Just outside the campsite, can’t remember which one but I think it was Estartit, was an unremarkable wooden building similar to a cricket pavilion. In front of it a crazy golf course and next to that golf course a couple of floodlit tennis courts. Inside the open fronted wooden building is a plain wooden bar with a line of bar stools, outside is parked a battered Land Rover. The owner of the Land Rover, a man clad in denim shorts and a casual faded shirt, is the owner of the wooden building. In this building he makes crepes, omelettes, filled baguettes and serves drinks. It is a place where the lonely come off the camp. But he has a great gimmick.
Those little metal puzzles beloved by Christmas crackers manufacturers, you know the ones you have to unlink, he has had them made up by a blacksmith into much larger versions some 12 inches or more across. When he has several lonely people seated, drinking at his bar he casually tosses a couple of these puzzles on the bar and with in a matter of minutes several lonely people have become friends as they struggle to solve the puzzle. But the main puzzle has been solved for them by the magic of these metal puzzles they are no longer lonely.
Later you will see them playing crazy golf and arranging to meet again all because of a few bits of bent metal. That’s magic!
I saw the owner in the local town one day, smartly dressed and getting out of a shiny new looking Porsche and commented on the change. He shrugged and said it’s all about ambience I have to look like a beach bum or it just doesn’t work.
An Englishmen abroad at peace with his world making money curing people of the curse of loneliness.
