In the autumn of 1978, a pretty-faced eighteen-year-old pulled into old Amsterdam’s grim and gloomy Centraal Station. It was cold and wet, with scary types milling about the windswept forecourt. The new beau in town had no place to stay. He’d heard that Kerkstraat was the place to hang out but had no clue where that was or how to get there. While standing in the rain wondering what next, he was approached by some sleazy bloke with a nasty comb-over – the kind of man your mother warned you against – who offered him a lift. He wisely refused, jumped into a cab and stumbled into the first hotel he came across. He asked if there was any room at the inn. There was – just the one.
That new beau in town was me, and that was my inauspicious start to an eye-popping, life-liberating experience. I lapped it up – and Amsterdam lapped me up – looked after by the proprietor of the West End Hotel, a grey-haired Dutch chap with a handlebar moustache and kindly eyes.
Forty-five years later, Liam and I pulled into old Amsterdam’s now bright and flashy Centraal Station. It was cold and wet but buzzy, with travellers and locals milling about the windswept forecourt. We jumped on a packed tram to Kerkstraat and stumbled into our hotel.
“Hold on, I know this place.”
Yes, you guessed it. It was the same hotel – renamed, remodelled and reborn, phoenix-like, but the same gaff, nonetheless. What are the chances?
If you look closely at the image below, you can spot the old name ‘West End Hotel’ etched into the glass above the entrance.
I wonder what became of the grey-haired Dutch chap with a handlebar moustache and kindly eyes who looked after a pretty-faced eighteen-year-old all those years ago?
Sleepy Frikes on the idyllic island of Ithaca was simply sublime – serene and restorative. The peace was broken only by the ringing of goat bells in the surrounding hills and wind chimes singing in the breeze. There was one exception, though. Some excitable sprogs commandeered the pool and did what excitable sprogs do everywhere – splash and scream – while their parents buried their heads in their tablets. Mercifully, it was just for the one afternoon.
I always thought Tom Conti’s fake Greek accent in Shirley Valentine was way too much until I heard our poolside barman speak. Young Luca’s deep and rich dulcet tones sent a dribble down the spine. No wonder Shirley dropped her knickers.
Lazy days basking at the pool were followed by an evening stroll down to the tiny harbour for eats and treats. Food was gloriously no–fuss – hearty, fresh and generous, and all washed down with robust local wine.
We made only one excursion during our stay – to the cute hilltop village of Stavros for huge portions and a quick gander around the fancy Orthodox church. There we witnessed a devout young lass kiss each icon in turn and an old girl in widow’s weaves gossiping with God on her phone.
And then came the tempest. Greece has endured a biblical summer season – heat, fire and flood – with devastating consequences. Storm Daniel – the most deadly and costly Mediterranean cyclone ever recorded – rolled over Ithaca trapping us in a harbourside taverna. Locals feared the worst as they rushed about battening down the hatches. ‘Best order another carafe,’ Liam said. And so we did.
In the event, we got off lightly. Tragically, this can’t be said for other parts of Greece – or, a few days later, for Libya.
It’s been a quarter of a century since I last visited Dalyan on Turkey’s pine-clad south-west coast. Back in the day, it was a sleepy village on a dreamy, reed-lined river stuffed with turtles. I’d been told that Dalyan had since grown into a full-on resort stuffed with young Russians avoiding the call-up. As they say, forewarned is forearmed.
And what did we find? Yes, Dalyan is much livelier, centred around a buzzy bar street with a smiley hawker at every door and the obligatory flock of peacocking waiters. But the resort has retained much of its old laid-back rustic charm with a hint of Bohemia. The river too is busier these days, but the turtles still pop up for air. As for the Ruskies, they were nowhere to be seen. With tourist visas expired, it seems most have returned to the motherland hoping to keep their heads down.
Our waterside family-run hotel delivered a cool pool and pretty wooded gardens running down to a jetty – the perfect place to decompress with a good book and a glass of cheap plonk. Wi-Fi was more notspot than hotspot, but that meant we took a welcome break from our glued-to-the-phone lives.
Built in quirky faux-Ottoman style, our digs were kept squeaky clean by a small gaggle of headscarved ladies who didn’t bat an eyelid at the prospect of a couple of old fairies shacking up together. And talking of wrinklies, compared to most of our neighbours, we were just out of short trousers. So much so, we thought we’d booked into the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – one of my favourite films – with paramedics and a defibrillator on standby, just in case.
Not that all the residents of our retirement village were retiring types. Our next-door neighbours were a couple of full-throttle sisters from North Wales. Both widowed some years back, the racy ladies had decided life was for living and have been living it large ever since. The widows were merry most nights. Naughty but nice. They were a scream.
Lazy days on the loungers were followed by leisurely meals in town; but just like Cinders, we were tucked up by midnight. The slow stroll home was usually escorted by an assortment of street dogs – ten a penny in Turkey. Two middle-of-the-road mutts reminded us so much of cartoon characters that we called them Hanna and Barbera.
Hanna
Mid-way through our return to Paradise, we hooked up with a belle from our old Bodrum days. She and her Turkish beau had left the hassle and bustle of Bodrum to build their picture-perfect home in the village of Köyceğiz, on the shores of the large lake of the same name. They gave us a winding road tour with a lazy meze lunch up in the hills where diners can cool their toes in ice-cold melt waters. We were the only tourists at the table. I’d forgotten just how beautiful Turkey is. This image of the meandering Dalyan River does not do it justice. We were too busy taking in the view to capture it.
It was a truly wonderful excursion. Thank you, you know who you are.
Essex, the home county to the east of London, has the reputation of being, well, a bit chavvy. But there’s more to Essex than big hair, gaudy bling, fake tans, assisted tits and impossibly white tombstone teeth – and that’s just the men.
Beyond the faceless towns of the commuter belt, Essex is a green and pleasant land, and its county town, Colchester, has ancient roots. Although not officially awarded city status until 2022, Colchester can reasonably claim to be Britain’s first proper city, sitting as it does on top of Camulodunum, the first major settlement of Roman Britannia and the province’s first capital.
Even before the unstoppable Romans slashed and burned their way through village, forest and field, the settlement was already a centre of power for the locals, including King Cunobelin – Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. When the Romans displaced the tribal huts with their first legionary fortress, it was like saying ‘we’re top dogs now’.
Following the Boudican revolt of AD60, when the seriously pissed-off Queen of the Iceni slaughtered everyone and burned everything in her path, a defensive wall was thrown around the town in an after-the-horse-has-bolted kinda way. Not long after, Camulodunum lost its status as provincial capital to the better-placed Londinium but continued to thrive as a garrison town, something which continues to this day.
We’ve passed through Colchester many times – it’s on the mainline from Londinium to Norwich – but we’d never stepped off the train for a gander. So, we thought, let’s give it a go, and we stayed overnight. The main event for us was Colchester Castle, which sits in a pretty park populated by picnickers and grey squirrels. The park also contains remains of that post-Boudica Roman city wall – the earliest ever constructed.
The castle keep is eleventh-century Norman, built on the foundations of the massive classical temple of Claudius the Divine; Roman emperors just loved to be worshipped. The castle is now a rather splendid museum dedicated to the long history of the city. Roman-era relics are what really draw in the punters. We were lucky enough to avoid the modern-day legions of over-excited schoolkids in hi-vis jackets screaming their way through the exhibits.
Museum’d out, we took a slow stroll around the ruins of St Botolph’s Priory, where Liam caught forty winks; then we withdrew to a local tavern for a bottle and a bite.
Our bed for the night was at the historic George Hotel, along the High Street. We chose well. Behind the hotel’s Georgian façade lies a timber-framed building said to date back to the fourteenth century, although the hotel’s extensive cellars may be older and feature the ruins of a Roman gravel pavement. A few years back, the hotel underwent extensive renovation and refurbishment. We fell for the lavish and distinctly quirky style.
I posted this image on Faceache of little ol’ me in a funky, over-the-top, oversized wing-back chair. It prompted this response from an old mucker of mine…
PUT THAT CHAIR IN YOUR HANDBAG AND STEAL IT FOR ME *NOW* PLEASE!
After flying into Corfu, we had some time to kill before our ferry to Paxos so we dropped off our suitcases at left luggage and went for a casual stroll around Corfu Town. Suddenly the skies darkened, the heavens opened and Mad Mother Nature threw a hissy fit with an instant snap, crackle and pop storm. And who can blame her? Caught completely off-guard, we and everyone around us rushed for cover to the nearest café. Our jovial host couldn’t believe his luck.
The storm passed as quickly as it had arrived and sun-kissed calm was quickly restored.
Three hours later we were in the village of Lakka, our home for our lazy week in nirvana. Our digs were typically Greek – squeaky clean but basic – with friendly staff, cheap local plonk and dodgy electrics. The pool, however, was a shimmering jewel surrounded by lush pine-clad hills, just the ticket for dossing and dipping.
Paxos is a sceptre’d isle of endless olive groves and randy crickets, partially protected from the stresses and strains of modern mass tourism. Laid-back Lakka is on the north side of the island, wrapped around one half of an iridescent yacht-sprinkled bay. Picture-perfect and taverna-stuffed, the pretty village of alleys and squares is an unhurried cash-only kinda of place. Leave the plastic at home.
After the big letdown that was our Canarian getaway – cancelled flight, greyish skies, cool-ish nights, sad face, sad face – a Greek treat is next on the holiday agenda. We fly to Corfu followed by a short ferry hop to nearby Paxos. It looks bleedin’ marvelous.
Yes, that’s our pool bottom right. But will it go the way of Tenerife? I’ll keep you posted.
Not really. Our digs were great – comfy and well-dressed – and the staff were fantastic but, let’s face it, the point of any holiday in the sun is, well, the sun. There’s a bit of a clue in the title. And there was precious little sun in Tenerife.
“The sun’ll come out tomorrow,”
Liam sang.
And it did for a couple of afternoons only to disappear once again behind a thick blanket of cloud. Talking of blankets, we put extra layers on our bed to keep warm.
There were no sunny coffee mornings on the terrace, no quick dips in the pool to cool down or sultry evenings on the sauce. We tried to make the best of a bad lot – drinking through it at various watering holes in buzzy Puerto de la Cruz with its trendy old town.
We were rather taken with the Fanny Bar
…and the murals
…and then there was the graffiti.
We even managed a day trip to La Orotava, a pretty inland Canarian town.
But in the end, when rain was forecast, we thought sod this for a game of soldiers and came home a week early. Still, as disappointing as it was, we try to keep a sense of proportion. After all, there are real soldier games going on in the world.
And there’s always Greece in July to look forward to, assuming our flight isn’t cancelled again.
We should have been in Spain in June – visiting old friends in pretty Sitges and a few days in gorgeous Girona. The pandemic put paid to that, of course. And, since foreign travel is probably off the agenda this year, I thought I’d raid the archives to find something about a holiday many, many years ago in a land far, far away.
For John Garner (1967-2003)
I was a Turkey virgin. It was 1997, my first time. John and I had booked a holiday with an old mucker and his latest squeeze. We were thirty-something boys-about-town desperate for a little respite from fast living and the daily grind. The glossy brochure promised tranquil simplicity and that’s what we got. Our digs were a modest whitewashed villa nestled on a craggy headland on the north side of the Datça Peninsula. The lushness of our rural idyll was totally unexpected – so much richer than the dry bush of Andalucia and the Greek islands I’d been used to. And the silent sunsets were life-affirming – spiritual, almost.
We were a week in. The hairdryer heat of a blistering August had us limp and reclining. Lazy days were spent lounging round the trickling pool – G&T in one hand, chick-lit in the other, swallows ducking and diving overhead and the deafening chorus of randy cicadas. Sultry nights brought lively conversation to a score of Holst and Madonna, and tumblers of chilled plonk on the empty beach, counting shooting stars as the lights of Bodrum flickered on the horizon. It was sublime.
But John wanted more.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said, peering over the top of a Jackie Collins.
‘What?’ I said. ‘In this heat?’
‘You can’t lie on your back with your legs up all the time,’ he said. ‘Mehmet’s getting the wrong idea.’
Mehmet, resident bottle-washer and dogsbody – and a dead ringer for Danny Kaye – showed a persistent interest, clipping bushes around us and throwing that all-too-familiar knowing look as he lit the candles each time the power was cut – a regular event most evenings. The lightless nights switched on the stars.
‘I think Mehmet’s got our number, don’t you?’ I said.
‘Look, the boys need a little privacy, you know, to get better acquainted,’ said John. ‘Nudge nudge, wink wink.’
I laughed. ‘They don’t need any encouragement. They’ve been at it like rabbits since we landed.’ I nodded at the two of them canoodling like horny otters in the pool. ‘Thank God I packed the earplugs.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said John. ‘Let’s go explore.’
Leaving behind our holiday companions to their splashing foreplay, we strolled through the ramshackle hamlet of Taşbükü and down to the sand and shingle beach. I was moist. I lifted my tee-shirt to dab my forehead and dry my specs. In the distance I could see Cleopatra Island, a verdant rock in the Gulf of Gökova. It shimmered, mirage-like.
‘Did you know,’ I said, pointing over with my glasses, ‘legend has it that Cleo snogged Mark Antony on the beach of Cleopatra Island?’
‘Oh,’ said John. ‘How very Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity. Wonder where he put his helmet?’
‘Where we all do, I imagine. So, where are we going?’
‘Over there, let’s go over there.’ John gestured to a long line of buildings at the far end of the bay.
‘Why?’ I said, unimpressed.
‘Because it’s there, stupid.’
Like intrepid explorers of old, we set about our quest with vigour, flip-flops in hand, splashing through the wash, joking and laughing along the way. It took about an hour to reach our destination – an assortment of identikit cubes toppling down the hill to the beach. We climbed the crazy paving steps through a rusting iron gate.
‘Oh, it’s just another holiday resort,’ John said, all drop-lipped.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Let’s have a gander anyway. Could do with a drink. Spot of lunch, maybe?’
John agreed. ‘Yeah. A cheesy pide and a glass of Efes.’
We wandered along the winding leaf-littered paths, past locked-up houses with empty terraces dripping in twisted bougainvillea. It was desolate, all waterless pools and shuttered cafés.
‘Where is everybody?’ I said.
Where indeed. It was a ghost town – soul-less apart from a street dog nodding off in the shade and a few mangy cats bickering about the bins. There were no over-wrought toddlers splashing about, no tanked-up dads propping up the bar, no mums leathering-up under the sun, no courting couples getting hot under the collar in the sweltering heat. It was eerie and unsettling. Like walking through the abandoned set of Eldorado.
‘We’re being watched,’ John whispered.
‘What do you mean we’re being watched?’
‘Over there. There’s some bloke hiding behind that bush.’
I grinned. ‘Trust you to notice a man hanging round a bush.’ But John was right. A dusky face with a handlebar moustache was poking out between the branches of a pink oleander, mumbling into a walkie-talkie. We could just hear the screechy static.
‘Now what do we do?’ I said.
‘Keep walking?’
Our pace quickened. Moustache man didn’t follow.
But all of a sudden, a hook-nosed apparition in black appeared from the shadows – more screechy static.
‘Okay, that’s it,’ I said. ‘Best get out of here – sharpish. Let’s head back.’
‘We can’t go back,’ said John, starting to panic. ‘The black shirts are waiting for us.’
‘To do what, exactly?’ I said.
‘Haven’t you seen Midnight Express?’
‘Get a grip, John.’
We fast flop-stepped up the hill to the entrance of the development. Hook Nose stalked us all the way, keeping a wary distance. As we neared a boom gate at the top, a pretty boy with messy hair and a grin wider than his waist emerged from a sentry box and waved us through to the open road with his walkie-talkie.
Crisis over, we stood by the side of a dusty track gathering our thoughts.
‘Bloody hell,’ said John. ‘That was close. Thought we were gonna get strip-searched.’
It was the calm before the storm. We flew out just before Storm Ciara barrelled across the flatlands on the Jet2 poofs and pensioners express to Gran Canaria with an all-male crew who minced up and down the aisles dishing up relentless jollity with the booze. We fitted right in and celebrated with fizz.
For our fix of winter sun this year we’d gone a bit more upmarket, staying at the Canary Garden Club, a well-appointed collection of whitewashed bungalows set in lush, beautifully-tended gardens. The sparkling pool was gorgeous though somewhat marred by the assortment of old fossils drying out in the sun. Still, it made us feel young again.
This was intended to be R&R gig and so we only ventured out once to the Yumbo Center – the epicentre of gay nightlife in Playa Del Inglés – with its trashy bars with their trashy boys flaunting their trashy bits. A likely lad emerged from the shadows and offered us Charlie, and I don’t mean my mother’s favourite fragrance from the seventies.
The gay scene has evolved down the years from the small intimate bars of my youth, partially hidden from view so as not to offend the easily offended, to cocktail cafés spilling out everywhere, in-yer-face drag shows banging out the show tunes and brash cruising establishments that do exactly what they say on the signs, and more – Sodom and Gomorrah in sequins and leather. We left it to the wide-eyed and lustful, and were in bed by midnight.
Most days we dined early and watched the sun go down over the Atlantic – just what the doctored ordered after an over-eventful year.
We arrived back at Stansted late – too late to travel back all the way to the middle of nowhere – so we’d pre-booked a budget hotel, or so I’d thought. To my surprise and total delight, Liam had upgraded us for Valentine’s. And on the train back to Norwich the next day, the guard hole-punched our tickets with a heart. Who said romance is dead?
Since we became village people, hardly a day has passed when it hasn’t rained – drizzle one day, deluge the next and endless dreary skies. Even the ducks have had enough. So at this time of year a young (and not so young) man’s fancy turns to a bit of cheap fun in the sun. Unlike the ducks, we’re flying south to Gran Canaria.
Whereas in 2019 we lodged in a bijou men-only bungalow complex for wrinkly friends of Dorothy, this time we’ve going large and going upmarket. While it would be rude not to venture to the bars at least once for our annual no nonsense in-yer-face, up-for-anything fix, I suspect the main event will be chick-lit under a parasol by day and cocoa laced with a medicinal nightcap by bedtime.
Perking the Pansies 