I Did It Seg Way

Oh no, no, no. Not something more to avoid and to cause accidents. Who has come up with this bright idea? More than one person, that I do know. As if the cyclists, the trikes, the roller-blading mothers with baby buggies, the jaywalkers and, oh yes, the cars weren't all enough, now the likelihood is that the eye will have to look out for ... the Segway. Yep, the Segway. A not useless piece of mobility I will accept, but as a toy for the holidaymaker, the mind boggles. Let some tanked-up Brit 16 year-old loose with one of those things, careering along The Mile or, worse still, along the carretera, and it's not going to be pretty. Well potentially it´s not. The remarkable thing is that the combination of lunatic drivers and lunatic tourists does not result in the hospitals of Mallorca being packed to the gunwales with tourists who have come off worse in a straight fight between a trike and a fast-moving Juan the lad in full chico-racing mode. But these Segways, they could be the stuff of casualty wards, I'll be bound. That said, maybe they won't be allowed on the open road, though this I somewhat doubt, but were they not then you might well ask what's the point of them. Use them only on pavements? That would be a hoot. The same brain-dead Brit youth, Segwayed-up and hammering along the sidewalks of Pedro Mas y Reus, scattering all the Kylies with their HGVs of baby-buggies. Actually you know, that sounds like quite good sport. Bring on the Segways, but don't fall off, like George Bush. Now I think of it, and warming to a theme and rich vein of disaster, why not have Segway bar crawls? All the lads and ladettes, on the Segways, into the bars, serious bingeing and then off again. Can you be charged with being drunk in charge of a Segway? I suspect that we will find out.


And yet more on the daft things that tourists ask. My thanks to Charlie for this little gem: ' "One day I was parking my car when an English couple knocked on the window and asked having looked at the British registration, how on earth did I get here? I replied that I drove through France, skirted around the bottom bit and caught the ferry. "Which ferry did you take, the one from Portsmouth or Dover?" '

Yes of course, the well-known Dover to Palma run.

And broadening the theme somewhat to embrace the treatment of tourists, this also comes from Charlie. 'I was having a tapa (well burger & chips) at the bar of my immediate watering hole, Bar Bonança just behind the Illa d'Or Hotel. Two English chaps came in dressed head to tail in their Boden best replete with brand new Panamas and said in unison "DO YOU SPEAK etc etc", and were stunned when Fran and Miguel retorted "DO YOU SPEAK SPANISH"! Miguel was requested by one of the Toffs to "rustle up" some chips for their unruly brats. He simply said, "sorry no food today"! Toff number one, having given me a stony stare, said "he's eating", and Miguel (I was wetting myself by this time) simply replied, "he's a local!" '

Now what I like most about this is the "rustle up". Priceless.


QUIZ: Yesterday - The Faces. Today's title - well the adaptation should be obvious, but who actually wrote "My Way"?

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