Ibiza Water

If Howlin' Wolf had lived in Ibiza he'd never have written the classic Blues song 'I asked for water, she gave me gasoline.'

I've just been to fill up with both liquids and 56 litres of water cost €3 whilst 41 litres of gas was €46! A bit of a discrepancy eh?

The reason that petrol cost so much more here is that it makes better tea.

Observational Comedy II

More pathos from Ibiza

Have you ever noticed when you've just had a knee operation and you can't walk, sit down and are sofa bound, your mother-in-law invites herself round to catch up on the last 4 episodes of Dancing on Ice and Popstar to Operastar? What's that all about?

Have you ever noticed that no matter which show you're watching, the panel of judges always has a nasty one? What's that all about?

That's Jason Gardiner, the angry one on Skating on Ice. I'd be angry too if I looked like that. Jason's claim to fame (apart from his anger mismanagement) is that he is Sir Elton John's choreographer.

Imagine how difficult that must be for Jason

"Come on S'relton, you great puff, sit here and look to the right when you get to a sad bit in your crappy songs."

I Don't Want to go to Rehab (Ibiza mix)

No, no,no!

Don't worry, I'm not giving up ale, but I've started my rehabilitation programme for my knee.

The reason I don't want to go has no connection with the muscle wrenching, bone crunching, heart pounding, lung bursting, tongue twisting exercises I have to do for 2 hours every day. No, that's easy and painless in comparison to listening to the two hours of top 40 Latino sounds playing constantly on the giant telly in the gym.

Here's Rosario with Cuentame Que te Paso


Anyone else think she's a bloke?

Ibiza Blog Comedy Awards

I'm happy to announce that once again 'The View from the (Ibiza) Villa' has been voted Ibiza's top comedy blog against absolutely no opposition.

I'd like to dedicate the award to my traumatologist Dr. Dirk Kuhnen.

Great knee op, thanks doc!

Spanish Histree in Ibiza

What's the connection between this Araucaria, or Monkey Puzzle Tree which I can see every day from our kitchen window, and Spanish political history?????

Well, it's almost 80 years old and was planted on 14th April 1931, the day the Second Republic was proclaimed


“The Second Spanish Republic was the system of government in Spain between April 14, 1931, when King Alfonso XIII left the country following local and municipal elections in which republican candidates won the majority of votes in urban areas and April 1, 1939, when the last of the Republican (republicanas) forces surrendered to Nationalist (nacionalistas) forces led by Francisco Franco, at the end of the Spanish Civil War.” - Wikipedia

Observational Comedy

According to the never wrong, always infallible Wikipedia

"Observational comedy is a style of humor based on making remarks about commonplace aspects of everyday life. The humor, based on the premise of "It's funny because it's true," consists of observations made about sometimes very minor and superficial aspects of Western culture: from airline peanuts to the Jared Diet to the lines at Walgreens. Jokes may often begin with the phrase, "Did you ever notice?..." or "What's the deal with...?", and may end with ...'What's that about?'."

Seems easy enough, so whiling away the hours at the doctors today, I thought I'd give it a go.

Ahem, (clears throat)

Have you ever noticed that when you're in the doctor's wating room everyone who goes in before you takes twenty minutes with the doc, and then you're in and out in two minutes? What's that all about?

Putting the (Medical) Record Straight

I feel I should explain that the reason I had no feeling in my legs yesterday after my operation was that I'd had an epidural. The effects last 5 or 6 hours after the op but now I'm perfectly OK. I'd only mentioned about 15 times - both orally and in writing - to the old people in St. Helens, so naturally they feared the worst when the saw my post below.

I repeat, I am perfectly OK and recovered now. To prove it, here's a snap of me and me room-mate in the hospital in Ibiza yesterday.

What a Drip

An hour after my knee operation and I can't feel a thing from the waist down!

Since I started this post I've acquired another drip

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

A phrase in all probability coined by Disraeli about probability (and other things.)

The probability of a random event happening in a certain hour is 4% (1 in 24) and the probability of that event happening in the 'day' time is double that of it happening in the 'night' time. ie 16 to 8 (or 2 to 1)

So why does Jaki's mobile phone's super loud low battery warning beep always, always, always go off in the middle of the frigging night?

(that's a rhetorical question btw, I don't want a flood of comments about skewed distribution and standard deviation, thanks very much.)

Return of the Old Woman

The mother-in-law's back!

Instead of the normal pleasantries of how awful the flight had been we were treated to a 2 hour monologue about the hitherto unknown weather situation in Britain. Apparently St. Helens has been snowed back into the stone age and a blanket of the white stuff is causing chaos everywhere, especially London, where all the news comes from in England.

If anyone's forgotten what snow looks like, here's a snap the old fella took of their avenue just before he went out looking for my mother who'd gone to Marks and Spencer to take a blouse back.

Anyway, the old-dear-in-law brought a packet of barley to Ibiza from the old country - because you can't get it here. She could equally have brought lightbulbs, firelighters, oregano, cat litter, antiseptic kitchen wipes and a myriad other things that you also can't get here.

Luckily for us, she's been dispensing useful advice courtesy of her position as Emeritus Professor of Hindsight and Malapropisms at the St. Helens Institute of Technology (SHIT). You should've had a waiter's dummy installed to bring firewood up from the cellar she helpfully opined seeing me hobbling up the stairs with a basket full of logs.

Stand by for more of this and some pretty useful gossip - Alex the Yorkshire welder has got the Showman's Bar in Cala de Bou, and he's going to open in winter! - as and when we get her twitter stream.

Ibiza CBB Villa

Only one day in to Celebrity Big Brother and we're already hooked and reliving the action role play style.



Jaki's outside perishing cold, screeching nonsensically through her shiny hair and I'm inside, toasty warm, trying to fathom out how to get from the hall to the lounge – there appears to be a door blocking the way – and wondering who the other house mates are. (I think I recognise two of them from 101 Dalmatians?)

Saint Joe Blues

I woke up this morning, at the crack of dawn.
Said, I woke up this morning, at the crack of dawn.
I was feeling so tired, all I could do was yawn.

Doin' a bit of research on the Can Jordi Blues Station in San Jose, Ibiza, I came across this fab video of Blues Dave (sometimes known as Dave Blues) in Raco Verd.




Great groove Dave!

Snafu Ibiza

Take a look at this

It's San Jose's new look high street. Recently completed at a budget cost of €384,000 using Central Government money from PlanE, it was opened with a flourish in an official ceremony by the mayor and representatives from the Government.

Doesn't it look great with brand new benches, saplings and planters with olive trees and lavender. It's even got a parking lane for anyone wanting to nip into the new shops and offices constructed by a private developer (rumoured to be a relative of the last mayor) 

The only problem is that over four years after the project started with the destruction of a perfectly good copse of pine trees, it still looks like an unfinished building site.

Old barriers, oil drums, rocks, debris and rubble litter the area and drain pipes poke out of the walls dripping liquid onto the floor. In a real country health and safety would have a field day, here, it'll be like this for at least another year.

Merry Christmas from Ibiza

We'd like to be the first to wish everyone a very merry Christmas twenty-ten!

We hope it's as good for you as ours in two thousand and nine! We're still here aren't we?

Cala Moli: You've Been Framed

If you've been observing my Tweets on Twitter, you are
a. under 100 years old
b. under employed
and will have noticed my daily snapshots not worthy of a full blown blog post.

One of them was a really blustery day at Cala Moli which actually rates a few seconds of video, mainly because it illustrates one of the unwritten laws of photography,

which is that when you don't want a dog to appear on a video, it will. Conversely, when you've just lined up a belting shot of your cute pooch, it will turn round just as the shutter clicks and all you've got is a great photo of its arse!

The dog was Floyd, who was not harmed during the making of the video.