“Noche De San Juan” Beach Party v Chas's birthday party.

Friday 22^nd June

Olivia:

Hi,

Well I'm in the bar, but I’m all excited as tomorrow is “Noche De San Juan” and there’ll be celebrations around open fires, on the beach, from midnight onwards.

I want to try to close our bar/restaurant a bit earlier than usual and shoot off down to the beach opposite, which is called Isdabe.

The plan will be to take a picnic and some candles, plenty of booze from our bar and have our own little intimate beach party alongside the big public do. Graham gets a lot of back pain late at night, so he’ll need to take his folding sun lounger.

I am hoping that our best friends here Chas and Noa will join us with their triplets Elena, Sergio and Jose. The triplets are 16 now and Sergio is in a wheel chair, so Chas and Noa may decide that it’ll be too difficult to get Sergio’s wheelchair onto the beach, although they do have a 4*4 and there is a ramp going down to the beach, so let’s hope they come.

Graham:

Hi,

It’s Chas’s birthday this Saturday and I know that he wants to do have a few aperitifs in a quiet local bar together and the a BBQ on the terrace at his house, so I may end up attending that do and leaving Olivia to celebrate on the beach at Isdabe, with another group of our friends from the bar. I am sure it’ll all work out well and everybody will have a few drinks, some nice food, let their hair down and have a great time. There’s a fantastic social life here on the Costa del Sol and the Spanish folk around; Marbella, San Pedro, Benavista and Estepona, are very open and easy to make friends with.

The great thing is that as it’s so warm in the evenings, you don’t have to spend loads of money in expensive restaurants. You have other choices; you can eat on your own terrace with your favorite music playing, you can go down to the beach with a picnic or BBQ or you can go to one of the many idyllic beauty spots in the country side which is just 10 min by car. You can always find a qyiet an inexpensive little bar tucked away wherever you go, if you need to quench your thirst.

Victor:

Hi,

6^th form finishes today and I shall be spending it doing some community service.

One of the things I’ll need to have on my CV when I apply to unis. next year, is a record of having done some useful community service and it’s something I’d very much like to do in any case. My College have asked us 6^th formers to do a series of CS units and upon completion of all the units we will be issued with an appropriate certificate.

Today my CS unit entails setting up a bar and serving drinks and refreshments to the juniors who are having an end of term fate to raise money for children in Darfur. Serving these little 4-5 year olds is really exhausting work, as they don’t always understand money or worse still try to get refreshments when they don’t have any money to pay for them. They haven't quite grasped, that you can't start a bar tab until you are at least 18. It would be very easy to be soft hearted and give into their imploring faces, but our mission is to raise money through bar sales for those who are existing at starvation level, so we have to remain strong, as we are trying to raise money for a very good cause.

I don’t always feel comfortable doing this type of work, but I do feel that it is helping me build up my self-confidence, which is something that will help me a lot later on in life.

I really feel that schools should all build in more community service and work experience, into their syllabuses.