An All-Pervading Inability to Knuckle Down

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that work at Restaurante La Marina would be too good to last.

And indeed; a few months after Manolo’s return from olive picking, he had another serious disagreement with the manager and was promptly fired for the second time – the final parting shot that he sent skittering across their bows being that if they fired him, I would naturally be leaving too in a show of girlfriendly solidarity.

This was news to me, but I found myself acquiescing nonetheless – I have never been able to resist the excitement implied by a sudden change of direction, and so I convinced myself that in light of Manolo’s ‘authority issues’, relations with my employers might well have broken down sooner or later had I stayed.

But whereas Manolo quickly found another steady job in a restaurant next to the beach, I spent the rest of the season failing to settle in one position after another.

First I decided to try to improve my employment lot by approaching the local hotel receptions.

After all, my Spanish was fluent by that stage, and I was even able to boast an impressive smattering of German thanks to the swarms ever-present in the restaurants I had worked in. I was friendly, reasonably intelligent and well turned out-ish in a scruffy-chic sort of a way – what was not to like?

Well sadly quite a lot, as in order to grace the reception desk of a hotel you were apparently required to hold a certificate of intensive studies into the intricacies of the meet and greet –  a certificate that implied several years spent at some prestigious hotelery college or other.

A whistle-stop tour of the University of Life just didn’t pass muster.

I was eventually offered a job in a swanky five-star hotel; shaking piña coladas and stirring Long Island Ice Teas for a clientèle that was almost exclusively Scandinavian.

A swanky five-star hotel that for twelve hours a day whisked me away into air-conditioned, palm-treed, swimming-pooled fakery; the bustle and fascination of the real world kept resolutely at bay with large metal gates – the tinted glass of the foyer’s heavy swing doors finishing the job.

I hated it.

So after a month I accepted a job at Flanagan’s, the restaurant next door to La Marina – they had apparently observed the dexterity with which I handled truculent touristicos and decided I was just what their little operation needed.

But my heart was no longer in it, and four weeks later I was off again, and eventually found myself working behind the bar of The Crown, a small pub that was in unfortunately close proximity to my old nemesis – Restaurante El Molino.

Run by a Mallorquín, Andrés, – married for many years to an Englishwoman – the pub was, in the manner of most pubs, unmistakably British: encouraging the patronage of those amongst my countrymen whose visits abroad are primarily made in order to barbecue several layers of epidermis, drink too much beer and watch endless Sky Sports.

It was behind the bar of this pub that I was working on the day they buried Lady Di – an event that led to an exhibition of oddness that I am unlikely to forget.

Crowds of British tourists had somehow managed to get their hands on black mourning outfits, (the staple of every well-prepared holidaymaker’s suitcase, perchance?) before crowding into the pub to snuffle morosely into their beer and crisps whilst watching the funeral procession on the plethora of television sets scattered around our establishment.

Now I can assure you that I am not a heartless person: a woman losing her life at that young age and two children being deprived of a loving mother is utterly heart-rending; but that dramatic deluge of sobbing, hiccoughing grief from people who knew none of the players in the sorry events struck me as verging on the distasteful.

Using the death of an unfortunate woman as an excuse to wallow self-indulgently in a group display of ‘humanity’ seemed unlikely to go down as a high point in the annals of our history, but as neither a patriot nor a royalist, who was I to judge.

So I just kept on serving the bereaved public their pints and handing over their smoky bacon with an appropriately sombre smile, whilst restricting myself to muttering internally in a ‘bah humbug’ sort of a way as soon as their backs were turned.

As much fun as assisting holidaymakers along the cheerful path of inebriation transpired to be, I was beginning to realise that my time in Mallorca was drawing to a close.

But my inability to settle to a job was not the only reason I was ready to make a move…