No such charge can be levelled at Bogged Down, although the first third has a touch of Joycean stream-of-consciousness, which encourages speed-reading up to the Ibiza chapters (pp. 135-351). It forms the third volume of a projected tetralogy, the narrative being taken up where the author left off in Volume Two, Don’t Tell My Mother I’m a Newspaperman... Kinsley, who styles himself ‘McGinn’ and writes in the third person throughout, arrives in New York on the eve of the American launch of his first novel, Three Cheers for Nothing. We follow some breathless globe-hopping for eleven chapters before eventually coming to rest in Ibiza’s Calle Mayor. The year is 1969, inland from Murcia people are just coming to grips with forks, and off the Ibizan waterfront, Seley is expounding the principal advantage of life on the White Island: ‘You can get a litre of gin for nothing. Of course, you have to eat the occasional orange for your health.’

The reader can tell it’s Ibiza because of the names: not Seley, but Steve Primero; the supporting cast include Far Out Phyllis, Jumping Susan (who cured a fit of depression by jumping from a five-storey apartment, hitting each balcony on then way down), Nescafé Jack, Crazy Hans, Finnish Dora, Sin Zapatos (a Swede who always walked barefoot), Cherokee Frank, Pot Peggy (whose children thought their surname was Pot), Peter the Book, Anna Banana, Rick the Prick, Kamikaze Schmidt, Too Much Tommy, Gordon the Flute, Hairy Pat, Charlie 103, Mad Mike, Wanted John (on the run from the law, he became Unwanted John when the authorities dropped the charge). Even the dogs have original labels - Sir Edward, Stroppy and No-Name. Kinsley often uses these sobriquets to brilliant effect:

‘Jill the Pill’s back,’ said George as he held the door.
‘Yes, and guess who’s with her? Chelsea Elsie.’
‘What? Randy Mandy’s friend?’

Bogged Down in County Lyric, p. 221

George Llewellyn was master of ceremonies at the George & Dragon, a bar in the Calle Mayor, nearby Wauna’s being owned by a large and formidable Anglo-American (Wauna Paul) who played up the fire-breathing beast for passing trade. Many of the best one-liners come from this amazing duo, and the present writer takes off his hat to Peter Kinsley for having the presence of mind and journalistic savvy to record them for posterity.

It is quite a line-up: Steve Primero, the archetypal alcoholic writer, penniless, perennially plastered, quick to take offence and unrelentingly rude; Tristan Jones, an old salt with a wicked sense of humour; George and Wauna with their rapier-like repartee; Doreen on her perch in the corner (‘I’m half Irish and half pissed and I came to Spain to get away from twats like you.’); and Dora and Lena from Helsinki, trying to raise the tone just a little:

‘They’re at it again,’ said the British tourist to his wife. ‘I won’t ’ave it.’ He stood up and walked over to Dora, a rotund and formidable blonde even more amply proportioned than Doreen.
‘Would you mind watching your language,’ said the tourist.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I said ‘watch your language,’ - there’s women and children present ’ere.’ He pointed to his wife and children.
‘But what has that got to do with me?’
‘We’ve had enough of it. That feller there -’ he pointed to Mad Mike, ‘was ’effing and
blindin’ last night when we were in ’ere. You should moderate your language when women and children are present and stop swearing.’
‘But I wasn’t swearing.’
‘It sounded very much like it to me.’
‘We are speaking the Finnish language together. Urpa, Lena and I are from Helsinki.
Urpa is a painter, Lena is a journalist and I teach music and art.’
‘Oooh, I’m very very sorry, Madam, I’m sure. I do apologise. Can I get you a drink to
make up for my mistake?’
‘Three vodkas and a whisky for Mike.’

Bogged Down in County Lyric, pp. 158-9

Just another day in a soggy corner of La Marina. Tristan Jones, as mentioned in the previous article, was a prolific and highly-successful author of yachting tales, among which Yarns (1990) includes a chapter on Ibiza. When not eyeing up local talent (including one of Abel Matutes’s daughters: ‘she’s twenty-three and even now she has to be in by nine o’clock at night.’) his main hobby seems to have been picking scraps with other ‘boaties’:

Jones caught him with a right hook that sent the fisherman flying into the doorway of a souvenir shop. The gorgeous Miss Matutes took the opportunity to use her discretion and hurry off, consulting the minuscule white gold wrist watch that her father had given her for staying a virgin, and wondering if she would dare to accept the little Welsh captain’s invitation to - what had he called it? ‘Tea and crumpet’ - aboard his little yacht…

Bogged Down in County Lyric, pp. 299

The reviewer is spoiled by the sheer number of anecdotes in this marvellous book - the lynching of the municipal dog-catcher by a pack of beatnik women, the mounted Guardia routing a barfull of hippies, the chair thrown through the Post Office window by Steve Seley and the clerk’s immediate response (‘Thank you Señor Esteve, we need some fresh air in here’). But to end we will return to our fairy theme, used here by Kinsley to christen a gay bar up in Dalt Vila, based on a real establishment which opened (under a different name) near present-day Anfora. Run by an English-Spanish couple it managed against all expectations to survive for two whole months in the early 1970s. In the book though, it is closed down the following day. Here we are on opening night:

At the door, Doris Karloff clanked as he greeted the guests with chain-mailed gauntlet. Ewald came as a Green Fairy, to the titters of the assembled throng.
‘He’s misunderstood again,’ someone said. ‘It’s the name of the drink they’re serving -
that mind-blowing stuff that tastes like licorice.’
‘No,’ said Youssef, ‘Doris wants to call the bar The Green Fairy. His English is not very
good.'
‘That Cockney barman, George … I asked him for a shandy and he said ‘Do you want it
in a straight glass or a gay glass’, the cheeky sod.
Two municipal policemen, in their navy blue uniforms with the green piping, stopped suddenly at the packed throng in the entrance to the new bar where men could dance with men. They pushed their way through until they could see what was going on inside and their faces turned the colour of the whitewash on the bar walls. Breaking, unusually, into a trot, they hastened towards Headquarters with the news that either the foreigners had gone mad or there had been an invasion from Mars. They had seen Ewald dancing with Gordon the Flute, Doris Karloff doing the rumba with Youssef wearing Wauna’s curtains as a shirt, and the waiter from Es Quinques in full bridal dress with a bouquet of fake orange blossom trying to get in to ask Doris Karloff for a dance.

Bogged Down in County Lyric, pp. 324-327

Bogged Down in County Lyric can be obtained directly (25 euro + postage) from Peter Kinsley, tel. 00 44 (UK) 207 652 2587 or from Island Books in Santa Eulalia. Ibiza’s prize-winning producer, Marí Mayans (‘by far one of the finest absinthes in the world’ according to an American specialist) has an absinthe page at http://www.marimayans.com/absinthe_e.htm A recommended website for the drink’s literary-artistic reputation is http://www.eabsinthe.com/past/halloffame/