Ibiza Blues

As the youngest of three, I regularly watched my older siblings getting ready to go out on a Friday and Saturday night. I would desperately try to get involved with the whole process by knocking continuously on my sister’s bedroom door. As she appeared, I’d take one step forward thinking I’d finally made it in but instead I’d be welcomed with her bellowing ‘Mum!!!!’, a sound that could put even a fog horn to shame. It almost became a weekend tradition.  As my mother stormed up the stairs, for the fourth consecutive time and whisked me away, I could tell by the unimpressed look that I should probably quit whilst I was ahead.  

Whilst my brother and sister were out partying ‘till god knows when’, as the parents used to say, my Friday and Saturday evenings consisted of watching Jim Davidson’s Generation Game, Noel’s House Party and Gladiators, (I’m aware of how old I’m making myself sound). 

I remember hearing about Ibiza for the first time when my sister organised to go with her friends in the early 1900’s...only joking. I must have been around 13. She told me how they slept on a mattress on her hotel balcony because they had no air-conditioning and stashed alcohol outside clubs because it was so expensive to drink in them. From then, I dreamt about the day I’d be old enough to go out there and experience ‘the party capital of the world’ for myself.

Moving on some wonderful nine years later, I can safely say I did none of the above, mainly because I spent the whole week recovering from a hangover, lapping up the intensity of the heat and...doing what I do best, sleeping, although there was definitely a severe lack of that throughout the week.

A week of sun, clubs, alcohol, alcohol and....alcohol.

To anybody that has never been on a clubbing holiday with their friends, you’re missing out. You have not used your youth to its full potential and ability until you have caused some drunken havoc with your friends in a foreign country.

In one week, I managed to lose my camera, drop my phone in a pint of coke (whilst sober), have the equivalence of about 24hours sleep, live off of ham and cheese toasties, see Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta, Groove Armada, P.diddy, Dizzee Rascal and Tiesto, as well as seeing Lydia Bright and Joey Essex from TOWIE, visit a zoo dressed as an animal, walk from San Antonio Bay to Ibiza Town (completely oblivious to the fact that we were doing it), go out at 8pm and return at 7am, plank on top of a bin, get a car ride from a random but very friendly man who let us off of ten euro’s and finally wake up when we should have been on our transfer to the airport because someone, cough Claire, set their alarm for the wrong time. It was an amazing holiday.

I had a week of no university assignments, no revision, no personal training sessions....no obligation to anything and it was probably was one of the best weeks of my life.

I had high hopes and it definitely exceeded them. It’s not just another clubbing holiday, it’s your chance to escape your everyday routine to a world of messiness.

Now, I’m back to reality, back to working towards a career as a journalist, back to early mornings, unpredictable weather, poor music in clubs and ridiculous queues just to get into your local liquid, where you have to get absolutely smashed just so you forget it’s full of a bunch of chavs.

The Ibiza blues have kicked in and I for one am seriously struggling to get back into my routine when I know I could be a mere 2hours away partying without a care in the world, but life must go on.

For now there is only one thing that manages to keep me sane and never ceases to put a smile on my face, Avicii’s track, ‘levels’. Whether I’m sitting on the tube at 8am listening to my ipod or driving somewhere in my car, that song gives me a couple of minutes to reminisce about the funniest week I had with some of the most special people in my life.

Roll on Ibiza 2012.