Mallorca 1974 - 2014

I first visited Mallorca in 1974 with my late husband Jerry, Jon Prew and Wendy Dagworthy. We had a rats nest in the oven, I saw a bright green lizard and Robert Graves outside a cafe in Deia. But I was more impressed by Jon and Wendy clocking David Essex up a mountain when they went off on a day-trip on a scooter. We stayed for three weeks and I particularly remember egg and crispy chips in Valldemossa.Forty years and three children later, in preparation for running a Walking, Writing and Meditation Retreat for Lynne Franks http://www.bloomretreats.com/ in Deia, I treated myself to a night in the village tavern - Mallorca's most luxurious, gob-smackingly beautiful and surprisingly friendly, five star hotel,  known fondly by locals  as 'the Resi' ... http://www.hotellaresidencia.com/web/olar/la_residencia.jspHow times have changed.Could I afford it? Of course not. But this February, when my back was so bad that I couldn't put on my own socks, I decided it was time to stop being the Bank of Mum and be the Bank of Me. Time to spend the insurance pay-out I got when I had a heart attack four years ago, that I was saving 'for when I was old.' Wake-up time, I'm 65 this year. And you know that bit on internet-dating forms where it asks you to tick how you want to spend your retirement and we all virtuously tick, 'Volunteering', hoping to impress a billionaire?  Sod that. I'm ticking 'Circling The Globe in Style.' After my last relationship broke up, I was sent by Woman and Home to the fabulous St James Club  in Antigua to write a piece. Alone in my room, I wept at the TWO dressing downs behind the bathroom door, the bottle of champagne and TWO glasses, the TWO pillows on the enormous bed. This time, at 'the Resi', I took one look, leapt on the equally enormous bed and shouted, 'All mine!'How times have changed indeed.