round upon round of Tsingtao (in my experience the only Chinese beer worth drinking).

We then grabbed a tube over to Wan Chai for a splendidly trashy Wednesday night session. The crowd out and about were young and very western, and as we hopped from bar to bar we felt increasingly old and jaded. Eventually, around one-ish, during a particularly strange gig with a squat Chinese fellow doing a poor Bon Jovi impression and a long-haired bassist who would wander out into the street mid-riff, the boys’ fuel gauges dipped into the red. It was time, we concluded, to knock this one hard on the head.

*

Post- an impressively average hotel breakfast, we found ourselves a taxi driver looking for a chunky fare and drove all the way southeast to the Shek O peninsula. He we walked up and down the Dragon’s Back Trail, a hot and rather challenging little hike which afforded sensational views, all across the surrounding forests and seas. Chatham House Rules, not a natural hill-walker at the best of times, complained relatively constantly about his ankle, and was only placated by the promise of Shek O Beach at the end of our saunter, where we could ‘chill’ in the sun with some drinks, and maybe even some attractive womenfolk, should the stars align.

However, once reached the beach proved itself a little lacking – certainly nowhere near Sydney standard – with dirty-looking water, litter-strewn sands and UV which could happily microwave a store-bought dinner for one. A prolonged stay was therefore promptly vetoed by myself, The Eagle and a Gay Arctic Monkey – which in turn prompted a now familiar barrage of curses, in a heady mix of Arabic, Assyrian and Canadian, against faithless ‘white boys’ who ‘can’t handle a little sun’.

“I’m solar powered!” lamented Chatham HR. “I need the sun to live!”

“Yeah but this is pretty rubbish, let’s walk somewhere better.”

“Aye, somewhere more shady and all.”

“$*&%£!!” swore Chatham, with some feeling.

[The figurative translation of this particular curse, we later learned, was ‘I disrespect your family’. The literal translation, however, one regrets to relay, was ‘I shit upon your lands’.]

We found a likely looking bus which took us back to civilisation, and then a westbound train to Central/Hong Kong Station. Here we found a famed dumpling joint which placated even the tempestuous young Chatham: Tin Ho Wan, cheap, popular and, would you believe it, Michelin-starred.

Now previously in this very blog I have suggested to you all that we had previously enjoyed dumplings. We believed it, I believed it, and therefore I conveyed this belief to you. This late lunch on Thursday 14th September, 2017, disabused us of this flawed notion. These were dumplings, my friends. Dang good dumplings. Accordingly, we ate a great deal of them  – proving quite incorrect the sceptical waitress who snorted (snorted, I say!) in derision at the sheer scale of our most manful ordering.

Replete, happy and corpulent, we waddled victorious from the restaurant and went over to Mong Kok (oo-er, vicar), apparently the most populated place on the planet, to check out some tat-filled markets. It was then back to the hotel, where all save Chatham splashed about in the establishment’s superbly malodorous outdoor swimming pool, cooling down properly for the first time in a sticky, humid day.

A particularly overpriced Asahi in the hotel bar later, we were all ready for another stroll and another Michelin starred meal. Over to western Kowloon we trekked, up to the third floor of an off-the-rack Chinese shopping centre, and into a celebrated branch of the world-famous Taiwanese restaurant, Din Tai Fun.

Considering the quality of opposition it faced, it was marked how easily our dinner here claimed the title of ‘Undisputed Champion of all Hong Kong Meals’. It was, quite simply, sublime from first dish to last. Special mention goes to the spicy wonton dumplings – as good and tasty a morsel as one has ever placed into one’s mouth (oo-er, vicar, once again).

Lan Kwai Fong, Honkers’ premier boozing locale, then called out our names on the wind. It was time, for the second occasion in so many nights, for some trashy expat libations.

Opting to begin in an uncharacteristically fancy manner, we began with a cocktail at ‘The Boudoir’, where we were kept company by a couple of taciturn Chinese lasses, a young Cantonese gigolo on the make and his sixty-something British ‘john’. Quite the party, I’m sure you’d agree.

From here, needing a wee change of pace, a Gay Arctic Monkey and I got well stuck into ‘Club 7/11’, the best value and most amusing of all the LKF joints. From this comely HQ, we would strike out into various different ‘hot spots’, dominating dance floors and generally running amok. Chatham and The Eagle were less impressed by these gilt-edged drinking tactics, but they came around in time, dear reader…oh they all come around in time.

*

Friday’s was a sluggish start, our quartet regularly waylaid by lost eagles, by breakfasts glacial and poor, and by disappearing taxis. Eventually, we made it way out west, to the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car which took us all the way up to the top of Lantau Island, over rolling hills and a wide and shining bay. Up here one finds a very large bronze Buddha, apparently the largest around, and a rather fake, commercialised monastery.

Now, here we had been promised by a friend of a Gay Arctic Monkey, delicious, monk-made vegetarian dumplings. What we received was different. Chatham House Rules still refuses to talk about it. Suffice to say, we thought a lot about Tim Ho Wan during the, quote-unquote, ‘meal’ we endured there. There is, on reflection, a good chance we went to the wrong place. Either way, the fare was ‘proper bobbins’.

The walk up to the Tian Tan Buddha himself was sweaty but manageable, and the vistas from the summit almost matched the fabulous views from the epic cable car up, in terms of scale and magnificence. Hong Kong does give a good view, no matter what one’s tastes might be.

Ngong Ping village proved fertile ground for souvenir shopping, and many a HK dollar was dropped on items not necessarily necessary. Then all that was left was a breathless cable car ride back to the city and a swift tube/cab combo back to the Harbourfront. We had every cause to rush – The Old Man had just checked in, and was eager to see his firstborn, that is to say, yours truly.

Now a famous five, we headed to Elgin Street near ‘Mid Levels’. Here, after a couple of drinks and then a couple of restaurant misfires, we found a decent place which would take us in on a busy Friday night – a delicious steak joint named, imaginatively, ‘Craftsteak’. The Old Man, you see, was on a strict vegetarian diet up in Shanghai, and was keen as mustard (and horseradish, and pepper sauce) to get himself outside a decent slab of cow and a bottle or two of Malbec that eve.

The sheer amount of meat consumed went a good way to writing off the remainder of the night, but we made sure to take The Old Man to a particularly happening branch of Club 7/11 for a few quality ‘street beers’. Then, meat drunk (and a wee bit drunk drunk), we hailed a couple of cabs and beat a lazy retreat.

*

Sad but true to say, the final day of our rather spectacular trip had, creeping up like a stalking panther, pounced hard and fatally upon us. Thusly mauled, we packed up and stashed our kit (bags now bulging with various souvenirs, ‘Tim Tams’ and bulky camel suits) in the foyer of the hotel.

We then choked down the stalest of all stale Harbourfront Hotel breakfasts and wandered through the oppressive heat to the Star Ferry terminal. A swift, old-timey riverboat then took us across the city’s central waterway to Hong Kong’s central ferry-port, where a second, larger craft was found which might take us over to Cheung Chau Island.

We had it on good authority that the seafood on this little island was tippity-top-notch and, having found seemingly the most popular place (an unpretentious joint called, with a charming lack of subtly, ‘Delicious Seafood Restaurant’), we told the waiting staff therein to ‘give us hell’.

Once again, the conservative reservations and general lack of ambition shown by the waitresses whose paths we were fated to cross was proven ill-conceived. Yes, we may have ordered enough scallops and crabs and prawns and grouper and the rest to feed a moderately hungry battalion of strong fighting men, but we put away said scallops and crabs and prawns and grouper and the rest with a verve and gusto that was, we felt, highly impressive to see. In short, no regrets were had, none whatsoever.

As good a mood as the food engendered within us, the island’s rising heat and humidity soon put paid to it. The temperature, an unforgiving bastard of a thing, was now in the high thirties, far too hot for we Brits – and almost too hot for Canadian-Iraqis to boot.

Extensive tours of the more beauteous parts of the island were now out of the question – we had to content ourselves with seeking out the better air-conditioned shops, pretending to want their wares while we cooled down to a mere swelter. One serviceable place was a wildly overpriced tea shop, where The Old Man whiled away some time indulging in his favourite pursuit – haggling Chinese women into a blazing fury over goods he neither wants nor needs. It really is quite the spectacle – if ever you find yourself over in Shanghai you simply must check it out.

Putting a pin in this overheated island nonsense, we caught the ferry back to the mainland, enjoying the endless skyscrapers and (in my case) extended catnaps in the sun. We then wandered a little aimlessly around central Hong Kong for a mite too long for my liking, finding a fancy shopping centre, part of a park, a Catholic church and then, at long last, gods and heavens be praised, some bars.

Beers purchased and defeated, the four of us then bid a fond farewell to The Old Man, whose late cameo in our trip I, for one, had very much enjoyed. Following this, we went to retrieve our loot before, a little glumly, a little wearily, we sloped over to Hong Kong International Airport.

The flickering flame of the voyage had, at last, choked out. We quietly ate a final portion of dumplings (better than the monastery’s, but barely in the same ballpark/giant Aussie Rules stadium as the divine stuff from Tim Ho Wan or Din Tai Fun) before, now utterly spent and utterly penniless, collapsing into our seats for the long flight home.

One by one my companions drifted off into well-deserved sleep and happy, spiralling dreams: Chatham House Rules, his incomparable snoring for once but a quiet rumble, dreamt of koalas and dumplings, sunshine and taxis; a Gay Arctic Monkey, ‘new music’ still blaring from his headphones, was visited by visions of split trousers, roast ducks and dancing, prancing fools; and The Eagle, flat-cap pulled down low over his eyes, endured nightmares most cruel, filled with a lass called Hunter and The World’s Worst Groom.

Only I remained wakeful, albeit not for long: I had one final thing to do, before calling time on this trip of trips and sleeping my way back to London.

Ignoring the muted snarls from the well-built Chinese girl on my right, I switched on my reading light and pulled out my pen and notepad, now full almost to bursting.

“Hmm…how to begin?” I pondered.

“$*&%£!!” suggested my neighbour, a little unhelpfully, due to the rustiness of my Cantonese.

“No…no that won’t work…hmm…oh yes, how about a wee bit of this..?”

Pen met page. Slowly, steadily, practically illegibly, I began to write:

It’s a solid nine hour flight from Sydney to Hong Kong – proof, if it were needed, that Australia is just a comedically long way away…

Early doors we tear ourselves away from our new apartment’s fabulous views and wander along the clifftops to Maroubra Beach. Here the local surf toughs, the ‘Bra boys, are taking to the waves, the fashionable brassieres and lingerie which give them their name shining brightly above their wetsuits in the morning sun. They instantly take a liking to us, and accept us into their thuggish but friendly fraternity.

“‘Bra recognises brah, bro,” notes a Gay Arctic Monkey, rather sagely.

Maroubra, overall, was found a little wanting, so we grabbed a quick breakfast-to-go and wandered back in the direction of home. And who did we meet on the path back to the flat but one Agent Cooper?

Chatham House Rules had, it seemed, invited her down to our new beach-side dominion, but, distracted by our new ‘Bra friends, had forgotten to furnish her with proper directions – hence her aimless wandering and our serendipitous clifftop rendezvous.

Chatham HR, a GAM and Agent Cooper then strolled across to the nearby (and superior) Coogee Beach. The Eagle and I stayed back at the flat for a wee while longer – myself as I had a spot o’ writing to do; The Eagle because he required additional slumber. The poor, glabrous soul had been stuck in a room with Chatham the previous night, and our learned friend had, snoring-wise, composed his latest masterpiece.

However, once rested, written up and – after a lovely walk along the rugged coastline to Coogee – reunited, the six of us all enjoyed fish ‘n’ chips and (contractually obligated) Coopers Pale Ale. Yes indeed, readers, six – we were now a round half dozen, for the Associated Press had returned (albeit briefly) to the fold, having been up seeing old friends in Newcastle (NSW).

This lovely scene of companionable felicity was only slightly dampened, pun very much intended, when The Eagle, idiot bird that he is, decided to pour an entire ice cold schooner of Coopers directly onto my testicles. Such was the sub-Kelvin temperature of the beer and such was the paper thin fabric of my ‘board shorts’, my reaction was far from muted – sending The Eagle flapping away apace.

Eventually, we managed to coax him down from a nearby tree, and we are able to wander back homewards. As nice as it would’ve been to stay and periodically dowse ourselves with freezing Australian beer, Chatham had a Skype talk thingy with yet another group of his followers and fans, and Agent Cooper had to go see a man about a barrel.

Now this august September day happened to be the 30th Anniversary of Frankie Blue Eyes’ birth, so that evening we schlepped on over to the Palisade Hotel in…hee hee hee…’Barangaroo’. The views out over the harbour were magnificent and the company uniformly excellent, and a good few sad goodbyes were exchanged at the evening’s conclusion – including with the World’s Worst Best Man, both the best and worst of blokes, right to the end.

Hangry A was also in attendance, and once last orders had come and gone we went together on an unsuccessful quest for that great Australian delicacy, the ‘meat pie’. Once defeated, we had to content ourselves with a final Opera House ‘selfie’, then a long bus ride back south with empty bellies.

*

The next day was to be a big walking day – much to the chagrin of Chatham House Rules, he being a man who has a.) a dodgy ankle and b.) a tendency to order Uber Deluxes at the drop of a chapeau.

The first leg was back to Coogee, where The Eagle and Chatham HR enjoy a couple of nice breakfasts and where I (finally) source myself a ‘meat pie’. It was, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, middling.

We then strolled along a patch of beauteous coastline to Bronte, where a Gay Arctic Monkey and I very much enjoyed some top rate seafood and chips – suggested to me the previous evening, rather forcibly, by a markedly tipsy Frankie Blue Eyes.

Everyone now fuelled, we mosey along, all the way to the famous Bondi Beach. Here we finally brave the frosty Pacific Ocean, mucking about in the waves for an impressive five minutes, before the cold becomes too much to bear, and our collective manhoods shrivel up into nothingness.

Continuing to go ‘full tourist’, we then purchased a selection of unnecessary Bondi souvenirs for our nearest and dearest, before thinking, ‘bugger it’, and walking all the way back to Coogee Beach, very much enjoying the play of twilight and sunset on this truly lovely part of the world.

At Coogee we ate kangaroo, as you do, at a joint called Barzura – it tastes a little like venison on the turn, but not exclusively in a bad way – and drank plenty of cheap red wine. Hangry A joined us one final time, and together we all adjourned to the beach-side Airbnb for more wine and some of the mountain of cheese we’d purloined from the Wedding of Pane. We could scarcely afford, as they say, ‘a heavy one’, for the taxi was booked for seven in the am the next morning – the taxi to the airport, my friends…our Australian days were very nearly numbered…

*

The driver was talkative…too talkative…but he at least knew the way to the airport and never came close to getting us killed, so he beat his Melbourne counterpart hands down, in my opinion.

Our final Australian hours were pretty melancholy, to be honest, a sleepy slog through check-in and security, and one last Oz coffee stop. It is, it must be said, a pretty fabulous country, and we all had the most sensational time, so it was unsurprising we felt a wee bit down about leaving.

However, our moods were instantly brightened when we bumped into a Puck Bunny, a very old friend of the World’s Worst Groom and a Wedding of Pane MC-extraordinaire. We were, as chance would have it, on the very same flight up to Hong Kong – her en route to distant, numinous Europe, us for a fresh, mini-adventure in the buzzing Cantonese metropolis. It promised to be an exciting, fun-packed, dumpling-filled few days…and who knows, perhaps we might post about it…should anything particularly noteworthy take place…

But all this, my friends, was in the future. It was now time to board the plane, to bid a fond ‘yeah bye mate’ to one heck of a place, and draw a final line under a hell of an Aussie trip. ‘Australians all let us rejoice’ indeed.