A Taste of Freedom

The new waitressing gig at La Marina was turning out to be a definite step up from El Molino.

One of the more welcome advantages of this rather more civilised operation was that we were allowed to drink whatever we wanted whenever we wanted (with the obvious exception of alcohol, and even that was up for grabs once we had packed up the restaurant in the evening) – an indispensable requirement when you are working on your feet for twelve hours at a time in an un-air-conditioned environment that on a hot day can reach over 35˚c (and far hotter when you are hanging about at the kitchen hatch waiting to be handed the next stack of steaming plates).

My previous employers had felt entirely justified in only providing us with a five litre plastic bottle of ‘mineral water’, which had actually been refilled with tap water and subsequently rendered utterly undrinkable.

I don’t know how many of you are acquainted with the ditty, “Water in Ma-jaw-ca don’t taste like wot it oughta.”

Or for those not au fait with cockney English, “The H²O from the largest Balearic Island is not as palatable as one might opine it should be.”

A ditty that had its roots in the rock solid foundations of absolute truth.

The reason behind it being threefold: overpopulation of the coastal resorts had led to real problems establishing a reliable fresh water supply, there had been contamination of fresh water pockets by sea water, and the water on the island also had an abnormally high mineral content.

Using it for cleaning teeth and even filling a kettle was just about acceptable, but actually drinking a glassful, even when parched, was absolutely nobody’s desired method of rehydration.

It was during those first weeks that I made my first real Spanish friend; that is to say someone who had not been introduced to me through Manolo.

Pili (short for Pilar) from Córdoba, was only about a year older than me, and  happened to be working behind the bar of La Marina until her normal place of employment opened for the season. Her entire family lived and worked on the island and her home was in an apartment complex towards the other side of Puerto Alcúdia where she lived with her older brother and her parents.

The combination of Pili’s uncomplicated friendship and the infinitely more benign working hours meant that I could finally get out and about and have some proper teenage fun.

The very first time we set out on an adventure – cinema and tapas in Palma with two of her friends – felt almost chokingly auspicious: there I was participating in a ridiculously commonplace activity – one that I had done hundreds of times back home – but this time I was doing it in a foreign language in a foreign country and with brand new foreign friends.

Sitting in the Spanish cinema, eating Spanish popcorn and understanding a Spanish-dubbed Hollywood film (Sleepers, in case anyone is interested) gave me a far deeper sense of belonging than even my relationship with Manolo had done up to that point.

I had finally made the transition from ‘guiri’ (a derogatory term used to mean foreigner, but more specifically a transient foreigner or tourist) to normal teenage girl going about a normal teenage life – and with it discovered the heady and addictive delights of integration…

Thus, by the time the dastardly deserter eventually reappeared from his picking duties in the spring, I had been introduced to all the music bars in town, danced in all the discos, had a midnight swim in the pool of local hotspot ‘Menta’, played dozens of games of pool with Pili’s brother and his friends, met lots of new people, made lots of new friends and generally had a ball.

None of which impressed my newly returned boyfriend, (equality of sexes apparently not an idea that had taken off in the macho Spanish Gitano culture) who had apparently been expecting to find me sitting meekly on the sofa where he’d left me two months previously.

In retrospect I would have saved myself a considerable headache had I been clever enough to read the signs when he began making it impossible for me to see Pili. But on I trundled, cheerfully oblivious to the implications his behaviour would have brought to the attention of anyone more astute…