More Ketchup Than Salsa - Confessions of a Tenerife Barman (3 page)

‘Yes… you might well,’ answered the woman faintly. The woman was no newcomer to the market and had been on the receiving end of teasing before. You couldn’t blame her for doubting that a couple of fishmongers wearing rabbits on their heads had bought a business on
her
island.

‘I’ll miss you,’ said Sandra at the end of the day. A solitary tear dropped onto a bag of peeled king prawns. ‘Here, take these,’ she blubbered. She checked if Pat was looking and handed us the seafood as a farewell gift.

Pat immediately shouted us over. ‘You three, over here now!’

‘Shit,’ said Sandra. ‘Might be needing a job meself now.’

‘We all clubbed together and bought you something for the bar,’ said Pat. The others were standing around watching. He handed us a box. Inside were an elaborately framed dartboard and two sets of darts. ‘I bet your bar doesn’t have one of those, does it?’

‘No, I’m sure it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Thanks Pat. Thanks everybody.’ We were touched that Pat had taken the trouble to arrange a going away gift, irrespective of the fact that the price tag signalled Whitakers of Bolton had unwittingly donated it.

Pat had spared us a final end of day clear-up. We were keen to get home to start packing. There were only three days to go before we were due to fly out and suddenly it seemed like we had a mountain to climb. I wasn’t ready, neither physically nor mentally.

I had intended visiting the hunting ground of my schooldays in Glossop. Subconsciously I wanted to be transported back to a time where anxiety, responsibility and financial burden had yet to surface. I wanted to recapture those carefree feelings of walking to Su’s at lunchtime when the biggest decision was whether to have batter bits with my chips. I wanted to stand outside the Surrey Arms where my first serious relationship was sealed with a long kiss, when nothing in the world mattered apart from spending every minute of every hour with Lesley Allen.

I desperately wanted to clear the whirlwind of emotions currently wreaking havoc in my head. I wanted to go to Old Glossop at the edge of the Pennines, to wander into the hills and gaze over Derbyshire life. It was there that I always had time to think, safe in the knowledge that at home my mum would have cooked my tea, washed my clothes, been to work and still have the patience in the evening to devote all her time and love to my brother and me. She was the one who had absorbed the anguish of teenage angst, soaked up the grief of broken relationships, made all the plans for our better future while my dad busied himself in making a career, always miles away from his real responsibilities. I could see now that my Dad had passed down his commitment-aversion genes. I, too, had developed a phobia of being trapped in a situation with no means of escape.

But my nostalgic journey was not to be. This was a time for going forwards, not back. I continued with the material aspects of emigrating. Packing for a new life involves a bit more than throwing in a few shirts, a pair of flip-flops and a good book. Everything that I had collected had some meaning. Each time I was coerced into taking things out of my suitcase to throw away, it felt like another nail in the coffin of my life to date.

Despite the wrench of packing for a new life and packing up my old one, all was going according to plan until we got a phone call from our
gestoria
, the person who was sorting out the paperwork for us in Tenerife. ‘Slight problem. I can get work permits and residence permits for the two lads as joint owners, but not the girls. I’ve just found out the only way we can make them legal is if you’re married, in which case the wives automatically become residents. You’ll all have to get married, quickly.’

As much as our hearts were racing at the thought of swapping the two-tone grey of Bolton for the multi-coloured hues of a life in the sub-tropics, Joy and I were adamant that marriage was not a thing of convenience. The threat of wedding chimes set off alarm bells and we said no. The whole move was in jeopardy once again.

Even Faith was disappointed. They had already agreed to get married if it meant we could still go ahead with the plan. They were not amused at our refusal.

‘We’re prepared to sacrifice so much and you won’t budge at all,’ complained Faith at an emergency meeting.

‘We are not being told when to get married,’ I said. ‘We’d rather forget the whole idea.’ Secretly, although I loved Joy, I had no intention of getting married at all, ever. My parents had got divorced and I was not convinced that wearing top hat and tails for a day while paying for a knees-up for distant relations was the key to an eternal romantic union.

In the meantime, David and Faith frantically set about organising their wedding, convinced that we would change our minds. It was only amidst a flurry of international phone calls between Jack and our
gestoria
that she admitted she may have been a little over-emphatic in using the phrase ‘
have
to get married’. We could still go ahead with the move but the legalisation process would take a lot longer, that’s all. The risk was that, in the meantime, should Joy and Faith get caught without either work permits or family connections, they would more than likely be deported. Naturally my brother and his wife-to-be were a little miffed at this eleventh-hour revelation but it was too late to back out, so they proceeded with their big day anyway.

Thus, on a blustery Saturday less than three months since the original business idea had surfaced, and in the presence of a select nearest and dearest, my brother and his girlfriend duly whispered ‘I do’ at a registry office in Salford. The bride, in an inauspicious display of doom and gloom, draped herself from head to toe in flowing black with matching bonnet, boots and mood.

The dashed affair was completed in traditional fashion: the hat competition was won by Aunty Beryl who managed to force an astounding union of millinery and garden mesh; confetti and insults were hurled with equal verve; tearful emotion became more contagious in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed, and never-seen-before in-laws  were loudly hailed as new friends, while quietly cursed as pains in the neck.

All the hellos quickly turned to goodbyes as the last drops from upturned bottles of Beaujolais dripped onto white linen. The following day we were leaving England to start a new life. The honeymoon was already over.

CHAPTER
THREE

To wake up in the morning and realise that this is the day every aspect of your life will change forever is, to put it mildly, a tad daunting. Try as I might, I couldn’t get back to sleep to delay the inevitable. A tinge of excitement at the start of something new was overshadowed by a cocktail of worry: anxiety that it was too late to stop the momentum; fear that we were stepping into the unknown and into a huge debt that would be hung round our necks for a good number of years; and panic that we had lost something – vital paperwork, passports, our minds. Yesterday I had gained a sister-in-law. Today I was to gain a new life, new identity and new prospects. Excitement and anxiety see-sawed continuously. A life with fish seemed years ago and my thoughts were now racing in one direction, towards what lay ahead. Final packing and the drive to the airport were a fuzzy montage of checking, rechecking and re-rechecking. I felt like an obsessive-compulsive.

Money? I patted my pocket. Phew… or was it? I thrust my hand into my pocket and let out a sigh. Yes, money. Was it all there though? Had I dropped some? I remembered pulling the keys out of my pocket to give to Joy. Were some of my hard-earned fish funds lying invitingly on the wet pavement outside Joy’s mother’s house? I pulled out the wad and counted it again. All there. Or was it? Had I counted it wrong? I pulled it out again. 10, 20, 30, 40… ‘Pack it in. You’re going to lose it.’ Joy snatched it from my hands and folded it in her purse.

I was surprised just how calm she was despite having just waved goodbye to her mother. Joy had an inner strength and a practicality that was beyond me. When the going got tough, while I’d look for my coat, Joy would take hers off to wade right in. For her, avoiding trouble and strife was not an option. If she set out to do something, she would continue unfalteringly in a straight line until the mission was accomplished. I would veer right and left haphazardly, trying to find a way round the hard work and confrontation. Some would call it lazy, I preferred ‘creative meandering’. However, creative meandering was not an option now.

David and Faith were to catch a later plane via Madrid so they could accompany Mal the cat on his journey. They would meet us at the bar tomorrow.

As the taxi neared Manchester Airport my nerves called a brief truce. The general melee and the whiff of aviation fuel transported me to a time when personal responsibilities involved nothing heavier than returning to the house with the same clothes I went out in, and not being caught with a finger up my nose.

This airport ‘buzz’ started the day my brother took possession of our first aircraft registration book. We both had an alarming lack of hobbies during our junior school years, a situation that our mother set about rectifying with no little verve and haste. Horse-riding lessons had gathered pace until we both outgrew the pastime – literally. My brother and I were not lacking in stature during our pre-teens. Our assigned ponies, unfortunately, were. Merrylegs and I had to part.

Judo was an equally short-lived pastime. Although our mother took great enjoyment from getting us out of the house on a Saturday morning so she could hoover in peace, the appeal of handing over money to a man who repeatedly threw us to the floor soon waned.

It was thus we were greeted with some poorly disguised horror from friends and family when we announced we had joined the ranks of dumbfounded young (and not so young) anoraks on the viewing gallery at Ringway International Airport.

Any airport now instantly invokes memories of sipping tepid Vimto within the deep safety of an oversized snorkel jacket hood. At regular intervals the sound of rain pattering on polyester would be drowned out by the exciting screams and whistles of a jet taking off or landing no more than a few hundred yards away. Screwing my eyes up, I would read the registration number out to my brother with a mouth full of egg mayonnaise sandwich.

‘Bvhee, voy, phthee, thow, thow, thuren.’

My brother, adept at translating my gobbled observations, would then meticulously scan through our handbook checking for BYC 227.

‘Nope. Already got it,’ he would announce more often than not. Occasionally I would sneak a glance at the more accomplished spotters’ records. Their pages always seemed to have more entries than ours. Written notes and scrawled observations filled their pages. ‘It’s not a competition,’ my brother would remind me. I remember having feelings of inadequacy even then; too few numbers, not enough equipment, tiny thermos flask. We had no short-wave radio to listen to the mysterious dialogue between pilots and the control tower. It was something that we always aspired to, but that was what plane spotting and most other ‘collecting’ hobbies were about. It wasn’t about having, it was about wanting. Even the fully loaded top dog of the viewing gallery would watch enviably as a bulky piece of metal lifted itself from the rain-stained tarmac of monotony to head for unimaginably more colourful skies beyond our horizon. We all wanted to go, but this was the closest a pale eleven-year-old, with just enough money for a bus ticket home and a two-pence piece for the rusty observation binoculars, was going to get. I should have realised then that I would always be striving for more. Contentment was forever going to be, sadly, beyond my grasp. It’s not unhappiness or dissatisfaction at what you already have, more of an obsession with not wanting to miss out on another opportunity that you know is out there.

‘Opportunistic’ was one of the terms that my dad had used to describe me after he had divorced us. It was a rare acknowledgement that he had taken enough interest in his sons to warrant making a judgement, and even then it was in the form of a written word on his suicide note. I was more taken aback by the fact that I had received a personal letter from him than the fact that he had taken his own life.

After all of his years of searching for something away from his family, he had come to the jolting conclusion that his can of contentment was forever going to be perched on a shelf just out of reach. I was intensely aware that I was shopping with a list that was potentially as unattainable.

Joy’s father, Arthur, had arranged to meet her at the airport to say goodbye, but urgent business had called on the day of his daughter’s emigration. Bolton Wanderers were playing Tranmere Rovers in the Third Division playoffs at Wembley. As soon as the fat lady started singing Arthur had promised to make all haste back north to wave us off. Unfortunately (unless you’re a Tranmere fan of course), Bolton lost 1–0 and the post-mortem took a lot longer than expected. This, combined with a particularly popular day for enjoying the M1, meant that the final boarding announcement came well before Arthur did.

I had bid my farewells to my mum and stepfather at their house. Similarly with Joy’s mum, Faye. Even though Joy was primarily the instigator of the idea, I still felt a pang of guilt at having been partly responsible for the decision that took her away from her family. She was the youngest of five offspring, the only girl. I sensed her mother in particular was not overly happy that her daughter had fled the nest for a distant land.

Faye and Arthur were traditional parents who had cemented a close bond with their children. Their four sons all lived within two miles of each other and were regular visitors at the house. I felt like I was stealing Joy from this nurtured and protected environment and risking her happiness two thousand miles into the unknown. Although Joy was initially the most excited about the idea, I sensed that she had still got her lead as to whether it was a sensible idea from me. If I had said no, she’d have been just as happy.

‘We’d better make a move,’ I suggested.

Joy continued nursing a paper cup of coffee, gazing towards the airport entrance. ‘I can’t go without saying goodbye to Dad.’ Her eyes had started to well up. ‘Two more minutes. He’s probably broken down.’ Just as she finished the sentence, Arthur burst through the doors puffing and panting.

‘Bloomin’ broke down,’ he affirmed.

After prolonged and tearful clasps, Joy’s farewells were complete, albeit a touch rushed.

Once on board I idly mulled over the fact that I was about to embark on an exciting life in a foreign land. I watched as the cabin crew ran through their regular repertoire of useful information, pointing out which doors we were to calmly file out of if the plane plummeted to the ground, and revealing the technical intricacies of how to buckle and unbuckle the seat belt. Suddenly a moment of panic jolted my mind.

Foreign! I thought, and then again a bit louder.
Foreign!
As in foreign language! It was one of the many elements of emigrating that I had pushed to the back of my mind. How was I going to communicate with the delivery companies? What if I got lost on a shopping mission? I rummaged through my carry-on bag and whipped out a handy phrase book. The panic increased as I tried to ingest every expression that I thought I might possibly need, but it was no good. Spanish words went in one ear and plopped right out of the other. There was too much to learn. Why don’t these books just include general phrases that could be applied in a variety of situations like: ‘Say nothing unless it’s in English’. Instead, they include specifically useless expressions such as: ‘My hat is on fire and I don’t seem to have any water. Do you know where I may be able to purchase some?’

I gave up and consoled myself with a Jack Daniel’s. We were actually doing it. I was actually being responsible for my own future. I figured this is what it must be like to be a grown-up and felt strangely elated. I was finally committing myself to something that had no way out, something I had to see through whether I liked it or not. If the going got tough this time, I’d have to rough it out, ride the wave, sink or swim. I slammed the cabin crew call button for an emergency refill.

Being served alcohol in your seat is one of the few redeeming factors about flying. This aside, it seems that the comfort of passengers is well down on the list of priorities for most charter airlines, just below making sure there are ample miniatures available for the cabin crew to take home, and checking that the captain has credit on his Visa in case the plane runs out of fuel.

Seating arrangements are absurdly inadequate unless you’re awarded the privilege of a fire exit seat, and with it the responsibility of fathoming out the sequence of lever-yanking necessary to operate the exit door following an unscheduled freefall. I was also the victim of an incessant recliner. The only way I could read the in-flight magazine was to rest it on the bald pate of the man in front who had reclined so much that I managed to pass a good few minutes counting the moles on his head.

The joys of having someone inconsiderate in front can only be equalled by having an oblivious individual behind and I had scored in both directions. Every twenty minutes or so, the incontinent man grabbed my seat to lever himself up, catapulting my head as he battled to clamber over his neighbours on numerous scurries to the toilet.

This made reading impossible and, for want of anything better to do, I paid a visit to the toilet myself. I have to admit to having a fascination with these sites of sensory overload. They’re like giant Fisher Price Activity Centres. The combined aroma of cleaning fluids, cheap soap and a dozen lingering perfumes confuse your sense of smell, while the unfamiliar sounds of droning engines, creaking plastic and ‘whoosh’ of water being magically whisked away lead to disorientation. A barrage of notices add to the chaos, warning of dire consequences for disposing of paper products in the waste disposal unit or waste products in the paper disposal unit.
Wipe round to clean. Lift up to drain. Push down to flush. Press in to call. Slide across to close. Pull out to open.
In a state of increasing panic I struggled to fulfil all my obligations and with one hand hastily trying to hitch up my trousers, the other unwittingly resting on the call button, the door flew open.

‘Can I help you sir?’ enquired the stewardess, holding the door open a bit wider and for just a little longer than I deemed necessary.

‘You were a long time,’ noted Joy on my return.

‘Just trying to pass the time,’ I replied, deliberately disturbing the slumber of my bald lap mate with a well-placed elbow.

I spent the remainder of the flight staring at the clouds or squinting at re-runs of the hugely unamusing
Terry and June
sitcom that seems to be compulsory viewing for those restrained in padded seats, locked inside metal cells miles away from populated areas.

After four hours the captain announced our descent. Out of the window the peak of Mount Teide, Tenerife’s sleeping volcano, poked through the cloud cover below. The ethereal vision of our new homeland, obscured by cloud yet signalled by the impressive point of Spain’s highest mountain, added to the apprehension of entering another world, another life even.

We touched down, waved our passports at the disinterested customs officials and awaited the arrival of four mismatched suitcases, three borrowed holdalls and a square, plastic flight bag that, nowadays, is usually sported only by those passengers who still insist on travelling in 1970s safari suits with hair severely parted in a cut-along-here-for-lobotomy fashion.

We had been happily reunited with half of our baggage, but then cases from another flight began to mingle with ours. The tannoy garbled in Spanish and then repeated the message in equally unintelligible English. Something about hairdryers were not to be used on horses.

A rotund German lady with exceptional BO had stolen my view and I leaned a little closer to the conveyor belt. As I did, an overhanging Samsonite rushed from behind the lady and struck me square in the groin, lifting me up slightly and carrying me along for a couple of inches. Now I had tears in my eyes and an intense urge to lie down to contend with, as well as the pungent sumo obstructing my vision.

‘That’s our case on that belt over there,’ said Joy, pointing to the adjacent carousel.

After relaying back and forth rounding up the remainder of our wayward luggage, the air rife with the fragrance of squelching armpits, and with a nagging ache lingering in my gonads, we were welcomed to Tenerife.