Until the first episode of Ibiza Uncovered aired on Sky1, the fact that we were about to appear on a weekly television show hadn’t fully sunk in. Sure, we’d signed on the dotted line of the contracts, filmed the “before” scenes: packing our cases at my parents’ three-bed semi in Sidcup, then another happily skipping out of Harvey Nicks after our last shift. The crew had appeared at our apartment a few days after we’d touched down on the White Isle brandishing conspicuous cameras and big fluffy mics. But it wasn’t until that first Friday night episode went out that the reality of the “reality show” finally registered.By this point we were living diagonally above The Ship Inn, having moved three times already; following our two-week package holiday near The Egg in central San An we spent several fraught weeks at Villa Angelina, although that was the mother of all misnomers, seeing as it wasn’t a villa at all, but a damp, stone-walled underground cave with an icy dribble of an excuse for a solar-powered shower slap-bang in the middle of the living area.This low-ceilinged subterranean dwelling was wholly inappropriate for a couple of lanky six-foot sheilas like ourselves, so we took to crawling about in there like a pair of tipsy trolls, necks craned at awkward angles, constantly cursing as we bumped our heads in the darkness after a boozy night out. It was like a scene from Alice in Wonderland; we’d drunk the wrong potion, clearly. Angelina, the crazy old cat lady who owned it, must have been stifling her sniggers as she pocketed our pesetas after that particular deal.

The darkness in the cave was disorientating too – one day I worked 6am-4pm, and went home to sleep at around five, before waking at seven-thirty and running to work in a blind panic thinking I was an hour and a half late for my 6am start, only to discover on arrival to everyone’s amusement that it was actually still the same evening.

The accommodation situation had clearly become untenable, so it was time for home number three. One day we simply pitched up at work with our suitcases in order to take up Juan’s earlier casual offer of residence in the flat above The New Star, which, it quickly became apparent, was an even worse idea.

By this time Kez and I were working opposite shifts, one of us on 6am to 4pm the other 6pm until 4am, which meant we shared a lumpy single bed and slept on rotation, with one of us waking the other when we finished work. Being employed at The New Star was crazy enough, living there as well….total chaos. Dodgy characters, shady deals, suspect “ladies of the night” regularly passing us on the stairs…hmm, time for us nomadic numpties to move on yet again.

Our fourth and final residence of the summer was, thankfully, much more suitable – a two-bed apartment at the top of the strip, aka the West End. It was very noisy, obviously, but being above The Ship was a huge selling point for us, and at least our neighbours wouldn’t be complaining about us playing loud music.

The Ship was, (and still is, 20 years later), a lifeline for workers on the island. Landlord John and his lovely wife Denise were like surrogate parents to the scores of clueless young Brits washing up weekly in search of jobs and a summer of fun. Their toddler daughter Krystal was similarly adored by us workers. To describe the couple as pub landlords would be a gross understatement; they acted as employers, recruitment agents, agony aunt/uncle, estate agents…you name it, they’d be there with a pint and some sound advice. To us workers, John and Denise were Ibiza’s A-Team. If you had a problem and no-one else could help, they were the go-to gurus.

The homely pub was a constant hub of activity as workers gathered around the noticeboard scanning the job ads, watching telly or reading their phone messages, since none of us owned a scrap of technology : no TV, mobile phone or landline. (Come to think of it, we didn’t have work permits either, but times were different back then).
It was like the local post office, with the added bonus of selling beer. If one of our friends or parents phoned for Kez or I, the bar staff would just shout up to our balcony to summon us down. The same happened when our programme was about to start : the pub packed with rowdy holidaymakers watching the show on the big screen, with Kez and I sat cringing amongst them also watching it for the first time, albeit from behind our fingers.

We shared the apartment with two other London girls we’d met called Sam and Maria, who also got roped into appearing in the occasional episode of Uncovered with us. Being savvy Londoners, we soon had the idea of moving various randoms into our living room for an inflated rent, thereby reducing our own payments considerably, including the bonkers bong-smokers Noah and Kristina, a couple of American body-piercers. It was a bit cosy with six of us in a two-bed apartment, to say the least, and sometimes I’d come home from work in the afternoon to find the door wide open, the flat full of revellers, music blaring and several fully-clothed strangers asleep in my bed.

Anyway, back to our fifteen minutes….

After that first airing we got our first taste of “fame.” Maybe notoriety is a better word. Workers and holidaymakers (or “tourists” as us workers patronisingly tagged them) whom we’d never met began calling us by name in the street, asking to have their photo taken with us (I bet there’s some horrific shots yellowing in many an attic), giving us their varying opinions of our on-screen personas and situations and generally offering unsolicited advice.

At first, we assumed we’d met them before, perhaps after a few drinks, but nope, they were complete strangers just sidling up for a chat. One family of nutjobs practically camped under our balcony for two weeks with a camcorder pointing up at us, filming us at every opportunity as if we were Hollywood stars. A few of the bars gave us a frosty reception, of the opinion that the programme brought the island into disrepute. I reckon the island was doing a good enough job of that on it’s own, thankyouverymuch.

We started receiving calls from various journalists and TV production teams via The Ship’s phone service, with regular exciting messages appearing on the noticeboard, leading to some welcome extra wonga from spin-offs and magazine articles. I flew back to the UK several times over the summer to appear on television shows such as This Morning and The Vanessa Show.

By now, we had several jobs on the go. Kez was propping for Amore Mio, an Italian restaurant in the West End. I was still at the New Star, we both did a spot of flyering and also sold tickets for Cream at Amnesia amongst other club nights, plus I was part of the entertainments team at Manumission. This basically involved dressing up as something ridiculous for the themed parties at Privilege on a Monday night, getting wasted and dancing on stage or mingling with the eight thousand clubbers in attendance, doing such random acts as peeling potatoes whilst sprayed head-to-toe in silver paint (over a leotard, of course) or dressed as a milkmaid milking a cow on a podium. The latter was the safer option, as I nearly gouged a few eyeballs out with that peeler as drunken revellers bashed into me. The week I had to hand out melon which I’d cut up in the middle of the club with a machete was a tad hairy too.

My cow co-star was a guy called Ben, who was really beefing up in his bovine attire. He’d get a bit irritable in the heat of a packed Balaeric nightclub in July wearing that full furry costume complete with huge udders. “Mooooo-ve,” he’d cry as he negiotiated the crowds in his costume. In exchange for creating a spectacle (the only vague requirement of the role), we got into the club for free and could help ourselves to the workers’ bar, plus a small wage. Sweet. We’d do a pre-party parade around San Antonio before hopping on a special disco bus (oh, it was special, alright) and heading to the club for midnight.

I have many memories of those hedonistic nights, my favourite moments involved floating about in the back room drinking a Coco Loco (an intoxicating potion whose dubious ingredients were unknown but the effects were pretty spectacular) and dancing ecstatically as the sun came up through huge glass windows. Then it was onto Space for the Carry-On, where Kez worked for a while handing out fruit on giant platters. Oh, how very civilised.

Space opening fiesta was another stand-out snapshot of the summer. Juan closed the bar, got the New Star team in for free, then the Sky crew rocked up and filmed our day, the joyous scenes of us dancing on the terrace in the sunshine with our fellow worker pals immortalised on celluloid, the many tatty VHS tapes of each episode of the series still lurking in my loft.

To avoid the extortionate bar prices, someone would wrap a load of drinks in a half-deflated lilo and sling them over the wall. The less prepared would simply go “minesweeping” instead, which was the unethical practise of swiping unattended drinks from tables.

And so the summer of ’97 passed by – a heady mix of sunbathing, work, partying and general, off-the-charts high jinks, as only one who’s been to Ibiza can understand. The daytime parties at Kanya, Mambo and Bora Bora spring to mind, to name but a few. Radio 1 parties. The Funky Room at Pacha. PAs from Sonique at Amnesia, Skin from Skunk Anansie at Es Paradis stand out in my mind. The MTV quarry party on the night Diana died. Morgana. KM5. There are so many anecdotes I could share, enough for a book not a blog (if only I could remember half of what happened). Perhaps these are best whispered in person directly into your shell-like, so I can watch your lips curl upwards and your eyes widen.

The overriding emotion, looking back, was a feeling of good fortune. How lucky were we to have escaped the rat-race whilst our mates slogged away at home like London-based lemmings? How lucky were we to be spending our days lying in the sun, working (in the loosest sense of the word), and going to the best parties and clubs in the world on a beautiful island at the pinnacle of it’s popularity?

One of our favourite pastimes was sneaking a peak at our watches and then reminding each other what everyone at home would be doing right at that moment. At 8am on a Tuesday morning whilst people at home were on their silent stony-faced commute, we’d high five each other as we stepped over the threshold into Space.

In 1997 Ibiza was in it’s prime, and so were we. It was the most amazing summer. From May til October we’d made firm friendships, most of which endure to this day (largely through the power of Facebook, which reunited us all, years later).

So it was pretty obvious that as we attended our final closing party and packed our suitcases at the end of the summer, the words on every worker’s lips as we hugged each other goodbye were:

“Hasta luego amigo….see you next season….”

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
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The post Our Fifteen Minutes appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

Like a cartoon bomb, the lit fuse on our two-week San An 1997 package holiday was getting dangerously close to it’s explosive finale, so it was with great relief that Kez and I finally secured the jobs that would diffuse the tense situation, thus allowing us to swerve the depressing deportation back to boring Blighty and instead providing our golden tickets to a great summer of working and partying (but mostly partying) on The White Isle: Ibiza.

With just a small fistful of crumpled mil peseta notes tucked into the back pocket of my favourite faded Diesels, we’d been a-begging for jobs, cap-in-hand, like innocent little Oliver Twists amidst a sea of Artful Dodgers. Finally the grovelling paid off, and we gleefully tore up our return tickets to Gatwick and strutted confidently along the San An shoreline at sunrise, en route to The New Star to start work.

Eager to impress Juan, our Super-Mario moustachioed boss, we arrived early for our six o’clock shift, at around 5.40am. The previous evening we’d physically forced ourselves to stay in for once: barricading the door to our apartment and resisting the pull of the hypnotic house music wafting up to our balcony and beckoning us down.

We focused instead on selecting the most work-appropriate of the various rumpled skimpy outfits dangling from every available surface in the flat, and polishing up our slightly scuffed sandals – much like any other nervous newbie preparing for their first day in a longed-for job. Only this wasn’t like any other first day in any other job we’d started. Oh no. This was about to be the most memorable first day ever….

So, it’s 5.45am, and all is deserted at the bar, which is what we expected from this benign-looking establishment on the outskirts of town. Leon, Claire, and a few other staff are quietly sipping black coffees, bleary-eyed, as they shuffle about looking subdued, preparing for opening. Kez and I had made a pact on the walk up : to stay together and help each other along, having previously blagged it that we were experienced barmaids, musing
“how hard can it be, eh?”

To our dismay this deal, solemnly sealed with a firm handshake, is instantly broken as Juan stations Kez out at the back terrace bar and me in the main one. There’s also a front terrace with yet another bar. Oh right. We hadn’t realised there were three bars. We look at each other imploringly as she’s led away like a death-row prisoner. Oh well, it’ll be quiet so we’ll have plenty of time to learn the ropes, I think. How wrong could I be….

The clock strikes 6am, the DJs Jamie and Dave fire up the decks, spin some vinyl and the beat of heavy house music fills the air. Seconds later, the doors of the bar are flung open wide and hordes of Duracell-bunny partygoers come piling through, eager to keep the holiday high-jinks going long into the morning after kicking-out time at the clubs.

Within minutes, the queue at the bar is five deep and a sea of thirsty faces surges forward, tongues lolling, eagerly flapping banknotes at us, vying for attention as they holler their drinks orders over the dance-music din. I’m like a rabbit in the headlights, pink-eyed and petrified. I’ve never so much as pulled a pint in my life. I’m about to learn, and quick.

The first attempt results in a pint of froth, the second sees me spilling beer all over me. I wipe my hands purposefully on my clean miniskirt and take a deep breath. I need to style this out. Juan is watching his army of trusty bartenders from a rickety wooden stool at the side of the bar, his beady black eyes boring into me, a lit cigarette dangling from his bemused lips. I don’t think I’m a contender for Employee of the Month.

I bat my eyelashes, bite my lip and smile through gritted teeth as I try to remember prices, pull pints and locate drinks I’d never even heard of (Hierbas? what?) on sticky shelves, through a thick fug of cigarette smoke. I amuse myself with the mental image of Kez having a similarly stressful situation down at the back bar, but she’s got the right idea, availing herself of the limitless supply of alcohol to soothe her nerves. I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but soon have the same brainwave and, following the lead of the other staff, swig a strong vodka limon between serving customers. I start to relax and get into the flow.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the bar is getting increasingly raucous. Having mastered the basics, I’m able to a step back and survey the scene : it’s 10am on a Monday morning and it’s what one might subtly describe as “all going off.” There are sweaty bodies gyrating on every available surface, including wobbly wooden chairs and tables, although it’s not clear whether it’s the furniture or the flailing bodies that are the most wonky. It’s a health and safety nightmare.

The sun is streaming through the chinks in the windows and doors to reveal beaming revellers dancing and chatting animatedly, marvelling at their good fortune at passing their Monday mornings partying in the sun rather than back in England (Ming-ger-land?), nose to the grindstone, the post-weekend blues rapidly taking hold. They can’t believe their luck, and the energy is contagious. It’s wall to wall Cheshire Cats in ‘ere.

It’s not just the punters throwing shapes, the bar staff and DJs are cutting some serious rug too. With the decks nestled right up alongside the bar, pounding bass and slow build-ups sending shivers up our spines, we have little choice. We are powerless to resist: the music is entrancing and we inevitably submit to multiple eargasms.

By now the bar looks like a bomb has hit it, spilt drinks, half-empty glasses everywhere, overflowing bins and ashtrays….but one look at Juan and I can see he’s no longer bothered, as he clumsily pours us all another long line of vodka and lime (wodka lima!) chupitos as he jumps up and down.

The staff yell “salut!” over the music and down them in one, slamming the empty shot glasses back down onto the sticky bar and wincing in unison.
He high-fives me and, catching me off-guard, lifts me high into the air, looking wild-eyed and crazy as he declares that I’m his “favourite girl in the WHOLE of San Antonio!” in his unintelligible Spanish accent, planting a scratchy kiss on my cheek through his thick wiry ‘tache. At least I think that’s what he’s saying. I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand and scrunch up my face.

“I take it I can come back tomorrow then?” I murmur under my breath…

The perspiring throng are, ‘ow you say in Eengleesh?…” ‘Avinit LARGE mate!”….eyes closed, lost in the music. I even catch sight of Emilio the chef, the palest squid-skinned Spaniard I ever did meet, shuffling to the beat through the kitchen’s food hatch. He’s having a cheeky dance seeing as there’s not much demand for fry-ups this morning; everyone is far too busy dancing to even contemplate the greasy Spanglish menu.

The crowd fist-pump their approval as the DJs drop one tune after another. The unmistakable opening bars of Nalin and Kane’s Beachball kick in, my favourite tune of the season, and I punch the air whilst simultaneously pulling yet another dodgy pint…

Then Ultra Nate’s “You’re freeeee, to do what you want to do….” really gets our juices going. This track will become another of our anthems of the summer, particularly resonating with us as twenty-something’s who’ve escaped the rat-race and feel that right here, right now, the world is our oyster, anything is possible. It’s like the song was actually written with us “workers” in mind….

Gradually the bar thins out and the volume of the music decreases, until it’s 4pm and only a few straggly hangers-on remain, face down at a table on the terrace, the backs of their necks burnt by the
scorching summer sun, or chatting in tight little groups in the dark recesses and alcoves of the building, cowering from the sunlight, postponing the inevitable painful trek back to their hotel, more battered than last Friday’s fish supper.

The following morning dawns and it’s time to leave for work once more. I hang on as long as possible at the apartment willing Kez to show up, but these are the days before everyone and their dog owns a mobile and she’s nowhere to be seen. Reluctantly, I leave without her, and within minutes of the bar opening, the party is once again in full swing. The place is heaving and we’re a (wo)man down. She finally shows up…seven hours late for our 6am shift. Oops. Manuel is less than impressed, and later, Juan sacks her. The Uncovered crew show up to film us, loving the scandal. After a lot of grovelling, she’s given another chance, although it’s short-lived.

It turns out holding down an eight-hour daily bar shift whilst attending every club night and after-party on the island is no mean feat, even for a couple of professional party-girls such as ourselves. If our work timesheet was as good as our reliable Ammesia or Pacha attendance, we’d be model employees. We clock in and out of Space every Sunday with no problems at all, 100% attendance, impeccable records. No disciplinaries needed for chucking sickies or dragging our heels and showing up late when it comes to clubbing. No Siree!

However, it quickly transpires that we are gonna need A LOT of jobs this summer…

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
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The post The New Star(t) appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

Following that first girly jaunt to The White Isle, the crew agreed that the trip had been the absolute dog’s balearics and were chomping at the bit to get back over to the party girl’s paradise as soon as our sixth-form schedules would allow.

The summer of ’94 followed a similar pattern to the previous year, only this time we were older and wiser; we swerved the grasping rep’s evil clutches, avoiding the welcome meeting and therefore any attempts they’d make to tease the traveller’s cheques from our sweaty paws in exchange for a lukewarm watered-down jug of sangria and a tacky talent show.

No cheesy congas through the West End for us this time, oh no, now we were clued-up chicas who frequented Space, Ku Club (now Privilege), Amnesia and Pacha. We could cherry-pick the best nights at the creme de la creme of clubland.

Ibiza became an annual pilgrimage; we’d slog all year, tucking away tenners here and there in between celebrating our eighteenth birthdays or spending nights down at The Moon and Sixpence pub in Welling, The Polo Bar in Bexleyheath, or cheesy local Kent nightclubs such as Bridewells, T’s and Zens. These clubs weren’t exactly the epitome of cool clubbing, a world away from their Ibizan counterparts, but they were close to home and so convenient for a mid-week mashup, what with school in the morning and all….

Eventually we’d build up enough funds to trot down to Thomas Cook and proudly slap our hard-earned moolah into their mitts, then we’d be counting down the days on the calendar until our skittish excitement reached a crescendo and the big day arrived, stirring fluttering butterflies in our flat teenage bellies.

Aged 19, despite getting top grades at A level, I’d binned the university offers in favour of gleaning some hands-on experience at the University of Life. I wanted to roll up my sleeves, get to work and start earning some dosh. However, here I was, merely a year or so in and already feeling a bit meh….and then later totally disillusioned. Oh well, only another fifty years to go. But then a little seedling of an idea took root deep in the fertile soil of my brain, and I began to formulate a cunning plan. Why was I spending fifty long weeks of the year working in the UK, for the sake of spending just two weeks in the place I really loved? Surely this was all out of kilter? How did other young people get jobs in Ibiza and pop back to the UK for the odd visit, rather than vice versa? I was determined to be one of them…

The monotony of working at WHSmith Liverpool St (which was basically a slow and painful death disguised in a putrid A-line skirt and naff polyester shirt and sold to me as a ‘fast-track management program’) soon galvanised me into action. It quickly became apparent that the starchy beige uniform and mundane repetition of the role just would not do at all. Not if I didn’t want to gouge my own eyeballs out in frustration at having to manually place daily book orders, poring over reams of print-outs of recent books sales and decide which stock to buy in next. My colleagues and I were eager to shrug off our geeky threads and shimmy on down to the local bars and clubs.
We were the Levis Club : always out the door at 5.01.

However hard we tried, and we were very persistent in our concerted efforts to replicate epic Ibiza-style nights out, the grey and drizzly City of London just wasn’t cutting the mustard.

Over an Archers and lemonade (hey, it was fashionable at the time!) we’d fantasise about telling Mr Philpott (our boss) to shove his book orders somewhere unspeakable and jet off to the white island, pronto. I’d suggest this poker-faced and deadly serious, but when the dutch courage had worn off the other girls seemed a little less sure. I didn’t fancy being Billy-No-Mates on Bossa beach, so the idea was temporarily shelved.

A year on, I saw my opportunity for a new life in the sun and seized it with both hands. It came packaged in the form of a fellow six-foot blonde bombshell colleague. By this point, I’d sacked off Smiths in the name of sanity and was now working in the more suitably glamorous surroundings of Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge as a make-up artist and skincare consultant for Clinique, alongside a new party-loving partner in crime, Kez Wells. Equally passionate about what happened between the hours of 5pm-9am rather than the boring 9-to-5, she listened quietly yet intently to my plans…and to my delight instantly signed herself up.

“I’m in!” she declared with a high five, and off we trotted to the pub to celebrate.

By sheer coincidence, a few weeks later we were working our notice periods and planning our new life in Ibiza when we had a chance encounter that was set to spice up our summer. Kez was chatting animatedly to a customer on our Clinique counter, who happened to ask if she enjoyed her job. “Yeah it’s cool,” replied Kez casually, but me and my good mate Sam over there are off to live in Ibiza next week.”

The customer, it emerged, was in fact Sam Brick, a producer for Sky, who was about to start work on a brand new fly-on-the-wall documentary, the first of it’s kind. It was to be called Ibiza Uncovered. Another ballsy blonde who I’m still in contact with, Sam has since found fame as an acclaimed author and journalist, becoming a household name in part due to appearing on Celebrity Big Brother after writing several outspoken articles.

Hearing Kez’s words, Ms Brick’s eyes lit up and she took our phone numbers, promising to call. And call she did. The very next week, the Sky crew descended on my parents’ house in Bexley to start filming, much to the surprise of my family and neighbours, whose net curtains were soon twitching with curiosity at the van unloading huge lights, cameras and microphones outside our three-bed semi.

They filmed us packing our cases, interviewed us lying on my single bed gushing enthusiastically about our plans, which were woolly at best, having simply booked a two-week package “18-to-Herpes” holiday with no onward accommodation…or job, for that matter. Full of the optimism (folly?) of youth, and long before the days of smartphones and social media networking, we weren’t remotely concerned that we had not a single solid contact and only one very weak job lead, figuring since we were heading over in May (’97), the season hadn’t yet kicked off and we’d have our pick of the barwork.

A few days later, reality set in. We were staying in an apartment block by The Egg, a central landmark in the middle of San An. It was 10th May, the weather was a bit unpredictable and the West End, which I’d raved about to Kez, the Ibiza virgin, was deserted during the daytime, eerily quiet and dare I say it…a tad depressing. A bit like Brighton pier in winter. It became apparent that she thought we’d made a mistake in coming to Ibiza…which she told me, brutally and vocally, during a fraught fracas after a particularly boozy afternoon’s sunbathing.

Nerves began to fray as time and money starting running out : we had to find a home and jobs quick-time, or face slinking back, tails between our sunburnt legs, to the UK….and reality….which neither of us wanted.

To be fair, we weren’t exactly trying our hardest to find work, as every time we went into a bar to enquire, we ended up stopping for a “quick one” which led to another and another and suddenly it was 6am and we’d be dancing on the bar, the job-hunting as far from our minds as the childhood bedrooms that awaited us again if we failed. With the Sky crew rocking up at our apartment every few days to check on our employment status, it got even harder to find a job, since the huge cameras trailing us everywhere had a Pied Piper effect, a steady stream of lagered-up blokes forming a never-ending procession behind us, eager to get their grinning rat-faces on the telly.

A cheeky money-saving ploy employed by the bar owners seemed to be to invite potential PR staff to work for free on a ‘trial shift’ basis, whereby you spend several hours bouncing about outside the bar like a deranged goalie, desperately trying to catch every passing holidaymaker swerving to avoid you, then field them into the bar, babbling incoherently about free shots, all under the watchful eye of the owner. Us Brits are accustomed to the tactics of Chuggers (charity muggers) on every high st up and down the country, so are pretty adept at side-stepping the tackles.

Having watched his potential employee springing about like Tigger in the name of good propping, the owner then makes a decision: will he a) employee you and give you the peseta equivalent of a tenner for a good eight hours of nightly sweaty toil?…or b) blow you out in favour of the next desperate hopeful, thus securing himself a whole summer’s free labour as a steady stream of expats come begging?

We ‘worked’ a few unpaid nights here and there in this manner, until one day we happened upon The New Star, a rather innocuous-looking bar on the outskirts of town, up past Bar M (now Ibiza Rocks Bar), near the petrol station. It was early in the season and a very quiet afternoon in the bar, virtually empty, so we chatted to the two young Brits already working there, Claire and Leon, who then beckoned Juan the owner over to us (later photographed below with myself, Leon and other New Star workers). He looked us up and down, asked if we’d done bar work before, to which we both instantly and instinctively lied “Yes!”

“Okay guapas,” he said in his thick Spanish accent through his equally thick black wiry ‘tache, “come back at 6am tomorrow to start work.” Juan’s business partner Manuel, looked on, bemused, from across the bar. Emilio the chef glanced up from his newspaper.

We wanted to leap over the counter and kiss him with delight, but instead simply sauntered out of the bar as cooly as we could, feeling a weight lift from our peeling shoulders, erupting into giggles as we rounded the corner.

Of course, being a relatively small venue on the fringe of San An, we calmly assumed it’d be a breeze – a chilled-out first shift whence we’d gently ease ourselves into the bartending saddle. No-one would be any the wiser that we had no idea how to mix cocktails or pull a decent pint. We’d soon learn the ropes.

Little did we know, as we innocently clip-clopped up to work in our heels and miniskirts at dawn the next morning, that in reality the New Star would be one of the most popular and notorious after-party bars on the island, a heaving hotbed of hedonism, a veritable den of iniquity, that would be the backdrop of an unforgettable summer.

Combine that with a stint in the entertainments team at Manumission, plus the television show we were set to feature in weekly with the first episode about to be aired, and it quickly became apparent that this was certainly going to make a refreshing change to the continous commutes and tedious tasking of our lives back in lustreless London. Oh yes, this was going to be an interesting season alright…

….To be continued….

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 The Dream Becomes A Reality….Show appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.