Minorca - the fury, jealousy, desire and aspiration

HOLIDAY DISASTERS:When HILARY FANNINwas a child, Minorca was a byword for sun and luxury - the reality had her dreaming of cosy Clogherhead

I NEVER WENT anywhere as a child. Well, that’s not quite true: sometimes we got the bus to the hole-in-the-wall beach and shivered underneath our cardigans until it was time to go home.

And, to be fair, once a year my mother brought me to Kerry to visit her aunt, where we would play hour after hour of beggar-my-neighbour between bouts of shivering under our cardigans on westerly-wind-scoured beaches. And my own aunt once brought me on a caravan holiday to Clogherhead, Co Louth, where we shivered with abandon under layers of cardigans and ate scrambled egg on toast between yet more bouts of beggar-my-neighbour.

It was okay though; nobody else on my road went anywhere either. And I’d actually been on an aircraft. My father was friends with a pilot, so I’d walked down the strip-lit aisle between rows of empty, expectant seats, swivelled at the rear-door exit and walked all the way back up again. But the bird was stationary, and when the tour was over we got off and went home to our immovable suburb.

Then I made a friend who lived in a big house by the sea, and whose father drove a car that smelled like a shoe shop. We were playing with her Cindy dolls when she told me that she was going to Minorca the following morning. I nearly fell off her window seat. Minorca is soooo unspoilt, she told me, whereas Majorca had gone to the dogs and was literally crumbling under hordes of tourists and – horror of horrors – was even starting to serve full English breakfasts in the harbour cafes.

Can you believe it? “Full English breakfasts in the harbour cafes!” I scoffed, twisting Cindy’s spindly leg around in her hip socket till she yelped. “Who needs it?”

Minorca, Minorca, Minorca – the name resonated. It became a harbour for fury and jealousy and desire and aspiration.

Around 30 years later I finally made it there. I was deeply tired: there had been bereavement followed by birth – the way these things often seem to happen – and sleep was a vaguely remembered country. Late, disorganised and desperate for a holiday, I packed bottles, formula, nappies and bibs into a bag the size of a principality, while my angry five-year-old took everything back out again, figuring that if we left his recently acquired baby brother at home, with a bit of luck he mightn’t be here when we got back.

The flight was heaving. Somehow a chunky Kit-Kat emanating from our row hit a bald man a couple of seats ahead. I didn’t think fist-chewing little babies had that kind of aim, but the five-year-old was impressed.

That longed-for blast of heat when you step out of the plane was ominously absent. I could smell rain, but denial, as they say, is not just a river. The passport officials were wearing fleece jackets; the woman at the information desk pulled her cardigan tighter as I inquired about transport. By the time we were on the right bus, delicate rain had started to decorate the window panes.

The apartment was functional. Two rings. Thin shower. Graceless bed. Pillows like hardback books. There was a balcony with a plastic table and chairs. Looking down, we could see little duck-shaped rockers to play on, and a red plastic slide; rainbow-coloured beach balls scuttled across the choppy surface of the pool’s water. The five-year-old found his swimsuit under the 28 babygros and the dozens of nappies, and, with the violent optimism of his age, led the charge down the newly cemented stairs. I didn’t bother with sunscreen; the sky could barely stay upright with the weight of cloud.

That night, as everybody lay in one bed with all our clothes on, having scoured the apartment for blankets (there were two), we grownups whispered over the sleeping boys. This was a blip, right? The weather had to improve, didn’t it? The five-year old-sneezed – he had been a strange shade of blue when he emerged from the pool, grinning at his nappy-anchored brother through chattering teeth.

The following day the purple sky blackened like a reversing bruise, the wind whipped up the concrete stairwell, the beach balls hurled themselves across the pool, the big yellow plastic ducks took flight. Someone ran out of a boarded-up hut and tied the red slide to the poolside fencing.

We figured out how to turn on the TV. A Minorcan lady with a bouffant and a polo-neck sweater was pointing at a satellite weather chart. All of Europe had been scribbled over with a big black pen; from Sweden to Seville, the blackness was relieved only by streaks of yellow lightning . . . but wait, what was that coy little green country on the western corner of the map, the one basking in watery sun? “Irlanda!” the bouffant lady was saying with incredulity, shrugging her wool-clad shoulders and producing wry professional laughter for the camera.

Soon after the balcony furniture took flight in pursuit of the yellow ducks, we watched the table struggle to join the airborne chairs. We had one grey sweatshirt between us; the mornings were a race to see who could reach it first. Every now and again a lone figure would appear on a windswept balcony and look despairingly skyward.

By day three, the magic markers had dried up, we were all shouting at the weather lady, and one more game of beggar-my-neighbour while the baby chewed on the ratty couch bed was going to tip me and the balcony table over the edge.

I could only dream of the luxury of a balmy caravan in Clogherhead.

We hired a car, and put the heating on full blast. I finally saw Minorca, unfurled every ribbon of island road. We had lunches in waterside cafes under sturdy plastic sheeting; we nodded sympathetically at other families sheltering under plane trees in graceful, saturated squares. We bought another sweatshirt and went back to the apartment only when it was dark, to watch the lightning crack from under the two damp blankets.

One evening near the end of the week, the sun came out briefly, and the five-year-old struggled manfully into his swimsuit and assaulted the waves. We watched from wet tombolos, the baby frowning under his blanket at the unfamiliar light, but soon after it began to rain again and we were back in the car.

It was just rain, and more rain, and howling wind, and crackling skies, and a Europe-wide, week-long storm. Nothing to write home about. I have, after all, at the school gate, been privy to stories of chicken pox in fields in France, vomiting bugs in Sorrento, rivers of mud in Pompeii and even sunstroke in Brittas Bay.

In truth, if this year’s endless rain would just let up, I’d happily settle for those childhood Kerry beaches, but, from where I’m standing, I can’t see a break in those clouds . . . the passports are packed and hope springs eternal.