DAVID BENTATA

  MY LIFE © - Chapter 40 - THE DISCRETE GENERATION. Here is a chapter that truly something that surprised me. I had been going out steadily with a local young lady since 1968. Differences between us were considerable and pursuing this relationship was going to prove difficult. Neither of us wanted to give up. Her parents realising that as long as we both lived in the same city especially a city like Gibraltar, virtually an island since the frontier was completely closed, decided to send her to London to stay with a distant cousin of her father, a Mr Mendoza. Mr Mendoza was one of these who was sent to London with his family during the evacuation in the early 1940s. He had married an English lady and settled in London, in Streatham in fact. And it was there that my girlfriend lodged. Meanwhile back at the ranch...... I found it impossible to live without her, but nor could I find it possible to find a reason to tell my parents I wanted to go to London after her. And here is ...

  MY LIFE © - CHAPTER 39 - LOVE AT FIFTEEN "El Queens in the Afternoon" .... does that sound too Hemingway for a title? What about "The Black Merc"...hhmmmm too Agatha Christie?? No, I guess the title of this chapter as "Love at 15", though it may sound too Wimbledon -(Love - 15) – is the more appropriate one, so we should leave it at that. This chapter is about a Love Story in Gibraltar in 1960 or 1961. I am sure many millennials will find it somewhat ridiculous, yet the earlier generation will easily identify with the intense passion which our hearts battled for what was then so much…..yet today means so little. Yes, I fell in love. I would do that often throughout my life, "fell" being much more the operative word than "love". These were the days when "las niñas del Convent Verde" would flood Main Street at 4:15 at the end of the school day. El Convento Verde (The Green Convent) referred to the green uniform all ...

  MY LIFE © Chapter 38 - BALLOONING & LADY K I knew Lady K from the time she was a senior in the Loreto Convent (El Convento Verde) which I hasten to add for my non-Yanito readers, did not make her a nun. It was actually the Loreto Convent School for Girls which was indeed run by nuns. I would say that my first memory of her was seeing her walk past, wearing the green school uniform and with knee-high brown leather platform boots, the rage at the time. I do not think she realised then just how attractive she was, that must have come later. The usual story, she met a nice guy they fell in love they got married and they disappeared. I believe they went to England where they lived for several years. She was one of the "walking wounded" of Divorce Courts, and in 1988, unfortunately, so was I. One of the effects of divorces can be the knee-jerk impulse to marry someone else so as not to be alone anymore, but that was not my case, nor I believe was it Lady K's. She was...

  MY LIFE. © Chapter 37 - "Ashes to ashes?" Sometime in the early 70s, the few caravans left in Gib were allocated parking facilities at the back of what used to be Penelope's nightclub. Today it's the Mediterranean Restaurant. There was not much there, just empty space and I remember at most three, maybe four caravans parked there, and were mostly empty. But the owners would rent them out to young hippies who were glad to have some cheap shelter for the weeks or months they stayed in Gibraltar. The easy contact between Gibraltar and Morocco kept attracting them to come here and take the Mons Calpe to Tangier every couple of weeks for their supplies of marijuana. This was not the weed that you will see nowadays. This was naturally grown weed unadulterated ….. and very cheap! One kilo sold in Kenitra for about £20 …yeah, tokers … eat your hearts out LOL. Today the hybrids that are being grown are 10 or 20 times more powerful and, in my mind, excuse the pun, rather ...