Forty Years On: Night Boat to Palma

The final instalment in the 'Forty Years On' saga, continuing the story from A Spanish Bee in your Bonnet:

The bee sting brought an end to sunbathing and we set off back to the hotel, with Kev in an increasing state of panic.  Fortunately, we spotted our tour reps coming in the opposite direction.  Less fortunately, they were determined to sell us tickets for a forthcoming night out in Palma.  As Kev swayed fitfully, they plunged into their hard sell until I finally got through to them that, interested as we were in their proposition; there was a good chance that my friend would be crashing to the floor at any minute.  Mortified (but not so mortified that they didn’t make the sale anyway) they escorted us to the nearest pharmacy and, armed with a cream of some sort, we returned to the hotel.

Rubbing cream into your mate’s scalp is not the best way of spending a holiday, but it did seem to do the trick and the following evening we reported to the harbour to catch a boat to Palma.  The outing, as sold to us by the Tour Reps, involved a trip across the bay (with free drinks), an evening in a nightclub (with another free drink) and then the boat home again.  As each of the guests boarded, they were handed a plastic cup filled with Cava.  Presumably because the Reps were feeling guilty about selling tickets to a mortally wounded Kev (a look that he had perfected), we were handed a bottle each.  This continued throughout the trip, which meant that we were not feeling a great deal of pain when we disembarked.  We were told to keep a careful note of where the boat was moored for our return, but by this time I really didn’t know if I was on this Earth or Fuller’s (as mum used to say).

I have vague memories of the nightclub itself (the free drink on arrival was probably a poor move).  For some unknown reason, we spent most of the night with a young French couple who (if my schoolboy French was correct) were on honeymoon, but who were accompanied by the wife’s mother.  Quite how I finished up dancing with the husband, whilst Kev boogied with the wife and mother, goodness knows.  I do remember attempting a fancy set of steps that involved me shuffling backward but which resulted in a fall over a small ornamental wall, thus ruining the effect. 

At the end of the night, we said our goodbyes to our companions and headed off in the general direction of the boat.  This was, however, foolish for two reasons (1) We had no idea where the boat was, and (2) It would have left an hour earlier anyway.  Realising that we were on a wild goose chase, and had no money with us at all for a taxi, Kev determined that we would walk back to the hotel.  Stumbling into a Spanish Military Post for directions was probably not a good idea, as the rifles pointing at us indicated (this was the time of Franco).  They did, however, give us the general direction to go in (‘away’ seemed to form the crux of what they were saying).

We trudged for hours along the Majorcan equivalent of the M1, with dawn breaking on the horizon.  A ‘back of a fag packet’ calculation revealed that we had a 10 mile walk on our hands. Drunk and despondent, we attempted to kip down on some benches outside a petrol station, until the owner arrived ten minutes later and kicked us back out onto the road.  Finally, we reached the next village to Arenal, Ca’an Pastilla, and figured that we just about had enough money between us to flag down a taxi.

We crawled back to the floor of our hotel.  Literally, because the hotel’s lift had an idiosyncratic approach to its job and regarded floor numbers as a broad objective rather than a specific target, leaving passengers to haul themselves up onto their chosen floor. 

The sun was shining and people were heading off to the beach.  We slumped into our beds with the well worn cry of ‘never again’.


You can find more stories from The Slightly Odd World of Phil Whiteland in e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA)

Forty Years On: A Spanish Bee in your Bonnet

The penultimate chapter in the Forty Years On saga and following on from "No, Luton Airport"

Our residence for our week in Spain in August, 1971 was Arenal, Majorca and the Hotel Arenal Gardens (the name has been changed to protect the guilty).  I was immediately impressed to find that the room had a balcony with commanding views over a large concrete area containing neatly stacked tables and chairs.  I couldn’t begin to think what this might be, for but soon found out at midnight when it converted into an open-air nightclub, keeping a boisterous crowd amused until dawn.

Checking out the balcony was my first job.  My second was to ring a family friend of ours back in the UK (who was working a night shift) to ask him to pass a message to my Mum and Dad that I had arrived safely.  It’s difficult to remember these days just how completely out of touch you could be just by popping over to mainland Europe.  I’m sure it was easier for the astronauts to report back from the Moon than it was to make a call to the UK from Spain.  Firstly, you could not dial direct, you had to battle the mutual incomprehensibility resulting from the Hotel Receptionist’s tentative grasp of English and my non-existent command of Spanish, mixed with my Burtonian mangling of my mother tongue.  Having made it to the International Operator and a series of bewildering tones, beeps and ominous silences, I finally contacted our friend.  By this time, I was so worried that I might be racking up a bill that would cancel out my holiday spending money at a stroke, all I managed to burble was that I had arrived safely and it was hot. 

I have limited memories of that holiday (you’ll be no doubt pleased to hear), just a few particular points stand out.  I remember going out on the first night to hit the bars on the main street.  The resort was crowded and the main street was a throng of people shuffling from bar to bar.  I was sporting my ‘bought for the holiday’ cream crimplene trousers and this was their first venture out in public.  I don’t know if you remember an old pub game that used to involve spreading the tissue paper backing from the silver foil of a cigarette packet over a wine glass?  Having done this, a sixpence was placed in the centre of the paper and people took it in turns to burn a hole in the tissue paper with the end of their cigarette (it seems like another world now, doesn’t it?).  The object of the game was to avoid your burnt hole joining with any of the others, thus dumping the sixpence into the glass.  Well, the action of a cigarette on tissue paper was as nothing compared to the action of a burning cigarette on crimplene.  After an evening squeezing through a crowd of holidaymakers, all smokers to a man (and woman) my brand new trousers had been ‘branded’ many times over and made the tissue paper look positively intact.

The other event that was seared into my memory began, quite unexpectedly, as we were sitting sunbathing on the beach in Arenal.  Kev was determined to get a suntan, which was a laudable aim but doomed to failure given that he was blond with a very fair complexion and simply tended to turn bright red and blister.  Nevertheless, he was sure that things would be different this time.  I wasn’t too bothered about sunbathing and regarded it as a profligate waste of good drinking time, but I’d agreed to keep him company on this occasion.   Suddenly, he turned to me and said “Is there something crawling in my hair?”  I looked down on his sunburnt scalp and spotted a bee plodding methodically through his hair.  “It’s a bee.”  I informed him.  “What?  Get it out!”  I understood his anxiety but felt that a calmer approach might be advisable and was proved correct when, after some flapping and flailing about, there was an anguished cry of “Oh, my God, it’s stung me!”  Given that Kev was a hypochondriac’s hypochondriac and had once had a Doctor’s Certificate for catarrh, this was not good news, as I’ll explain in the final instalment Night Boat to Palma

You can find more stories from The Slightly Odd World of Phil Whiteland in e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA)

Forty Years On: No. Luton Airport!

Even though our week in Majorca via Clarkson’s (see How many cigarettes to Arenal?) was only going to cost some trifling amount like £35, this and the spending money were going to take some raising.  Which is why June, 1971 found me reporting back to Bovril/Marmite for duties, whilst Kev headed off to the delights of regular night shifts at the Ashby Biscuit Factory, affectionately known as ‘Muck and Dust’ after its former owners, Meredith and Drew.  Sun, sea, sand and anything else beginning with ‘s’ (like sangria, of course) seemed a long way away as we trooped off to work.

Now that I had reached the grand old age of 16, I was no longer considered to need sinecures like the cap filling job at Bovril/Marmite and was instead made part of the small army of students employed each summer to cart heavy things about.  As I was still only 9 stone soaking wet and looked like the ‘Before’ part of the Charles Atlas adverts, this was not exactly my dream employment.  The only way all of this was made bearable was the promise of a week in the Majorcan sun at the end of it and the various milestones along the way, such as paying the balance to the travel agent, collecting the foreign currency and getting the British Visitors Passport (BVP).  Do you remember those?  They cost a few pounds, lasted for 12 months and were really useful documents that anyone could get from a main Post Office.  Having said that, my first BVP was issued by the Burton Employment Exchange in Cross Street.  I nipped out of work one lunchtime and walked into town to Woolworths on Burton High St to the only photo-booth I knew, to get my passport photo.  You can see the result below.  I have a collection of these which I sometimes inflict on people during my ‘guest speaker’ talks for local societies.  This is probably my favourite.  I think it looks like someone wanted for questioning for Indecent Exposure.  The expression on my face should give you a good indication of how much I was enjoying my vacation job.

I’m glad that I kept my first BVP because it tells me that I withdrew the princely amount of £30 in pesetas from Barclays Bank on 31^st August 1971 (you were still limited by The Exchange Control Act 1947 as to how much cash you could take out of the country, but I don’t think that my stash worried the authorities). 

Finally, the great day arrived and, with our bags packed, we headed off to Luton Airport.  As we had little money left for anything other than the holiday, we scrounged a lift from my Uncle Ron who happened to be travelling in that direction as part of his job.  The only downside to this arrangement was that we had to be dropped off at the airport before 10.00 am as Uncle Ron had to get into London to start his day, and our flight was not until the evening.  I was terrified of the concept of flying (still am to a certain extent) and, given a full day of hanging around an airport with nothing better to do than wind myself up and drink, I was not feeling a lot of pain by the time we boarded the aircraft.  A good illustration of this is that I put my lemon scented hand towel in my tea instead of the milk, and drank it.  I also could not cope with the stuffy sensation of the pressurised cabin and went to the toilet for a breath of fresh air!  Whether I thought, in my befuddled brain, that I could open a window in there, I really don’t know.

Eventually, we landed at Palma Airport and I had my first experience of walking out of the aircraft door, into the oven-like heat of the Spanish night.  Immediately my nostrils were assailed by the singular smell that always reminds me of a combination of dodgy drains and cheap cigars (but not necessarily in that order).  We had finally arrived on foreign soil (well, tarmac) and the holiday started here.  


Find out how it all developed at Forty Years On: A Spanish Bee in Your Bonnet

You can find more stories from The Slightly Odd World of Phil Whiteland in e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA)

Forty Years On: How many cigarettes to Arenal?

Continuing a story that begins in Forty Years On and Counting and continues with Putting a lid on it

Four weeks or so of diligently providing caps for (arguably) the nation’s favourite sandwich spreads, provided me with untold wealth.  Well, untold wealth from my point of view, my only comparison being the meagre rewards from my paper round before Mr. Kidger in Uxbridge Street, Burton, finally dispensed with my services (which is another story altogether).  Inevitably, all of this money burned a hole in my pocket and, one second-hand moped later (yet another story) I was returned to my usual impecunious state.

September arrived and I presented myself at Burton Technical College (as it then was) in Lichfield Street for my first day of lessons under the new regime.  I was to study ‘A’ Level English Literature and Economic & Social History.  As these two subjects together did not fill my week sufficiently to satisfy the Education Authority, I had also opted (rather optimistically) to take ‘O’ Level Mathematics. 

Day 1, and my first lesson of the week was History with the wonderfully laid-back Mr. M as our teacher.  The class was small, perhaps 15 students in total, and comprised of a large number of girls, mostly from my old school, plus two lads, me and Kev.  It soon became apparent that Kev was everything that I was not.  Tall, blond, handsome and supremely at ease with people in general and women in particular, he contrasted sharply with the short, dark-haired youth, with a face that only a mother could love, parked at the other end of the row of seats (me, if you were in any doubt).  Whilst Kev could charm birds from trees, I looked more like a candidate for Dutch Elm disease.  Crippled with shyness, I found it difficult to even hold a conversation with my ex-Anglesey classmates, let alone someone I didn’t know at all.

Tea break came and we trooped off to the Refectory,  Kev in animated conversation with some of the girls, me trailing along behind. This is probably how things would have stayed had my addiction not compelled me to take a leap of faith.  I had absolutely no cigarettes.  I hadn’t even been able to ‘borrow’ one from my dad’s packet (probably because he didn’t have any either).  So, by tea break every fibre of my being was screaming.  This was particularly galling as one of the main attractions of Burton Tech was that students were treated as adults and were allowed to smoke with impunity.  It was, therefore, particularly hard to be cigarette-less on the first occasion when I didn’t have to nip behind the bike sheds to indulge.

“Erm, you don’t happen to have a spare fag I could borrow?”

I surprised myself with this outburst, but needs must when the cravings drive.  Kev looked back up the stairs, said “Yeah, sure” and produced a packet of Players No. 6 Tipped, a rare luxury for someone who had previously existed on a diet of Senior Service Extra, Benson & Hedges Sovereign or Players No. 10, all of which had filter tips that were nearly as long as the tobacco portion, and that wasn’t saying much.

We chatted and, over the rest of the academic year, became firm friends.  It was a good match because he had cigarettes, money and an easy confidence with girls and I wished to acquire all three.  As the next summer holidays approached, we talked about how we could spend these doing something marginally more exciting that putting caps on jars of vegetable and beef extract.  Kev had dreams of hitch-hiking through France and grape-picking.  Exciting as these sounded, they came crashing up against my deeply conservative inner adult (other people have an inner child, I have an inner adult, it’s depressing but it keeps me out of trouble).  I set about modifying Kev’s ambitions.

It was 1971 and package holidays were being made available for the masses by firms like Clarksons (remember them?)  Somehow, I managed to persuade Kev to abandon his dreams of life on the open road and a bohemian existence amongst the peasant farmers, and settle instead for a week at the Hotel Arenal Park, Arenal, Majorca, of which more next time in No, Luton Airport!

You can find more stories from The Slightly Odd World of Phil Whiteland in e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA)