a better ibiza october 2011

Like paella needs rice, a musician needs an audience. Sunshine is good too. No surprise then when, with the prospect of British autumn already glowering below the horizon, I accepted a last minute invitation to explore the gig potential of Pleasure Island.

Within a week the librarian was releasing my print job. Showing her the boarding passes I explained my plan. Her eyes lit up. ‘I’m sure you’ll have fun,’ she said.

Things had moved so fast that it wasn't till I was actually airborne that I managed to hit the background reading. Ibiza has big history - it said. It has been won and lost, rich and poor and, like much of the Mediterranean, both Christian and Muslim. It has worshipped earlier deities besides. Bes god of dance and the goddess Tanit feature strongly in the story of the island’s party habit.

Call me crazy if you will but I’m not sure I didn’t meet Bes myself one evening. In a huge improvement on my first October night on the island when polite young Brits had tried to hook hostess and I into grimly vacant bars, we ate at San Antonio’s Contra Vent restaurant. After dinner Pedro el Chacho’s burnished flamenco got me off my seat and onto my feet where I aped the local dancers’ gypsy moves. Embarrassment was minimised when, after presumably sharing a chuckle at this turista’s skill-free pirouetting, the spirit of dance used his magic patterns to guide me back to my chair.

The dining was generally excellent. We ate in Ibiza town next day. Here the enthusiastic presence of a middle-aged, middle-class French couple told me more about the food in the ‘for the locals’ Bon Profit restaurant than any Michelin star. After lunch as we moved on though it seemed that consumerism of all kinds was well entrenched here. In contrast to the the open hearted pulse of the previous night, in daylight a myriad glittering shops and restaurants hustled for our money. I’m not sure I didn’t catch the occasional ugly drug deal going down.

Is anything though ever what it seems? As we relaxed over our café con leche the island’s history began to muscle out the facade of glitzy dross like sun through a morning mist. Once it had caught my eye Dalt Villa, the fortress heart of the town revealed an older dignity beneath the cynical tourist machine.

I was getting a sense of place. It was engaging. Although no bookings had been offered the public’s response to my casual tango harmonica flurries had been warm enough to consider a return visit early next season. My feeling was growing that Bes and I had connected. I felt sure he wouldn’t turn me away.

Tanit was a different matter. As we drove round the island, through delicate pine woods and unaccountably emotive farmscapes to restaurants by sparkling coves, she kept her distance. Even as the sun plunging between Ibiza and mainland Spain created my final night’s light show she kept to the shadows. ‘Gods?’ I thought, pulling myself back into the material world on the flight home. ‘Goddesses? I must be mad’.

‘How did it go?’ said the librarian a few days later.

‘Pretty good,’ I said. We were getting used to each other by now so I told her a little about my adventure. Then I realised I didn't really know who she was. ‘By the way,' I asked, 'what’s your name?’

I know this is daft but I’m sure I felt a jolt as her eyes shone again,

‘Tanith,’ she answered brightly.

© Patrick Ellis

so dragons you would fight?

It was cool resting against the rock. A good vantage point from which to oversee the unsurfaced road along which trouble was bound to come.

            Snarkleibe turned to Friedlebrund, “So forty years old they are and dragons they want to fight. Why they are not content with their sciatica, their rheumatism, but dragons, dragons, they must have dragons.”

            “Oy, oy,” hissed his companion, “heroes they would be. It is their way.”

            “Their way? OK, it is their way. But then why does that have to be our way? I have many better things to do than breathe fire over men who should be in their offices. Pushing pens they are good for. With those swords they might hurt somebody. And swords, my life”

            Friedlebrund let a small puff of smoke escape her green reptilian snout. “That is how it is.” she said. “A lizard of your considerable years should know this.”

            “But I do. I know it,” he complained. “That means I should like it? I, Snarkleibe, I am too venerable a dragon to pander to the whim of some retired clerk. He wants a challenge? He should go climb a mountain.”

            “Ach, it was always thus, oh, scaly one.” his friend replied.

            Snarkleibe was silent for a moment and then, from deep within his belly, came a rumble which slowly grew into a deafening roar. “It was always thus, oh scaly one,” he bellowed in mockery. “It was always thus. I, chief dragon, know it was always thus.”

            Smoke began to billow from his nostrils.

dragonfly heart

out in the ether
shimmering, darting
i felt your fragile, dragonfly heart
begin to beat more calmly.

© Patrick Ellis

The Sea Nymph and the Walrus

The walrus opened his eye. She was still there. But now she was lying on him. Actually on him as though he were some sort of rock. God, did she have no respect for such an important character as himself?

Obviously she didn’t. There she lay sunning herself and probably, although the walrus couldn’t turn his head round far enough to tell, smiling.

He had no doubt that it was her. Although he couldn’t see her face he could just about catch a glimpse of her hair. And it was definitely her hair. It was as fine as the finest seaweed and equally naturally undisciplined. Although he could tell that she would brush it and brush it and brush it to make it behave, and sometimes it would let her think she’d won, once she started to relax it would reassert itself. When this happened it would put out feelers in every direction, but mostly forwards, and create the most delicious abandoned tangle he’d ever seen.

Although it wasn’t actually green, well not when he’d met her but you never could tell what colour a lady’s hair was going to be from one day to the next: maybe green, then aquamarine and then as red as a sea anemone, there was something very mysterious about it. Early on he had wondered whether it was trying to tell him something. But he knew that was nuts. Nonetheless he thought he’d pay close attention to her crowning glory. For some reason he was sure that it would be that which would let him know which way the currents were flowing.

there'll be a welcome in the hillside

swansea, neath, port talbot, bridgend, cardiff - were these concentrations of people ever attractive. industrial dormer dumps smeared over the bleak hills of the south wales coastline, the whole abortion leavened by gagging remnants of its ugly industrial past.

especially true of port talbot.

10 minutes out of town by train the harsh spell is broken. morning sun on orange willow shoots. clusters of sheep in quiet fields and an occasional stoic horse in its corrugated shelter briefly lift the spirit before the next dose of derelict dismay that is bridgend.

and then theres the litter.

trouble is this hamstrung economy has bred defeat into its people who, in turn, will inertia to win out over initiative.

smouldering like a tip fire below the grass an inescapable heritage of brutality occasionally erupts in the quietly tense communities. then a mother, two young daughters and grandma are silently bludgeoned to death. wraiths of doubt so haunting the eventual conviction. who needs halloween when you've got south wales.

© Patrick Ellis

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

The clothes were definitely the thing in last night's episode. Unhindered by gorgia taste phantasmagorical, ultra wedding dresses with their battery pack powered lights and tremulous artificial butterflies were a complete delight. After all if you are going to get married you might as well make your statement. And those young women defintely did that.

What I found so enjoyable about the whole process was the sheer in-your-face comittment to celebration that the gypsies/romanies/travellers or whatever they prefer to be called displayed. It seemed to me honest and direct and above all passionate. The integrity and intelligence of the tree-surgeon groom being a satisfying rebuttal to the condescention of the snidey and divisive interviewer.

Call me perverse if you will but having photographed more than a few weddings myself I do appreciate the sight of a beautiful woman in a great dress. And as far as the gypsy brides are concerned, for me their frocks really rock. More of the same please.