Well, where did that go? Summer. I know, I know, there are three weeks until the equinox but September cannot disguise its name. It is a synonym for an ending, for a hastening descent towards the real end: September and summer, slip sliding away.
The natural rhythm of summer and so also its September conclusion has been disrupted. Once upon a time, in an English sense, September was a month of the Gillette final, misty morns, the occasional summer of an Indian variety and the start of the autumn TV series, timed to climax with the family glued to the box at Christmas. Now even "X Factor" starts in August, thus maximising the potential for the latest victorious product of the Cowell factory to ratchet up ever more million-plus sales in the pre-Christmas chart race.
Oh for the days of yore when a dewy Lord's would stage the season's final, played by cricketers knackered from having shoehorned into August roughly eight three-day matches, four one-dayers and the occasional festival match against the tourists. What do we have now? England's one-day captain, Eoin Morgan, takes the whole of August off, having managed a less than impressive three-ball duck in his last match on 1 August. 'Twas never thus.
All the while of course, footballing hegemony has edged closer to 365 days a year. Even without there being matches, there is the transfer window and the consequent opportunities for 24-hour sports news to blather on about the likelihood of an Armenian centre-back making his way to Burnley. (All other sorts of options are available.) With the Premier League reversing in Cowell-like stealth fashion to an ever earlier start, this does bring joy to the Brit bars of old Mallorca: one more weekend of nectar, an amber one, the tills overflowing with the revenues of Fosters or Saint Mick.
The bars, however, like Septembers and not just because of the football. August, the main summer month, does not necessarily bring forth foaming rivers of gold: too many damn families not out on the lash, assuming they have been let out of their all-inclusive internment camps, that is. Whatever movements there are, sporting or otherwise, in the UK or other main markets have generally small disruptive impact on tourism. It is as it has been for many a year, August giving way to the September prospect of greater spend per head of tourist population.
Yet in a different sense - Mallorca's political summer - there is disruption. Massive disruption. For one particular observer, let's say myself, there is much to be said for Eoin Morgan's desire to recharge energy levels through an August lay-off. Chance would be a fine thing. Through the enervating heat and increasing humidity of August, there has been no time to rest, to recharge, to recuperate. The politicians have denied themselves adequate periods of lounging on a beach, away from the machinations of politicking. They have been too damn noisy. They have, as a consequence, demanded too much attention.
If not the tourism minister Barceló charging around resorts with which he was presumably unfamiliar, then it has been the president and her aide at finance, Cladera, issuing daily bulletins (sic) regarding the parlous state of Balearic finances: all with a target date in mind, that of tomorrow, 2 September. The great meeting with Rajoy at which Armengol will hope but doubtless fail to extract any less parsimony than at present has overshadowed the rare shade of August. The month was one of a carefully crafted propaganda event, laying the groundwork for public opinion when the Rajoy-Armengol summit goes in a direction opposite to that which Armengol might have wanted.
It was a month when there was too much of the politics thing, bolstered by the 24-hour news chatter of the eco-tax: a subject of speculation like the transfer window and no less capable of endless comment. And then there were the appointments, those of senior officials, about which there were disagreements among the partners of government. How could the politicians have relaxed, taken August off when they had eyes constantly trained on what their so-called partners were up to and their potential infidelities?
With so many of them new to all this, it has not been surprising that they have chosen not to stay silent. Plus, they are of the new age, when a politician needs to be able to demonstrate - transparently - that he or she is earning the crust granted by the citizens' taxes, even if this means getting it wrong. Far better to be seen to be doing and speaking, rather than not doing and keeping mum.
This is not how August should be though. Not in Mallorca. Everything is meant to close down. The rhythm has been disrupted. And now it's September. Oh well, soon be Christmas.
Showing posts with label September. Show all posts
Showing posts with label September. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 01, 2015
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
When It Rains, It Rains
The German language possesses words which reflect a German characteristic of straightforwardness and directness and a further one of the mysterious. This vocabulary is especially evident when it comes to the weather. What a magnificent word "Unwetter" is. Un-weather. It is brilliant in its clarity, simplicity and lack of complication. It says it all. Then there is "Gewitter", a word spoken with a sense of foreboding, of the gods of Germanic mythology stirring violently and unleashing a terrible force across the land. Both words are applied to storms, though "Unwetter" is more a state of turbulent and bad weather rather than the specifically horrific storm that can be "Gewitter". I have experienced the summer "Gewitter" in the steamy south of Germany on more than occasion. You know it is coming. The wind suddenly picks up from nothing and within only a short few moments the skies change. The speed with which the storm hits and the violence it unleashes over the Central European land mass are awesome to behold, except if you happen to be caught up in it.
The Spanish "tormenta", with its implication of the tortures of the Inquisition, is frighteningly apt because of that implication. My, how vocabulary can describe the mental state that storms provoke, either through literal implication or through onomatopoeic suggestion, and German and Spanish do so far more strongly than English. The monosyllabic "storm" lacks a potency. A storm brews, just as tea does. It is a more sedate state of turbulence.
We are in the season for the Mallorcan storm. If there is any predictability with weather, it is that the island is going to be subjected to the torment of the tormenta at its most inquisitional, and it typically occurs around the middle of September. The high humidity and the paraffin-vaporous great heat of this September, the great warmth of the sea surrounding the island: the elements are there. The perfect storm is not brewing, it is being slowly and maliciously stirred before the whips of frenzy finally crack from an apocalyptic sky.
Local terminology requires us to believe that there is a "gota fría", a cutesy meteorological expression which massively understates what this cold drop can be. Strangely enough perhaps, given the German linguistic propensity for playing up the power of storms, it is a term which owes everything to German - the "Kaltlufttropfen". But even the understated in German sounds worrying and vaguely mythical, as though the Brothers Grimm invented weather.
Though the middle of September is often when the "gota" makes its coldness evident, it can be earlier or later. Just recently, we experienced the 25th anniversary of the 1989 weather event, one so extreme that five lives were lost and almost 200 litres per square metre of rain fell within two hours along the eastern part of Mallorca. It was 6 September in 1989. The anniversary has passed. We are waiting for the 2014 version, and we might well be waiting with some trepidation.
Of course, anyone who can claim an association of some years with Mallorca can point to the dramas that nature has for us in late summer and early autumn. Take 2003, for instance, a summer that was excruciatingly hot. The highs actually peaked in June, around 40 degrees, and didn't fail to exceed 30 degrees for weeks and weeks until, right on cue at the change of the month, 31 August brought with it a change. Bang, crash, wallop. "Donner und Blitzen". Or take another example. That of 4 October, 2007. The "cap de fibló" tornado which claimed the life of a worker at Son Espases, ripped roofs off buildings on the Can Valero industrial estate and hurled along a route mapped out by the motorway heading northwards. The damage was great as the swirling blackness of meteo-four horsemen of the apocalypse propelled itself with what seemed like the speed of sound.
Though there are extreme weather events, they tend not to repeat themselves with such ferocity too often. This, though, was not the case after the 1989 event. The following year, a month or so later in early October, there were the disastrous rains which affected the north of the island particularly badly. So bad were the floods that the army had to be mobilised. The city of lakes that is Alcúdia became the city of the lake. It was impossible to see where lake or canal finished and where road or pavement was supposed to be. This did, though, lead to a greater appreciation for the need to attempt to limit flood damage.
When it rains, it does indeed rain. The season is with us. We should be scouring the maps of the AEMET meteorological office for the signs. The tormenta will be with us. It's a case of when and how fierce. My, how we love to talk about the un-weather.
The Spanish "tormenta", with its implication of the tortures of the Inquisition, is frighteningly apt because of that implication. My, how vocabulary can describe the mental state that storms provoke, either through literal implication or through onomatopoeic suggestion, and German and Spanish do so far more strongly than English. The monosyllabic "storm" lacks a potency. A storm brews, just as tea does. It is a more sedate state of turbulence.
We are in the season for the Mallorcan storm. If there is any predictability with weather, it is that the island is going to be subjected to the torment of the tormenta at its most inquisitional, and it typically occurs around the middle of September. The high humidity and the paraffin-vaporous great heat of this September, the great warmth of the sea surrounding the island: the elements are there. The perfect storm is not brewing, it is being slowly and maliciously stirred before the whips of frenzy finally crack from an apocalyptic sky.
Local terminology requires us to believe that there is a "gota fría", a cutesy meteorological expression which massively understates what this cold drop can be. Strangely enough perhaps, given the German linguistic propensity for playing up the power of storms, it is a term which owes everything to German - the "Kaltlufttropfen". But even the understated in German sounds worrying and vaguely mythical, as though the Brothers Grimm invented weather.
Though the middle of September is often when the "gota" makes its coldness evident, it can be earlier or later. Just recently, we experienced the 25th anniversary of the 1989 weather event, one so extreme that five lives were lost and almost 200 litres per square metre of rain fell within two hours along the eastern part of Mallorca. It was 6 September in 1989. The anniversary has passed. We are waiting for the 2014 version, and we might well be waiting with some trepidation.
Of course, anyone who can claim an association of some years with Mallorca can point to the dramas that nature has for us in late summer and early autumn. Take 2003, for instance, a summer that was excruciatingly hot. The highs actually peaked in June, around 40 degrees, and didn't fail to exceed 30 degrees for weeks and weeks until, right on cue at the change of the month, 31 August brought with it a change. Bang, crash, wallop. "Donner und Blitzen". Or take another example. That of 4 October, 2007. The "cap de fibló" tornado which claimed the life of a worker at Son Espases, ripped roofs off buildings on the Can Valero industrial estate and hurled along a route mapped out by the motorway heading northwards. The damage was great as the swirling blackness of meteo-four horsemen of the apocalypse propelled itself with what seemed like the speed of sound.
Though there are extreme weather events, they tend not to repeat themselves with such ferocity too often. This, though, was not the case after the 1989 event. The following year, a month or so later in early October, there were the disastrous rains which affected the north of the island particularly badly. So bad were the floods that the army had to be mobilised. The city of lakes that is Alcúdia became the city of the lake. It was impossible to see where lake or canal finished and where road or pavement was supposed to be. This did, though, lead to a greater appreciation for the need to attempt to limit flood damage.
When it rains, it does indeed rain. The season is with us. We should be scouring the maps of the AEMET meteorological office for the signs. The tormenta will be with us. It's a case of when and how fierce. My, how we love to talk about the un-weather.
Saturday, September 01, 2012
It Might As Well Have Rained Until September
Damn, damn, damn. It's happened again. September has started. Summer is going, fading, being forgotten. It's no use saying it's still summer because it feels different. What a difference a day makes. From one with an A to one with an S. It happens every year. The first of September, and all the regrets start flooding in along with the floods that the predictable change in the weather brings. When it was still June and July, there was always the next day, the next week, the next month even for whatever it was. Summer stretched for an eternity. September would never come. Nightswimming. Remembering that night. September wasn't coming soon. All of a sudden it was. And now it has.
September is deep-rooted in the consciousness. It is what makes it even more unbearable. We all know what September meant. An end and an unwanted beginning. And as it wound on, September became, if you were lucky, the misty morning giving way to an early autumn heat. But it was also always the month of gathering and swifter twilight. The twilight of summer.
A Mallorcan September is not very different, but there is the added poignancy, as 31 August turns into 1 September, of vitality being sucked out, of a draining, of an enervation. Life starts to go because people wish it to go, wish it to pass with the days being counted down until the shutters are pulled down, until the chairs and tables are piled away for one last time, until the cleaning-up is performed one final time. Wishing time away, wishing the onset of winter desolation, the non-time of a Mallorcan winter, deprived of a life force. How strange that this desolation should be so craved.
Come September and remember a dream from back in May when you panicked that it was September and that the summer had been missed. All those forgotten or missed fiestas. All those forgotten or missed sultry nights. All those forgotten or missed beaches. All those forgotten or missed tumbles in the surf. All those forgotten or missed shouts and laughs amidst the splashes.
And the end of August change in weather is the perfect storm to create the perfect end to what cannot any longer truly be summer. September is the half month. Half here, half there, not knowing which way it is really going. Unreliable. Unpredictable. The perfect storm brings down the curtain on the final act of colossal heat and immediately it has finished, you want it reinstated, want more, want an encore.
Come back.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
September is deep-rooted in the consciousness. It is what makes it even more unbearable. We all know what September meant. An end and an unwanted beginning. And as it wound on, September became, if you were lucky, the misty morning giving way to an early autumn heat. But it was also always the month of gathering and swifter twilight. The twilight of summer.
A Mallorcan September is not very different, but there is the added poignancy, as 31 August turns into 1 September, of vitality being sucked out, of a draining, of an enervation. Life starts to go because people wish it to go, wish it to pass with the days being counted down until the shutters are pulled down, until the chairs and tables are piled away for one last time, until the cleaning-up is performed one final time. Wishing time away, wishing the onset of winter desolation, the non-time of a Mallorcan winter, deprived of a life force. How strange that this desolation should be so craved.
Come September and remember a dream from back in May when you panicked that it was September and that the summer had been missed. All those forgotten or missed fiestas. All those forgotten or missed sultry nights. All those forgotten or missed beaches. All those forgotten or missed tumbles in the surf. All those forgotten or missed shouts and laughs amidst the splashes.
And the end of August change in weather is the perfect storm to create the perfect end to what cannot any longer truly be summer. September is the half month. Half here, half there, not knowing which way it is really going. Unreliable. Unpredictable. The perfect storm brings down the curtain on the final act of colossal heat and immediately it has finished, you want it reinstated, want more, want an encore.
Come back.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, September 13, 2010
All That Noise: Back to school and beaches
Get a day of beach transcendence, such as yesterday, and you realise there is only one blemish. Other people. Sundays should be for highly vocalised church-going, leaving non-believers in sandy peace and quiet.
It was the last day of summer yesterday. Schools are back today. 12 September can normally be relied upon to unleash biblical weather. It did, but was an Araratian failure and a success of Eden, save for the great unwashed who came to take the waters.
September here and the British have largely fled, leaving the Mallorcans to attempt to stave off German sunbedsraum and for them to both compete in the sonorous league. Which is louder? A Mallorcan or a German? Teutonic volume should be a thing of research. There is no obvious explanation for it other than a direct correlation between size and loudness. The Mallorcan bellow, on the other hand, is easily understood; it has been genetically programmed in order to be heard over the thunderous growl of a "moto". Smaller families have not eliminated another form of conditioning, that of feeling the need to shout to be heard.
The Mallorcan child's noise does not seem to register with the Mallorcan child's parent. It is fair to say that the child is also indulged. Today, a communal song and dance will be made about the return to school, while the cacophony on the streets will be matched only by the sound of heavy boots ensuring a smooth first day of the new school year. So much is made of the "vuelta al cole" that the press report the number of police being pressed into action to supervise it. One can only attribute the number of column inches to the fact that the summer holiday occupies a quarter of the year; the return is an event. There is even a whole website devoted to it.
To coincide with the vuelta, a survey has been conducted regarding issues in local education. The greatest concern involves discipline. It doesn't come as a surprise. Kids are not out of control, but that parental indulgence translates itself into the classroom. More importantly, what one has is often the reverse of deprived conditions which lead to school indiscipline. The presence of a "class" of offspring of wealthy Mallorcans who come to appreciate that they need to do little but whose cups will still runneth over once they leave school, allied to that indulgence, creates its own lack of discipline. It's a phenomenon that has been explained to me more than once by local teachers.
Back to school though means that the beaches will be quieter, the late summer sun can be enjoyed, until the torment of the stormy "tormenta" arrives, which it will. And then you won't hear the shouts for the sound of the thunder.
QUIZ -
Yesterday: Dido, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HwXgVFS5rY
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
It was the last day of summer yesterday. Schools are back today. 12 September can normally be relied upon to unleash biblical weather. It did, but was an Araratian failure and a success of Eden, save for the great unwashed who came to take the waters.
September here and the British have largely fled, leaving the Mallorcans to attempt to stave off German sunbedsraum and for them to both compete in the sonorous league. Which is louder? A Mallorcan or a German? Teutonic volume should be a thing of research. There is no obvious explanation for it other than a direct correlation between size and loudness. The Mallorcan bellow, on the other hand, is easily understood; it has been genetically programmed in order to be heard over the thunderous growl of a "moto". Smaller families have not eliminated another form of conditioning, that of feeling the need to shout to be heard.
The Mallorcan child's noise does not seem to register with the Mallorcan child's parent. It is fair to say that the child is also indulged. Today, a communal song and dance will be made about the return to school, while the cacophony on the streets will be matched only by the sound of heavy boots ensuring a smooth first day of the new school year. So much is made of the "vuelta al cole" that the press report the number of police being pressed into action to supervise it. One can only attribute the number of column inches to the fact that the summer holiday occupies a quarter of the year; the return is an event. There is even a whole website devoted to it.
To coincide with the vuelta, a survey has been conducted regarding issues in local education. The greatest concern involves discipline. It doesn't come as a surprise. Kids are not out of control, but that parental indulgence translates itself into the classroom. More importantly, what one has is often the reverse of deprived conditions which lead to school indiscipline. The presence of a "class" of offspring of wealthy Mallorcans who come to appreciate that they need to do little but whose cups will still runneth over once they leave school, allied to that indulgence, creates its own lack of discipline. It's a phenomenon that has been explained to me more than once by local teachers.
Back to school though means that the beaches will be quieter, the late summer sun can be enjoyed, until the torment of the stormy "tormenta" arrives, which it will. And then you won't hear the shouts for the sound of the thunder.
QUIZ -
Yesterday: Dido, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HwXgVFS5rY
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, September 06, 2010
The Work Ethic: September's return
Almost a week may have passed, but today is when September really starts. A weekend creates a pleasant intervention in delaying the inevitable. Work.
August is a month of blissful indolence. One can excuse one's own inertia on account of that of everyone else's and the closed signs which go up, if only metaphorically. Come September and some time snatched on the beach seems vaguely fraudulent. It is said of the Mallorcans that they cease going to the beach in September because 26 or so degrees are the equivalent of a grey January day in Worthing. Or maybe they stop because they reckon they should, as though commanded by an unwritten labour law, even if a compulsion to work is the last thing you would normally associate with the Mallorcans.
There remains something of the school holidays in all of us. What seemed like months of the back garden, the estate streets, the woods and sometimes the beach came to a highly unwelcome halt at the start of September. The discomfort of a tie around a new shirt collar, stiff from the outfitters (and one shop used to have a bizarre monopoly for my schools' kits) and the retching over the morning milk that had been left out in the still warm sun. It always tasted sour, and never more so than when the sourness of the new school year curdled a dreadful realisation that Christmas was light years away.
School, through its routine of day and term, may be designed to teach us as to the horrors to come, but it also teaches us that it, school, is there against our will. Much as it might make us collude in the conspiracy that life isn't one long game on PlayStation, it fails miserably in making us want to do what it tells us. Like going back to work. Furthermore, it teaches us that September is a month to resent: for the loss of summer and because of the gradual fading of summer through the September days until it becomes a distant memory and because also of the gloom of the workplace with only that memory to convince us that it will return and we can start the whole process over again.
Mallorca is back to work today. In "The Diario" yesterday there was a four-cornered interview which took this return as the springboard for discussing some of the island's problems. I had hoped for a revelation or two; headings such as "Change of mentality?" suggested there might be. There weren't. But I know what they were driving at. While there's the sun and the beach and the summer it can be easy to switch off from what is to come. Mallorca creates its own sense of unreality, and it lasts from at least the middle of June when the schools shut up, climaxing in the other-world surrealism of lazy August. September comes with a jolt. The article should have been titled "Trepidation", because that's where we're at. Despite the promising statistics, this has been a rotten summer for many, and it will soon finish completely. Then what?
Unfortunately, though we rather might like the idea, we can't all go back to school. Oh, that we could.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
August is a month of blissful indolence. One can excuse one's own inertia on account of that of everyone else's and the closed signs which go up, if only metaphorically. Come September and some time snatched on the beach seems vaguely fraudulent. It is said of the Mallorcans that they cease going to the beach in September because 26 or so degrees are the equivalent of a grey January day in Worthing. Or maybe they stop because they reckon they should, as though commanded by an unwritten labour law, even if a compulsion to work is the last thing you would normally associate with the Mallorcans.
There remains something of the school holidays in all of us. What seemed like months of the back garden, the estate streets, the woods and sometimes the beach came to a highly unwelcome halt at the start of September. The discomfort of a tie around a new shirt collar, stiff from the outfitters (and one shop used to have a bizarre monopoly for my schools' kits) and the retching over the morning milk that had been left out in the still warm sun. It always tasted sour, and never more so than when the sourness of the new school year curdled a dreadful realisation that Christmas was light years away.
School, through its routine of day and term, may be designed to teach us as to the horrors to come, but it also teaches us that it, school, is there against our will. Much as it might make us collude in the conspiracy that life isn't one long game on PlayStation, it fails miserably in making us want to do what it tells us. Like going back to work. Furthermore, it teaches us that September is a month to resent: for the loss of summer and because of the gradual fading of summer through the September days until it becomes a distant memory and because also of the gloom of the workplace with only that memory to convince us that it will return and we can start the whole process over again.
Mallorca is back to work today. In "The Diario" yesterday there was a four-cornered interview which took this return as the springboard for discussing some of the island's problems. I had hoped for a revelation or two; headings such as "Change of mentality?" suggested there might be. There weren't. But I know what they were driving at. While there's the sun and the beach and the summer it can be easy to switch off from what is to come. Mallorca creates its own sense of unreality, and it lasts from at least the middle of June when the schools shut up, climaxing in the other-world surrealism of lazy August. September comes with a jolt. The article should have been titled "Trepidation", because that's where we're at. Despite the promising statistics, this has been a rotten summer for many, and it will soon finish completely. Then what?
Unfortunately, though we rather might like the idea, we can't all go back to school. Oh, that we could.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Nightswimming: September's Here
What a difference a day makes.
While still in August we feel as though we can look forward to endless summer, and then suddenly September arrives and we look back at a summer disappearing below the sunset horizon of a shortening day. As night arrives earlier, so summer starts to wind down and enters its own twilight. We look forward, but without enthusiasm, to the inevitable storms, the infuriation of the autumn flies, the enclosure of the terraces with their wind-beaten plastic drapes. One day may seem much like the previous one, but we know that it isn't; summer's coming to a close again, and we wonder, as we wonder each year, where on earth it went.
Rarely is September a month of uninterrupted bliss. The mid-month malevolence of the "gota fría" can be forecast without the advice of the meteorologists. We know it's coming, coinciding with the "vuelta al cole" (back to school) of 12 September. The ferocity of the September storms is the evil witch of weather who mocks our desire for a lingering summer and simultaneously kidnaps the vitality and shouts of children which, though we might have cursed them in high summer, become the muted manoeuvres and idleness of beaches, as summer passes into old age. And at times, in September, a sea fret encloses the beach with a chill blanket for the rheumatic, fooled into the fading warmth of summer.
September's coming soon. We announced it as though it were a distant omen. Now September is here. It arrived when we weren't looking. Be damned its apparition. Cock a snook at the ghostly and life-sucking presumptuousness of its shore mists. The sea's still warm. Very warm. The recklessness of water. We assume, if only briefly, the recklessness of childhood. If not now, then not again. Nightswimming.
REM.-.Nightswimming.
Cargado por carlitos117. - Descubre más videos creativos.
QUIZ:
Yesterday - Prince of course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rTvG2jVteA
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
While still in August we feel as though we can look forward to endless summer, and then suddenly September arrives and we look back at a summer disappearing below the sunset horizon of a shortening day. As night arrives earlier, so summer starts to wind down and enters its own twilight. We look forward, but without enthusiasm, to the inevitable storms, the infuriation of the autumn flies, the enclosure of the terraces with their wind-beaten plastic drapes. One day may seem much like the previous one, but we know that it isn't; summer's coming to a close again, and we wonder, as we wonder each year, where on earth it went.
Rarely is September a month of uninterrupted bliss. The mid-month malevolence of the "gota fría" can be forecast without the advice of the meteorologists. We know it's coming, coinciding with the "vuelta al cole" (back to school) of 12 September. The ferocity of the September storms is the evil witch of weather who mocks our desire for a lingering summer and simultaneously kidnaps the vitality and shouts of children which, though we might have cursed them in high summer, become the muted manoeuvres and idleness of beaches, as summer passes into old age. And at times, in September, a sea fret encloses the beach with a chill blanket for the rheumatic, fooled into the fading warmth of summer.
September's coming soon. We announced it as though it were a distant omen. Now September is here. It arrived when we weren't looking. Be damned its apparition. Cock a snook at the ghostly and life-sucking presumptuousness of its shore mists. The sea's still warm. Very warm. The recklessness of water. We assume, if only briefly, the recklessness of childhood. If not now, then not again. Nightswimming.
REM.-.Nightswimming.
Cargado por carlitos117. - Descubre más videos creativos.
QUIZ:
Yesterday - Prince of course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rTvG2jVteA
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
September's Coming Soon
September. It lends alliteration. The sad season. September's coming soon. September is the saddest month of the year. The season starts to feel as though it is running down. All that optimism of spring, and September gives a backdrop of storms to pessimism and even despair. So many bars and restaurants for sale, or so we are told. The heavy dews will start to return and there will be mists; the lawns are at their happiest while others are not. But sleep can also return. The nights are less oppressive and the darkness already extends for longer till seven in the morning and from nine in the evenings. Sleeplessness though for some; how will the winter be and what will the next season bring? September's coming soon, but it can also be the best of months. The economy-class families of August go back to school and the couples come back and linger longer and more regularly at the tables. And the football's back, and the bars can be packed even for the misery of an England international. September's coming soon - sad but happy; all depends how the summer's been, for autumn's coming soon.
September though should be a good month for the souvenir and china shops. August has seen a drop of some 50% in sales for this type of store in centres such as Puerto Alcúdia. It can be attributed, in large part, to the nature of the August tourist, that economy-class family. The last thing on their list of must-dos, it would appear, is to go on a shopping binge and load the suitcases with Lladró and Majorica. September brings the couples, the families with very small children and the senior citizens, the latter just the ones for the china. While some of the souvenirs are basically crap, the porcelain, ceramics and glass are not - well some, but mostly not. A problem for these shops, however, is, like bars, there tend to be too many of them, and the brands are the same. It is hard to differentiate in such a homogeneous market. Yet there are stores that seem to manage it by presenting themselves in a stylish fashion. One such is Ones on the frontline in Can Picafort. Ignore the bikinis and stuff to the left of the store; the rest is filled with displays that are quite captivating. Porcelain brands are collectibles, and there are those who come here with at least one acquisitive eye on adding to their collections, while - say it ever so quietly - Christmas is not that far away; so all that gift-buying back home can be made less onerous through the purchase of some NAO and Elisa.
PUERTO POLLENSA - THE DAILY MOAN
Well it seems that not a day passes without some complaint or controversy. The latest - rubbish. I had actually received an email from Colin about precisely this issue. Today's "Diario" highlights the problem, and quotes critics of the town hall administration and its "inactivity". For a council that managed to up its rubbish tax so much, it does seem to be in a bit of a mess - quite literally. Unlike other recent reports of matters in Puerto Pollensa, the beleaguered mayor has not been hauled out to issue a denial; presumably as there is nothing to deny. With rubbish, smells from the torrent, criticism of the swimming-pool, to say nothing of the ongoing dissatisfaction of the local police, maybe now is not really quite the right time to be adding to the sense of chaos at the town hall by going ahead with the pedestrianisation trial, the wisdom of which, at best, is questionable.
For a nice photo of the rubbish, go here:
http://www.diariodemallorca.es/secciones/noticia.jsp?pRef=2008082700_3_387615__PartForana-PPUMP-denuncia-acumulacion-basura-calle-exige-plan-limpieza-prometido
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Donovan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2arEUEAWck). Today's title - it's REM week on the blog; where does this line come from?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Monday, September 03, 2007
Just Passed Me By
September. End of summer. One of Ian McEwan’s saddest stories was called “End Of Summer”. September. Holidays over. September has a simple alliteration - sad. It’s a sadness part nostalgic - new school year, darker evenings, changes to TV schedules, heavier dews, the start of the fall, misty mornings of Indian summers. This is not a nostalgia confined only to the past or to England; it is also a present and here in Mallorca. September. Though the sun and heat remain, there is a perceptible change. Though the season has some weeks to run, the press refers to the “fin de la temporada”. Though September is usually a month of plenty for the bars and restaurants, owners start to see an end, start to count the days to taping up the facades for winter.
The beach, though still busy, now has the spectres of the past months; the ghosts of those who have passed across the sand, briefly met and befriended. A holiday villa here and there has had its terrace stripped of furniture. A Mallorcan-owned seaside second home has been evacuated, its occupants returning to Palma or the hinterland. An apartment has had its “se alquila” sign re-posted onto the door.
The people start to change. Earnest septuagenarians with spindly legs and backpacks lope through the streets of the old towns; couples, with no need for July or August, stroll along the quieter shores; older Germans, baked the colour of mahogany after a summer by a Bavarian Baggersee, oil themselves for a final leathering.
September. The end of summer, even though summer continues. September. And you think - where did it all go?
QUIZ
Yesterday - the missing words were “of oil”, meaning therefore Billy Bragg (his one-time roadie was Andy Kershaw). Today’s title is a line from a song preceded by four words, summer being one of them; these four words contained the song’s title. By?
PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The beach, though still busy, now has the spectres of the past months; the ghosts of those who have passed across the sand, briefly met and befriended. A holiday villa here and there has had its terrace stripped of furniture. A Mallorcan-owned seaside second home has been evacuated, its occupants returning to Palma or the hinterland. An apartment has had its “se alquila” sign re-posted onto the door.
The people start to change. Earnest septuagenarians with spindly legs and backpacks lope through the streets of the old towns; couples, with no need for July or August, stroll along the quieter shores; older Germans, baked the colour of mahogany after a summer by a Bavarian Baggersee, oil themselves for a final leathering.
September. The end of summer, even though summer continues. September. And you think - where did it all go?
QUIZ
Yesterday - the missing words were “of oil”, meaning therefore Billy Bragg (his one-time roadie was Andy Kershaw). Today’s title is a line from a song preceded by four words, summer being one of them; these four words contained the song’s title. By?
PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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