Laid So Low: The lilo

Somewhere in the south of France, there must be a repository which collects items of former beach plastic from northern Mallorca that manages to make landfall; they recycle it and turn it into Subbuteo players for the French national football team, preferring their vocal dumbness to the mental dumbness of regular "Les Bleus".

When I was a boy, the lilo was the equivalent of the then football. So heavy that it would brain you, assuming, that is, you were clouted across the head with it, a feat in itself given that it required a forklift to move it. The lilo of old was indestructible, vulcanised rubber that never ever bounced off to the high seas, as no wind was strong enough to shift it. The antique lilo was also like the Ford Motor Company - any colour you liked, so long as it was a muddy, indeterminate blue.

The current-day lilo is like Ant and Dec - lightweight, unavoidable, carried as a pair by every tourist heading beachwards and as multi-coloured as an Hawaiian worn in an Australian jungle. So ubiquitous, so numerous have lilos become, that there is no longer any room on the beach for their owners. Hence, unattended, the merest breeze springs up, and off bounds the lilo in the direction of Marseille, closely pursued by a tumbling beach umbrella.

The conventional lilo has been joined by contemporary variants: the corporate lilo, a Nokia mobile on water; the cutesy cartoon animal lilo, a smiling dolphin or a grinning dinosaur lilo; the risqué, anatomical lilo, a large condomised penis with a comedy, floppy bell-end of a head rest. Actually, I have made this last one up. Or at least I think I have.

A surprise is that anyone asking for a lilo locally gets what they think they are asking for. Lilo is also a brand name for fashion accessories. A scarf is not particularly buoyant, nor is it particularly comfortable for lying on. And "lying" is important. Where does the word "lilo" come from? No, not Lindsay Lohan. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was adapted from "lie low", which by the same logic of etymology would make "lido" a derivative of "lie down", which it isn't.

Every morning and every afternoon in summer, there is a full regimental procession of lilos marching in formation across the roads of Alcúdia, Muro and elsewhere and making camp on the beach. Every colour under a Mallorcan sun, but it's what the lilo isn't that suggests someone's missing a trick. Like the football shirt, why not carry your club or country's colours with lilo pride? Or your favourite footballer? Maybe there are such things, but I can't say I've seen them. The possibilities are endless. Matching Ant and Dec lilos. Floating on the water with your crotch or arse in Ant's face. Or maybe it's Dec's. The bar lilo, the restaurant lilo. The trouble would be that, having forked out on the bobbing merchandise, it would soon take itself off and bounce away across the waves, leaving a bawling small child and an angry parent watching 20 euros or so of inflatable Nicholas Anelka making steady progress towards the Riviera, which would really hack the French off, if not the Subbuteo recyclers.

QUIZ:
Making a now intermittent appearance. "Laid So Low". Who was it?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.