We came in from the airport after a hellish journey, arriving just as the sun was setting. Black, pointed peaks wreathed the road and my son asked if there were any volcanoes in Lanzarote. ‘I don’t know about that,’ I chuckled, charmed by his belief that all geological features must be those found in picture books. A Google search, however, revealed that Lanzarote not only has a very famous active volcano, it owes its entire landscape to volcanic activity and is ‘known around the world as the Island of Volcanoes.’
We, my wife’s parents, siblings and their kids, were staying at a very swish resort near Playa Blanca, a megalithic warren of square white buildings that sprawled down to the sea. My first thought was that it was a far cry from the caravan parks and campsites I remembered from my own childhood, almost all of which were in Ireland, and roughly as exotic as holidaying on a traffic island, albeit one with donkey rides.
In short, it all looked extremely fancy, and only a little bit like the set for cult 60s sci-fi series The Prisoner. It had restaurants, a cinema, a spa and more pools than I could count. Luckily, I didn’t need to do any counting at all, since my numerophile boy was on the job, offering a handy tally of, well, everything he saw during the entire trip. ‘There are 28 chairs here, Daddy,’ or, ‘This floor has 64 squares,’ he’d say, oh, every eight minutes or so. ‘Thanks for keeping track,’ I’d say, as tanned residents flashed him white smiles of appreciation for his talents, and I whisked him away before their patience stretched any further.
My daughter, meanwhile, proved reliably contrary, reacting to the 40C weather with a sailor’s cough so wet and barking you’d be forgiven for thinking she was touring the peat bogs of Athlone, with nothing in her pack but a slab of duty-free fags and 200 matches. Thankfully, there was ample childcare available for guests, and she took to Baby Club like a duck to water. She enjoyed it so much I presume it included generous cigarette breaks.
My son was less enamoured of Kidz Club, having immediately developed a pathological phobia of its mascot, Daisy, an objectively terrifying anthropomorphic plant who split opinion among the resort’s infant guests. Some thrilled at her giant flower-head and propensity for late-90s trance, others bristled the second her lifeless, felt-embroidered smile hove into view. Fortunately, she was easy to avoid, since her arrival was preceded by the steadily approaching sound of Gigi D’Agostino’s L’amour Toujours, which preceded her like a plague doctor’s death bell, as she went about her itinerary of trauma infliction.
For the most part, he stuck with us; playing draughts with his grandad, taking dips in the pool with his mum, while I showed enough sense to shelter from the sun entirely, and settled in to read my book with a drink by my side.
‘You’ve had three beers today, Daddy,’ my son declared loudly, at a time in the afternoon I will not here report. ‘Thanks for keeping track,’ I said, above the laughter of sun-kissed strangers.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
