Ibiza

Official. It is going to be Ibiza 2011. We booked our summer holiday/vacation yesterday. Now I can relax. I know with certainty that we will be evacuating this city during the month of August, pending any intervention from continental baggage handler strikes or rogue clouds spewed out by an Icelandic volcano. 

I love London but to be here in August is a nightmare. Everyone else is abroad so the neighbourhood is empty. The city is not designed for heat so there is no air conditioning. So we all go somewhere even hotter.

Securing a summer rental is a British obsession. It is pretty much guaranteed that the moment the Christmas adverts stop on the telly, the summer holiday adverts will begin. Christmas adverts where it is snowing everywhere, a perfect family in heavy jumpers sitting in front of the open fire and suddenly, WHOOSH! The same model family are in swim suits and sitting on a beach in golden sunshine with mandolin music playing in the background; a friendly, exotic but most certainly foreign voiceover inviting us to explore the beauty of >insert name of Mediterranean country here<.

The British spend the next six months using every opportunity to discuss their plans with anyone who will listen. It is the fodder of small talk. Go to the hairdressers and the stylist is bound to ask; going anywhere nice for your holidays? I must have been asked the same question at least two dozen times during the past month at the start or end of meetings at work.

Ibiza is nothing more than a wrinkled rock in the Mediterranean, about 90 miles off the coast of Barcelona. A raw, scraped knuckle of land, plunging into the crystal clear Med; but it has a rightful reputation for being a party island. This will be our fifth visit. It gets better every time. It has a popular dance music scene that attracts people from all over the world. The Phoenicians first came here in 500BC to throw down some shapes and shout out “Tuuuuuuuuuuune.”

We work hard all year and these three weeks in the sun are milked for every last drop of fun. That notion fits very nicely with the island’s party image. Every trip is the stuff of life-long, joyous memories. It is the great carrot on a stick that makes the donkey get up for work each morning. That is, as long as we follow the rules.

My wife has certain rules for holiday. The truth is she has unwritten rules for everything but those associated with the great summer get-away are relevant today:

1. Must be in another country

2. Must travel by airplane

3. Must be hot and sunny

4. Must get a tan to make everyone back at work jealous

5. Must be a pool/beach

6. Everyone must be packed by the end of June for departure the first week in August

7. The holiday officially starts the moment the luggage has been checked in at the airport

8. We must buy at least 3 litres of booze in The Duty Free Shop before boarding; therefore taking drink from England to another country and bringing it back again because “Smirnoff for £10 a litre! That’s good, isn’t it?”

9. We must visit the WH Smith in the departure lounge area where every member of our family must purchase two magazines to be read ad-nauseum on some Spanish toilet. At least one of such magazines must be The Viz. Another must be football related. The rest are most likely to include a cover headline banner reading JORDAN: MY NEW HELL.

10. We must get to the departure gate as soon as the display boards announce that passengers can make their way to Gate 26. We can only wait for someone in the toilet for reasons of not wanting to stink out the aircraft cabin. Magazines recently purchased cannot be used as rest-room reading material on this occasion.

11. We must have breakfast in the airport chain restaurant. 

12. Upon arrival, everyone must get burnt to the verge of sun poisoning on the first day. This is called base coat. In the first evening, industrial size jugs of moisturiser/cocoa butter/ aloe must be applied liberally and descend into at least 6 litres of the stuff being squirted across the room to start a cocoa butter fight.

13. If we are walking into town, everyone must dress up.

Other than that, anything goes. And anything certainly goes in Ibiza. We will dance, drink and laugh; chase random, roaming chickens through the streets, go German nudist spotting at the naturalist beach. We will doze, baking in the sun on an inflatable crocodile.

At night we will stumble dark through the pitch black, dusty lanes; drunk on good Sangria and cocktails with names like In Your Face. We will befriend the stray cats that hang out near the beach restaurants; begging for the scraps from fresh barbecued sardines that swam in the Med with us that morning. We will walk through the market sharing inside jokes on the tat for sale. We will play cards by the light of the moon and a candle and sing Sweet Caroline despite no one knowing all the words.

We will watch drag artists dressed as Lady Gaga in some downtown club where the smoking laws haven’t yet reached. We will dance and dance some more. Later we will nip into the club next door to watch the Elvis impersonator and wait for him to shout out, “Anyone here from Phoenicia?! You Phoenicians know how to party!!!”

And when the three weeks are up, we will return home, more grateful than ever to back under London’s gray cloak. We will return to work and wear clothes that best show off our tans. We will answer every Oh, you look brown have you been away? with a nonchalant “Ibiza”. 

Today it is sunny in London. The street cafes are full with people in sunglasses drinking frappucinnos. Listen closely to their conversations and one will hear, 'Going anywhere nice for your holidays'?  66 days to go, dear readers. 

Keep the Faith,

The Head