Getting closer? Maybe

In common with just about every diarist and letter writer I start with an apology for the tardiness of my latest missive. The reason this time is that although most of Barbara and my thoughts are focused on getting the house, we can’t admit it. We have to maintain this pose that says we’re not thinking about the house so we won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t happen.

Actually, the fact that we now probably have a fallback position means we won’t be horribly disappointed if it all does fall apart this evening. We’ll just stay on where we are which, if nothing else, will be much easier than having to scrabble around for money, chase mortgages and so on. If we don’t get the house, the difficulties will arise later.

We’d already decided that we wouldn’t look for anything over the summer. People are too busy and there are people visiting the island who may be persuaded to part with silly money when in holiday mood. But in the autumn our sights will be set much higher and we’ll be disappointed by places that don’t match up to the house we’re after now.

The other reason we’ve been trying to talk as little as possible about our potential home is that the decision’s largely out of our hands. That does not, however, mean there are no silly nagging doubts. For instance, what do we wear for this evening’s meeting? In Scotland it would be easy for me. Lawyer equals suit. Here, not only do I not possess a suit, but wearing one could be counter-productive. The seller could try to push the price up on the basis that we look as if we could afford it. On the other hand, we don’t want to seem disrespectful. Barbara will tell me that these are problems women have to face all the time.

Anyway, in three hours we should know the worst, or best…


It’s good to see the world’s two biggest car-hire companies Avis and Hertz involved in a marketing competition which I hope will spread. In the United States in particular both are promoting their ability to provide cars with adaptations so that anybody can drive.

Of course, the Americans with Disabilities Act provides a strong stick to hit organisations with that discriminate against people by not making their services accessible. But there’s an equally powerful carrot in the form of the spending power of people with impairments. As the population ages this is represents a fast-growing market.

The services now offered free by Avis include:

• Transfer Board: Eases the driver or passenger from their wheelchairs into the car seat.


• Swivel Seat: Allows the driver or passenger to turn their bodies in the car seat with limited effort. The seat can easily be removed from underneath the person.


• Spinner Knob: Enables a full turning radius of the steering wheel while using only one hand.


• Panoramic Mirror: Provides a much larger field of view for any driver, and is a legal requirement in the USA for hearing-impaired drivers.


• Accessible Bus Service: Offers an electrically operated ramp or lift, two ADA compliant wheelchair positions, special aisles and low luggage racks.


• Additional Driver Fee Waiver: Customers with visual impairment can rent an Avis car without incurring any additional driver fees for their designated driver (All drivers must meet Avis' standard licensed driver requirements).

Obviously you should make requests for these services and adaptations as far in advance as possible. Avis and Hertz both have websites with full contact details.


Today I should have definite news about where we’re going to be living at the end of this month, but I don’t. Yesterday’s meeting with the lawyer was neither good nor bad, but it certainly didn’t go according to plan. Actually, if events so far have often made us feel as if we were living a reality television programme, yesterday was closer to a soap opera. You know the sort of thing, people turn up conveniently and unexpectedly in order for the plot to unfold.

The latest episode began at 6pm. Unusually for me, I was actually ready in time to get to the lawyers early. So after a quick once round the block, looking in estate agents’ windows to assure ourselves we were getting a bargain, we walked up the steep stairs to the lawyer’s office.

Our first surprise was to see the woman who had negotiated the property deal for us sitting in the waiting area. We hadn’t asked her to come, but assumed she’d turned up to help the deal go through. But no, she was there to see her lawyer before appearing in court the following day. She’d had a car accident last year and, she told us, assumed her ex-husband had insurance.

Her presence was pure coincidence. But she did have some gossip for us. The guy who is currently living in our intended house was involved in a deal to buy a hotel which apparently went disastrously wrong. After he’d had a few drinks, she told us, he had visited the hotel and started shouting the odds in the reception. Later that evening he had been badly beaten up. Fortunately, that had nothing to do with our house, although one could only feel sorry for the guy. It’s a full story which I probably don’t want to know.

Eventually our lawyer called us into the boardroom. There was no sign of the seller, which gave us a few minutes to ask questions and get answers in ponderous legalese. Sometimes I get the feeling that what defines a “professional” is the ability to respond to any question without giving a definitive reply. After a few of these carefully hedged answers he went to see if maybe the seller had got lost. Certainly, all I’d been able to see through a crack in the door was a youngish guy in a tee shirt going into the reception area, no old “Ibicencan” as the seller had been described.

A few minutes later we found out that the “old” guy was no more than 35. He was the chubby guy I’d seen outside wearing a “Dissident” tee shirt. (No I don’t think that had any significance.) From the moment he came into the boardroom the seller studiously avoided looking either Barbara or I in the eye, talking only to our lawyer in Spanish. Although this made it hard for us to follow it was obvious that he was unhappy with the amount of tax he would have to pay on the deal. As I’ve said in previous blogs, this was largely a problem of his own making. The tax authorities would almost certainly smell a rat if the amount he was declaring he had sold the property for was considerably less than the mortgage.

During this discussion our negotiator put her head in to see if things were going okay. She came in. Fortunately, she was able to explain the taxation problems more simply to the seller. (We learned from her later that although he had developed a number of properties, this was his first sale.) He seemed surprised that the detail of his mortgage was on display to us the public and, of course, the tax authorities. It also transpired that his plan to conclude the sale next year was pointless because he’d already sold the property to a company he’d set up for the purpose. This is a common technique in Spain to reduce liabilities, but obviously needs to be done with professional advice.

The lesson in taxation for our seller lasted about an hour while our lawyer explained the problem in detail and the negotiator simplified it. All we could do was watch. There simply wasn’t room to negotiate and anyway this wasn’t supposed to be a negotiating meeting. Everything was supposed to be agreed. Now we could see the deal ebbing away. I wasn’t totally despondent, however, because the seller had brought some of the missing papers which our lawyer had requested and he was happy to have them taken away and copied.

After the seller had left our negotiator stayed to discuss possible outcomes. She comforted us by saying that buying property is always like this in Ibiza. Our lawyer didn’t seem convinced.

But, once again, all we can do is wait.

Losing power in every sense

Most of this would have appeared yesterday if I hadn’t been hit by a power cut which wiped out most of what I’d written. Electricity – another thing I can no longer take for granted living on this island.

I was railing about our local estate agents who seem to come up with ever more inventive ways of cocking things up. The day before, Barbara and I had been to see Annette, a somewhat dizzy Swede. As you may remember from my last posting, she’d phoned to say she’d got an apartment to show us which was good quality and at the right price. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in her office so couldn’t tell us any more than that.

We set off with a feeling of optimism. The sun was shining and although the flat wasn’t exactly what we were looking for, it sounded a possibility. Annette was in a colleague’s car in front, a relief to us as it meant we didn’t have to do the usual forced conversation. Mind you, it would have been even worse if we’d had to share a car with her dour colleague. There had never been any danger of a smile crossing her face.

We followed the red Volkswagen through the security gates and turned left, away from the sea. The view’s still beautiful, forested hills with a golf course at the bottom. But as we drove along the narrow road an awful realisation began to dawn on us. The reason Annette couldn’t accurately describe the apartment was because the block hadn’t actually been built yet. I’m sure the apartments will look lovely in June 2006, which is when they’re due for completion, but we’ve got to find somewhere by the end of next month. Annette knows that and even told her colleague who, for the first time, smiled when she was told. (They don’t realise how much Spanish we can understand.)

It should be said that they also offer some text book examples of how not to behave when you’re trying to sell a property. When we arrived at the show flat there were two parking spaces, using one of which meant negotiating piles of rubble, the other was simple and straight in. Guess which one our dynamic duo from the agency used? Then, when showing a property, is it really the best idea to always make sure that you enter a room first so the potential customers have to peer over your shoulder? And finally, they were really good at preventing the customers feeling self-important. They simply ignored us and talked amongst themselves. But, being British, we responded in the only way we could. We apologised.

Then we went back to what we currently call home. I was hardly cheered up by an email from my accountants telling me I’d be pleased to know that the Inland Revenue wouldn’t be asking for any more money from last year’s return. I’d asked them to apply for a rebate.

Yesterday didn’t get any better. We headed off to meet another estate agent, German this time. This time we knew the apartment was old and therefore, at least, was not a figment of the imagination. But my mobile rang and it seems the people currently renting the apartment had changed the locks or something. Anyway, we couldn’t get in. An email from the estate agent later said she didn’t like the building very much anyway.

By the way, we still haven’t heard anything from the English couple who own the flat we’re living in now. The home phone number we have for them doesn’t work and neither do the mobile numbers. Will we be homeless in five weeks?

Today, Thursday, and tomorrow are fiesta days for Easter so we won’t hear any more from estate agents. But, this is Ibiza. We’ve been invited to a party tonight for the re-opening of one of the island’s trendiest bar- restaurant-nightclubs. House hunting can wait.

Confessions of a middle-aged clubber - an unused Guardian feature

What on earth was I doing, apparently respectable, and certainly middle-aged, punching the air with a crowd of shaven-headed, labelled up teenagers, most of whom were probably on drugs? At approaching 50 I was supposed to be smoking cigars in a gentleman’s club or worrying about my health at the gym, not deafening myself to a hard house beat.

Friends thought it must be me who was on drugs. It was the only sensible explanation for somebody my age suddenly developing an overwhelming passion for dance music. Okay, so I’d just come back from a holiday in Ibiza, but I was hardly the Uncovered type, prone to mooning and vomiting in the street.

Better known for my sadly encyclopaedic knowledge of seventies rock music from prog to punk, I’d barely been to see two live bands a year for the past decade. Clubs were places to fall into for one last drink at the end of a leaving do when the pubs had stopped serving.

That Ibiza holiday was supposed to be a week’s convalescence to help my wife to recover from a couple of serious operations – a peaceful hotel by the beach, a few romantic meals, nothing more energetic than that. Then on our penultimate night we were offered free passes for the superclub Amnesia.

Now, a trip to Ibiza without a visit to a club seemed a bit like going to Paris and missing out on the Louvre. Or something like that. We expected to stay for half an hour or so, long enough to be able to make a few anthropological observations about the state of dance music over dinner on our return.

From the outside the club didn’t look promising. It was slightly more attractive than a B&Q superstore, albeit with a few palm trees and a bit of neon. But inside was a different story.

Lasers and strobes flashed, dancers with beautiful honed bodies gyrated on podiums, giant cannons blasted dry ice into the huge, packed dance floor. And everybody was on their feet to the driving beat. It couldn’t have been further from my teen disco memories of girls, handbags and me trying to look cool at the bar.

Now I wanted to join in, much to my wife’s surprise. She’d struggled, and failed, at various wedding receptions to get me to do more than a drunken Mick Jagger impersonation to Brown Sugar.

But here I was giving it my all on Amnesia’s dance floor. The only time I’d ever experienced anything like it was on the football terracing, but this time a goal was being scored every few minutes. The whole crowd was ebbing and rising as the music reached one euphoric, joyful crescendo after another. Everybody was smiling. Perhaps they were all off their heads on Ecstasy. I have no idea.

I didn’t want to leave, even though dawn was breaking. But I knew I wanted to repeat the experience, even though I knew it was going to be somewhat different at home in Scotland.

For a start I knew nothing about dance music. Everybody I knew who was of an age to educate me came back with the same vehement response: “Dance music? That’s shit.” Vaguely embarrassed, I set off to teach myself. It was easier said than done.

By the end of the 1990s the whole scene was fragmenting. I could take an educated guess about most of the 57 different varieties of house music - hard, euphoric, funky and so on. But other terms were totally confusing. “Garage,” I had assumed was rough and ready. Wrong. It’s smooth and tuneful. “Trance” was even more baffling. I expected calm and hypnotic, instead I got the most basic sort of thumping dance music guaranteed, presumably, to drive clubbers into a trance.

For several months I lacked the courage to go clubbing in the UK. And, in the end,I took the soft option and decided to go and see a deejay I’d heard to on the radio. Today I know Judge Jules is not the man for the hip clubber, but I didn’t then. And neither did the small group of pals I’d persuaded to come along.

Their first question, to a man, was: “What do we wear?” I tracked down one of the promoters who would only tell me that anything smart and not in football colours was acceptable. It wasn’t a great deal of help.

So there we were, five of us in the queue, all dressed in our best casual wear. If anything had a designer label, it was carefully concealed inside the collar. Not so the crowd around us, labelled up and proud of it. And then there was the hair, or the lack of it. Not a tuft protruded from the mass of baseball caps surrounding the four of us. Only slaphead George was in his element.

Inside, we felt even more conspicuous at probably twice the age of the average participant. It seemed we were starring in “Last of the Summer Ecstasy” or “One Foot in the Rave”. Pick your sitcom. The only time we achieved invisibility was when we tried to get served at the bar. And that was where the rest of my mates stayed.

Alone, I threw myself into the sweat and rhythm of the dance floor. The club lacked the sophistication of Ibiza, but the feelings of euphoria and togetherness were the same. More than once I landed my size twelves on the designer trainers of the sort of tattooed, shaven-headed youth I’d normally cross the road to avoid. But the only response was a smile and a shrug of the shoulders.

That night was the last time I tried to drag a bunch of my contemporaries out clubbing. Instead I turned to the internet and the bulletin boards where clubbers gather. I found I was not alone. There were some like me who’d discovered dance music late. Others had been involved since the start in the mid-eighties and were now the other side of 40. A few even went with their kids. But I bottled out of actually joining any of them at a club. “We met on the internet” was just too scary a thing to say.

More recently I spoke to Paul Oakenfold, probably the biggest name at the hard, trance end of dance music. “The people who come to see me are getting younger,” he says. “There’s a new breed of clubbers coming into it for the first time. I reckon every three years there’s a complete turnaround as peoples’ tastes broaden.” So I should be about ready for a change.

But three years ago I was searching on my own, not just in Edinburgh, but in Glasgow, Newcastle and Manchester. Each night it was the same. I loved the music, but the pre and after-club experience left me like a fish out of water.

In London it might have been different. With something for every minority, middle-aged clubbers or “Macs” are probably already a demographic, subdivided into those who are happy to flash their credit cards or “Plastic Macs” and impoverished old crusties or “Dirty Macs”.

In fact Lohan Presencer the managing director of Britain’s best-known clubbing brand Ministry of Sound told me almost as much. “Our Chillout Session CDs show there is a huge older audience who have grown out of going to clubs but who still love dance music.” He says, however, that although the brand has grown beyond just house music the people coming to the club remain predominantly young.

Elsewhere, Sintillate (correct spelling) - promoter of the year at the 2004 London Club and Bar Awards - has specifically targeted a mixed age audience. Set up five years ago, when the promoters Gary Sewell and Kevin O’Shea were 29 and 49 respectively, the club has expanded from London to Marbella in Spain and soon opens in Manchester.

Revealingly, Sewell asks me: “Can you talk in the clubs you go to?” I reply: “Basically no. People come to dance and the music’s too loud.” If I want to chat I’ll go to the pub. It’s cheaper.

If there is a halfway house – and no that’s not a dance music genre, by the way – it comes from brands such as hugely successful Hed Kandi that play good-time dance music with vocals that clubbers can sing along to. Deejay and label boss Mark Doyle says: “Part of the reason we’re doing so well is because we don’t try to be challenging. We play tunes people know. And, especially outside London, that means we appeal to a wide age range.”

I was talking to Mark in Ibiza, where I now live. It’s the only place I’ve ever been to where nobody thinks I’m weird going clubbing at my age. Anyway, to hell with it, you only get time for one midlife crisis and I’m going to enjoy it.