Put Up A Parking Lot

Well, with slightly less than a fanfare and not even the hooting of a celebratory car horn or several, the new parking area in Puerto Pollensa yesterday became a tarmacadamed reality. No more of that wrecking the suspension on bits of old rock on what was there before (the suspension-wrecking can still be achieved in Puerto Pollensa thanks to the superbly dilapidated state of some of the roads). Now, 110 cars can enjoy the luxury of white-lined parking on the plot opposite the new school. Except there won't be 110 spaces once the art, or should that be science, of Mallorcan parking is on show. This follows a mathematical principle of why let one space do, when two will do just as well. The white lines are mere guidelines to the parking of vehicles, guidelines that steer the car to come to rest either side of the white line, thus occupying two spaces. Perhaps at driving school, they don't explain that you are meant to park inside those two parallel lines, not on top of one of them. Still, once you have tried and given up squeezing into what little space has been left, you will be able to admire the 48 trees that will be sprouting up, almost one tree for every two cars or, given the exactness of the local parking technique, more like one car per tree.

Nevertheless, this parking lot is welcome. Unlike Puerto Alcúdia (in the port that is) which has a fairly large parking area, Puerto Pollensa does not. I have largely given up driving around, hunting for a street parking space. It is altogether quicker to park a distance away and walk, that distance away meaning either on the side roads of the bypass to Formentor or by the Puerto Azul and Oro Playa hotels. One of the problems in Puerto Pollensa is that, since they started filling every available bit of land with buildings, the car population has grown accordingly, and there is nowhere to house it - as it were. 110 slots, fine, but still not nearly enough.

And while on Puerto Pollensa's parking, does anyone have the faintest idea what the deal is with the parking by the nautical club? Some while ago, they introduced this crazy system whereby the driver was meant to place a piece of paper in the windscreen on which he or she had written the time of arrival. This all required that a pen or pencil and piece of paper were immediately to hand, and also that the sign saying that the driver should do this had actually been observed, which it normally had not been. The fact is that there is still a sign there and that parking is meant to be limited to an hour and a half, but no one bothers. Or maybe they just gave up as it was a totally bonkers idea, and someone finally realised that it was bonkers. If they really want to limit parking time, why not install a ticket machine?


And ... Word is that Barrie, recently departed from The Smugglers, has now taken The Highlander. Don't know. Thought he was going back to England.


QUIZ
Kajagoogoo, and Kajagoogoo were produced by Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran. So where does the name Duran Duran come from? Oh, and for those still on title questions - who?

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