Summer Holiday/Spain Day 1 Find the nightlife
The night was still young so I decided to go into town and sample the nightlife. The taxi dropped me by a pedestrian area that was pulsating with neon and reverberating with a cacophony of music, mostly bass. There were people everywhere; girls in miniskirts and crop tops and boys in shorts and T-shirts, most of them teenagers.
I walked down the street, skirting round the puddles of vomit just taking it all in. They were all there to have a good time and mostly ignored me, probably because I was older and more soberly dressed than the average. Eventually I found a bar with the music was kept down to a bearable volume, managed to snag myself a table and ordered a jug of sangria.
“Tell them you’re my brother,” the girl looked about sixteen, with bright red hair and far too much make-up. She collapsed into the other chair at my table. “I’m trying to get away from that lot.” She jerked a thumb in the direction of a gaggle of boys.
Now I’m no hero, but how could I resist a damsel in distress. “Come on Susie, we’re gonna party,” the leader of the gaggle said.
I stood up, trying to look imposing. “I don’t think my sister wants to go with you,” I said. To my relief, they didn't want to fight. "Yo gonna shag 'er then," one of them said, and they all wandered off in search of another victim. I went to the bar and found a glass for my new friend. “I think you’re safe now; would you like a drink,” I said.
During the course of the next half hour or so she told me that she was with a party of girls and they’d got separated. She was already fairly drunk and after glugging down half a glass of sangria she suddenly turned a bit green around the gills and ran out of the door to empty the contents of her stomach onto the road. I bought her a bottle of water and she used some to rinse her mouth and some on my clean hanky to wipe her face. She offered it back to me but I said she could keep it.