Friday afternoon I landed back in Blighty after a mostly damp week on the south coast of Spain. A week which involved the worst Spanish February weather for over thirty years, a lost taxi driver, the resulting Policia escort, and some old men flamenco dancing. Lovely.

Que?

Five minutes past four on a grey Friday, the tyres of the British Airways Airbus A320 danced their way along the tarmac at Málaga airport. We breezed through passport control with as much messing about as a Jeremy Paxman interview, and our baggage beat us to the carousel – take that, Heathrow!

“Well, that was easy.”

Ever get the feeling you’ve spoken too soon? To be fair, I should have expected the experience to go downhill when we got in the cab to find that the driver had no evident knowledge of the handbrake’s existence, but I let it slide.

The address seemed to make perfect sense to the driver, who nodded, mumbled something in Spanish, and headed out of the airport. A few minutes in, he began signalling – in a fashion not unlike the iconic mannerisms of Manuel from Fawlty Towers – to see the paperwork once again. This second look appeared to do nothing but perplex poor old Manuel.

El Hospital?

My suspicions that Manuel didn’t have a clue where we were going were confirmed by our brief visit to the hospital. We weren’t supposed to be anywhere near the hospital, but there we sat and blocked the single lane of traffic for a few moments while Señor Sat-Nav went to get directions from a fellow taxi driver.

I’m going to give the poor guy the benefit of the doubt and say that the directions he received were worse than that week’s weather forecast. A few minutes later, we were lost. Again.

This time it was what seemed like the middle of nowhere. The far end of a quiet cul-de-sac.

Policia Local: Brit Delivery Service

A three-point turn and some more Spanish mumbling were followed by what looked like an impression if a duck attempting some sort of flamenco routine, and – although the Spaniard’s flailing in an attempt to visualise the directions was much more impressive than his sense of direction – we weren’t getting anywhere.

Cue the Policia Local, who – thankfully – were passing by on their way to do something clearly less important than help get some Brits to a resort.

Shortly thereafter, we roll up to the bottom of the steps outside reception and our Policia escort leaves us to enjoy the damp, dreary weather.

When It Rains In Spain…

… it gets a bit chilly too.

In fact, the weather was barely warmer than the UK and I could have gone to Brighton and been dryer. At least then I would have been able to use my iPhone to keep myself occupied, and not have to sell a kidney to pay for roaming data costs – but that’s another rant entirely.

So what do you do in Spain, in abnormally bad February weather, when the tennis court is under 2 inches of water, the jacuzzi is freezing, and the pool is like diving into gazpacho, just less tasty? Pick up British daytime telly on the satellite, of course! A few days – with the exception of a brief bus-ride into Marbella – were spent drinking tea, watching Jeremy Kyle blindly hurl big words at the bottom of the gene pool, and thinking about dinner.

Olé!

Flamenco dancing – it’s all stamping and clapping isn’t it?

Wrong! Theres much more to it than that. Much, much more indeed – there’s a shite-load of unnecessary fabric too! Like dancing in a curtain.

I’m not mocking the flamenco style, and I can totally understand the whole ‘big dress’ thing, in that cancan sort of way, for the visual element that adds that little something extra to the movement and music to round off the whole experience, but surely there’s a limit?

For the most part, the show was genuinely very entertaining. However, in one of the solo sections, the dancer looked like she was attempting to awkwardly reverse park a wedding dress. It was just odd. If you nearly trip yourself up that many times in a two-minute routine, there’s got to be some part of your mind telling you it’s just plain ridiculous.

She managed to finish her routine with dress, and dignity, intact – then came the inevitable.

The usual “I really don’t care whether you want to or not, you’re going to make an arse out of yourself on this stage … now!” bit. Strangely, they chose to target the over-60s, dragging every old codger onto the stage one-by-one to humiliate them with a sequence of half-arsed stamping, clapping and spinning. It was like seeing Statler and Waldorf on Strictly Come Dancing – only much less amusing.

Homeward Bound

I’m not going to lie. I don’t really have a climactic finish to my ramble through the oddities of my week. Nothing much more than the first entirely dry day in Spain being the one with the early start to get to the airport. Oh, and landing at Heathrow nearly half an hour early and sitting on the plane for just as long because they didn’t have any steps ready.

To be fair, I’m fairly sure my ranting, disjointed writing would have made most give up before the bit about Señor Sat-Nav, so well done for reaching the end with your sanity intact.