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.

***

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.

***

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 believewhat 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 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 neverget 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 scarsely 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.