Moving On. Part 1
With limited funds, renovating the farmhouse, Cana Cavea, had been a challenge. In those days Mallorca had a bad press as a holiday destination. Most peoples’ idea of the island was Magaluf and El Arenal discos, bars and young people out of control on cheap booze and drugs. To some extent, that was true then and still is today. We have our annual share of kids falling to their death off balconies because they think they can fly or have misjudged the position of the swimming pool in a dive from their fourth-floor bedroom.
We reckoned there were some who would be captivated by the rustic charm of a Mediterranean island that was unfamiliar to most tourists. And so, we converted our small donkey stable into a two-bedroom self-catering annexe. We earned a moderate income from adventurers willing to risk all on a five-line ad in the Frankfurter Allgemeine or Times newspapers. We were right, they loved it. We made many friends renting out the annexe. Some returned each year, others asked Sandy to find them a ruin so they could replicate our dream. For eight years, we shared food, wine, and amiable company on warm star-filled nights at our home.
In 1998, we decided it was time to move on. Temperatures rarely fell below zero in Son Barcelo. However, living on an island with just a log burner, the humidity made the farmhouse a bleak prospect in winter. Damp clothing and bedding were the norm. We decided to sell up and build a traditional style house with double glazing, central heating, and roof and wall insulation on our land in Son Bennassar.
A damp house was not the only reason for a change. Even with those magical summers, after the fiasco with the powerboat company in Cala D’or, now long gone, I was quite unsettled. I was not happy being involved with the nouveau riche superyacht scene. With no other tech opportunities on the island at the time, I felt I might have made a mistake coming to Mallorca. I struggled with the rapid change taking place around me from the influx of so much wealth, and I began drinking too much. I invented reasons for this, but they were just excuses to explain something I didn’t understand myself. My behaviour upset Sandy, and she almost took the children and left me. In my darker moments, I couldn’t have cared less, I’d lost faith in humanity and myself, it was a horrible time. Fortunately, on Valentines Day 1998, with Sandy back in the UK for some respite, the kids off doing their own thing, and me home alone, I had a moment of clarity. Since that night, with the love of a good woman, the kids and some dear friends plus an attitude adjustment, those days are far behind us. Life never lets you off the hook, there are always new challenges, but for me, drinking never solved anything. That’s a story for another day, but if anyone ever wants to talk about it, I’m always here to listen.
Now I’ve become Saint Bernard! Once a year, I buy a Cohiba Havana and smoke it under an August night sky watching shooting stars, content that I still have at least one vice. The last one I smoked made me throw up, but I endure.
My friend Ray’s father, Mr Papworth, died. Ray was Tayrne’s Godfather so on 18 July, Tayrne and I flew to England for the funeral.
When we returned, Sandy had sold Cana Cavea, and had a seven million peseta (₤35,000) deposit. Still having bookings for the annexe, we had until the end of October to move out.
Tayrne wasn’t a problem, rather than paying rent for five years, she lived in a flat in Palma that we’d bought for her while she was studying at university. She let out two rooms to students and used that money to live on.
Rohan was a different story, optimistically, we told him he’d need to find his own accommodation and a steady job. That was hard, but at nineteen using home and parents as a convenience was not an option. It was time he entered the real world.
Selling was one thing, but the tricky problem of finding somewhere to rent that would accept two cats and two dogs was another. It was time for a plan.
We had to:
• Make appointments with the council, notary, lawyers and banks.
• Contact the electric and telephone companies, and inform the Son Barcelo Water Association of the change of ownership.
• Make a backup plan in case we couldn’t find alternative accommodation on time. Go to see mobile homes and caravan parks near Palma, and even visited camping specialist suppliers in case we had to pitch a tent in Son Bennassar.
• Find a place to store our things, check out storage companies, garages and even look for an old shipping container to put on our land as a last resort.
• Talk to architects, builders and the council about building the new house.
• Look after the guests that were still coming to stay in the annexe.
Eight weeks before we were due to move we’d not found somewhere to live, so I made the ‘Doomsday’ clock. This was a circular disk made of card, divided into eight coloured segments. The segments started on Monday 7 September and finishing on Monday 28 October the last week before we had to vacate the house.
To focus our minds, I hung the clock on the wall and incremented its single-hand clockwise through the segments as we came closer to Doomsday.
In all this chaos, Helga and Winfried, from Marburg in Germany, arrived. Winfried was the Chief Auditor for the Lufthansa airline. They could travel anywhere in the world for free, and they did, but every year since 1991, when we first started renting, they came to stay with us.
As soon as they put their bags down in the small living room of our converted donkey stable, they’d say “Now we are home”.
We’d become close friends and were always happy to see them. Our dogs were happy too, knowing they had weeks of gourmet tinned food, constant attention, and morning and evening rambles through the lanes. Oddly enough, with all the emotions involved in leaving Cana Cavea, Helga and Winfried gave us the most concern. Telling them, we had sold up, and they wouldn’t be able to share their Octobers with us, and the dogs again was the hardest thing we had to do. On the bright side, we said, there would always be a place for them in our new home once it was finished.
16 September 1998, against all odds, Sandy and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. It was the last day before Helga and Winfried returned to Germany. As a sign of our friendship, they invited us to dinner at the rather expensive Italian restaurant ‘La Cocina’ in Calonge, ironically owned by a German man and his Thai wife. It was a poignant last meal together.
The next morning we drove Helga and Winfried to Palma airport. It was an emotional farewell as they checked in for their flight to Frankfurt.
Having some disposable capital in the bank from the sale of Cana Cavea, and as an extension of our wedding anniversary, Sandy and I went for a late lunch at La Lubina fish restaurant in the marina opposite Palma Cathedral.
When we said goodbye to Helga and Winfried at the airport, we had no idea we would never see them again. Only in their early sixties, before our new house was finished, they’d both died. Helga sent us word first of Winfried’s death. A few years later, a German lawyer dealing with Helga’s estate, found a letter from us inviting her to stay at the Wild Olive. The lawyer was kind enough to write and tell us of Helga’s death. We should have known, it was the only year we hadn’t received a box of traditional Schmidt ginger cakes from her at Christmas.
I don’t have too many regrets in life, but that Helga and Winfried didn’t ever see or come and stay with us in the Wild Olive is undoubtedly one.
On Friday 18 September 1998 we only had six weeks left before we had to vacate Cana Cavea. With the Doomsday clock counting down to ‘eviction’ day, we were still nowhere near finding a place to stay