Holidays in the Sun (Ibiza 1996)
In early 1996 I was 24 years old and my life was very
different to how it is now. I was living
with my parents, had been working for over two years, had no major debts and
access to credit. I was single. I was never too happy about the single part
and it is fair to say I was probably preoccupied with the fairer sex around
this time, most notably the fact that I had no success in persuading any of
them to go out with me or just to get their clothes off for me, either would
have been good. To be fair I’d lost a
bit of what was me, I was dressing in a casual manner that was far removed from
the demi-goth/grebo style I’d been in to as recently as two years before, lots
of sports clothes with jeans and trainers.
This was the time of Blur and Oasis so I was hardly a chav but was as
near to one as I have ever been. I’d
only the previous year cut off my long locks which had been on-going since I
was 18 but later decided to grow them back for the holiday. But I wanted to fit
in a bit more than I did and had started occasionally going clubbing and
listening to more mainstream music.
I’d only once been abroad at this time, a school trip to
France when I was 11 years old, and had only two holidays in the UK with my
family. I decided I had to go
somewhere. I started browsing through
brochures looking for somewhere where it would be warm and sunny, there would
be plenty of drinking, there would be topless girls and partying. I eventually settled on San Antonio, Ibiza,
because it filled all the boxes and seemed best value for money. Now I just needed to rope a couple of others
in to make it affordable.
I thought three single lads would be the best option so I
asked my friend Harry and also asked him to see if his friend Ian would be
interested in going. Ian seemed ok, I
knew he was single and I knew he was working so would be able to afford
it. Though I didn't know him well I’d
socialised with him a few times and though a bit nerdy he seemed like someone
I’d get on with. In any case, with Harry
there as a go between we should all get on fine, nobody would have to feel like
a third wheel if somebody wanted some time to themselves.
So, I got it all booked up and paid on my credit card so it
was all done. In typical Darren fashion
I didn't save for the holiday at all, I decided that the others share which
they would pay me in cash would be my spending money so effectively the whole
thing, two weeks bed and breakfast (more on that breakfast later) for three was
on tick. If I was to pinpoint where I
started going wrong in life regarding finances it was almost certainly here. The wait for the holiday started in
earnest. A bloke at work told me “If you
don’t get laid in Ibiza there is something wrong with you”… fantastic! I was very eager for my longest sexless spell
since I was 18 to come to an end even if it was by some loveless, grubby
encounter in a foreign hotel room; hell, on the beach or behind a skip would do
me.
Then disaster struck.
Harry came down with glandular fever and wasn't fit to make breakfast
let alone go on a grueling two week regime of partying. By this time Harry had also rather selfishly
got himself a girlfriend so wouldn't have been available for the shagging
element of things anyway but as he went on to marry her I will forgive
him. We started looking in to
alternatives to fill his place but he agreed he’d pay if we couldn't find
anyone. We never found anyone, he
paid. It was just to be Ian and myself.
Ian was a year or so older than myself but more importantly
he was shorter, fatter, at least as unattractive, had less hair on his head and
more hair everywhere else. For once I’d
be the good looking one if we met a couple of chicks! We met up once before the trip to just talk
through arrangements and before we knew it, September arrived and we were
off. We’d gone for end of season as it
was cheaper and gave us time to pay and also the weather would be slightly less
oppressive but still hot enough for lady breasts to be out. I had plenty of money, plenty of clothes but
had failed in my hair growing as I had that mid-nineties indie mop-top, not
long and not short which really did nothing for me. And so it came to pass that one weekday evening
in early September, 16 years ago, I climbed in to a taxi from my parent’s house
with a bloke I didn't know and was about to spend two weeks with.
We arrived at Gatwick suitably early; I have issues on
punctuality and will always arrive somewhere long before I need to just to
avoid any possibility of being a tiny bit late.
We checked in, probably the first on our flight to do so, and went off
to the pub. I think I’d had three pints
before we boarded our flight. I spent
the time nervously looking at the other passengers. Everyone looked cooler than me. Everyone.
I even saw a girl who’d been in my younger brother’s year at school and
I think fancied me back then who pretty much turned her nose up when I gave a
gesture of recognition. Oh dear. My confidence started to ebb. By the time we were in the air I was already
starting to think I had made a massive mistake.
Everyone was so boisterous. I
like a drink and a chat but this was just so loud, everyone shouting and
cheering like they were already at a rave.
I realised that a lot of people had started partying before they got to
the airport and quite a few probably had stimulants other than alcohol in them
already. I felt horribly out of place,
like the geeky boy in a room full of jocks.
How was I going to do this? I
just wasn't as outgoing as seemingly everyone else on the plane, including
Ian.
I forget how long the flight was, a couple of hours or so,
and apart from the level of shoutyness from the passengers it was fairly
uneventful so at least I knew I could fly though. It had been a night flight, as was the return
journey, so it would be some time yet before I found out how terrifying I find taking
off when I can see what’s out there. We
disembarked, found our party and set off for the hotels in similarly loud
circumstances to the plane. The holiday
rep on the coach was telling people to be careful with what drugs they took
because there’s been some bad Es around.
I knew there would be drugs on Ibiza (or so I thought… more on that
later) but was not aware of just how openly the reps would encourage the taking
of them. I had less of an issue with the inherent suggestion that promiscuity
was ok.
At this point I need to mention the name of the holiday
group I was going to Ibiza with. It was
called 2wentys which was holidays especially for young people, in the Club
18-30 style, under the Thomson umbrella.
The hotel we were going to would be exclusive to 2wentys so there would
be no old farts harshing our buzz and we could all have a wicked time. We’d all become best friends, probably after
having huge amounts of sex with each other.
This sounded great… I just wished the noisy fuckers would shut up then,
I had a headache. We reached our hotel
after 2am and the bar was throbbing, playing very loud dance music and full of
other hotel guests who presumably had just come back from a club. I expect they were just winding down now
before going to bed. Checking in to the
hotel seemed to take forever, one grumpy looking Spaniard processed each of us
one by one before giving us a room key and telling us which floor we were
on. By the time we reached our room,
third floor, it was gone 3am. After
unpacking and freshening up we assumed we’d get some kip but at 3.30 it was
still banging so we went down for a drink.
I think we eventually went back up at 5am and slept for a couple of
hours. I say slept, I laid with my eyes
closed and listened to the throbbing bass below.
The next morning I stepped out on to our balcony on to what
was a half completed building. It looked
like a car park with no cars. The sky
was heavily clouded and it was muggy. We
decided to partake in breakfast and then cut our losses regarding sleep and see
what was out there. Breakfast turned out
to be some cut bread, some jam and the off piece of manky looking fruit. I was ravenous so had some bread and jam but
didn't bother with it for the rest of the two weeks. In fact, I didn't take breakfast for two
weeks and I like breakfast! On every
holiday I've had since finding somewhere to get a good breakfast has been
paramount, possibly because of this one.
In the harsh light of day the hotel looked revoltingly
cheap, as did most of the buildings in San Antonio. Clearly it was a report that had come to life
in the last decade or so, and was littered with a sequence of ugly buildings
and uglier half completed buildings. It
was clear that hotels generally needed to be functional and not to take up much
ground space so most were at least five stories high. I imagined one monstrous but average looking
hotel that had been knocked up by a municipal building from Moldova and was now
stomping Godzilla like around the resort, endlessly discharging it’s progeny of
tacky hotels and bars. Few were made in anything other than a bland, square
shape; there were no contoured shapes and curves to add a gentler look to the
harshness of the area. It looked like a
ghetto. It later transpired that since
Ibiza had become big business some nicer hotels had been built down on the bay
but that was quite walk from where we were, just off the centre of San Antonio.
As we explored we soon realised that we had arrived just
after a very short period of biblical weather.
On the coach they had mentioned that they’d just had the biggest storm
for 50 years but now we could see upturned boats and thousands of palm leaves
littering the sea shore like so many dead, oiled up gulls; it was clear just
how big this had been. Speaking later to
a fellow guest at the hotel I was told that during the heaviest rain it was
like looking out of the window to see another window behind it and another
behind that and so on. This was bad
news, what if the weather stayed like this?
I wanted a tan. More than that, I
wanted to see tits. Sue me. I was 24, horny as hell and I liked tits.
We returned to the hotel to meet our rep, a lovely girl
called Sharon who did turn out to be very reliable and helpful. There were a couple of reps that I liked,
Sharon and Spencer (Spencer ended up
coming back on the same flight as us when he resigned after being heavily fined
for being drunk on duty!), A couple of
reps joined her and together they performed a presentation which in effect was
designed to panic everyone in to thinking they would have a shit time of they
didn't sign up for all of the excursions and group activities on offer. They actually used the term “Billy
No-Mates”. Did they really think
something like that would work on us?
Well, it did. I got out the
credit card and signed up, as did Ian. I
forget how many excursions there were but most them were an absolute waste of
money, some little more than a glorified bar-crawl. One I do remember was a foam party at Es
Paradise, but this turned out to be a lunchtime engagement when the club was
not in normal use and had no atmosphere.
The only one that was any good at all was the boat trip, which I will
mention in more detail later on. I’m not
saying excursions are always a waste of money, I signed up for several a few
years later in Crete and they were fantastic, but these were garbage, just a
way of Thomson getting more money out of us and they should be ashamed of
themselves.
We went out for lunch after that, it is one of the few meals
I remember as it was a hamburger and the burger actually tasted like it was
made of ham. Very odd. We got chatting to a middle aged couple who
seemed quite nice and then we had a few beers.
I think the first evening ended in one of the organised bar crawls and
it we ended up back at the hotel around midnight. The music was still on and it was very
loud. It stayed on. I did not sleep. I don’t like not sleeping, I get very
grumpy. Over the next two weeks the
music in the bar at the hotel stayed on very loud until around 4am every night
except one. Now, I know San Antonio is a
clubbing town. I know people stay up
late and like dance music. But… the town
is full of bars and clubs that play loud music in to the early hours, with
proper light shows and so on. Why is it
needed in the hotel bar where people want to sleep? Or perhaps it was just
me? The long and short of it is that I
managed no more than 2 hours sleep a night for the next two weeks, I drank and
smoked far too much and I ended up with an extremely heavy cold that turned in
to a chest infection.
The weather did get better.
I got a tan. I saw lots of
topless girls, two naked girls, one naked man and got very naked myself. I danced with a couple of girls in bars. I enjoyed the sunset from Café Del Mar more
than once. I made a few friends, none of whom I kept in contact with after but
if they ever somehow see this I’d particularly like to say hello to the Dudley
lads and the extremely scary looking but bloody nice Barnsley lads. There was
also a very nice bloke, very good looking but extremely shy, who thought I’d
said my name was Daryl and I was too shy to correct him. I was fairly surprised someone that dishy
could be shy but by the end of the trip he was spending a lot of time with a
nice girl so maybe it turned out ok for him.
There is so much more I could say but I've tried to get out
the main memories. I can’t give you a
day by day account of what happened over the next two weeks as I slowly
mentally unraveled over the first week and only really enjoyed the second
fitfully, depending on how annoying Ian was being, so I am going to split up in
to little sub sections now! Starting
with:
Ian
It took about two days.
There were little glimpses in those first two days but by day three I
was sure. Ian was really fucking
annoying. It was mostly the way he
talked. Some would call him a story
teller but to me it was just being a big, fat fibber. He told anecdotes endlessly, many that seemed
unlikely but who was I to say? Then he
started to talk about things that had happened while I was around and I
realised it was if not all then largely bollocks. The anecdote would start off, on the first
telling, as mostly true but with his part in it emphasized beyond what it had
actually been. Then with each retelling,
Ian loved talking, it would become more and more fantastical until it was all
about him and everybody in it saying how great he is. It wasn't just that. He spoke like he was trying too hard. Like everything he did was part of an
act. He just never seemed genuine or
natural, always trying to impress somebody.
The final straw was when he asked the barman at the hotel, brother of
the owner, if he could take his sister out to dinner. Just not done. Badly done Ian, badly done indeed. I started
trying to avoid him after three days. Oh
yes, after the boat trip he stank of Tabasco sauce.
The Boat Trip
The boat trip was the only excursion I remember that I
enjoyed and the only one that seemed to be worth paying for. We went out on a boat. We stopped at an island for lunch and then
played some games by the pool. Then back
on the boat, more games on-board, finally to another island for some
karaoke. There is a real possibility
here that there were actually two boat trips and thus two excursions that
weren't shit, but for the sake of narrative and because I can’t remember I’m
going to make it one.
I was pretty hung-over on the boat trip so for the first
half of the day I didn't play much. Ian
though was his usual self; wanting to be the centre of attention and taking
part in all of the pool games, mostly because he got to lick whipped cream off
the crotch and boob area of some girl’s swim suit. He actually fought with another competitor,
literally trading blows, to get there first.
My favourite game though was Endurance, which Ian won.
You may remember the Japanese game show, Endurance, in which
competitors either endure various methods of having unpleasantness meted out to
them or they surrender, losing the game.
Last one in wins. Ian won. I was very glad as that meant he took the
maximum level of nasty because I couldn't stand the sight of him by now. Of the tortures he endured the ones I
remember are eating sand, having Tabasco sauce poured over him in the sun,
having pegs on his nipples, eating raw squid (I actually quite fancied some of
that) and being hit in the balls with a table tennis paddle. I loved every minute of it and wish I’d
bought the video, I’d still be watching it now… with one hand. His prize was an edible thong and a pint,
which he downed in one to clear the sand out of his throat. The pint that is.
Ian partook in some of the drinking games on the next part
of the boat ride but thankfully not the one that ended in a much fitter bloke
walking naked around the boat. And he
was fit; could have had me on the turn but instead induced in me that feeling of self-loathing about my own body shape that has become so familiar over the years.
By the time we got to the second island most people were a
bit pissed, not me though as I’d just had a few alco-pops, my hangover had
subsided but the thought of more beer was anathema to me. Ian and I performed Crocodile Rock, which is
actually quite hard to sing. A huge cheer
went up during our rendition which I thought was nice until I realised that it
was actually for some poor sod who had just erupted all over himself like a
volcano of sangria sick. Nice.
Alcohol
Of course I drank a lot in Ibiza. I was 24 and single and had some money and
frankly there was bugger all else to do.
I think twice in two weeks I was really, uncontrollably drunk. The first time was early on and I had to get
Ian to take me back to the hotel because I couldn’t remember the way. I then decided to dance naked around the room
and the balcony, insisting Ian take photos.
Sadly I don’t still have them, which is a shame as I was slimmer back
then. The next day I was sick, the only time I was for the two weeks. There was a lot of that going around, one
morning I went out on the balcony to see a huge pile of vomit on the balcony of
the lesbian couple in the next room.
There was another on the stairs, so copious I suspected the culprit had
eaten a manky bear.
The second incident was set off by Nelly, who we shall come
to later. I had no plans to get drunk
but after talking to her I stayed in the hotel bar all day. This was at the beginning of the second week
and marked the beginning of 15 years of not being able to drink San
Miguel. I’ve only recently had it again…
it’s ok!
After going off San Miguel I would occasionally have a
bottle of Bud but more often stuck to alco-pops or sangria. I never got seriously drunk again while I was
there.
Drugs
There weren’t any, the place was dry. Seriously, we never went looking for any (I’d
dabbled in the past but didn’t know how Ian felt) but we had dealers asking us
if we had any. It was end of season and
they’d had a good summer. Nobody at any
time offered to sell us drugs and I’d imagine that, being with Ian, at times I
looked as if I needed them. That or a
crossbow.
Food
On our first full evening Ian bought some chips and gravy. Perhaps it is the born and bred southerner in
me but I find the idea of putting any sort of sauce over chips horrendous. One may dunk a chip in sauce or mayo or even
splash a little vinegar on them but to make them go all soggy like that seems
like a waste of a good, crispy chip.
We got fed up with chips very quickly and Ian decided he
wanted a meal with potatoes. I don’t
think we ever found that, but there were plentiful alternatives to chips. We had Chinese food several times, pizza,
curry… but San Antonio in 1996 was not the best place for traditional Spanish
fare, fresh fish, vegetables… anything like that. As a renowned fat person subsequent holidays
have largely been based around food so
this holiday has a rarity value for me in that it was a case of scrabbling to
find something we liked. There were
several Chinese restaurants but only one curry house, which may have been
called The Curry House. It was run by an
English couple but the curries were as near as dammit to British style Indian
cuisine and a blessed relief, even if I did over-reach by having the Vindaloo
and burning both tongue and bot-bot. The
Curry house was right next to…
The Rock Club and
Unplugged Bar
I’m not a clubber. I
wasn’t a clubber in 1996 but I somehow thought I could be. I’m not. Never was. That’s not to say I don’t like “dance music”. I do like various aspects of ambient, techno
and so on. I’m not an expert by any
means but I like quite a lot of it. I’m
not a dancer though. I feel very
self-conscious dancing. I don’t think I
had such a problem with dancing so much in 1996 which was just as well as it
was often obligatory.
For the first few days we stuck to the larger bars in San
Antonio which were like small clubs, usually with a dance floor. They all played club music. I remember that Tori Amos remix, Professional
Widow and Underworld’s Born Slippy were both big at the time, the irony of the
latter being completely missed in most instances. I didn't mind those but there was so much
stuff I was hearing far too much; a club remix of Wannabee by the (new on the
scene) Spice Girls particularly rings a bell and soon I was getting sick of
hearing the same old tunes all the time.
If it was just for dancing it would probably have been ok but I can’t
help listening to the music. I was
actually grateful for Wonderwall by Oasis which was played every so often and
that’s saying something.
Right next to The Curry House and to each other were The
Rock Club and Unplugged. The Rock club
was a large upstairs bar which played modern (in 1996) rock music. Having drifted away from the genre over the
past five years I wasn’t up to date with post grunge rock, I recognised the odd
bit of Smashing Pumpkins or Metallica but there was a lot I didn’t know. Still I liked it and I insisted we came back
a few times (actually, I wasn’t too bothered if Ian didn’t come). There was also a girl who stripped naked at a
certain point every night which I didn’t object to at all. The music was too much for Ian, too loud, too
heavy (he likes Heart and All About Eve) so we then tried Unplugged.
Unplugged was a bar with a stage and a bloke that sang and
played guitar. He was good and very
friendly and it was a nice atmosphere for people who weren’t wanting to boogie
all night long. He played mostly fairly
mainstream rock/pop, REM, U2, Oasis, Crowded House and so on but it did make a
change. One night Ian disappeared off on
his own so I went and had my Vindaloo, then came to Unplugged, couple of drinks
and then back to the hotel to find that the sound system was OFF! It stayed off all night, for the only night
we were there. I was woken after a solid
night of sleep by the hotel manager insisting I had to get a taxi. In my confused, just woken state I thought
Ian had arrived in a taxi and had no money so rushed down to find that no, he
wanted me to get a taxi to the airport.
Due to a mix up on paperwork he’d thought we were only at the hotel for
one week and that I’d missed my transfer. We’d been entered in the register, by him, for
two separate weeks instead of one fortnight.
The stupid cunt.
Ian turned up half an hour later, saying he’d walked a
couple of girls back to their hotel in the bay, stayed for a drink and then
walked back, which had taken all night.
I just think it was a massive coincidence that this happened the day
after Spencer had pointed out a brothel to us.
Carl Cox:
I spent 16 years thinking I’d met the DJ Carl Cox at a pool
party but I checked the photo against pictures on the internet and it isn't
him. We didn't go to any of the big clubs because
we couldn't afford it. It turned out our
“exclusive” hotel had a large party on a trip organised by Kiss FM who all had
tickets to the big clubs included in their package. If I’d gone to them I’m fairly sure I’d have
had a much better experience of clubbing and possibly would have had some drugs
as well. And life may have been VERY
different. 2wentys suck.
Nelly
Nelly, not her real name which I can’t remember, was a girl
we sat next to on the coach on one of our excursions. She was short, a little tubby, wore bad glasses
and had a very heavy cold which meant at most times she had snot visible in her
nostrils. To call her plain would be to
overlook several alarming irregularities in her complexion. My heart did not skip a beat. Ian though took great interest in her as she
was on her own and seemed possibly achievable even to him. I didn't really partake in the conversation
but heard enough to suggest that Nelly would be challenged intellectually by
the average house-cat, which for Ian is another plus because he probably seemed
impossibly interesting to her.
A couple of days later Ian told me he’d bumped in to her in
the street and had gone back to her hotel where she had let him use her
shower. That was awfully nice of her,
our hot water was solar powered and ran out very quickly so I’d been having
cold showers for a week and the smell of Tabasco still pervaded, no matter how
many Ian had.
Then, the next day I was sitting in our hotel bar when she
banged on the window behind me. I waved
and she came in. It turned out that Ian
had omitted to mention a few things from his trip to her bathroom. Apparently Ian had asked Nelly out and when
she said no he told her I liked her too which was an idea she was very on board
with. She had now come to tell me she
was up for it. I may be wrong to this
day but I’m fairly sure she was offering me a shag, there and then, well, not
there but in one of our rooms. I said
no. Actually, with every ounce of tact
and discretion in me I explained that Ian was mistaken, that she was indeed a
lovely girl but I wasn't looking for anything like that but that I’d be
delighted to maintain contact with her.
I didn't even ask to use her shower.
She went away quite happy and I got pissed out of my face, not sure if
I’d just dodged a bullet or given up my only hope of ever having sex again.
A few days later Ian used Nelly to mock me in front of some
other girls so I was forced to point out that he had been turned down by her
and that he was a total shit. Nelly
called me at home a week or so after the holiday and frankly I’d have had a
more engaging conversation with the speaking clock. I dodged a bullet,
Coming Home
I spent the last day in the hotel watching movies and
drinking Coke. Ian went down to the
beach with a girl who went topless and let him take photos of her. Or so he says, I never saw the evidence. Ibiza had really not been for me, I’d
realised I just wasn't a very cool person and was looking forward to going
home.
I didn't get laid in Ibiza so maybe there was something
wrong with me. Notwithstanding the
possibility that he used a ‘Ho, I don’t think Ian got laid either and I’m damn
sure there’s quite a lot wrong with him.
I managed to get a seat away from him on the flight home and when we got
to Gatwick made a dash for the luggage reclaim and then all but ran to the
train station to catch one before Ian had finished saying goodbye to all his
new “friends”. I missed it by seconds
and had to spend another 90 minutes on a train with him.
We then didn't speak for six months.
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