This Expat Life: AlcudiaPollensa.blogspot and perceptual gaps

"I'm surprised anyone talks to you." Eh? What?

It's a perception thing, you know. It's what people think you write or think what you might write. I wouldn't talk to me if I did write what people thought I wrote or might write. But the above was said to me the other day, if joshingly, by a local bar-owner.

This blog will be five years old in a couple of months. There have been over 1500 entries. I'm struggling to think of any occasion when I have slagged off a local individual or business, except obliquely; or any occasion when I have broken a confidence. There are things I know, but they won't appear here.

No. One moment. There has been the odd occasion, like with the "Sun, Sea and A&E" lady, but there was that perception thing again, as in had it been read carefully it would have been clear that it was a piss-take, hardly for the first time, of "The Bulletin". I have no reticence in rubbishing something which affronts me with its Palmacalvia-centricity, mistakes and rotten English. And it's the media. Like politicians, political parties and town halls, it's there to be shot at.

I've known this perception thing before. When I was at university I became the one who was most closely associated with a scurrilous publication that was eventually banned when the local police threatened an obscenity charge (and this was just a few years after the "Oz" trial). The only reason why I was thus associated, and I was neither a member of the particular college from which the magazine emanated nor one of its editors, had to do with a higher profile on campus than others. I was personally responsible for only one of the many controversies that the magazine spawned.

The perception thing was also evident when this blog was commended in "PC Advisor". "Thoughtful and witty descriptions of the expat life." The quote needs to be seen in context, but I don't know that the blog has ever been about expat life, other than occasionally specific pieces. And the perception thing blends into the profile thing. You might take that quote, you might take that surprise at anyone talking to me as evidence of high profile, of hanging around bars and hanging on all the gossip and then churning it out - here. Both the perception and the profile are inaccurate. What can also surprise is when I say that I am an habitué of very few bars, and certainly not for the evening piss-artisting, have never been inside many and have never met or had anything to do with so-and-so expat who does, on the contrary, have a high profile.

The perception thing is wrong because the blog is detached. It is this very distance that creates a diversity of subject and an absence of pressure to somehow act as reportage of this "expat life". It is, essentially, observational. A part of but also separate. It is the observation and the diversity which, despite times when I have wondered about stopping, keep the blog going. There simply is no end to what you can write about. Were it about "expat life", were it about the local who's doing this, who's doing that, then it wouldn't have legs, not long-running ones. People would not only not talk, they would also, in all likelihood, be somewhat aggressive. But more fundamentally, I have, despite that perception thing, no interest in being a conveyor of tittle-tattle, a slagger-off of who's been slagging with whom. That said, there is a file of what I presumptuously call the blog's basement tapes: stuff that has been written but which has never appeared. Even these pieces don't name (though it might be possible to assign a name), but they are very much darker or more off-the-wall.

There have been recently, as there have been in the past, some highly satisfying compliments both of the blog and of HOT!. I even received a letter, remember them, from someone who had enjoyed the newspaper. Sometimes, though, I wonder if I don't become self-indulgent, such as with yesterday's piece. I had thought of consigning that to the basement tapes. And then I got a compliment about it (Glen's), as similarly I had one a couple of weeks back from Derek who referred to the more poetic stuff being inspiring. But the danger is I end up taking myself seriously, which would never do. And I might end up understanding who the hell it is I'm writing for.

It's this very unknown, among all the thousands of you who come to this blog, that make it as worthwhile as the compliments. The unknown also as to which pieces might interest more than others. The unknown as to who will be in the inbox on a given day, saying they have been following the blog for this or that length of time. The blog is self-indulgent. By definition, I suppose, most blogs are. But as to people not talking to me, I don't think so, because I guess most don't know what the blog is about, other than by some fault of perception. And I couldn't help. Because neither do I.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.