Until my last marriage, I could only remember taking one, possibly two, holidays with a loved one. One of those was taking a train up from LA to Portland, Oregon at Christmastime, 1998, for a reunion of my then-wife’s family. The only real holiday part of it for me was riding in a sleeping car on a train, still a novelty for me then, but that novelty would wear off a couple years later when I’d start working in UK. I wasn’t even that keen on honeymoons, though those were mostly paid for before we embarked on them. Admittedly, I’m a tight-ass, but I often get paid to work in exotic locations all around the world, so for me it’s easier to just have my significant other join me if and when it’s feasible. The idea of consulting travel guides, booking transport and lodging, and planning to be a tourist for a few days has always been a complete alien concept for me. The idea of going away when I earn most of my living going away seems like overkill.

             My last wife worked in the 9 to 5 world, and like most in that world, was allowed a certain number of paid vacation days, and we were damn well going to take them. But since she had a son in school, the only times we could go was when every other freaking family was planning the same thing, so we always had to pay top prices for everything, unless we booked maybe a year in advance. On top of that, she got goaded into investing in a time share plan, even though the phrase was never used in the entire sales pitch. It meant an obligation to plan our holidays at specific resorts, which got more boring each time we did it. Our last one, near Malaga, Spain, was compounded by the fact that it rained for about the last 100 hours we were there. This trip also started a day after I’d just spent a week working a cruise ship! 

              So when Eileen, my girlfriend of the last seven months, started hinting at wanting a holiday, I wasn’t jumping up and down at the idea. The only plus I could see was that since her work is freelance, and there’s no children involved, we had a lot more flexibility as to when and where we could go. There was also that inherent fear that because we hadn’t been together that long, going off somewhere for a whole week when the longest we’d ever spent together was a weekend could be our undoing. So I was hoping we’d just go somewhere on the British coast for maybe 3 or 4 days, and that would be sufficient.

                 Enter a comedian with whom I was doing a resort gig in early April. On this incessantly long drive to and from a caravan park near Middlesbrough, about 250 miles from London, he mentioned that he lived in a villa in Mallorca, and since I’d been talking about my girlfriend, he made an offer for us to come down and spend time with him and his Mrs. when it was convenient. I was surprised that he offered, since I didn’t know him that well, and had never met his wife, but when I brought the idea to Eileen, that turned out to be exactly what she wanted, and wasn’t worried about not knowing either of the potential hosts.

                   So there we are, booking flights, which they advertise as £56 per person round trip. That’s before they add £40 per person baggage charge, and who’s going to be flying to Mallorca with only carry-ons? And there’s an additional £38 for using your credit card, though there’s some electronic Visa card, that almost nobody has, that exempts a credit card charge. Fuckers! What we were initially led to believe to cost £112 was now £230, and there would be additional charges. Didn’t break us, but an annoyance just the same. The rental car involved some of the same shenanigans, adding a charge for a full tank of petrol once we picked up the car from Palma Airport.

                   Those things aside, Mallorca is lovely, and we got to spend some time on a beach, which we sure as hell wouldn’t have done anywhere in England, even though UK had a bit of a heat wave while we were gone. What I really liked was the freedom we had to do whatever the fuck we wanted to do, and if we chose to do nothing (which we did one day), that was that. There were ancient villages like Soller, completely surrounded by mountains, and the view of it from a vantage point a few hundred feet above was the type that you would only find on postcards.