Beach Baby Beach

I don't know. Would you take your laptop onto the beach? Sand flying everywhere, hands covered in sun lotion, the glare making the screen invisible. Presumably there will be some covered area, but the idea of a Wi-Fi zone on Puerto Alcúdia's beach seems a tad unnecessary. Can we not do without the Internet (and our mobiles come to that) just for a bit? Seems we can't.

This is just one idea that the town hall have dreamt up to transform the beach into what verges on a hotel on the sand. A chill-out area with sunbeds, whatever that is, kiddies' play areas; add the Wi-Fi and it could be just like a hotel but with a giant pool (the sea).

All this is reported on today in "The Bulletin". It goes on to mention new access ways for the disabled and showers (which are fair enough). There is also to be a tannoy system to inform the sunlovers of events taking place on the beach, which sounds ominously like "Hi-De-Hi". Will Gladys be inviting the masses to a knobbly-knees contest by the beach bar? It seems a bit contradictory as well. There you are, relaxing in the chill-out area, and then comes a blast over the PA. "Good morning, campers, at 11 o'clock there will be a Donkey Derby in front of Sunwing." And because Alcúdia is such a cosmopolitan place, the announcements will have to be in several languages, or maybe they'll just do them in Spanish so no one will have a clue what's going on.

I mean, I can see where they're coming from. Information and access to information are no bad things as such, it's just - is this all necessary? The help for the disabled and the showers, absolutely, but splashing out a million or so euros to be able to say that Alcúdia is the first beach to offer all this sounds a touch vain. As for this chill-out area, if this is meant to be a kids-free zone, how do they stop the kids entering it? Children, strangely enough, have a habit of just wandering into places. Are there to be warders with grim faces patrolling the chill-out areas, shouting at an errant infant - "oi, you, 'op it". Except of course it would be "fuera, fuera" and a small child upset by this nasty man, breaking down into a bawling fit. So much for a chill-out area. There's one other thing. It is already the case that a day out on the beach involves transporting the entire contents of a Currys shop - mobile, MP3 player, digital camera, digital camcorder. So adding another item, a laptop, just about completes the set, save for a 42-inch screen television and home cinema system. All this kit though adds up to a tidy sum in terms of value. I just wonder if the addition of laptops might not be tempting for those of a light-fingered orientation.

But being a beach thing, nothing can be done without the say-so of the beach jobsworths, the authorities that give consent for anything that moves or stays put on a beach nowadays. Beach being public space and in the protected zone 100 metres or so from the coastline, nothing gets done without a stamp of environmental approval. Not that anything that is being proposed sounds particularly intrusive in this regard, though I am sure they'll find something. Wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't. Noise pollution. Those tannoys. Hmm.


SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT - NO FRILLS EXCURSIONS
Yes indeed, a special announcement to say that No Frills Excursions will be open for trips from 15 March this year, a good deal earlier than in the past. For obvious reasons, like not everywhere being open, the March and April programme will not be as full as the main-season programme, but there is still a goodly amount on offer. Go to the WHAT'S ON BLOG to see what there is.


QUIZ
Yesterday - The Intruders. "Win, Place Or Show". Today's title - a truly awful record by?

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