What next?

By this stage you may have noticed, if of course you are still reading, that my six-month Spanish stay was threatening to run over time.

And indeed it was.

But as the summer months passed, it had slowly dawned on me that I was really not remotely ready to return to England. I was enjoying my exciting new life far too much, and the possibilities of continuing to enjoy myself, whilst also learning interesting, life-related stuff, seemed to be endless.

My original plan had been to return to Northamptonshire in September to start a Spanish A-level course. But what was the point? Surely it would be far easier to pick up a language whilst living amongst the people who spoke it every day?

So it was with a gasp of relief that I finally pushed all thoughts of returning to formal education to the recesses of my mind, and sunk gratefully back into the Mallorcan adventure.

Whose adventurousness was upped yet further when Manolo got the sack from the peppermint-striped restaurant: a huge disagreement with the manager had culminated in him being asked to leave.

It was a development that placed an unwelcome question mark over how the winter months might pan out.

Previous to the sacking I had already planned every detail; romantic strolls on the beach, romantic meals in the moonlight, romantic so on and romantic so forth: it seemed only fair after the drudgery of the summer months to spend our hard-earned money on quality time actually getting to know each other.

But my fluffy teenage fantasies were soon stomped on when Manolo informed me, in a tone that brooked no discussion, that as he was no longer employed he had no choice but to return to Andalucía to help his family with the itinerant olive harvest.

I could either accompany him, and spend the winter grovelling around in the earth picking up bucket loads of half-frozen fruit, or go home.

Hummmm. Crumpets in front of the fire in Blighty, or frostbite under an olive tree in Jaén. Tough one… I would actually have preferred to have stayed in Mallorca and hunt out some winter work, but my gypsy lover obviously didn’t trust me one iota. Had I been a little surer of myself and a few years older, I would have stuck to my guns, but being a timid, immature little creature, I chose the crumpets.

(Of course had I been a true gung-ho adventurer, I would have chosen the Andalucian olive picking, which would I’m sure have lent itself to a far more fascinating telling… but you lives and learns.)

A week before our planned departure – Manolo to Granada, me to the UK – I had a much longed for visit from my darling mother. It was now November, and we hadn’t seen each other since the end of April, so a very happy little mother/daughter reunion was witnessed by Manolo in Palma’s newly-refurbished Son Sant Joan airport.

I was puffed-up with pride to be able to introduce her to my cheeky Spanish chappy – although conversation between them was destined to be limited, in fact nigh on non-existent due to Manolo’s lack of English and Mum’s dearth of Spanish.

Now, my mother is a wonderfully discreet and tactful person, but even I, with all my youthful optimism, suspected that she was not overly thrilled by the prospect of having this rather brash young man as a son-in–law. Luckily for him, I was still at an age where parental approval was a bit of a no no, thus our fledgling love affair remained unthreatened by this turn of events.

So a wonderful week was had by all. I took great pleasure in waltzing Mum round all the tapas bars, enticing her to try habas fritas, calamares a la romana, pulpo gallego, ensaladilla rusa and tortilla de patatas amongst other delicacies that I had gluttonously discovered and devoured over the previous months.

She in turn was gratifyingly impressed by my fluency in the language of my host country, and on each and every occasion that she witnessed an interchange in Spanish I was bombarded with; ‘Well, what did you/he/she say? And what are they saying over there? They speak very fast, don’t they?! How do you pronounce grassy arse again?’

‘It’s gracias Mum, gra-thee-ass.’

‘Oh yes, gassy arth, that was it.’

‘No Mum… Oh never mind.’

Parting from Manolo for over two months was predictably and deliciously tragic; the potential for dramatic declarations and lovesick wilting over the holiday period almost too glorious to contemplate.

But two months of catching up with friends, ferrying plates at the local pub and taking the odd Spanish lesson passed in a lickety split; and the following January saw the youthful lovers reunited as planned – all set for another season of love and romance across the cultural divide.