Landlord's Life

Here's a bit of midsummer madness with only a tenuous connection to property, winging all the way to you from "de costa".

As it's goblins and goolies time of year and my subject is an ex-pat Englishman by the name of Tony Sharpe, I may be forgiven for penning a paean of praise in his honour.

In the tiny bit of Spain which I inhabit for part of the year, Tony ran a late night bar in his home. Originally a fisherman's cottage, his entire habitat occupied only a ground floor.

With tourist prosperity, it become a pied-à-terre, with a terrace and magnificent views over the sea to north Africa.

Mind you, I never actually saw north Africa, anymore than I saw Wales from Skerries. When people assert they saw those places through the haze, I'm inclined to add "alcohol" to their description.

Tony bought the place for a song - and with a song in his heart - because he was a generous and romantic man who loved to entertain. He played the piano, told stories, was a brilliant mimic - and like a lot of people who are witty and charming on the outside, he was something of a loner inside.

For readers of a certain vintage, think Hancock - you get the picture. Tony's shirts hung drying over chairs behind the piano, the bar was along a wall of shelves, with the spirits and wines sharing space with manuscripts of books, published and unpublished. Some of the dog-eared pages were by Tony, some by other ex-pat, some by random visitors who - peering into the cavern - found the home-from-home they had been looking for.

He never opened before 8.30pm and rarely closed before the early hours of the next day. After the town's restaurants closed, Tony's place filled with waiters and chefs and stragglers in search of some spark of entertainment as compensation for a long day spent in the service of tourists. Some of his clientele were middle-aged and ex-pat who had made their homes in the sun, for better or worse. Sometimes, for worse.

But in Tony's for a few hours, they could trip the light fantastic, hear a few good stories - and most of all, be entertained by himself. And so, for a few hours, taken out of themselves. Some were as lonely as he was.

Then a few things happened, which changed everything. One was a legal injunction taken against his piano playing by a neighbour. She did not live there full-time, but managed to have the piano playing closed down. Tony stayed on, but no music near the witching hour.

But the stories and banter persisted. It was there, for instance, I heard how prosperity, as driven by tourists and the jet engine - changed a scrub land of bare subsistence into the prosperous place it now was.

Of how the sons of the rural families were left the best land up in the mountains, while the women were left large tracts of the poor foreshore.

Of course, with prosperity, the foreshore become more valuable than the farms. Tony loved to mention some families whose fortunes changed immensely as a result, with the women becoming wealthy, opening shops and buying into hotels and changing forever the traditional "balance of power" in the rural family. There, too, I met Irish ex-pats. We were wary of each other, not least because Tony might introduce someone as "do you know X, a fellow countryman of yours? Don't know him? Oh come on, he owns the Y hotel and has the Irish franchise for X motor cars. He's here with his second wife."

This week I walked by Tony's. The lights were out. Two other things had come to pass.

He published a book which was well received and a businessman made him an offer for the place, of the kind he would have been mad to refuse.

May the magic of midsummer smile on you, Tony, for the pleasure you gave.