In case you can't read it from the photo above, here's the text of the article:
The accompanying picture should
give you a fair idea of the theme of this month's article. I'm willing to bet that anyone who had a
holiday in Spain in the 1970s has one of these buried, and thankfully forgotten,
amongst their holiday snaps. Before you
ask, it is not a photograph of someone trying to put out a fire in a horse-hair
mattress, but we'll come to the explanation later.
You may recall, from last month,
that I had embarked on a holiday in Majorca with my friends Kev and Den in the
early 1970s? Hotel Pollensa Park in
Puerto de Pollensa, in the north of the island, was our destination for 10 days
of sun, sea, sangria and anything else we could find that began with 's'.
We arrived at our hotel late in
the evening and discovered, to our chagrin, that we had a room with one double
bed and one single camp-type bed. Kev
was first through the door and was quick to claim the camp bed as his own,
which left Den and me with the double.
Common sense should have told us to ring Reception and ask for the bed
to be converted to twin singles, but we were young and unsophisticated and, as
this was only the second time I had been in a hotel in my life, we just decided
we would have to make the best of it.
Kev decided that he had had
enough for one day and decided to turn in for the night, but Den and I were
excited about arriving in Majorca and set off for the pub across the road, El
Leon Dorado. Whether this was a good
idea, or not, can be judged by the fact that we burst in on Kev an hour or so
later, in search of more money for alcohol and declaring that the beer was
"just like Pedigree" (our usual tipple at home) It wasn't!
I have always said that the
English are really only happy when they are confined by rules and regulations,
particularly when it comes to the partaking of alcohol and, by the English, I
really mean me. After years of sneaking
into pubs whilst under the legal age (I know, I know, I should be ashamed of
myself) and dutifully heading for home each evening at 10.30 when the pubs
shut, I had rather decided to take full advantage of the more liberal,
continental approach to the consumption of alcohol on this holiday, starting
from Day 1.
Our first night pretty much set
the tone of the rest of the holiday for me.
Den was a keen cyclist, so he wasted no time in hiring a bike and
setting off each day to discover more of the island. Kev joined him on a few occasions. I made one trip out to the nearest village
with them and decided it was too much like hard work.
Kev and Den were also keen to get
a decent tan and, therefore, headed down the lane to the nearby beach quite
frequently. I, on the other hand,
usually didn't surface until midday and then only to drag myself across the
road to El Leon Dorado. Any tan I got
was purely accidental, usually as a result of the sun having moved so that the
parasol at my bar table was no longer protecting me.
On one occasion, I did get up
enough enthusiasm to stagger down to the beach and join them. I dimly recall deciding to have a dip in the
Med. and set about demonstrating an enthusiastic front crawl (to the dismay of
all in the vicinity) which later turned out to have been in roughly six inches
of water, this went some way to explain the extensive cuts to my arms and legs
when I tottered back up the beach.
All in all, I was single-handedly
confirming the worst perceptions of the British teenager abroad, way before
this became fashionable! And the holiday
was yet young, we still had two drinking highlights to go, a night at a
medieval banquet (hence the photo) and another night out clubbing, all of which
I'll tell you all about next time.
You can find Part 1 of this mini-series here - Back to the Balearics
