Bloody Brilliant Birthday Bash

9.30am, after four hours sleep, a surprise visit – mother, brother, gifts from back home and I will be allowed on the road this year. One tick on my big list. Sleepy, cold and dressing-gowned with Earl Grey to hand, open parcel by post from Carole - steeped in sequins, containing a ton of best friend including peppermint Aero, packet gravy and a hand-held percussive instrument to wave at the hippies (see 'Voe Don't Play Xilo').

I’ve been taking people for granted.

Later, hit beach expecting at least five people, but everyone that didn’t reply to my texts is there, one by one, and more. Carina’s doing. There’s pain-staked food, and trashy 80's music and gifts - spaced out through the night. Hannah's baked a cake (operation c) with smarties and chocolate Bourbons that travelled with her brother (coincidentally, on the same flight as my mother) all the way from Hull. The icing on the cake is that I’ve known these people (Carina, Hannah, Anne, Lester and Katya) for less than four months and they’re taking me to Barcelona because I was otherwise stranded. That tips me over. My faith in humanity is up there with the kite that Hera and Bron so charmingly customised for me. And there’s a good wind.

I sent my mum and 9yr old brother on the wrong bus which meant they missed the sunset.

I don’t deserve all this.

Night-time is cool. The uninvited guest, with his tons of baggage and his holey jumper filled with sand, finally leaves after drinking our wine and passing sentiments that were hardly in keeping with the rest of the evening. He reminds me a little of someone I used to love. We get on with football. I get on with kicking sand into my own face. People wee behind the stripy huts while other people discretely watch from a distance in the dark.

We hand our mobiles and watches to my mother and go in the sea. We’re fully clothed because we were only expecting a paddle, but the waves consume us so we take our wet things off and get back in. Upon Hannah’s shoulder, a €1 radio tape recorder from the rastro that my little brother had earlier placed atop a sandcastle, almost entirely filling the battery compartment with non-conductive matter. ‘Come Together’ by The Beloved and ‘All Together Now’ by The Farm become one before we drown music. My brother is scared as we swim further away from land, so I hold his hand until I’m scared too.

We put my family in a cab, and I stop off at Carina’s for clean-ness before going to the Swan. They won’t play anything we ask for but they do play ‘Deceptacon’ and we play our usual silly dances, fuelled by tequila, until they kick us out. We get told off in the street for doing the limbo too noisily. Then, after a scorcher of a day, it rains - really rains, fat tropical drops - so me and Hannah sing and dance in it as everyone else ducks for cover by the pizza place, holding their arms tight against their bodies trying to keep the heat in, or the wet out. Some take photos of us because, for them, this is unusual behaviour.

Then I walk home, with rain-flattened hair and rain-stained make-up, in Carina’s shoes and Lester’s cardigan, feeling very special.

No amount of ‘thank you’s will ever be enough.