The Boy and The Piano

Christmas is rapidly approaching.

I know this not just because the days are growing shorter and I’m a Geordie Get Me Out Of Here is on the television. I know this because the John Lewis Christmas advert was launched a few weeks ago and that to me signifies the onset of the Festive season.

I was snuggled in bed with a poorly Britney (Not her real name) on a Thursday morning a few weeks back and I watched the John Lewis advert on Twatter about 30 seconds after it had been released. If you have been living in a yurt in your garden and haven’t yet seen it, you can click here to watch it.

In previous years there has been a lonely man on the moon, a dog bouncing around on a trampoline and a Monster hiding under the bed, but this year the John Lewis advert shows Elton John reminiscing about his life. Elton is seen playing the piano at school, in a pub and performing in a stadium before we see a young Reginald Kenneth Dwight running down the stairs on Christmas morning and tearing the wrapping paper off a piano-shaped gift from his Mother and Grandmother; and John Lewis tells us that some gifts are more than just a gift.

There had been rumours on social media for some time that Elton was to star in one of the country’s favourite Christmas adverts and it is also rumoured that he was paid 5 million pounds to be in it. As I watched it, I just kept thinking that it was just really, really odd as I had been thinking about Elton John only a few days earlier.

Many, many moons ago I used to go on holiday every year to sunny Spain.

This annual pilgrimage to the home of Rioja and Cava always coincided with the schools’ October holiday as Music Teacher Friend wasn’t allowed to take her holidays during term time and it was her Uncle and Aunt who owned the apartment that we stayed in.

Casa Rioja was a wonderful ground floor apartment in a beautiful place called Calella De Palafrugell which is a coastal town in the province of Girona.

Calella is an hour and a half from Barcelona by car and when we first began going to Spain there were no direct flights from Newcastle to Girona (which is closer to Calella) or to Barcelona. Instead we had the option of flying from Newcastle to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Beijing, Beijing to Rio, Rio to Reykjavík, Reykjavik to East Midlands, East Midlands to Nice, Nice to New York, New York to Dublin, Dublin to Gatwick and then Gatwick to Barcelona.

Alternatively we could have flown from Newcastle to Gatwick, Gatwick to Montpellier, Montpellier to Manchester, Manchester to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Dubai, Dubai to Gibraltar, Gibraltar to Majorca, Majorca to Alicante, Alicante to the Isle of Man, the Isle of Man to Exeter, Exeter to Madrid, and from Madrid to Barcelona. With both of these options we would then have to charter a helicopter to fly us on to Girona and then hire a car to drive the 50 minutes to Calella.

The third alternative was that we could fly from Newcastle to Heathrow, Heathrow to Barcelona and then hop in our hire car. We obviously chose the latter as the shopping was far better at Heathrow compared to Gatport Airwick and Heathrow even had a small Harrods store to enable us to look at things that we couldn’t possibly afford while we were waiting to be called to the gate.

The first time we went to Calella we landed at Barcelona at around 7pm. We collected our hire car, drove around the airport and then went back to the parking space that we had recently vacated to wait for Pilates Friend who had flown in from Heathrow on a later flight. Music Teacher Friend then negotiated the 53 lanes of traffic through Barcelona with me reading directions from a small notebook that her parents had given to us, written on their last visit to Casa Rioja, detailing the journey we had to undertake to get to our home for the next 7 days.

Bizarrely after several visits to Casa Rioja we never did find the motorway with the toll booths on it. To this day we still have no idea how we found our way from Barcelona to Calella De Palafrugell in the dark and without paying 2 Euros for the privilege. The grown ups back home said that somehow we must have taken the old coast road instead of the new motorway every time we visited, despite the excellent directions that were given to us.

Anyway; I digress.

Calella De Palafrugell is a place where you go to experience true Spain and it should not to be confused with the commercialised resort of Calella which is further South and closer to Barcelona. There are very few expats in Calella De Palafrugell and most of the whitewashed houses in the town are empty during the week until the people who live and work in Barcelona arrive there for the weekend. During the winter there are only a handful of bars and restaurants open as that is enough to supply the demand. Back in the day, Bar Gelpi’s was the place to be for lunch. It was situated right next to the beach and served the most amazing Tapas and ice cold glasses of San Miguel, but in the evening the restaurant Les Voltes was our place of choice. It was much more expensive than anywhere else in the town but the food was fabulous and we always visited at least once during our visits to Calella.

Casa Rioja was in the El Golfet area of Calella on the outskirts of the town on the Cap Roig headland. El Golfet is a very quiet area and the only downside to having such a beautiful and tranquil area to stay in, is that the land rises steeply from the beach at Calella. This basically meant that walking back from Les Voltes in the evening after several bottles of wine and a couple of large vodkas each could prove problematic. The hill back to Casa Cava caused us many problems over the years. We collided with lampposts, cars, stray cats, garages and even Spanish people as we zigzagged across the roads and pavements and if our Catalan or Spanish had been any good we would have called a taxi.

If there had been such things in Calella De Palafrugell.

On our first trip to Casa Vino Tinto, we visited absolutely everything in the area. We went to immense ceramic-produced-goods outlets and bought everything from tapas dishes to garden ornaments. We went out in a glass bottomed boat at L’Estartit, we went to fabulous beaches and quaint towns and we even went to the Salvador Dali museum in Figueres. The Dali museum is incredible, from the Rainy Cadillac, to his mad self portraits with rashers of bacon on his face. Dali was an incredibly talented artist but was clearly as mad as a lorry. We spent the whole day at the museum muttering “He was seriously f***ed up” as we viewed every single piece of his art.

It was on our way back to Casa Vodka in the dark after a long day out at the Dali museum that we stopped at the telephone box on the hill to make a very quick call home to let our parents know that we hadn’t yet died from alcohol poisoning. As Pilates Friend took her turn to use the phone the threatening clouds that had been rolling overhead quite literally burst and Music Teacher Friend and I ran to our hired Renault Clio for shelter. There was a huge rumble of thunder as Pilates Friend jumped in the car and as we drove up the hill to Casa Sherry the rain was coming down so hard that Music Teacher Friend had the windscreen wipers on full welly. Pilates Friend had to shout over the noise of the rain on the car roof to make herself heard and pointed at 3 soaked and hunched people walking up the hill ahead of us.

“OFFER THEM A LIFT!” she yelled.

“THEY COULD BE BLOODY AXE MURDERERS!” I roared back.

“IF THEY’RE ENGLISH WE’LL GIVE THEM A LIFT!” shouted Music Teacher Friend.

“WHAT BLOODY DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE IF THEY’RE ENGLISH?!” I bawled.

“IF THEY’RE ENGLISH WE’LL BE ABLE TO TELL IF THEY ARE BLOODY AXE MURDERERS!” yelled back Music Teacher Friend.

“THEY’RE BLOODY SOAKED JUST OFFER THEM A LIFT!” shouted Pilates Friend from the back seat.

The 2 women and their male friend were indeed English and extremely grateful for a lift. They told us that they were staying with a friend in one of the enormous Villas that were nestled into the countryside very near to our apartment and had decided to walk back from the town without realising exactly how far it was. The 3 of them had actually flown out from Heathrow on the same flight as Pilates Friend, which made us instantaneously realise that they couldn’t be axe murderers as they were able to talk about how bad the queues had been at security that day.

When we pulled up at the enormous gates in front of their Villa, Georgia, Victoria and Matt invited us in for a drink as a thank you for our taxi service and told Music Teacher Friend to park as near to the front door as she could as it was still raining heavily.

Georgia and Victoria were busy pouring drinks in a luxurious lounge when an agitated bloke walked in.

“Who the f***ing hell f***ing parked their f***ing car there?” he screamed adjusting his coloured spectacles and gesticulating furiously towards the door.

Music Teacher Friend slammed down her drink on the table and in her very best Teacher voice retorted: “Me.” before adding hotly “Because it’s raining and my hair goes frizzy if it gets wet.”

There was a long silence and then he began to laugh and replied that frizzy hair was never a good look.

After that, Elton John seemed to accept us as part of his crazy entourage and we had a tremendous evening. Not having eaten since lunch in Figueres the green coloured cocktails that Georgia and Victoria were creating were going down awfully well. So well in fact that Pilates Friend and I were eating olives and salami straight out of the fridge and Music Teacher Friend was asking Elton to play something on the baby grand piano. In fact as I remember it, she was asking him to play anything except for “that god awful rendition of Candle in The Wind because that was utter crap”.

As we left Villa Elton with the code for the gates written in pen on the back of all 6 of our hands (to enable us to collect the Clio the next morning), we invited our new found friends over to Casa Rioja the following evening. In reality we knew that we would never see them again and talked in very loud drunken voices into the early hours of the morning at Casa Vodka-and-some-fake-Baileys-we-found-in-the-cupboard-as-there-was-no-gin-or-wine-or-mixers-left about what an extreme experience we had just had.

The next morning we woke late with sore heads, collected the Clio from Villa Elton and talked all the way to the local Supermercat about the previous evening, trying to decide if it had all been a dream.

That night Music Teacher Friend created the most gorgeous Botifarra and we relaxed on the candle lit patio at Casa Sangria with soft music playing and the smell and sound of the Mediterranean Sea wafting around us.

And there was a knock at the door.

Initially I think Georgia and Matt were marginally more scared than we were when we opened the door brandishing a steak mallet, an empty wine bottle and a set of barbeque tongs for protection.

Elton took one mouthful of the Rioja that Pilates Friend poured for him and immediately sent Matt back to Villa Enormous for Champagne. Matt duly returned 10 minutes later with a case of Bollinger and Elton seemed happy enough for the rest of the evening, sitting on a window seat in our turret lounge in his tracksuit bottoms and Watford FC top, sipping his Champagne from the one Champagne flute that remained intact after my ambitious attempt at a Cava fountain earlier in the week.

But I know what you are thinking.

You’re thinking: Is it really true? Is it really true that you, Music Teacher Friend and Pilates Friend drank Bollinger out of pint glasses while Elton John and his followers argued over which of your CDs they were going to play next?

No.

Of course it’s not.

In the same way that little Reg Dwight didn’t receive a piano for Christmas from his Mum and Granny.

But let’s face it, there’s no point in a small untruth getting in the way of a damn good story.