I must’ve been about ten or eleven. My parents had just bought me a new bicycle—a bright red Torrot with three gears. For a kid in mid-70s Mallorca, this was the height of engineering. I’d cruise the golf course paths, weaving between the holes like the king of Son Vida.
That’s how I met Juan Carlos Sobran, a Spanish kid my age whose father, I later learned, was a famous architect. Our paths kept crossing until eventually we became friends. My Spanish was decent enough by then—mostly thanks to school—but now I had real incentive. Juan Carlos didn’t speak English, and he had something I desperately needed to talk about.
He’d just won a kids’ golf tournament at Son Vida. The prize? A brand-new Bultaco Chispa.
In 70s Spain, three motorbike brands ruled the world: Bultaco, Montesa, and Ossa. Bultaco and Montesa were like Liverpool and Chelsea—if you loved one, you hated the other. Juan Carlos was Team Bultaco. And the moment I saw that Chispa, I became a convert.
It was a scaled-down trials bike—49cc of perfection. I was in love.
Of course, the friendship wasn’t exactly balanced. He was tearing around on a motorbike. I was pedaling furiously behind on my Torrot. My desperation must’ve been obvious, because—much to my mother’s dismay—my dad decided it was time.
I was going to get a Bultaco Chispa of my own.
What followed was one of the most euphoric moments of my childhood. We drove into the Bultaco showroom in central Palma, and there it was—my Chispa—sitting on a pedestal like a trophy. My dad paid the man, we loaded it into the back of my mum’s Ford Fiesta, and drove straight back to Son Vida.
Just before the guardhouse, they pulled over. Unloaded the bike. And let me go.
The only condition was that I had to wear a helmet—which, of course, none of the Spanish kids did. A minor social humiliation, but a price I was willing to pay. I rode through Son Vida like a champion.
From that moment, it was my world. I adored that bike. I wheeled it through the hallway and parked it in my bedroom, where it sat in glory. I’d lie in bed just gazing at it. I learned how to strip and clean the carburettor, polish every surface, and make it hum. I learned to wheelie, to kickstart, to ride like it was in my blood.
We became a little gang—me, Juan Carlos, and a few others. One day, as we rode a lazy vuelta around Son Vida, we heard this horrific grinding noise. It was Bubi Sanso—his dad had clearly caved to the pressure and bought him a Chispa too.
But no one had taught Bubi how to change gears.
He thrashed that poor thing to death—redlined it in first gear until the engine gave out. Even after I showed him how to shift, it never ran the same again.
Still, we hung out a lot. His family had a spectacular villa with a huge pool, and his sister—Mausi—was a few years older. She quickly became the unwilling star of several early fantasies. But that’s another story.
For a while, those years were magic. A little motorcycle gang, a beautiful bike, and the wind in my face. I didn’t know then that the end was coming. That my mum would soon break the news we were going back to South Africa.
But that’s the thing about childhood. You don’t see the exits coming.
You just ride.
Our gang grew fast. First it was just me and Juan Carlos, kings of Son Vida. Then Bubi joined, with his poor dying Chispa. Then came Gaspar—Spanish, the right kind of bike (maybe even a Montesa), and more importantly, he fit.
For whatever reason, I was the leader. Maybe I wheelied the longest or ramped the furthest. Maybe I just had the most ideas. We weren’t just riding—we were creating. Beneath the Son Vida hotel there was this forgotten field, ringed by old stone walls, maybe once a bridle path. We turned it into a motocross track. Built ramps, laid corners, carved it into our own little arena.
After races, we’d swim at each other’s houses, compare scratches and scabs, and do it all again the next day.
But home was a different world.
Outside, I was flying. Inside, everything was collapsing.
My mother’s sadness was thick in the air. And my father—well, he was doing what he always did when he thought no one was looking.
When we first arrived in Mallorca, I was too young to understand what was happening. I didn’t know what an affair was. But I could feel something. Kirsten and Steen Brabrand were a young Danish couple—25 or 30 years younger than my parents—who’d befriended my dad during the months he’d been alone on the island before we joined him.
They had two kids, Christina and Mark, roughly bookending me in age. We visited them often at their house in Costa d’en Blanes. I remember those visits more by feel than detail. What I do remember is how much my mum hated Kirsten.
I once asked her—this was back when she still dressed me, so I must’ve been tiny—
“Why do you hate her so much?”
And she said, “Because she’s going to take your father away.”
That’s not something a mother should say to a child.
But it stuck. Like a seed.
A year or two later, it all came crashing down.
I was on the couch with my mum. She was reading to me—probably James Herriot or The Lord of the Rings. The phone rang in the hall. She got up to answer it.
Everything changed.
I heard the panic in her voice before I saw it on her face. She came back pale and shaking.
My dad, she said, had gone to Copenhagen—to “talk to the bank.” Kirsten had also gone on a “trip.” Steen, not a fool, had hired a private detective.
They were in the same hotel.
The affair that had simmered under the surface ever since Kirsten showed up—ever since she told my mother to her face that she was going to take her husband—was now fact.
After that, it spiralled.
Kirsten had a little green Mini Cooper, and I used to wait for her at the riding school and shove potatoes up her exhaust with a broom handle. I’d watch in grim satisfaction as the Mini stuttered and farted its way down the street. Silly rebellions, maybe. But at least it gave me something to do with all the rage.
My dad started splitting his time. A few nights a week with Kirsten. The rest with us—if we were lucky. She took an apartment in Genova, and every morning on the way to school, we’d pass it. His car would be parked outside. I’d glance at it from the back seat. Like a witness to a crime everyone was pretending not to see.
My mum was unraveling. Every morning, I’d hear her retching up her muesli and yoghurt—meals she forced down out of pure discipline, only for her body to reject them moments later. Her nerves were gone. Her face was growing gaunt and grey.
Briony, my older sister, came to visit from wherever she was off gallivanting. She took one look at my mum and said, “If you don’t leave this man, you’re going to die.”
There’s a photo from that time, now lost. The four generatoions—my mum, her mum, Briony and Briony’s toddler daughter Natasha, and me. My mother looked older than our grandmother. And it wasn’t exaggeration. It was despair made flesh.
And yet… outside, life was still glorious.
At school, I was thriving in football. I remember a match against a Spanish school, played on a gravel pitch somewhere outside Palma. We won. I was breathless, thrilled. I ran to the sideline to share the moment with my mum.
She didn’t smile.
I asked, “What’s wrong?”
She said, “We’re going back to South Africa.”
I looked her in the eye.
“Of course, Mom,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you need to do.”
And I meant it.
And so the plans were set.
I was to return to South Africa to start the third term of my final year at prep school—St. John’s College in Johannesburg. I think the class was called Lower 5. The idea was that I’d rejoin the kids I’d started Grade One with back in 1972.
It was like my mum had decided we’d hit reset on our failed life in Mallorca. We were going to pick up where we’d left off—except this time, my dad wouldn’t be part of the picture. He was staying in Mallorca.
One of the things she promised me, to soften the blow, was that I’d still be allowed to pursue my motorbike obsession in South Africa. That helped.
And anyway, the rest of that summer really was glorious. Golden light. Endless days. It felt like everything might just work out.
But I think she must’ve told me the news during the last term at King’s College—just before the move. I was due to start the third term at St. John’s in September, which meant my time at King’s was nearly up.
And that final term? That’s when I properly started acting out.
I went full tilt: over-the-top flirting with Dina and Tammy, writing ridiculous love letters, being rude to Miss Peary, getting sent out of class. I was a walking rebellion—performing, provoking, not really knowing what I was trying to prove.
There’s one moment that stands out more than the rest.
There was this girl, a big, broad-shouldered Scottish lass named Sharon Swiggs. And I teased her. Mercilessly. Not in a cruel way—more like flirtatious playground warfare. I’d snatch her pencil sharpener or pen across the desk, poke at her, just generally be an irritating little shit.
Unbeknownst to me, she’d had enough.
One day, I reached for something on her desk like usual—some smug little gesture—and she slashed me. She’d taken the blade from a pencil sharpener and, when I made my move, she dragged it across the top of my right hand.
I remember grabbing my hand back and looking down.
There it was: a neat, inch-long gash. The skin parted, white and raw, beads of blood starting to well up like pearls. It looked surgical. And I knew I was in deep trouble.
But there was no way I was going to give Sharon the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt. So I clamped my hand shut with the other and made it through the rest of class.
Luckily, it was the last period of the day.
My mum picked me up from school. I showed her. She wanted to take me straight to Son Dureta Hospital.
I refused.
We got home, and she poured hydrogen peroxide into the wound. It burned like hell. We bandaged it up. I tried to go out for a ride on my motorbike, but the pain was too much.
So I came back inside. Lay down. And went to bed.
I still have the scar.
And good for you, Sharon Swiggs.
Sometimes, the only thing that gets through to an arrogant little prick is a sharpened piece of stationery and a clean, bloody line across the hand.
Lesson learned.
I was ten or eleven. And I meant it with everything I had.