First week as an Ibiza resident

No problem is quite what you expect. Saturday’s journey was a nightmare. (Was it really just a week ago?) I was up all night bar a couple of hours shoving stuff into the spare room to clear space for potential renters in the rest of the house. Half an hour to go and it was clear I wasn’t even going to have time to shower before heading to the aiport. Ordered taxi in vain hope that it’s arrival might ensure that we’d catch our flight. Eventually got out the door knowing that it was going to be tight – but it was Saturday morning and that should have been okay.

But the fates were against us. Every set of lights was against us. Slow drivers seemed to have been organised to prevent us getting there in the private hire Skoda. Even as we got close to the airport the underpass at the end of the bypass was closed. When we got to the airport 35 minutes before the plane was due to depart (40 minutes is the closing time) I sent Babs to the check-in, hoping the extra few seconds might work. It did. We got on without paying the excess baggage due on our third world red, white and blue woven bags.

The flight was on time and we arrived at Stansted ready for a relaxing four hour wait. Got some sarnies from Boots, changed some money, posted a few letters, then headed for security realising that 3 ½ hours had somehow disappeared. My plan for a leisurely stroll round Dixons duty free evaporated as we queued at security. (This was not helped by an over-anxious Italian twentysomething behind us who wanted to push past even though her flight was due to depart 15 minutes after us.) And I had forgotten that you had to get a monorail train out to the departure gate…

It broke down. Hot and exhausted we were crushed while engineers lifted panels and flicked switches. Eventually it left without us. At these times you know that the flight won’t take off without you because your bags are already on. But you’re never entirely convinced either. A wait which seemed half an hour, but was probably three minutes and we squeezed back onto another train. Most people got off at the first stop. Two minutes later we arrived at our stop. Something between a swarm and a herd of good-looking women rushed past us and up the escalators. At the top they continued rushing round trying to find an open door to our flight without success. Eventually they resorted to standing at the window leaping up and down to attract the attention of anybody. They succeeded eventually and a walkie-talkie wielding member of the ground crew let us in, ushered us through and told us to hurry up. We arrived in Ibiza 30 minutes early.