Catch up 1 of 5: Thursday – Stansted, Ibiza and Boogying

We arrived at the airport at some Godforsaken hour by train – I shan’t describe the journey except for the bit where we sat sitting outside a station for 15 minutes and Auntie Ivy fought mounting panic that we’d actually miss our flight. She had bitten through her nails and was about to start on Janey’s when we started moving. We checked in with nary a problem and even managed a civilised coffee whilst we waited to board. Bea had insisted that we sit together on the plane and stuck to me like a limpet throughout check-in and boarding. At the last moment, it looked as if the stewardess was going to herd her (yes, we were treated a little like cattle) into the next bank of seats but Bea stood firm, caused a pile up behind us and made her disapproval known to the entire plane. The stewardess looked very sullen after this but, as Bea pointed out “so would I be if I had to wear that dreadful uniform. That awful colour and it’s man made – you can hear the electricity crackling from here”. Despite her previous misgivings, the captain “flew beautifully”. She kept asking the harassed flight attendants if she could be “presented to him”.

Auntie Ivy ended up sitting next to Lou who was dressed in her usual denim and who, despite the time (7.24am) kept asking why she couldn’t order a pizza. Janey and Toria (stick thin brunette that looks as if she’s never eaten anything with a fat content) sat together in front of us and Charlie and Sue ended up sitting further down the plane overlooking a wing. Sue is an Amazon – she’s six foot two in her bare feet and carried both hers and Charlie’s mammoth case to the check-in desk without breaking into a sweat.

The flight was fairly uneventful although I don’t know how I’m going to cope with Toria’s voice. It’s very clipped, very nasal, very posh and incredibly fake. She was all “and Ay said to him, Ay shall meet you outsaide”. Mind you, it’s made Janey pick up her aitches and she hasn’t said “f***” since we all met up in the coffee bar.

Lou and Ivy were at each others throats even before set foot on Spanish soil and Bea had to repeatedly ask them to shush as she tried make the hire car lady understand that she didn’t want to drive a SEAT. Bea decided to drive me, Charlie and Sue with Toria driving Janey (“I’m not doing anything manual, it’s my special weekend”), Ivy and Lou. We could have waited at the airport for Melissa, Jackie and Lucy who were getting the flight after ours but Charlie was keen to see the villa and bags the best room. “I’m sharing with you” both Charlie and Bea said simultaneously as they looked at me. Maria, Lisa, Serena and Lizzie were due to arrive on the 14.06 flight and “could sort themselves out”.

The villa was beautiful – absolutely beautiful. And the views! We were perched, yet somehow nestled! Bea and I shared a twin and Charlie had the single which was opposite ours. She was determined to move her bed into our room however. Oh, and there was a laptop and a surfeit of floppy disks. Charlie complained that she couldn’t get to sleep because of the tapping of the keyboard as I recorded our adventures for posterity and my blog.

By the time the next arrivals joined us, we were more or less settled and were having an early lunch. The maid had left us an exotic salad, six cooked chickens, a whole side of ham and enough eggs to bind up the whole of Ibiza. Charlie was preening as everyone commented on how handsome Rich Boyfriend Jonathan was – we knew this because of the rather narcissistic portrait of him above the shell filled fireplace in the main living room.

“Vereeeee nice!” winked Melissa as she gawped unashamedly. Melissa has stick thin arms (I must admit to feeling quite happy that Sue was with us, I felt quite svelte compared to her) and no chin. She’s happily Sarf London and told us five times in the first few hours that she’s “an actress”. “Would we have seen you in anything?” Bea enquired from her lofty position overlooking the pool (Bea was in her bikini and covered in Ambre Solaire ten minutes after arriving). Melissa struck a pose. “I’ve done three crowd scenes in The Bill and an advert for yoghurt – I played a bacteria”. Jackie has a Jordan-esque chest and is not averse to showing it off – she’s also got poker straight white blonde hair and calls everyone “babes”. Lucy likes to be known as Luce (we found out why later) and is the colour of Donatella Versace. She is also surgically enhanced but more in the lip area.

By the time Maria, Lisa, Serena and Lizzie arrived we were all poolside. My tankini (and weekend pampering) didn’t make me look too shabby and I felt I gave a good impression of myself amongst all the bikinis. Maria is mixed race and absolutely hauntingly beautiful – high cheekbones, slanting eyes and graceful movements. Lisa is a poorly maintained bottle blonde with five inch talons and, according to Janey, “is only here cos it’s her brother that’s doing the disco”. She also has a habit of swearing unnecessarily – Bea has already asked her if she has Tourettes. She replied “nah, but we can get some in town if you want some?” Serena is obviously (and I mean this in a nice way because, let’s face it, I’m hardly Kate Moss) the “fat friend”. She’s Rubenesque, as Charlie put it, but is constantly on a diet. Her suitcase is full of Slim-Fast. Lizzie is fatuous, vacuous and I’d use the word “airhead” if it wasn’t unfair to airheads.

We went “clubbing” in the evening. Dear God and all His Angels. What an experience. I was on Virgin Pina Coladas all night, much to the disgust of the Bimbola’s (as Charlie and I had collectively named Janey and her friends).

The noise. The lights. They weren’t night clubs, they were the stuff that nightmares are made of. We did the round of five clubs in the space of about 6 hours, Auntie Ivy trailing around after us tutting about the scantily clad women, wanton behaviour and vomit. I think it was in club number two (the actual names have escaped me) where we found a couple having frantic sex over the handbasins in the ladies loos. Ivy was most disgusted - “the soap dispenser was empty” she huffed as she joined us at the bar.

Club number one was quite sedate to be honest – Janey was starting us off gently. Bea found an “acceptable” wine and Lou disappeared to peruse “the talent”. “Isn’t she married?” Charlie asked in horror. Janey wrinkled her nose “Yeah but they’ve got….what’s the word……an open marriage apparently. Darren does his nut, he says he’s never sure who’s gonna come out the bathroom of a morning”

In club number two, as well as the couple having sex, they had scantily clad young things gyrating and thrusting in cages suspended above the dance floor. We steered clear, just in case one of the cages plummeted earthwards. Club number four found the remainder of the group (we’d lost Lou, Melissa, Luce, Maria and Jackie at some stage) sitting at a table that flashed. Bea and Ivy were open mouthed with distaste at the goings on – one young lady wearing nothing but bikini bottoms was simulating something that should only be done in private with a grinning lad covered in tattoos. Janey appraised the scene before her “I’ve seen better” she sniffed. It wasn’t until we were leaving that we discovered the young lady last seen pleasuring the tattooed youth was in fact Luce. Luce indeed.

Club number five was by far the worst however. Bea had drunk enough wine to be fairly mellow and they were playing tunes that we knew (by that I mean it wasn’t just noise. Can you hear me mother?) and so we hit the dance floor, me, Bea, Charlie and Sue. There we were, giving our all to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”, when a heavily muscled gentleman appeared at the side of the dance floor holding a huge hose pipe. I saw it first and naively thought he was going to spray some dry ice, to fully take us back to the 80s.

Then the foam hit. Oodles of the stuff, a great big jet of it hit Bea who unfortunately had her mouth open at the time. Her expletives were drowned out in a sea of foam as whooping lads and lasses joined us on the dance floor for a foam fight. I grabbed Bea by the hand and dragged her off to find a cab. She looked like she’d been in a car wash.

And the cab driver told her off, in extremely broken English, for “wetting up the seat huh?”.