Back Home - Tuesday

Half way through the Easter break I finally stop thinking about work and that double-deal exchange of contracts I’ve been sweating on for weeks. A day later I begin to fret about returning and the problems I’ll find.

‘Just try and relax will you?’ Pleads my wife as I tire of the sunshine and an ill-chosen airport book that only makes me think I could do better, if only I was a minor celebrity with a pro-active publicist.
‘I’m off for a walk.’ I tell her wiping the sun-cream tainted sweat from my brow and plodding past a brace of fat Germans both of whom – husband and wife - shouldn’t be sunbathing topless with tits that saggy.
‘Don’t go on your laptop,’ She cautions, as I hop on the baking flagstones. ‘You’ll just depress yourself.’

So in the absence of a chance to check my e-mails, or polish the book draft that might only ever be read by me, I exit stage left just as my wife suggests unhelpfully:
‘Why not chat to a few people? You might actually meet someone you like.’

Still laughing at her absurdly optimistic suggestion, I don the dark glasses disguise and pass a phalanx of horizontal chavs, slowly broiling in the midday sun. Each giving off a pungent whiff of Piz Buin, subtly overlaid with notes of FCUK aftershave, topped by the reek of cheap lager.

To confirm my preferred anonymous status, one of the fat-bellied thugs calls out abruptly, ‘Oi Pedro, three large beers over here, ta.’ as I pass. An absurdly self-destructive impulse to shout: ‘That’s tres grande cerveza por favor senor, you meathead.’ Is only just stilled as I realise returning to the office with a red face and a black eye, isn’t going to help my immediate employment prospects.

As I wander across the road from the hotel I pass five identikit bars offering roast beef lunches and gassy English keg beer, as if it’s a benefit not an embarrassment. Wall-to-wall Premiership football is being illegally beamed to those in need of Yorkshire pudding and Yorkshire bitter, but despite a latent desire to know the scores, I plod on.

After years of selling I can effect a chummy persona and talk about dodgy offside decisions if I have to, but come halftime the chat will inevitably turn to the dreaded, ‘and what do you do?’ question. Short of telling the enquirer, in shiny replica team shirt, a complete porky, or for some real opprobrium pretending I’m a city banker, I prefer to keep walking.

Then as the parade of concrete shops ends, I find the vacant estate agency unit. The one’s I’ve spotted earlier in the holiday have been empty too, with desperate hand-written notices trumpeting special offers and big price reductions, but although the only occupants were morose looking staff in short sleeved shirts, at least they were still open.

Another unwelcome glimpse into my future occurs as I gaze through the smeary window, past the empty wire-hung displays, to see a grubby fake marble floor and a brace of curling cables stretching forlornly from a wall socket. If I thought the UK property market was grim I was mistaken compared to Spain, where if the bank doesn’t snatch-back your home, the local authority repossess the garden that never actually belonged to you.

‘I bought you a drink,’ announces my wife when I return to the pool, indicating a plastic beaker full of gassy lemonade. ‘Only everything is so expensive here now.’
Yep, with the euro riding high against the pound, I think, as I rub some cream into her back and wonder if my waist wobbles like that too after half a week of all you can eat buffet gluttony, it’s no wonder ex-patriot baby boomers are feeling the pinch as badly as my waistband.

A heat-induced dream ensues, as my face tightens in the sunshine and a surreal vision of negotiator S swims into view. Just as she clambers from the pool, rivulets of water tracking her curvaceous frame mouth-wateringly, I gaze upwards to see trainee F’s grinning face on her shoulders. Fortunately my scream was mistaken for anger as the fat Kraut bombed too close to the edge and soaked me.

Time to leave.