So, I have a short novel to start reading (recommended by RigelBB) and the Sunday times before settling down to the Newcastle vs Chelsea match on the box.
I will be joined by the Italian Hairdresser who is one of my few friends to be substantially my junior.
I met the Italian Hairdresser when he was 16 and sweeping floors and making cups fo coffee in Toni and Guy Kingston-upon-Thames. He is 10 years (less a couple of weeks) younger than me. We share similar extrovert personalites; for those who like their astrology we are both Leo sun signs. Over the years we have also had a common bond through house music.
For many years we were acquaintances who got on well whenever we bumped into each other, but there became an extra dimension to our relationship when I went to Ibiza for the summer in 2000. I knew that the hairdresser loved his clubbing and partying. At the time I would have been 35 and him 25. The big night / day in Ibiza for me would be to go to the Manumission party on the Monday night / Tuesday morning and then onto the Space Terrace for the after party all day Tuesday and then onto the party at Bora Bora beach before retiring to my good friend ("HehHehHeh's") bar into the early hours of Wednesday morning.
As I was getting ready at about 11pm on the Monday night I would always ring the hairdresser. He didn't work Monday's (most hairdressers work Saturdays) so I would always catch him as he was preparing to go to bed knowing that his weekend was coming to an end. In other words I would stick the sounds on in my Ibicencan flat and start whooping on about how I was well rested and getting ready to go and party for the next thirty or so hours.
You can imagine that this was like sticking a stake through a vampire's heart. Not much fun for him but superb banter from me. Of course, I could always ring him from Ses Salinas beach on the Wednesday when I was recovering in 35 degree Celsius heat with Sangria and Calamari if I felt like reopening the wound.
On one particular week I rang his phone and a stranger answered. He told me that he had the hairdresser's phone and the hairdresser had his and that the Hairdresser was in Ibiza with girlfriend in tow. To this day I do not know what the phone thing was all about, but I rang the number he gave me and sure enough Italian hairdresser 1 and Italian hairdresser 2 were both staying close by.
It was one of those occasions when all roads lead to Ibiza because this time overlapped with a week that my parents had come out to see me and the "Boxer" was also out with his stag party. The stag party had the full complement of mates including "Notoplip", "Sound Man" and "Big Boss", so it really was a full on week.
Unfortunately most of the best tales from the next few days are unprintable in a public forum without being self-incriminating but it is enough to say that we had an excellent few days and the Hairdresser and I lay down bonds that have bridged the age gap from now until this day.
Whilst I cannot share most of the humour, I was able to look after him and his now wife to make sure that they had a great holiday. This was made easier by the fact that I had my convertible BMW with me out there so I went with them to my favourite beaches and clubs.
We had one particularly afternoon on a beach, which goes down in folklore and not for all the right reasons. We pitched up on Ses Salinas beach at the swankiest of the four beach bars "Malibu". Getting your footwear right in a hot climate is very important even though I do not generally suffer from smelly feet. I had taken to wearing plastic soled beach shoes and had been unware of their odour despite having been warned on an earlier visit by Kitten. The hairdressers had been enquiring about a bad smell for quite a while before pin-pointing my shoes as the culprits. We were in fits of laughter because they really were bad and it was quite amazing that I had not noticed that I had been walking around in smelly shoes for quite some time. No amount of rinsing them in the sea would cure them and we resorted to burying them in the sand until we left.
Perhaps the most unusual event of our chilled out day (apparently the hairdressers' last before returning home) was one of those coincidences that you wonder where they come from. The hairdresser and I had been sharing some of our favourite meditteranean "rolled up cigarettes" and were engaging our imaginations. The Malibu beach bar is not the best beach bar on the beach because it veers towards the pretentious whereas the Jockey Club further down captures the vibe better.
You see waiters coming down onto the beach and delivery drinks to the punters with their tea-towels over their upstretched arms that are carrying the drinks. The sea is littered power boats, yachts and some of them extremely grandiose. Consider the Lady Moura that was a frequent visitor to the beach whilst I was out there.
As Italian hairdresser and I were engaging our imaginations we noticed a motorised dingy at the water's edge and we speculated that it would be amazing if one of the waiter's came down from the Malibu resplendent with drinks and tea-towel, started the motor and hot-footed it out ot one of the nearby power-boats or yachts. No sooner had we finished our sentence than a waiter came out of the bar, down to the water's edge, started the motor and hot-footed it out to a nearby powerboat.
I had been to the beach several times and had not seen this happen before, probably because it was early season. It came to be a common sight in the height of the summer but, at the time, Italian Hairdresser and I were quite taken aback. So much so that we both gazed intently at our "rolled up cigarette", simultaneously threw our gaze to the waiter in the dinghy, back to the "rolled up cigaretted" then back to each others incredulous faces and then burst out laughing. "Good sheeeeet, huh".
Of course this was Italian Hairdressers' penultimate day, or so he claimed. Suffice to say that hairdresser's must have scissors because they are not the sharpest tools in the box themselves (I jest). It had turned out that their apartments were only a couple of hundred metres from where I was staying and, no sooner had I dropped them off than Italian Hairdresser was ringing me and showing his tender years by his blind panic.
"Swordfish" they have chucked all of our stuff out of the apartment in black bags. It took me a couple of minutes to calm him down and a couple of minutes to work out that he was returning to London that day and had not checked out of his room. He had simply assumed a date based on number of nights and had not counted the first, nor checked his tickets. He was still trying to justify his position despite the weight of evidence being obvious to the most supportive of bystanders.
A bit more cool headedness and I worked out that there was still and hour plus until his flight. I mulle dhtis over whilst he panicked that the airport transport had already left. So, hood down and plastic bags unpacked into suitcases we headed over the San Jose hills to Eivissa airport where a 30 minute pre-flight arrival is good enough for those in the know.
As, I said the best stories I cannot print here but that gives some insight into how I know Italian man and his good lady wife.
So that's why we were waiting around all morning for you surface! Cymraes
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