On most Sunday mornings a hot air balloon floats gently above my house in a valley just outside Ronda. I love watching them while I water my garden. The occasional firing up of the flame to keep it flying is the only sound at this early hour.
Last Sunday a globo bearing the name JOY caught my attention. It immediately reminded me of a former girlfriend with the same rather unusual name. All of a sudden the balloon disappeared. It appeared to have gone to ground up the hill to the north. I jumped in my car and went to investigate. Sure enough, it was on the ground in a farmer's field. Then they deflated it, packed it in the company trailer and that was it.
Photos of "Joy" and her crash landing [Paul Whitelock]
Joy
This balloon flight was rather like my relationship with JOY all those years ago - short and sweet and over in no time.
This event set off an idea in my mind. A hook for a retrospective article about other girlfriends whose names have cropped up again in later life: Andrea; Bev; Brenda; Jac/Jaque/Jacqui; Jayne/Jane; Jeryl/Cheryl; Julia; Liz; Maria/Mary; Michelle; Paula; Rita; and Trish.
Andrea
Andrea was my first proper girlfriend. We met at the Assemblies of God (Pentecostal) church in Exeter. I was in the Sixth Form doing my A-Levels and Andrea was a dental nurse.
Andrea was very pretty and I was thrilled when I asked her out and she accepted. We saw each other every Sunday and frequently in the week.
[Photo: Skills for Health]
It wasn't long before our holding hands and kissing turned into heavy petting and ultimately we made love.
My first ever time, aged 18.
I was at university by this time and Andrea visited me and stayed in my room in the Hall of Residence for a week. Strictly forbidden back in the late 1960s.
Ultimately, me being in Salford and she back in Exeter, meant that we didn't last. But I fondly remember the pretty dental nurse who "stole" my virginity.
[Sign courtesy of Spotify]
It was over 50 years before I came across another Andrea, and then two came along in quick succession, like buses.
The first of these two Andreas was the lovely Uruguayan who came to work in my local near Ronda. She and her fellah, from Argentina, had decided their future was in Europe, so they asked me to help them get Spanish nationality and Spanish passports. Which I did, and they are now fully-fledged "Spaniards".
I like Andrea a lot and given different circumstances, I'd have "chased" her. But we're both married and I'm much more mature these days, so extra-marital affairs are no longer a wise option.
Hotel Ronda Valley [The hotel]
The third Andrea was a German guest at the hotel. She was there with her husband Uwe. They are motor-bikers and had come all the way from Cologne to do a tour of Spain and Portugal. They were having a great time riding the bendy roads of rural Spain.
Brenda Bowden/Brenda Mellor/Brenda White
Brenda B was in my Spanish class at university. She was petite, bubbly and very attractive. But she had a boyfriend doing engineering.
Then, when we got sent on our "year abroad", she "got off with me"!
We flew to Barcelona en route to San Sebastian, where we were due to spend six months. There were seven of us.
We enjoyed a couple of days in the Catalan capital before continuing in a hire car (a big hire car!) across northern Spain to the elegant Victorian resort which was to be our "home" for the next six months.
Anyway the night before we left a few of us went to a disco in Barcelona where BB made her pitch.
On arrival in Donostia (as San Seb is now officially known) we found beds for the night in a pension at the fishing port, before going "out on the town". The least said about that night and the following day the better!
Anyway, hangovers over we set about looking for long-term accommodation. Three of us ended up at Maria Nieves huge apartment/lodgings - we nicknamed her Snow White.
Roger and I shared a large double room and Brenda had a single to herself.
We had an enjoyable time, spending several nights together, although we never made love. Then, all of a sudden, she dumped me for a well-to-do local Spaniard. And, that was that. I was bereft.
The next two Brendas to turn up, two at once, were Brenda M and Brenda W.
This was around 2009, some four decades later.
Brenda M was a former primary school teacher turned financial advisor who had her own company with her husband, Laurie, in south-east England. They owned a house in Montejaque, where I was living with my new love, the Meter Maid (see below).
They also had another house near Madrid, I found out later.
Brenda W was a retired secondary school science teacher. Married to Jeremy, a retired university academic, they had owned, and still do, a house in Montejaque. They were pioneers, amongst the first "guiris" to buy in the village back in the 1980s.
Also non-residents, they come several times a year, for two weeks at a time.
Both these Brendas and their husbands became good friends.
Liz
Or, as our Spanish co-workers called her, Leeds, was from Dublin. We coincided in San Sebastian where I was on the first part of my year abroad (see above). We both worked for DORFE as tour guides.
Liz and I got on like a house on fire.
When I left San Sebastian after my six months and went to Germany in September for the next six months, we kept in touch by letter, and when I returned to SS to work the summer season in 1971, Liz was still there. I decided we ought to try and get it together physically.
We went to bed but Liz was nearly physically sick. She told me she had been raped after a drunken spree with a colleague and she now had issues when it came to sex. We stayed friends, but the relationship never went any further.
Liz K was my equivalent in another Merseyside LEA in the 2000s.
We had a lot to do with each other professionally during that time and often popped up at the same conferences.
We got on really well, and I sensed there was always a frisson of something between us.
When I propositioned her one time, she said: "Paul, we should have f**ked years ago, but now the time has passed!"
Oh, well!
Liz K [Photo: BBC News]
Liz, from Chester, and Rob, from Salford, moved to the Serrania de Ronda (La Indiana) some five years ago.
I bumped into them in the Venta opposite their house the day they moved.
Liz is gorgeously attractive. Voluptuous is the word, I think. I liked her - "In your dreams, pal!". That was Rob talking! Let's be realistic, Liz is younger than my daughter!
Liz, Rob and Libby [selfie]
Michelle
"Michelle, ma belle …..", the plaintive Paul McCartney ballad sung in French, was the first lady with this exotic French name that I remember.
I was a teenager and I loved to sing along to this song which was mostly in French.
Paul McCartney "Michelle" - Live @ AccorHotels Arena, Paris - 30/05/2016 [HD]
[Image courtesy of eil.com]
Then a few years later There was another French Michelle. She was a tourist guide I got to know when I too was working as a guide/rep in San Sebastian in the early 1970s. Michelle was a stunner, tanned and very vivacious. "Way out of my league", I thought at the time, so nothing happened.
The next Michelle was a pupil of mine at the first school I taught at near Northwich in Cheshire.
I taught her Spanish. She was bubbly, attractive and delightful to teach. They suddenly discovered she had an aggressive form of cancer and she was dead at 18!
Michelle's death at such a young age hit me and my faith in God really hard.
Michelle No. 4 was my "taxi driver". I had ruptured my right Achilles tendon playing squash in the summer of 1989, and when I returned to work I was still in plaster and couldn't drive.
Michelle, whom I knew only slightly - she worked in St Helens Town Hall and I was based in the nearby Education Centre - offered to take me back and forth to work. She lived near me.
She reminded me of Joanne Whalley in "The Singing Detective" and was very sexy in an understated way.
Well, I fell for her, although we were both married, and it wasn't long before we started a relationship, although we never slept together, regrettably. Our "summer romance" petered out when it became clear that we couldn't just abandon our respective marriages.
Paula Netherlands/Paula MJ
awaiting text and photo
Rita
My first Rita was Russian. She was my first wife's "official friend" when Jeryl went on a heavily chaperoned visit to the Soviet Union in 1970.
But they became good real friends and stayed in regular touch for years.
Then in 1989 when Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the USSR and basically tore down the iron curtain with his policies of glasnost and perestroika, we got a message that Rita, husband Sascha and daughter Elena were coming to stay with us in a week's time!
That turned out to be a great couple of weeks, despite me being in a wheelchair (ruptured Achilles) and having no Russian!
The following year we were invited to stay with them in Krasnodar and again we had a great time. Rita was very pretty and I dreamt of a liaison, until I remembered that Sascha was 6'4" tall and "as fit as a butcher's dog"!
As an aside RITA is spelt PUMA in the Cyrillic alphabet - a source of much amusement.
28 years later I met another Rita in Ronda (Malaga). This one was German and lovely, so she got the nickname "Meter Maid". (Geddit? "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid ....." - the famous song by The Beatles)
After a whirlwind courtship we moved in together into her house in Montejaque (also Malaga). 18 months later we got married and in 2011 we moved to where we still live in Fuente de la Higuera, in the campo just outside Ronda.
Trish
Trish, a big girl from Birmingham, was a good friend at university. We hung about together quite a lot, but it never turned into anything romantic.
She even bathed me a couple of times which was nice but not sexy.
I recall she once told me she loved giving blowjobs. Since she had a French boyfriend, I thought nothing more of it, It was only afterwards that I realised she had been making me an offer. Too late!
Trish no. 2 was a neighbour and mobile hairdresser some 30 years later. She used to cut all our hair. She was very tactile and very sexy.
One day I plucked up the courage to tell her so and next thing we were an item. Her marriage was breaking up and she needed some tender loving care. But she knew I would never leave my wife Jeryl, so it came to a natural end.
© Paul Whitelock
Links:
Thanks to:
eil.com, Facebook, Paul Whitelock, Rita Whitelock, Ronda Today, Wikipedia,
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