Lost 'n' Found

"Lost May." Where did it go? Did someone take it? Is it likely to be found?

"Mayo perdido" is a headline in today's "Ultima Hora", the newspaper which, for once, spreading as it is the bad news about this month of May, gets close to living up to its anglicised nickname of the ultimate horror. A lost May is not perhaps the ultimate in horrors but it will do for starters, though one trusts that there is nothing to follow - like a lost June as well. Under the paper's banner are photos of an empty shop, an empty beach and an empty terrace, all of them in Arenal. But for Arenal, you can probably read most of the island. The loss of May has been down to one thing - the weather. And there is still no sign of a permanent shift for the better, even if the weather maps show the latest band of cloud clearing by Monday next week, which will indeed take us into June. The Ultima also carries these headers: "Black May for tourism" and "The rain and the cold mean that the month will end up as one of the worst that can be remembered". And this "worst" was not lost on a client to whom I spoke today. My, what a good old laugh we had when I broached the subject of his invoice. Mind you, any old excuse.

Someone once said to me that Mallorcans don't take their cardies off till June. But I think he was exaggerating. Quite a few do, though not necessarily this year. And this quite a few has not been taking to the beaches and resorts during May. Though the poor and wretched old tourist has been rained off, the locals, who supplement the whole tourism industry at weekends, have stayed at home and watched Eurovision. There have been three weekends without sun; and that is not great news, even in May when some cardies remain firmly buttoned. Personally, I don't possess a cardie, but by this time of May I would not normally expect to a) still be deploying a thickish duvet or b) be wearing socks as a matter of course, even if there is - you'll be saddened to learn - a recurrence of the infected toe problem. Duvet and socks - May has been lost, but found in the winter wardrobe.


And more noise, following on from the last two days' entries. John has mailed me to suggest that maybe there is just a touch of double standards when it comes to the insistence on limiters and curfews. He refers of course to the fiestas and specifically to the annual disco-party-thrash that occurs in the centre of Alcúdia town as the culmination to Sant Jaume. The annual thrash that lasts well into the small hours; indeed well beyond sunrise. And Alcúdia is not alone in this regard. Pollensa and Puerto Pollensa both stage similar dos that run up close to breakfast time.

Now one can of course argue that it is but once a year (actually if you take in various other events, it isn't), and that the Spanish are used to doing things that much later than your average Brit, but what is good for the town halls, who run these events, is not good for the humble bar that has been served with all those decrees against noise - by the town halls. As John points out, a bar-owner could apply for a licence for something similar, but the laughter in the chambers of the ayuntamientos would be as sardonic as that of the client faced with an invoice at the end of a soggy May. Forget it, in other words.


QUIZ
Chain - "Brimful of Asha" was remixed to hitdom by Fat Boy Slim aka Norman Cook, so therefore to The Housemartins and thence to "Caravan of Love". And what's the very simple connection between "Caravan of Love" and yesterday's titlists who were The Allman Brothers Band. Today's title - "get herself lost 'n' found"; one of the greats. Who?

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