Bus to oblivion in sun-dried sorrow

Ring them bells! We’re on the bendy-bus into oblivion. Ding! First stop drugs. Ding!
Next stop prostitution. Ding! Last stop, spread across Highway 332 like a sun-dried
tomato.

It’s all out there on the other side of the toughened glass of this wiggly old bus. 97
degrees Fahrenheit of fear, razors, skinny prostitution, muggings - cops with guns, not
a MacDonald’s or a Kentucky Fried Chicken in sight.

Highway 332 mangles the flesh and bone of Torrevieja like a chrome bull bar. This
once Royal town now sprawls and festers across seafront, olive groves and foothills
alike. But the influx of back-street Geordies, Mancs who’ve come into a bit of
wonga, Liverpudlians wearing gold-plated hubcaps, Cockney sparrers with bronchi tic
laughter, goes on like a lemmings’ reunion.

They are all seduced by brochures that make Torrevieja look like a very merry New
England, sausages and lemons, oranges and duck, eggs and bacon. But it’s isn’t.
Torrevieja’s a dump. It’s more embarrassing than Benidorm was in the 1970s.

These Brits Abroad all thought they’d spotted an opportunity – the road to sunshine
and fortune. They saw the potential in Spain’s Salt Lake City, but they didn’t realise
that the shimmer in the distance turns your eyes into a saline solution that runs down
your cheeks. They didn’t know, either, that salt gives you bad dreams. And that
Torrevieja is a nightmare of drug dealers, pimps, whores, muggers, conmen and
beggars.

They all flash by like beads of sweat inside the toughened glass of the wobbly
Oblivion Express as I watch. A lady boy pirouettes on a skateboard – I catch him
smiling at me in the chrome of the bus’s mirror just before he misses the
undercarriage of a 16-wheeler.

This road is the true Terror of Torrevieja. At least one person a week is pulped into a
memory just trying to get to the beach.

My text message had said: “Lk fr trck in sand junes – tel drver to let u off thr – lk fwd
2 c-ing u!”

And there it was, off to my left – a truck okay, but a twisted, rusted wreck in the sand
– a sign hung from its windowless cab telling you that you’ve arrived at the Anglo
community, a security conscious haven from hell. Or so it claims.

I Ding! The bus skids onto the hard shoulder as the driver pumps the brakes. He
spins the wheel like his careening eyes and sweats as he scours the mirror for a break
in the traffic. The doors hiss and me and my bags tumble on to the open road.
Pantechnicons, salt wagons, Winnebagoes, stretch-limos, fallen angels, death-wish
people come tearing by.

A dark girl with black hot pants so high they make her ass look like Mickey Mouse’s
ears texts her pimp as I’m rocked on my feet by the turbulence of the road. I roll by
her. Her thighs are sweating. Ten yards away a girl with eyes throbbing like her
throat, crouches in the dust. She wipes the corners of her mouth as her neon smile
licks in and out of the cars.

I see the gates to the Anglo community less than ten yards away but before I get there
a guy with flying saucers for eyes approaches me for a match, he slides a patch of
Morrocan Gold Stripe into my palm. His garlic breath envelops me closer than his
violent aftershave as he demands a hundred euros. I slide the patch back and snarl like
a fat Elvis. He waddles off on cartoon legs.

A dog growls in my ear at head height. I sneak a look to my left – a walled garden
containing an unkempt olive grove. And a rotweiller is climbing a tree to get at me.

Two rat-dogs appear from nowhere and start snapping at my heels – I kick one with
my boot and they both retreat indignantly. I sneak a look to my right and an hysterical
mongrel without a brain smashes its head into a wrought-iron gate and spits and
growls as it chomps its way through its owner’s mobile phone.

This place is ex-pat’s oblivion going to the dogs.

I was welcomed with open arms by my friends. It took some time as they had to
disable the alarm, unlock the mortise and throw the switch on the electric fence which
surrounds their new home at the heart of one of Spain’s burgeoning secure estates.

“Hi-eee-eee,” they cackle in a unison of sun block, sweat and that diesel breath caused
by trying to rehydrate with sangria and stubbies in heat that could make a Bible sweat.
The Big Guy pulls me to his chest and my face feels like it is being pressed into a
frying pan. He sizzles. Maisie Day as he spoonerifically and affectionately addresses
her, peels me off him and bastes me with her own secretions as I flounder between her
turkey neck and chicken breasts. She giggles and laughs unnecessarily.

The Big Guy conjures up a couple of stubbies and hands me one. “Let’s have a party
huh?” he laughs out loud and shakes his gut about inside his Union Flag T-shirt.
“We’re the real Brits Abroad heh!”

Well, I’m a party animal as much as any man, but I have to admit a stubby or two just
won’t work.

A travelling man’s tip: always carry a silver foil bladder of red wine in your hand
baggage, and a couple in your stowage. That way all emergencies are covered.

By 3am the stubbies and liberal splashes of brandy have stubbed out the Big Guy’s
brain and he and Maisie have stumbled off to their room with its air-conditioning,
barred windows and spinning bed and I am left alone at the plastic table on the
balcony.

And for a few seconds at a time you can believe you are exactly where you want to
be: in The Spanish Dream. The night is as dark as fate and a million stars mark out an
alleyway to the moon. Crickets are singing and the ocean does a soft-sea shuffle with
the rocks and the shale on the beach. Fishing boats ring them bells.

Until a sixteen-wheeler thunders by, that is. Then another. And another. They come
through at the rate of one a minute, 24 hours a day seven days a week. 2000 HGVs a
day thundering by your holiday home.

Next morning. 6.30am and I hear the echo of a Ding! in the distance. It’s followed by
the rallying parps of a horn – like an applauding seal. Honk! Honk! An industrial
symphony begins. A waltz of toreadors as cranes begin to swish their loads across the
morning’s red sky and conveyor belts of salt grind into life.

I bury my head under the pillow but the sun is already beating down like dragon
breath. The ceiling fan creaks monotonously: Eek … eek … eek … Eek. Mosquitoes
buzz. Traffic makes the house tremble. Dogs begin to bark.

The Big Guy and Maisie Day join in with a snoring that sounds like God’s furniture
being moved. So, I get up and head for the beach after flipping on my flip-flops and
jauntily flicking my towel over my shoulder. My silver framed wrap-around shades
are an optional extra.

Unfortunately, there’s only one way of getting to the beach and that’s by crossing
highway 332.

At 7am the roadside is still a wreck of humanity. A whore with glazed eyes and
swollen lips kicks off her shoes in the gutter as she divvies up to a pimp in a dusty
Merc. A beggar insinuates himself in and out of the queues of traffic waiting to join
the highway. Dope dealers slide on home, a guy terribly tattered round the edges,
stinking in a string vest and with a head like a leaking boil, his wife and three dogs
drags a shopping trolley. They dig breakfast out of the bins behind the Wing Chew
Chinese restaurant.

I stand there in my flip-flops and shades as an endless wall of traffic blocks out the
sea view.

Schoolchildren are here too, waiting to cross. Even the school crossing sign shows a
girl pinning her hat to her head as she dashes with her brother in tow across the road.

This is madness. A siren rents the air and the traffic grinds to a halt. A black guy in a
greasy suit and hair bangs, sinks to his knees and begins mouthing soundlessly at the
sky. He counts his fingers endlessly and invokes God in the silence between the
siren’s wail. Me and the school kids ignore him as we spot the opportunity and dash
through the now-frozen traffic.

Some kid just out of school and tanned to perfection with a porcelain smile, his
girlfriend rapped around his waist like a bum bag, decided to take a chance on his dirt
bike and ended up ricocheting off six vehicles like he was inside a pinball machine.
They were both dead by the time they finally hit the ground. The emergency services
were there within minutes with body bags, power hoses and detergents. But me and
the school kids took our chance and made a dash for it. Luckily the city-bound lane
had been brought to a halt by the rubberneckers.
It’s a sad situation that the untimely departure of these two children facilitated my
early arrival at the beach. And it truly wasn’t worth the sacrifice. Most of the beach is
like being on the wet side of the Moon, rocky escarpments and sharp-worn stones -
except that the wet side of the Moon wouldn’t be polluted by rotting fish, broken
bottles and long-abandoned barbecues.
I looked at the sea and decided that if I went for a swim I’d only be going through the
motions. Salt Lake City glistened in the distance and Highway 332 has become a
place where people pay homage to the dead.