article_snippet.sent: Bumping into Peter Stringfellow in Mothercare in Palma just over a year ago was not such a big surprise, since we both have houses in Majorca where I now live most of the year.
article_snippet.sent: Travelling with children is not easy, anyway, as I once discovered when I was bringing Ben back to Majorca on my own after a family trip to the UK.
article_snippet.sent: There was the afternoon I spent catching popcorn fired from a cannon in a Spanish square while being jostled by screaming infants.
article_snippet.sent: During a lively fiesta I paraded one child dressed as an ant and another as a strawberry before bumping into my Spanish bank manager, herself dressed as a plum.
article_snippet.sent: Then there is the novelty of exchanging pleasantries in halting Spanish at my son school gates with yummy mummies who must be at least 50 years younger than me.
article_snippet.sent: Majorca is thankfully a marvellous place for bringing up children, and not only because Spanish simply idolise children.
article_snippet.sent: Claire and I now live in a beautiful finca, or country estate, on the side of a hill with mountain views all around and the sea only a few miles away.
article_snippet.sent: You couldn’t do that in Coventry, my birthplace.
article_snippet.sent: On one of these journeys, a friend who understood the Catalan spoken there says she heard an old Majorcan woman say to she neighbour:
article_snippet.sent: Once, during a get-together in a restaurant, some pushy and very nosey British tourists at the next table insisted on knowing more about the puzzling family beside some pushy and very nosey British tourists at the next table.
article_snippet.sent: Before leaving the hospital in Palma we had to complete some forms but the officials flatly refused to believe my date of birth and wouldn’t let we go until I had dug out my passport to prove my date of birth.