I’m rocking out to Plan B’s album “The Defamation of Strickland Banks” in the beach bar rather loudly, dancing away, stocking the fridge with my phone sitting between my shoulder and my ear, a cold beer on the side. England take note- this is how work should be.
Last year me and Vincente ran the joint and had blast inventing cocktails and theme nights, drinking and partying as much as the customers. This year however, he decided that it was too much work, and even though he comes and sits on the end of the bar and drinks buckets loads of whiskey and sprite whilst rolling joints for himself most weekends, he flatly refuses to work this summer. (A fellow graduate who has decided his brain needs a rest from any kind of strenuous activity. His answer to the ‘post-uni question’ is to drink and smoke until summer is over. Then worry about it.)
So this year when I arrived back to Spain, I was pleased to hear they specifically wanted me to work another season in the same place- what I didn’t realize was that they were all going to disappear when I started my shift at 8pm.
If you looked up ‘typical Spanish man’ in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Juan- the boss of the beach bar. He has curly black hair, a hairy chest and wicked sparkling eyes that flash when he smiles. Juan beams and smiles and growls and yells all at the same time in a continuous roll of elated speech, talking to himself customers ands and staff in gravelly tones, rolling his ‘r’s so it’s hard to tell whether he’s purring or growling at you. Spanish people work ridiculously hard along the coast as they make the most of the summer season; Juan along with various sons and nephews (who all seem to be called Juan too) run the beach bar seven days a week, ten hours a day all summer.
After pats on the backs and welcome back and hugs etc, I’m handed a cold beer and a set of keys, told about banking- (which in Spain rarely has anything to do with a bank and generally involves hiding the takings in obscure places. My ex-boyfriend used to hide the day’s takings in a biscuit tin somewhere around his bar out here (!?) and once rang me in a frantic temper yelling at me not to put the washing machine on because he’d left an evening’s takings in his pocket- about 800 euro.) I hear “adios!” and various scooters zooming off into the horizon.
Bye? He leaves me to it. Apparently Juan trusts me enough to have the whole bar to myself, I can close when I want, and depending on which amigos pop down for a visit or theme nights I invent, I stay open til 7.30am, 5am or 2am, whenever. Liberating. If not slightly scary.
Following the model of last year, over the next few weeks there are a few theme nights, including melon night, white night and Hawaiian night, where I was given pretty ropey looking pair of plastic coconuts which apparently would serve as a top. (Nice try Juan) I compromised and wore my bikini top and a grass skirt. The grass skirt I liked and had loads in a box in the ice cream cupboard- and gave them out to various customers and friends. I was particularly happy to see two customers (male) wearing them as part of fancy dress outfit the next evening in a different bar. (The deal was they could wear them if they told everybody that asked, which bar the skirts came from. At the point I saw them, I’m not sure they could remember their own names, let alone remember that I gave them the skirts..)
When I say beach bar- I mean it- it’s a wooden 'chirenguito'- meaning shack- on the sand and my uniform consists of bare feet, and whatever skirt shorts or dress takes my fancy. It so hot in the day that the heat leaks into the night and I’m rarely ever cold even with the sea breeze. It’s very well built; wooden paneling and cream wind-breakers (withstanding the odd tornado), at the back are a row of BBQs where the food is cooked during the day, which at 8pm when I start are usually slowly cooling. There’s a hut attached to the side that has all the ice-creams in and a small porta-loo on the other side. It doesn’t get dark until about 10pm and one of the best things about this job is watching the sky and the sea change colour as the sun goes down. The sea and sky and even the sand seem to fade into shades of mauve, soft purple and lilac and before it goes dark- setting behind the bar over the mountains- but it rises on the sea. It’s worth it being knackered and shuting the bar at 7am to watch it light up the sea, turning the sky red, orange then slowly a clear blue colour as it hits the water. The only thing that rivals such a sight is the smell and the noise. Sea air, with the salt and the warmth feels so fresh and clean- it wakes you up, energizing, and hearing the waves crash on the sand, pulling back and surging forward is for me, so calming.
So anyway, I’m busy dancing away to Plan B (track 3, my favorite) and my friend on the phone is telling me to turn it down. I love him a ridiculous amount but he is well-known in our little circle as pretty much impossible to understand on the phone. He has a Murcia accent which means you pretty much loose the consonants at the end of all words; ‘terminado’ becomes 'terminao,' 'complicado' becomes 'complicao' and so on. This seems to translate to his English so you pretty much loose any chance of a coherent string of conversation with the lost letters. He’s telling me about the BBQ he’s having the next day, and being a man bought so much meat the fridge had a heart attack and died (perhaps it was a vegetarian fridge) and was in the process of moving the meat to another location. I can’t quite decipher where he is now and where the hell the meat is going, but I make a note to myself to not eat anything all day tomorrow if I want to be able to keep up.
“Put on what the paying customer wants, Spanish people don’t want Plan B,” he tells me. Apart from some pretty good house music, ‘Gasolina’ in a variety of forms seems to appear in the majority of bars, that and the world cup anthem- a Spanish version which is rather popular- reminding anyone that possibly missed the news that yes, Spain won the world cup and yes, they rock.
How wrong he is. I’m one of those annoying people that when I like a song, or indeed in this case, an entire album, I play it over and over again untill me, along with the rest of the world, are completely sick of the sound of it. A table of Spanish customers drinking a variety of complicated coffees ask me the name of the group and the album. Pah. Perhaps I sold it to them with my awesome shape-making. Perhaps not. In England we have white coffee, black coffee and if we’re feeling a bit pretentious we stretch to a franchised latte, cappuccino or even a frappuchino. Spain is a different story. When I first worked in a bar out here at 18, I was confronted with café bon bon, café carajillo, cortado- let-alone when you start mixing in the possibilities of decaf- from the machine, sachets of it etc. They take their coffee and ice-cream very seriously- ice-cream parlors are often open as late at the bars, a wide variety appearing in various shapes and forms for all the family. And I can honestly say, it took more time and effort to understand their bizarre coffee taking habits, that to get a good grasp of the Spanish language.
Suffice to say Plan B continues since I am head DJ, head bartender and the head of whatever I want since its just me, and I’m completely unfazed by the fact that I’ve played it over and over all evening. The Romanian security guard that keeps an eye on the beach bar is bemused but comments he particularly likes track 4 ‘She Said’ - good choice.
(He’s a really interesting guy, speaks 5 languages and was in the French legion, and from what I can get out of him has been in some pretty hairy situations. He says random wise sayings that sound out of sync because I never quite know what language or culture he’s translating them from- by the time it reaches me in Spanish it comes out like this for example; “If you knows everything and have nothing to learn more, I just kill you so knowledge is for next person. Life has no use for you without learning.”
I assure him I’m a graduate and have every intention of one day doing a Masters so definitely have a reason to not be killed. He‘s over 6 foot 4 and built like a New Zealand rugby player- I watch him pick up 5 huge parasols in one arm that would take me or my friends two people per brolly, and he was pretty firm about this blog- I’m not allowed to mention his name or his work (shit) and I’m slightly afraid to ask the massive fellow- who I’ve convinced myself is a gentle giant- quite why he has to be so secretive. Perhaps it’s better not to ask? More of him in the next post…)
A group of my mum’s friends from back home are staying in a nearby resort in La Manga, and having descended on little Mil Palmeras for a day at the beach with various children and patient husbands in tow, they come to say hello and have a ‘one for the road’ drink on their way back. (Essex is one of those places where the inhabitants seem to stick together and follow each other around, subconsciously. I‘ve come to believe that Essex is a race of people, not a county or reigon- at uni and out here, everyone gets very excited when you find a fellow Essex-lander, and an instant bond and unsaid understanding that you will be friends, happens simultaneously.)
I’m telling one of them about the Hawaiian theme night; the costumes, plates of kiwi and pineapple on the tables and free pina-colada cocktails when someone yells excitedly “Awww Marelene, another pina-colada Marlene?” (Only Fools and Horses right?) This subsequently becomes the drink of choice for the evening. I make a bucket of the stuff and ladle it out into ‘fish-bowl’ glasses, decorated with colored straws. (There was much disappointment that there were no umbrellas.) The huge round glasses that could quite easily house a goldfish or two, seem to be the typical style of glass for bars out here- they need to be this big as rather than measuring spirits in 25ml or 50ml, Spain goes by the ‘count to six and a bit more for luck’ pouring style when it comes to spirits.
The gang manages to take up most of the bar and I give out a range of crisps, olives and variety of ice-creams to keep various children happy so that the parents are able to enjoy the flowing pina-coladas. “Marleeeene” I hear over and over- apparently it doesn’t get old.
After they leave, I dash to the porta-loo and am minding my own business when it all goes very dark. I scramble about uncomfortably until I find my way out and find that it’s pretty much as dark outside as it is inside. Power cut. Some else the Spanish don’t do by half.
I find some candles and a few random lanterns in the ice cream hut and hang them along the bar top, the sea breeze making them gently sway and flicker. (Dripping wax everywhere I later discover.) The whole town of ‘Mil Palmeras and the neighboring town ‘La Torre’ have gone dark, and it seems to make the sea louder. Black waves crash on to dark warm sand and the light lost in the towns seems to have transcended to the stars. They are so unbelievably bright, without the distraction of street lights, music from bars and restaurants- there seems to be nothing but stars, so clear I feel I could pick them out.
The sand between my toes, still warm from the heat of the day, the salty sea breeze so fresh it makes me feel cleaner with every breath, and those stars- if this doesn’t make me feel good, nothing will. I am completely engulfed in that moment, grounded from the sand up to the stars, and I feel really really good.
I snap out of my hippie one-with-mother-nature moment and realize with no electricity, there is consequently a hell of a lot of melting ice-creams and ice in the bar…
One of the chefs come down to see if I’m ok out on the beach in the dark- and shows me a little trick of opening the till by sticking a knife in the back of it (I don’t ask where he learnt that trick) because of course with no electricity, there is no till.
The bar looks so pretty, I sit on one of the fridges, have a beer, and kind of just wait. The lights show no sign of reappearing, but no one seems too surprised. This is Spain with it’s ‘manana manana mentality’ (tomorrow tomorrow). I give customers candles at their tables and resist the urge to do a bit of singing to make up for the lack of Plan B on the music system. By the time I decided to shut up shop, the lights come back on as I lock the last door and hide the money in one of various genius places as instructed. I wander home- hearing tales of people’s brief encounter with no electricity- ranging from the peril of ovens turning off in busy restaurants, to the atrocity of missing Sherlock Holmes on T.V- the gentlemen was extremely displeased.
I wonder if I was the only one that noticed the stars.
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