Tenerife: Day One

DISCLAIMER

Choosing a name for your blog is rather like choosing a name for your band – all the best ones taken, so in order to roll that motherfucker out into the public domain, you’ve got to settle for a bad one.   I could think about it longer and come up with a name that's not quite so dire, but that'd mean you, dear reader, would have to wait longer before this beautiful blog was before your eyes.  The trick is to bite the bullet and just get on with it, even though you’re slightly embarrassed about whoring it around. 

PREAMBLE

A few weeks ago, my GP, the affable Dr Chris, told me that I was suffering from exhaustion coupled with mild anxiety.  Fucking hell, I’m turning into Edward Norton in Fight Club (before he wises up and bones Helena Bonham-Carter).  Good job I’ve got a holiday to Tenerife booked up, eh?  It’s tough being as important and as popular as I am.  Sometimes life just takes its toll, man…

JOURNEY

It’s 5am on Tuesday 12^th September 2011 and I’m feeling dreadful because not only, as I’ve just told you, it is 5am, but also because I’ve spent the day before throwing up.  I’m pretty sure it was those sadistic bastards at Domino’s.  That’ll serve me right for trying to broaden my life experiences by ordering a half-and-half.  Perhaps it was God and Baby Jesus telling me to cut down on my carbs and saturated fats.  I do love a bit of divine intervention.

This is probably the first time and the last time I’ll see the 6am ghosts at Dalston Kingsland station.  Despite living in the same part of the same city, we exist in different time zones.  Our lives never touch and right now I feel a bit like an imposter, or worse, a tourist.

Fuck Gatwick.  I’m more of a Heathrow man – they’ve got a Paul Smith in T3, which is where I bought the striped scarf I’m wearing right now and is also probably the reason that the thing the big ginger rugby player I’m sat opposite to is whispering to his girlfriend (who is way out of his league and almost in mine) is about my sexuality.  I care not.  Even if I were that way inclined (ladies, I’m not), it’s 2011, who cares?  John Barrowman.  Jodie Foster.  Tom Cruise.  Everyone’s at it.

Anyway, it’s around this time that I realise that I’m slightly out of my comfort zone.  Sat at departure gate 38, surrounded by elderly couples, parents with babies and loved-up couples.  Not a hipster in sight.  A lot of beige and crew cuts going on here.  A lot of baggy trousers and Hawaiian shirts.  I’m dressed in a black suit that fits a little too snugly.  I think this is about the time that I accepted I am a hipster.  Fuck it, there are worse things to be.  Like a Nazi or the singer of Elbow.   I should’ve been prepared for this.  Tenerife isn’t some sort of hipster Mecca.  It’d be different if I were going to…Christ…where do hipsters go?  Williamsburg?  Yeah, it’d be different if I were about to board a plane for Williamsburg Airport in the centre of Williamsburg for a secret Daft Punk gig in Nick Valensi’s basement.  As an aside, I am aware there is no Williamsburg Airport and I also seem to be the only person in the world who thinks that Daft Punk are shit. 

Monarch Airlines.  The bastards have already charged me £8.99 each way for the privilege of booking my seat online in order to avoid a £50 charge for making them do it at the airport so I’m being rude to the staff who are just trying to get on with their jobs.  They probably hate Monarch more than I do. 

Bumpy take-off.  I have this theory that the cheaper the airline, the worse the pilots.  It’s not unreasonable.  When I fly BA, I expect Maverick (second Tom Cruise reference in this post, maybe I am turning…) to be at the helm, guiding us through all the turbulence and Russian missiles.  When I’m flying Ryanair, it’s more like that old alcoholic guy from Independence Day who dusts the wrong crops.  You know the guy I’m talking about.  But I’m comfortable with dying.  We’ve all gotta go sometime, right?  Besides, it’s a pretty dramatic way to bow out.  And I’d be in such esteemed company as Buddy Holly, The Busby Babes and, er, Aaliyah.  They’d probably make the anniversary a British Bank Holiday.  I digress.  Talking about death again.  Bloody goth.  It’s not like I’m flying Aeroflot or anything.  Chillax m8.

The inflight entertainment could’ve been a little better.  I refused to shell out another £2.50 for some headphones (which I could keep!) to hear it, so instead I was subjected to an episode of Glee about a cheerleader trying to fuck a guy in a wheelchair whilst my iPod belted out Queen’s A Day At The Races as the soundtrack.  Then I watched a Cee Lo Green concert with DMX shouting ‘motherfucker’ and ‘nigga’ in my ears.  However, the icing on the cake was Will Mellor’s White Van Man.  This pretty much consisted of our cheeky hero trying to avoid a parking ticket inspector and a fat guy in a wife beater.  I tried to read my book, but the tractor-beam smile of that Manc cunt was too hard to resist. 

Despite there being so many old people on the plane that it smelt like a charity shop, all I noticed were the fucking babies.  There’s one, two seats to my left, gargling and crying its way through the fucking flight.  Cheers for that, Baby.  The mother’s putting on a silly voice.  The mother’s clapping.  In public.  Everyone else is silent (except for the fucking baby, of course).   The baby’s rattling a box of Smints.  Can you overdose on Smints?  Oh, now it’s crying because its ears have popped.  That’s what happens on planes, you stupid fucking baby. 

Probably should move on from the baby thing seeing as I’ve recently become a Godfather…Sorry.

SPAIN

They just don’t give a fuck in Spain.  I was out of the plane, through passport control and into my taxi in about five minutes.  I try to talk to the driver, but he already hates me for declining the front seat in favour of the back one.  Then I have to tip the bastard and the smallest note I have is 20 fucking Euros.  Sometimes I wish I didn’t have such a kind and generous heart.

Mediterranean Palace, Playa De Las Americas. 

I’m queuing for about 20 minutes to check-in, but I don’t mind because they’re giving me free Champagne.  I get through three glasses and they go to my head because I haven’t eaten anything in almost 48 hours due to those cunts at Domino’s poisoning my guts.  I unsuccessfully try to flirt with the receptionist. 

‘I’m sorry, we don’t have a smoking room you requested.’

‘That’s okay, I gave up two weeks ago, so I’m kind of glad you don’t have it.’

‘If you want a cigarette though, you can, just don’t disturb the other guests by having one of the balcony.’

‘You’ve done that before, right?’

‘No.’ 

She hands me my key.

'Your room is 5015.’

‘5015, yeah?  Okay, see you later, babes.’

Nothing.  Cold.

My room’s nice.  So is my view.

So this is what stressed-out adults do – they go on holiday.  Christ, I can see tits from my balcony. 

‘Wonder if I could Spiderman them from here,’ I joke to myself.  I laugh a lot. 

Armed with a pair of shorts and this nice striped singlet I bought from Topman, I wander down to the pool via the bar.  I flirt, this time a little more successfully, with the barmaid, who pours me a Singapore Gin Sling, which didn’t have much Singapore or Sling in it. 

Try to put some sun cream on my back.  This is what I need a girlfriend for, I think to myself, annoyed that I look like I’m having some sort of stroke whilst trying to apply the stuff.  

The couples seem a lot older than me, but in reality there’s probably only about two or three years in it.  Cancerous tans aside, everybody here is very, very white.  It’s odd to be taken from the cultural cauldron of Dalston and dropped into what looks like a BNP summer camp for grown-ups.  I’m sure they’re all lovely, though.  Not a racist amongst them.  But, Christ, there are a lot of Fat Jason Stathams.   Also, it appears that I am the only male reading a book.  Fuckin’ homo.

It dawns on me that since the Domino’s catastrophe, I’ve had nothing to eat.  The Champagne and the gin have absolutely killed me so it’s probably the right time to get another drink.  I prop myself up at the bar.  It’s only 6pm, but I’m on holiday, so I’ll get drunk when I damn well want.  After a few beers I ask the barmaid from before, who is now my friend, where the best place to eat is.  She draws me a little map and puts her phone number on it.  It’s always nice to have options even if she has drawn her eyebrows on. 

I leave the bar, completely ignore her advice and go to some Argentinian steak place.  I eat some unseasoned, sparsely garnished skirt steak and drink a bottle of wine.  (Fuck you, I’m on holiday.) 

Feeling sick and quite drunk, I decide that I need a cigarette, so I walk down to a ‘supermarket’ by the beach and for €1.90 buy a pack of these:

I’m lying down on the beach smoking a Coronas (my new brand) and thinking about the title sequence to The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin.  I skim a few stones, but I’m not as good at that as when I was a kid.  Maybe it’s because I’m left-handed.  They don’t make stones for left-handed people.   Cheers for that, Mother Nature. 

Deciding that to the passing couples, the sight of me drunk on my own, badly skimming stones and chain-smoking these vile Spanish cigarettes might look like I’m building up to some sort of emotional suicide-bid, I retire to my room and pass out. 

Day one over.