Arrival in Palma
Yesterday I flew from Gatwick North Terminal on the 0710 hours Easyjet flight to Palma Mallorca to spend a couple of days with my son Barry who lives and works in the marine industry on the island.
The outward journey was unremarkable save for a bout of sneezing that I suffered about 45 minutes into the flight – suddenly, from nowhere, I managed (I should estimate) to sneeze at least twenty times in relatively quick succession – a bodily function that I deal with my holding my nose in order not to spray hundreds of thousands of moist germs all over everyone and everything in my vicinity, the one disgusting habit in other people that irritates me more than any other. Especially when they not just seem to find this as perfectly normal, indeed sometimes positively appear relish doing it as if it is somehow their God-given right to go around infecting everyone else whenever they feel like it!
I have no idea what caused my fit – perhaps a combination of germs brought on board the aeroplane by other people and/or the air conditioning dispersing them around the cabin. Anyway, the upshot was then that my nose began streaming as if suddenly I had suffered the onset of mid-period, full-on, ‘flu. I must have blown my nose ten times or more during the remainder of the flight, eyes also streaming, as if I was worsening for something, and I type as an oldie who only about three weeks ago had my annual oldies’ ‘flu jab.
My taxi driver from the airport to my regular hotel spoke reasonable English but was pessimistic about the weather, reckoning it was going to rain solidly for the next two days – a forecast that thankfully was not borne out by the actuality: Palma turned out to mild, sunny and warm all day thank you.
I joined Barry in his apartment overlooking the main drag around the Marinas and spent the day following him around and catching up. He cannot drive because of his badly-broken wrist (he is halfway through a period of eight months with it in a cast) and therefore travels from one marina jetty to another to visit his workmen or see current and/or prospective new clients by taxi – attempting to save money by confining himself to one or two expeditions per afternoon and asking the driver to wait on the quayside at each stop before going on to the next, each outing lasting about an hour in total.
His business is in a strange position – I have only every run a couple in my time and that was by appointment, rather than starting one up as Barry has done – in that on the one hand it is grinding along happily but, on the other, it requires far more of his time then he would like.
He has two ambitious projects he’d like to work upon but hitherto has been obliged to act as his own operations director – which was never his intention – because his original partner (the intended operations director) had to be fired and Barry has had great difficulty in finding a replacement of the right calibre. The period from now up to Christmas is slow and financially the company is still playing catch-up from the two months Barry had to spend in the UK from July in the aftermath of his operation.
Already this trip has had a benefit for me personally. Way back in the day when I worked in ITV I once met a female TV presenter socially and she attacked me for never appearing in the newsroom.
I pleaded not guilty – I did visit her newsroom regularly, but admittedly this was usually behind closed doors (checking things with my on-site ‘libel lawyer’) – but added that I always felt a bit superfluous in the newsroom proper because everyone was always rushing around trying to get ready for the next bulletin.
Her response was to say (politely) that this was balls. They loved having ‘the suits’ come down and see what life was like in their office because hopefully, if they did, they’d actually appreciate quite what the news team did, how, and under what pressure.
I had something of a simliar experience yesterday.
I don’t even begin to understand the intricacies of the marine industry but, from the moment we got together, Barry was constantly ‘on the go’. Between 1300 and 1900 hours yesterday he must have made forty or fifty phone calls, some of them easy chats, some highly complicated or difficult. One finished and then – within a minute or two – he’d receive or have to make his next.
By the time we reached Sindy’s bar for a couple of pints and a burger each I was quite exhausted from just spending an afternoon watching him work – And I sensed that he was glad that I had taken the trouble to come out and see what his average day at the office was like.
I was happily in bed by 8.30pm!
