COLUMNIST – MAX WALLIS
Putting things into perspective
It is 2pm on a Thursday in late August and I am sitting at a sunset bar in Sant Antoni de Portmany, Ibiza – but it isn’t the horizon I’m watching, it’s the people.
A group of public schoolboys just out of sixth form baulk at the cost of the tapas and leg it before they have to pay for their cervezas. The slightly older, taut, muscular men look like they belong on Love Island
and are accompanied by their girlfriends. Hanging over a balcony, a woman languidly smokes a cigarette, watching the sunrise through her phone screen as she records it, most likely for Instagram. Behind me, two lovers have a tiff about patatas bravas.
I’ve come here for my partner’s work; he’s reviewing two hotels, but we have lingered afterwards to see what Ibiza is like in a post-lockdown summer. The clubs aren’t open, so we’re left with people-watching, lounging on the beach in the scorching, 35°C heat, and overthinking.
I’ve just turned 32. When I was last here, at 20, the boys looked more like they came from Shameless than the runway – all out of their minds and throbbing in sweaty clubs. Here, they seem to spend all their time in the gym. They go to lunch with fake nylon Prada crossbody bags slung across their shoulders where they keep their phones. They are a stage beyond metrosexual. It is vanity, I think, more than anything else. It amuses me. I start to wonder if I’ve grown old, and when it all slipped past me?
Later, we swim in the clear waters of Cala Alto de Porta, a rocky beach hidden beneath the lip of a cliff. Two women are swimming naked nearby, but apart from that, it is just me, my partner and the sea. (We keep our shorts on.) I turn to him and say, “You know, I don’t think I like press trips so much any more. This is the most relaxed I have been this week.”
As we leave the water, his phone vibrates against a rock. I pick it up: three missed calls — MUM. He calls her back and what follows are the most agonising few minutes of my life. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WHERE WAS HE?” he roars down the phone.
Is his dad OK? I wonder. “What’s happened?” I mouth. As it turns out, our oneand-a-half-year-old Saluki greyhound cross, Burt, has tripped and broken his leg while running. He has shattered his radius and ulna and needs a new titanium leg, which will be built by plating the metal to what’s left of his bones. Frantically, we ring insurance companies and vets, then anxiously wait to learn that the operation has gone well. On reflection, it was a seminal moment. The sort of shock that cuts through any self-indulgence or hangover and makes you see what’s important. Stop pondering boys on beaches, Max, and look after your dog, I think to myself.
Two days later, we pick up our squeaking boy. His leg is shaved bald and he’s limping, but he’s still beautiful. Now I have become his carer. I administer 16 pills a day hidden in sausages. We both sleep downstairs with him as he isn’t allowed to move too much, for fear of his metal plates bending or the screws coming loose.
It is trying and difficult. But for once I am thinking of something other than myself.
“This sort of shock cuts through any self-indulgence”