Rupert Baird-Murray, 50, was born in the UK and raised in Malta until the age of six. He was a fixture on West London&rsquo;s social scene for many years before moving to Ibiza almost four years ago. He is a partner in the Santa Gertrudis-based property firm Domus Nova and lives off the San Juan road near Es Cali&uacute;

&lsquo;I wake up between five and six am. I&rsquo;m not one for hanging around in bed, so I&rsquo;ll make a coffee and head straight out for walk with my dog, Dolly. My house backs onto Terra Masia, a vast regenerative farm that was recently bought by the DJ Calvin Harris. I&rsquo;ll walk around the fields and maybe stop to chat to the farm manager, Philip, who shows me what he's planting that day. Dolly just runs and runs. She&rsquo;s a Dachshund crossed with a Jack Russell and she&rsquo;s very bouncy. Dolly was born in San Carlos and I got her through a friend of mine, Luke, who has Dolly's half-sister. I think half of the north of the island have one of her half-sisters too! I live alone, so she&rsquo;s the best thing to come home to. I do have two children but one lives in West London and one in Los Angeles. Jack, my son in London, is 15, so he&rsquo;d rather be with his friends than me right now. But Syd, who lives with his mum in LA, is only six and although he comes to Ibiza for six weeks in summer and four at Christmas, he&rsquo;s at that age where he really wants his dad around.&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s interesting because I was sent to boarding school at seven, which isn&rsquo;t far off Syd&rsquo;s age now. My father was in the Navy and my parents travelled a lot. I don&rsquo;t think people send their children away so readily anymore, but my family has seen a lot of displacement. My mother was Burmese but had an Irish father. Back in the days of the Empire, all the upper-class British went to India. They sent all the Irish to countries like Burma, which acted as a sort of buffer to protect India from the Chinese. My mother wrote a fascinating book about her childhood there called A World Overturned. Her father &ndash; my maternal grandfather &ndash; had been the Superintendent of the Shan States in the north of Burma and his father was a sort of itinerant soldier who had fought in the Boer War and even been a Canadian Mountie at one point. When the Second World War broke out, my grandfather had to escort a lot of people away from the Japanese. They were rescued by a chap named Elephant Bill. It was quite a remarkable story and there have been books written about it. At one point I was working with [the explorer] Ranulph Fiennes on a project to recreate the trek they made. Despite his exploits &ndash; or perhaps because of them - my grandfather died very young in Calcutta &ndash; he was only in his forties. I definitely think my heritage has contributed to me never feeling quite settled. I never feel as though I&rsquo;m where I&rsquo;m going to end up.

If it&rsquo;s a weekday then after my walk I&rsquo;ll head to the office. In London I was the creative director for the PR firm Purple. I was hired by Domus Nova back in 2019 to come to Ibiza and create a one-off cultural event for them, so I set up a partnership with a friend of mine, the tattooist <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/portraits/mark-mahoney-from-la-to-ibiza" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mark Mahoney </a>from Los Angeles. We created a little popup Shamrock Social Club at Hostal la Torre which was super cool and we had [Mambo boss] Javier Anadon tattooed and it was a real success. After that, Domus Nova asked me to stay in Ibiza, so now I work across brand partnerships, culture and property which is great. I&rsquo;ll spend four or five hours at the office. I don&rsquo;t stop for lunch, which is odd I suppose, because I&rsquo;m a real foodie. I had a restaurant in Notting Hill for years called Rosa&rsquo;s Dining Room. It was next door the iconic Westbourne pub, which was another of my projects back in 1995. Rosa&rsquo;s was great because it was a real social hub for that little area and we had everyone in there at the time. There were only 40 covers and we&rsquo;d have <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/beauty/stella-mccartney-critique-movement-clean-beauty" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stella McCartney</a>, Bella Freud, Grace Jones. It was a nice little vibe and in the days before Instagram so it all felt quite under-the-radar. I also used to do a lot of work with the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park and with the Design Museum. Art and design are real focal points of my life and have remained so in Ibiza. When I leave the Hub, where our office is, I might visit a gallery. I&rsquo;m a big fan of Parra y Romero, the contemporary art gallery who have just opened a new outpost in the heart of Santa Gertrudis. Or I might pop to Kzar or Tanis, two brilliant interiors stores that both share a sort of earthy, primitive aesthetic

If it&rsquo;s the weekend then no doubt I&rsquo;ll have visited San Jordi flea market in the morning, especially in winter when the sun is bright and I can wander around with Dolly and a coffee and bump into lots of friends. On Sundays I love to visit Espacio Micus, a mid-century art space near Can Furnet that&rsquo;s full of marvellous creations. It&rsquo;s a real insider&rsquo;s secret and I always leave Micus feeling very inspired, so I might go home and spend the afternoon tinkering in my workshop. I guess you might say I&rsquo;m a bit of a carpenter - I make wooden tables in my spare time. I learnt by watching my father do it although he was far more meticulous than me. My joints aren&rsquo;t quite up to scratch! But it&rsquo;s a very relaxing thing to do, very therapeutic, and I can easily while away four or five hours in the workshop without noticing. I listen to America&rsquo;s NPR &ndash; National Public Radio &ndash; while I&rsquo;m working. They cover quite interesting topics and I like to keep abreast of the news. In Ibiza it&rsquo;s quite easy to detach completely from the outside world but I do try to stay connected, certainly with politics. I think anyone with young children has a responsibility to understand what&rsquo;s going to impact their kids&rsquo; future. At 5pm each day I have a Zoom call with Syd in LA. He&rsquo;s just waking up and that time online is precious for us both.

I go out a lot in the evenings. I&rsquo;m very sociable and I love to go for dinner. I might take a meandering drive through the campo first. I have quite a rare old car: it&rsquo;s a silver Mercedes W123 from 1978 that I actually bought near Golborne Road in London. It has a lovely blue leather interior and is quite a special thing, but it had been shrouded beneath a tarpaulin for five years, totally unloved. Quite unbelievably, it was already on Spanish plates! So, of course I bought it on the spot and drove it to back Ibiza. My favourite place for supper is Bal&agrave;fia, just off the San Juan road. It&rsquo;s a very traditional grill restaurant with a charming terrace peppered with orange trees and lit by little lights. It&rsquo;s been open for over forty years and the Ibicenca owner, Lena, is one of Ibiza&rsquo;s real characters. I might go with friends like the publisher Hugh Merrell or Clarisse Grumbach Palme, a woman who has led the most fascinating life. I&rsquo;ve always been very social and I love interesting people. My first trip to Ibiza was actually in 2006 for the makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury&rsquo;s now-legendary wedding. After a wild weekend with the likes of Kate Moss and Mario Testino I didn&rsquo;t come back to the island for 17 years because I didn&rsquo;t want to keep bumping into the same people I knew from London! I&rsquo;m over that now though and I do feel that I&rsquo;ve fallen back in love with the island.
When I get home from supper I might listen to some music &ndash; I have quite eclectic tastes, so it could be anything from Chopin to the Pixies. I probably go to bed around 1am. I love living by myself. All my life I&rsquo;ve been surrounded by tons of people, so I really appreciate my solo time. It&rsquo;s just nice to get home and be able to completely switch off.&rsquo;

A Day in the Ibiza Life: Rupert Baird-Murray

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