Jackie Bleaklook hauled her weary 40-something body from the comforting cocoon of her warm bed and padded slowly into the bathroom. Peering reluctantly into the mirror, she winced at her pallid complexion, which appeared to be the exact shade and texture of cold porridge under the harsh strip light. Letting out a sigh, she acknowledged that she could postpone the doctor’s appointment no longer; this could be something serious. She’d been working extremely hard lately, but a slight feeling of “meh” had deepened into persistent pessimism. She showered and applied her makeup as she always did, day in, day out: painting on a happy smile with her trademark red lipstick and concealing the bags under her tired eyes with copious amounts of concealer.

At the doctor’s office, the empty-nester receptionists clucked and squawked into the phones, defensively covering the appointment booking system like a hen guards her eggs. Trying to get a slot with the GP was an ordeal in itself; she’d almost needed a lie-down after the monumental effort involved. Anyone would think the ladies behind the desk were being paid not to book anyone in. Jackie jostled for a seat in the packed waiting area, attempting to drown out the screaming infants and phlegmy cough of the elderly gentleman next to her as she scrolled idly through Facebook for an hour. She was just about losing the will to live when she heard her name being called.

Gesturing for her to take a seat, silver-haired Dr Spiderscrawl sat back in his chair, pushing his horn-rimmed specs up higher on the bridge of his nose in order to get a closer look at her. “What seems to be the problem?” he enquired earnestly. He had the mahogany skin tone of someone who clearly enjoyed regular Caribbean holidays and as he smiled the corners of his eyes crinkled, softening his face. Jackie took a deep breath and began listing her symptoms: lethargy, low mood, anxiety….the list went on. The doctor stole a brief glance at his expensive gold watch as she continued to rattle off an alarming amount of concerns. Jackie even surprised herself with just how many issues she’d been holding in. Once she started speaking, it was like a river that had burst its dam; the flow was unstoppable. Eventually she closed her mouth and slumped back into the seat, exhausted. She looked expectedly at the doctor. He ummed and ahhed as he took her blood pressure, peered down her throat and checked her breathing. “All work and no play makes Jackie a dull girl,” he concluded, as he removed his stethoscope. “What you need my girl is a rather large dose of….FUN.”

Dr Spiderscrawl started scrawling spider-style onto his prescription pad. He paused, thinking deeply. Changing his mind, he tore off the script and scrunched it into a ball, expertly tossing it into the waste paper basket a few feet away as Jackie looked on quizzically. “Ms Bleaklook, my dear. I’m afraid you have a classic case of Midlife Malaise, brought on by over-work and disillusionment. I’d usually prescribe Prozac and exercise, but in your case it is an emergency, so….”

He reached down into the brown leather holdall which was open at his feet and, much to Jackie’s amazement, produced a large conical flask containing a bubbling bright orange liquid. “What the…?” began Jackie. Dr Spiderscrawl held his palm up in a gesture of silence. “Listen, Ms Bleaklook, he said, in his plummy English tone. “I’m old school….or should I say Old Skool with a K. I firmly believe in the restorative power of a good night out, preferably involving a decent crowd of up-for-it revellers, loud, repetitive beats, lasers and flashing lights. Alcohol is one way to relax from the stresses of modern life, but it has adverse long-term health implications; good-quality house music does not. Fortunately I have just the remedy for you – although this one is a non-prescription drug combination, so I ask that you be discreet. I could get struck off for my, ahem, slightly unorthodox – although highly effective – methods. Not because this potion is dangerous – quite the contrary in fact – but there are pharmaceutical companies who lose a fortune when people choose these alternative remedies.

Holding aloft the conical flask betwixt bronzed and manicured fingers he smiled as he announced grandly: “let me introduce to you…Danny’s Marvellous Medicine.”

“But, but, what’s in it? And who’s Danny?!” stuttered Jackie. “Well, I can’t reveal the exact formula, because even I’m not privy to that top secret information, but let’s just say it’s a heady blend of stamina, house music, euphoria, orange-flavoured smoke, glitter and friendship. The side-effects include indescribable happiness and uncontrollable dancing, as you’re transported back to the carefree days of your youth by the restorative powers of music and freedom. Danny Gould is one of the creators of the original formula. He discovered the chemical reaction quite by accident one day back in 1993, along with his good friend Andy Manston. They decided to name the potion Clockwork Orange. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other patients to attend to.”

He spider-scrawled on his prescription pad once more. “Go to this address on Saturday night. Tell them you are on my guestlist. Drink the potion there. Don’t be tempted to drink it at any other time or place; it won’t work properly.”

Back at the flat where she lived alone, having subconsciously dedicated a large portion of her adult life to an ungrateful boss, Jackie placed the flask of orange liquid on the windowsill and carried on with her busy working week, barely having time to eat or sleep. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a date or a night out with her friends, who were mostly mums and had different priorities these days.

By Saturday she was exhausted and considered not obeying the doctor’s orders, but by mid-afternoon her curiosity got the better of her and she could ignore the flask no longer. Lifting it gently from the windowsill, she carefully removed the cork stopper and took a tiny swig of the bubbling orange liquid. “It’s probably just Berocca,” she mused as she swallowed it down. “He’s expecting a placebo effect.” Within minutes, she knew it wasn’t simply an effervescent vitamin supplement after all: her head crackled and fizzed as if she’d eaten popping candy; she felt alert…and she was sure she could hear the faint sound of 90s house music in the distance. How strange.

Feeling suddenly energised, she hurriedly shimmied into her favourite party dress (which only now was she realising she hadn’t worn for years), wedged her feet into teetering heels and applied the sparkly makeup she’d have worn back in her clubbing days. Stepping back from the mirror, she admired her appearance. It had been a long time since she’d looked this glamorous. That potion had definitely stirred something within her. She took another small swig, before slipping the flask into her sequinned handbag and silently closing the door to the flat, the address the doctor had given her tucked into her jacket pocket.

The chilly September air took her by surprise, and she felt suddenly silly and self-conscious as she tottered to the station and stepped onto the tube dressed up to the nines. She clutched her bag in front of her bare legs, the outline of the flask against her body and the doctor’s words ringing in her ears providing some reassurance.

As she approached the venue she was aware of hordes of very animated people, all heading in the same direction. Jackie was pleasantly surprised to see that they were mostly the same age as herself, and appeared to be highly excitable. Knowing that she’d have a job getting the potion past the octopus-like bouncers, and reasoning that she was almost inside the venue, Jackie nipped around the corner, yanked off the stopper, and downed the orange liquid in one. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand in a most unladylike fashion, she stifled a belch. She caught the eye of another middle-aged woman doing the same, who winked at Jackie and tossed her own now-empty flask into a nearby bin. “First time at Clockwork?” she enquired, noticing Jackie’s nervous demeanour. “It won’t be your last.”

Finally entering the venue some time later, having queued with thousands of other partygoers eager to get inside, Jackie was instantly energised by the music: heavy bass reverberated in her chest and uplifting vocal house music caressed her ears, the words to which she was surprised to note came instantly flooding back, despite the fact she’d not heard them for years. Her feet were moving uncontrollably to the beat and she had the urge to throw her hands up in the air. She grabbed a vodka Red Bull from the bar before jostling through the crowds to get to the dj booth, by which time she’d finished her drink and was determined to focus fully on the serious business of dancing like no-one was watching. Because, well, nobody was.

Everywhere she looked people were smiling and dancing wildly, the dj seducing the crowd with soulful house music interspersed with heavier, dirtier beats. A bongo player accompanied the music and people were singing at the top of their lungs to their favourite tracks, heads thrown back, completely unselfconscious. Suddenly a welcome blast of icy air from a smoke machine hit her, cooling her sweaty body, before a giant glitter cannon exploded, sending thousands of pieces of metallic ticker-tape up into the air before landing on the writhing throng. A cheer went up. Jackie looked around her at the incredible sight of so many happy faces and realised with a jolt that she felt emotional, tearful almost. She hadn’t had this much fun in…well, forever. How had she missed all of this for so long? When had she decided to spend so much time working that she’d forgotten to have fun. How had that happened? She’d lost herself. She shook her head, sad for a moment.

She was roused from her sombre thoughts by a gorgeous tall, dark-haired guy dancing in front of her, who she realised was gesticulating wildly to attract her attention over the din of the music. Making the universal motion of bringing an invisible drink to his lips and raising his eyebrows questioningly, he put a strong arm around her waist and guided her gently in the direction of the bar. Smiling contentedly, Jackie danced towards the bar, taking his hand as he turned to kiss her on the cheek.

“Oh yes,” mused Jackie with a giggle, making a silent promise to herself to seize as much fun as possible from now on, “Clockwork Orange is just what the doctor ordered….”

Are you suffering from Mid-Life Malaise? (Trust me, it’s a very common affliction). Clockwork Orange takes place every six months in London, in March and September, as well as a weekend of events in Ibiza each July. For more information and to become a member check out the Clockwork Orange website here. 

Sam x

Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (Life:ABird’sEyeView)
Facebook: @lifeabirdseyeview
Instagram: @lifeabirdseyeview

The post Danny’s Marvellous Medicine appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

I fell in love with clubbing long before I was old enough to set foot in one. Well, legally anyway.

At fifteen, I papered my bedroom walls, door and even the ceiling with flyers for raves and club nights, signing up to the Flying Squad mailing list to have all the latest party invites posted to me. I would eagerly await their arrival, marveling at the trippy graphic designs and poring over the intriguing details of all the upcoming raves in fields, manor houses and other off-limit locations.

Okay, so I wasn’t allowed to actually go to any, but it didn’t stop me listening to the pirate radio stations on my old stacking stereo system, making my own mixtapes and plotting my escape to run off and join the circus of parties.

It was around this time that I first became aware of a magical little island in the Mediterranean Sea that was set to become an important feature in my early adult life and beyond: Ibiza.Ibiza (pronounced eye-beef-ahh in my downmarket teen dialect) popped up regularly in the various dance music magazines that I had started buying, such as DJ and Mixmag, and I became focused on the idea of jetting off, sans parents, for a party-packed package holiday with my fellow female schoolmates to this mystical floating clubber’s paradise.One evening, I recorded a TV show called The Rough Guide To Ibiza, hosted by the glamorous Magenta Devine and that was it, I was officially obsessed. I’d sit there in my school uniform, gazing transfixed at the screen as beautiful exotic dancers clad in feather headdresses, towering heels and jewel-encrusted bras paraded through the streets of Ibiza Town, promoting the night’s festivities ahead of their later stints in the club, where they’d be gyrating to pumping house music on the stage at Pacha. I’d rewind the VHS and replay that TV show ad infinitum, or until my Dad came in and commandeered the remote so he could switch over to the footy.

To my absolute amazement, in 1993, not only did my parents agree to allow me to go on a two-week jaunt to Ibiza on a Club 18-30’s holiday, but so did the parents of my fellow 17-year-old besties….all eleven of them.

Our naive Olds were obviously under the illusion that since we were all intelligent, well-behaved and well-performing grammar school pupils we’d be more than capable of taking care of ourselves. Well, we may have breezed through our Eleven-Plus exams, but we hadn’t all got full marks in that most important of life lessons….common sense. Some of us may have even bunked that particular class.

Imagine a room full of hyped-up puppies bounding around, tails wagging furiously, multiply that ten-thousand-fold, and you still won’t come close to conjuring up the excitement we all felt as the cheap early-morning red-eye flight filled up with fellow teens and twenty-somethings. As we soared skywards, everyone on the plane was chain-smoking and guzzling alcopops (pilot and crew probably included) despite the early hour. Why? Well, because we could, of course. Duh!

There were no smoking bans in those days, even on tube trains or aeroplanes, so we flipped open our little armrest ashtrays and puffed away. It was an airborne party from take-off.
Rip-off baggage charges had yet to be dreamt up by the money-grabbing airline fatcats, so our suitcases were jam-packed with every item from our wardrobes (I remember opening the doors and just scooping the whole contents out and into the case), along with a ton of make-up, beauty products and about ten pairs of shoes.

My beloved ‘ghetto blaster’ – a giant black plastic monstrosity – and a selection of my favourite cassettes were also vital items of luggage, the stand-out tunes of the summer being Mother’s ‘All Funked Up’, Nightcrawlers ‘Push The Feeling On,’ Aftershock’s ‘Slave To The Vibe’ and ‘Give It Up’ by The Goodmen:

 

 

 

The Poniente Apartments overlooking Kanya beach were basic at best, but to twelve buzzing young birds on their first foray to The White Isle, it was The Ritz. We squeezed ourselves six to an apartment to keep costs down and within minutes the two adjoining rooms looked like a bomb had gone off, as cases were flung open and clothes tossed over shoulders in an unpacking frenzy. It was boiling hot, we’re talking ninety Fahrenheit (no metric measures for us!), so we were stripped down to inappropriate hotpants and vest tops with a Budweiser in each hand before you could say “Hola Guapa!”

Determined to rinse us whilst we still had pockets full of pesetas, the 18-30 reps set about the serious business of parting everyone with their hard-earned cash, acquired mostly from various Saturday jobs in hairdressers, hotels and shops. In an effort to kill twelve birds with one stone, they backed us into a corner of the bar following the ‘welcome meeting’, plied us with ominous-looking shots of something cheap and luminous, and convinced us that if we didn’t sign up to all their trips we’d be social outcasts in our apartment block, shunned by our fellow fun-loving holidaymakers, who’d be trotting past us smirking as they headed off on all the exciting excursions. Spirits consumed, and our own spirits eventually broken, we handed over the majority of our cash, shrugged, and headed down to the beach.

Every detail of that first holiday is forever etched on my memory. Well, the bits I was conscious for anyway. Which is probably about a third. The days were spent on the beach, whereby we’d line up our twelve identical lilos and bronze (ie burn) our tender teenage skins to a crisp, rotating at regular intervals like suckling pigs on a spit. Nothing to worry about, skin cancer wasn’t invented in those days.

When the scorching Balaeric sun became too much to bear, we’d trot out to sea and line up the aforementioned lilos along the length of the safety ropes, tucking the ropes attached to lifebuoys under our heads so that we could doze lazily without fear of being washed out to sea. The bass from the pumping house music at Kanya would drift across the ocean – soothing our ears as the waves gently rocked the bobbing airbeds. Bliss!

We quickly fell into a routine – rise at lunchtime, chuck on bikinis, eat cheap English fayre such as beans on toast or burgers and chips. In those days, food was merely fuel.Well, we didn’t want to waste our precious drink money on such boring necessities as food, did we?  The lazy sunbathing days were broken up with games of cards (Shithead or Blackjack), as well as the occasional boozy party boat trip or hair-raising ride on the banana boat. The girls would sing Simply Red tunes to me in jest at my sunburnt skin, as my fair colouring turned an increasingly alarming shade of puce in the glare of the midday Med sun.

As the sun went down, it’d be a bunfight to get ready for the evening’s events. Imagine the carnage of twelve teenage girls, packed six to a bathroom like spruced-up sardines, attempting to simultaneously shower, primp and preen, hairdryers all blowing in unison, make-up everywhere, music pumping from my tinny old stereo. Clothes were strewn from every available surface, sticky drink-stained worktops were littered with half-empty beer bottles, the air thick with a heady mixture of Impulse and duty-free Anais Anais, Poison and Samsara.

The EDS (Early Drinking Sesh) was all part of the prepping process, and by the time we tottered out for the evening we were all ‘refreshed’, in high spirits and a little unsteady on our high-heeled Top Shop sandals. We’d dance the nights away in San Antonio’s West End, in venues such as Nightlife, Trops, Gorms Garage and Koppas: free-entry clubs that the British PRs (or props as they were often known) would coax us into on the premise of free shots and group discounts. Their eyes would light up at our huge gaggle of giggling girls, and we’d be ushered into the bar before we could protest. Which to be fair, we didn’t do very often. We’d dance until dawn, taking occasional breaks to sit sipping cocktails and people-watching outside the clubs on the bustling strip.

The most memorable night came courtesy of Es Paradis, a stunning pyramid-shaped labyrinth of a club filled with palms, podiums and posers. Having been given a fistful of free-entry flyers, we set about throwing some shapes to all the latest floor-fillers, awaiting the ‘piece de la resistance’ – the Fiesta Del Agua, whereby the dancefloor filled up with water for the last tracks of the night, and everyone jumped and splashed about in waist-deep murky water in the name of fun.

Obviously the foam and water-parties of old would never work in these tech-obsessed times, but we’re talking about the early Nineties here, when Smartphones were merely a twinkle in Steve Job’s eye. We didn’t have to stress about destroyed Iphones, (nor incriminating photos ending up on social media within seconds) or our hair going frizzy, as  ‘mobile’ ( ie ‘housebrick’) phones were the sole preserve of yuppy bankers, and our hair was already of the kinky afro variety as we’d not yet been blessed with straightening irons. When I speak to young girls about the ‘good ol’ days’, they look at me open-mouthed in horror when I inform them that there are people still alive today who grew up without phones or GHDS, those now-essential hair-taming devices.

If someone chucked me in water at a club these days I’d be livid, but I can clearly remember the euphoria of sloshing back to our apartments at sunrise with soaking-wet clothes stuck to our skin, the dye seeping out of cheap China-made garments, flat hair plastered to our pinheads.

On ‘excursion’ nights, we’d be herded like groggy cattle by the holiday reps on a by-numbers pub crawl or hypnotist show, drinking cheap toxic spirits and eyeing up the other groups of tourists, who all seemed to come from just around the corner back home.

Those two weeks were a rite of passage, our coming-of-age celebrations which will stay with us all forever. We squabbled, gossiped and bonded our friendships with a superglue that remains stuck fast even now, 23 years later.

 

It was the cementing of our life-long girls-own gang, and my love of those ladies remains as strong today as ever. My budding romance with Ibiza was also sealed on that trip, although little did I know at the time that I would end up living on the island, and ‘starring’ (I use that term loosely) in the first-ever fly-on-the-wall documentary, Ibiza Uncovered.

But that is another story…

 

Sam x


Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (Life:ABird’sEyeView)
Facebook: @lifeabirdseyeview
Instagram: @lifeabirdseyeview

 

The post San An Shenanigans: Twelve teens hit Ibiza appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.