Discussions about time in Mallorca might strike you as slightly odd. The relationship with time is, after all, somewhat distant. Times can be whatever a Mallorcan (or Spaniard) want them to be, and preferably they involve the next day or the day after that.
While there are those for whom timekeeping is an alien concept, I'm far from convinced by the general stereotyping: once upon a time (sic) maybe, but very much less so now. This is, after all, a modern society (oh yes it is, before you start pooh-poohing the suggestion). Time is vastly more precious than it used to be. If it weren't, then why are there all those drivers hurtling around with apparent disregard for anyone else, desperate to get to wherever they're going? (Sorry, another example of stereotyping, as let's not forget those who have dawdling in a car down to a fine art: those for whom cars can appear to be in permanent reverse, along with time itself.)
Periodically, these time discussions crop up, and they are often determined by time: clocks going back or forward. We are on the cusp of hour reversal, and right on time comes the regular discussion, only this time there is more to the time conversation. There is a petition on Change.org to not change the time in the Balearics this weekend.
Its organiser believes that hours of daylight in the Balearics should be adapted to the daily lives of the islands' people. Thus, the sun, and one more hour of it, is a resource from which benefits can be derived. And apart from any economic benefits, he suggests, there are the simple natural ones and so not the "political" nature of Balearic time.
Ah yes, the politics of time. The story of how the Balearics and Spain, except for the Canaries, arrived at the current system of time is well known: all to do with Franco thinking it was a good idea to match Hitler time. Despite the fact that almost all of Spain lies to the west of the Greenwich Meridian, Central European Time has remained in place all these years. The Portuguese, though, have remained firmly wedded to GMT (or BST or whatever it is nowadays): good, loyal allies that they have been for centuries.
Although the the Change.org thing's organiser refers to "political" time, his not wanting the clocks to go back an hour has a more common-sense aspect. If the clocks were to stay as they are in the early hours of Sunday morning, the afternoons would not be shortened. The extra hour of sun in the afternoon could just make a difference: a tourism difference. Mallorca suffers by comparison with the more southerly Costa del Sol and especially the Canaries in winter, so why not adopt a measure that might be advantageous?
Were there to be no backward movement of the clocks, the Balearics would be on British time, something which the national government has in any event been considering for the whole of Spain and so not just the Canaries. The chances of the government ever getting round to taking such a decision are probably slim, even if the national commission that spends its time looking into time, working hours and what have you has recommended that there should be a change. Sensible though it might be, it would play havoc with electronic control devices: the consequences might actually be disastrous. So I'm not sure if the Change.org chap has thought that part of the time equation through.
While the possibility of a move to British time remains, there are those who are lobbying to ensure that parts of Spain opt out. A couple of years ago, when the time discussion cropped up when the clocks went back, a group of "experts" advising companies about working hours and workers' social hours (assuming they have any), were sticking up for the Balearics and Catalonia to not be included. Was this another manifestation of Catalonian independence and the spread of the Catalan Lands notion to the Balearics? Well no, not really: Catalonia is, by and large, to the east of the Meridian, as of course are the Balearics. More importantly, though, the experts were saying that Catalonian (Balearic) resistance should be for reasons of greater productivity and the reconciliation of work and family life.
But then, the chap behind the Change.org petition seems to want the clocks not to go back for much the same reason. He would like there to be an hour's more sun in the winter afternoons, while the experts want things to stay as they are. Who's right? Both or neither probably. Whenever there is a time discussion, plenty of time is made for debate, with neither side having a compelling argument, albeit that the one about tourism might just be a strong case.
Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Friday, July 31, 2015
Loving English And Summer Holidays
There are some more students at Alcudia's Bellevue hotel complex. They are not like the others. They are younger, some of them very young. They are summer school students. Some wear t-shirts bearing the legend "Love English". The youngest ones play games and sing songs in learning their English. This is how it should be. Not the idiots' guide to idiotically introduce teaching in English to secondary school maths' pupils: those in the Balearics who, as the PISA assessment data reveal, are already lousy at maths.
Summer school camps for learning English are a good idea. Any summer camp probably seems a good idea to Spanish parents. From mid-June to mid-September the long hot summer school holidays last. Idyllic for children. Hell for parents. Nowhere has longer summer holidays than Spain. No schoolchildren enjoy longer summers than those of Spain. How their British counterparts must envy them. All those weeks off and sun as well. It doesn't, in a child's world, get any better. One quarter of the year is devoted to summer holidays. When they're older, they will remember thinking that holidays just went on forever. And they did. Very much more so than an English child from the early 1960s thought the same. At what age do children truly acquire a sense of time, a temporal appreciation? Presumably when they start borrowing phrases from their parents. Doesn't time fly. I can't believe it's nearly Christmas. Where did the summer go?
In Mallorca, as with the rest of Spain, a sense of time is in any event not as it is in other countries. Time is movable, it lacks definition and exactness. Mañana could just as easily be next year as tomorrow, or morning. Mediodía? Who knows where it starts and where it ends. Oh the vagueness of media horita. Time, though, has its importance. It does encroach in a formal manner upon a society generally ill-equipped to understand the rigidities imposed by time. For Mallorcan and Spanish schoolchildren, therefore, it is evaluated in terms of the hours they spend at school, which are not as short as some might believe. Nevertheless, in the Balearics they have spoken about the need for more hours. Perhaps they need the extra hours to compensate for the quarter of the year when hours, in a child's mind, may as well not exist and when time stands still.
Spain, for a country where an acquaintance with the formalities of time can seem distant, does devote a great deal of its time to temporal study. This is surely a consequence of societal ambivalence to its meaning, is it not? Maybe, but more pragmatically there is an ongoing debate regarding the hours of working days, changing from Central European Time, abandoning the siesta, redefining lunch (and so therefore mediodía) and also evening. And when it comes to schooling, in addition to possible extensions to the school day, there is a debate over the summer holidays. Might Mallorca's children soon be cursing their luck as much as British or German children do?
The head of Spain's IMF distance learning business school is just one who has called for there to be shorter holidays. Business in general appears to agree with him, as do some parents' bodies. One consequence of the long holidays is that children, after some thirteen weeks away from the classroom, forget why it was that they were going to school and also forget how it was. How to learn, how to study.
There is of course a good reason for the length of the summer holidays: the heat. It isn't conducive to learning, but there again, with air-conditioned classrooms need this be an issue? But then the heat, albeit of the mornings and with the aid of some shade doesn't seem to deter the summer school attendees of Bellevue.
If there is a concern about the loss of the routine of learning and study over the long holidays, then the summer camps make plenty of sense. And if the kids are learning English, then so much the better. But these are camps, for the most part, for parents who can pay. The disadvantaged remain disadvantaged. It's fanciful to think, even for the current regional government, that funds would be made available for universal language-learning summer camps. That might not be such a bad investment, but there is only so much spare accommodation knocking around.
While there is the great Spanish debate about time, there is the even greater debate about education, exemplified in Mallorca by the row over trilingual teaching and now the provisions of the national LOMCE curriculum for improved educational quality. Part of it should be about the summer holiday. Three months are too long. They create too great an imbalance in the learning routine. They should be shorter.
Index for July 2015
Alcúdia, Bellevue and Spanish students - 4 July 2015
All-inclusives - 25 July 2015
Calvia and cinema tourism - 6 July 2015
Children's entertainment and fiestas - 12 July 2015
Constitutional challenge to Balearic retail legislation - 22 July 2015
Fadrí fiesta, Moscari - 26 July 2015
Fiesta sameyness - 28 July 2015
Flamenco: not loved in Mallorca? - 14 July 2015
Francina Armengol government - 8 July 2015
IB3 broadcaster - 27 July 2015
In-store music - 15 July 2015
Jewel races - 19 July 2015
José Ramón Bauzá senator - 13 July 2015
July fiestas - 7 July 2015
Mallorcan nobility - 24 July 2015
Nepotism allegation: IB-Salut - 10 July 2015
Partido Popular succession - 20 July 2015
Political pacts in Mallorca - 30 July 2015
Politicians' holidays - 29 July 2015
Resort architecture and planning - 21 July 2015
Salvador Hedilla - first flight from Barcelona - 3 July 2015
School summer holidays - 31 July 2015
Summer in Mallorca - 9 July 2015
The Beatles in Spain - 2 July 2015
Too many tourists - 16 July 2015
Torrent de Pareis concert - 5 July 2015
Tourism in government structures - 1 July 2015
Tourism ministry appointments - 18 July 2015
Tourist tax - 11 July 2015, 17 July 2015, 23 July 2015
Summer school camps for learning English are a good idea. Any summer camp probably seems a good idea to Spanish parents. From mid-June to mid-September the long hot summer school holidays last. Idyllic for children. Hell for parents. Nowhere has longer summer holidays than Spain. No schoolchildren enjoy longer summers than those of Spain. How their British counterparts must envy them. All those weeks off and sun as well. It doesn't, in a child's world, get any better. One quarter of the year is devoted to summer holidays. When they're older, they will remember thinking that holidays just went on forever. And they did. Very much more so than an English child from the early 1960s thought the same. At what age do children truly acquire a sense of time, a temporal appreciation? Presumably when they start borrowing phrases from their parents. Doesn't time fly. I can't believe it's nearly Christmas. Where did the summer go?
In Mallorca, as with the rest of Spain, a sense of time is in any event not as it is in other countries. Time is movable, it lacks definition and exactness. Mañana could just as easily be next year as tomorrow, or morning. Mediodía? Who knows where it starts and where it ends. Oh the vagueness of media horita. Time, though, has its importance. It does encroach in a formal manner upon a society generally ill-equipped to understand the rigidities imposed by time. For Mallorcan and Spanish schoolchildren, therefore, it is evaluated in terms of the hours they spend at school, which are not as short as some might believe. Nevertheless, in the Balearics they have spoken about the need for more hours. Perhaps they need the extra hours to compensate for the quarter of the year when hours, in a child's mind, may as well not exist and when time stands still.
Spain, for a country where an acquaintance with the formalities of time can seem distant, does devote a great deal of its time to temporal study. This is surely a consequence of societal ambivalence to its meaning, is it not? Maybe, but more pragmatically there is an ongoing debate regarding the hours of working days, changing from Central European Time, abandoning the siesta, redefining lunch (and so therefore mediodía) and also evening. And when it comes to schooling, in addition to possible extensions to the school day, there is a debate over the summer holidays. Might Mallorca's children soon be cursing their luck as much as British or German children do?
The head of Spain's IMF distance learning business school is just one who has called for there to be shorter holidays. Business in general appears to agree with him, as do some parents' bodies. One consequence of the long holidays is that children, after some thirteen weeks away from the classroom, forget why it was that they were going to school and also forget how it was. How to learn, how to study.
There is of course a good reason for the length of the summer holidays: the heat. It isn't conducive to learning, but there again, with air-conditioned classrooms need this be an issue? But then the heat, albeit of the mornings and with the aid of some shade doesn't seem to deter the summer school attendees of Bellevue.
If there is a concern about the loss of the routine of learning and study over the long holidays, then the summer camps make plenty of sense. And if the kids are learning English, then so much the better. But these are camps, for the most part, for parents who can pay. The disadvantaged remain disadvantaged. It's fanciful to think, even for the current regional government, that funds would be made available for universal language-learning summer camps. That might not be such a bad investment, but there is only so much spare accommodation knocking around.
While there is the great Spanish debate about time, there is the even greater debate about education, exemplified in Mallorca by the row over trilingual teaching and now the provisions of the national LOMCE curriculum for improved educational quality. Part of it should be about the summer holiday. Three months are too long. They create too great an imbalance in the learning routine. They should be shorter.
Index for July 2015
Alcúdia, Bellevue and Spanish students - 4 July 2015
All-inclusives - 25 July 2015
Calvia and cinema tourism - 6 July 2015
Children's entertainment and fiestas - 12 July 2015
Constitutional challenge to Balearic retail legislation - 22 July 2015
Fadrí fiesta, Moscari - 26 July 2015
Fiesta sameyness - 28 July 2015
Flamenco: not loved in Mallorca? - 14 July 2015
Francina Armengol government - 8 July 2015
IB3 broadcaster - 27 July 2015
In-store music - 15 July 2015
Jewel races - 19 July 2015
José Ramón Bauzá senator - 13 July 2015
July fiestas - 7 July 2015
Mallorcan nobility - 24 July 2015
Nepotism allegation: IB-Salut - 10 July 2015
Partido Popular succession - 20 July 2015
Political pacts in Mallorca - 30 July 2015
Politicians' holidays - 29 July 2015
Resort architecture and planning - 21 July 2015
Salvador Hedilla - first flight from Barcelona - 3 July 2015
School summer holidays - 31 July 2015
Summer in Mallorca - 9 July 2015
The Beatles in Spain - 2 July 2015
Too many tourists - 16 July 2015
Torrent de Pareis concert - 5 July 2015
Tourism in government structures - 1 July 2015
Tourism ministry appointments - 18 July 2015
Tourist tax - 11 July 2015, 17 July 2015, 23 July 2015
Friday, July 04, 2008
Time Won't Give Me Time
A happy event - Frederick and Emmi have a baby girl called Isabel. Bistro Bell in Alcúdia, that was La Sala, may no longer have the wail of Nanouk, but it can now anticipate another form of cry. I mention this by way of introduction to ... Firstly, Frederick was full of praise for Inca Hospital, commenting that concepts of service do seem to be thriving in some sectors of Mallorcan life. Secondly, I had stopped by the bistro to collect something. It was a book. It had been left there by one of my email correspondents - Charles - to whom I am very grateful. It was, and is, "Beloved Majorcans" by Guy de Forestier, some of you might know it. Published in 1995, the book is one of those rare insights into Mallorca, one that does not take as its raison d'être a brochure approach of the island, typified, as I pointed out the other day, by Thomsonisms that can give us something as pretentious as the "a hop, skip and a jump away from the shimmering sands of Muro beach" (21 June). This is not Mallorca through rose-tinted, glass-bottomed boat but nor is it Mallorca to hell and back. It is non-pompous, it is culturally, historically and linguistically literate and it is coloured with the ease of a journalistic style and a wit that is all too absent from mostly anything one reads about the island. It is also authored pseudonymously. The guy is not Guy. The author is in fact Carlos García-Delgado, born a Catalan but adopted by Mallorca. Though more or less native, the book - in translation at any rate - feels something other than a work by a Mallorcan (Catalan). It is though an insider has looked in from the outside, informed by that insider status.
As I scanned through the book for the first time, I was struck by certain coincidences to pieces have appeared in this blog over the now years. The coincidence of Chapter 8 - "The Concept Of Time" and Chapter 9 - "Buying And Selling" (doing business if you like). When, for example, I had spoken in the past about the non-existence or flexibility of time and indifference/ambivalence towards time, it hadn't necessarily occurred to me that someone else would have been there before. To quote: "What is certain is that in Majorca - and the sooner you realize this the better - minutes don't have sixty seconds, any more than days have twenty-four hours". Mañana may be a Spanish concept of non-time, but the Mallorcans have made of it a high art of abstraction.
The advice for those coming to live in Mallorca is such that I wonder to what degree those from northern Europe in particular can ever go native. Much of what García-Delgado says will be familiar to expats, some of whom will claim to have indeed gone native in adapting to, for instance, non-time if I can call it that. But I doubt them when they protest so. I also wonder whether, 13 years on from publication, the book still holds true. In many respects it does, but in others? Take Frederick and Inca Hospital. Service, if one follows García-Delgado's thesis, should hold no place in Mallorcan society, yet it does. But if anyone wants to experience, first-hand, "the slow pace at which things are done here - be forewarned if you have to go shopping, do business or deal with bureaucracy", then you can test and prove the thesis in respect especially of bureaucracy. Go to the office for foreign affairs in Palma, stand in the boiling sun or the rain in the queue to wait to get in, and then spend three hours waiting to get that residency certificate. I had been inclined to think of this as indifference or lack of respect; it isn't, or well it is, indifference at any rate. Because that time spent is not time; it is neutral, it is indifferent.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Tears For Fears (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1OduoZAUeM). Today's title - pretty easy, but think androgyny if a clue is needed.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
As I scanned through the book for the first time, I was struck by certain coincidences to pieces have appeared in this blog over the now years. The coincidence of Chapter 8 - "The Concept Of Time" and Chapter 9 - "Buying And Selling" (doing business if you like). When, for example, I had spoken in the past about the non-existence or flexibility of time and indifference/ambivalence towards time, it hadn't necessarily occurred to me that someone else would have been there before. To quote: "What is certain is that in Majorca - and the sooner you realize this the better - minutes don't have sixty seconds, any more than days have twenty-four hours". Mañana may be a Spanish concept of non-time, but the Mallorcans have made of it a high art of abstraction.
The advice for those coming to live in Mallorca is such that I wonder to what degree those from northern Europe in particular can ever go native. Much of what García-Delgado says will be familiar to expats, some of whom will claim to have indeed gone native in adapting to, for instance, non-time if I can call it that. But I doubt them when they protest so. I also wonder whether, 13 years on from publication, the book still holds true. In many respects it does, but in others? Take Frederick and Inca Hospital. Service, if one follows García-Delgado's thesis, should hold no place in Mallorcan society, yet it does. But if anyone wants to experience, first-hand, "the slow pace at which things are done here - be forewarned if you have to go shopping, do business or deal with bureaucracy", then you can test and prove the thesis in respect especially of bureaucracy. Go to the office for foreign affairs in Palma, stand in the boiling sun or the rain in the queue to wait to get in, and then spend three hours waiting to get that residency certificate. I had been inclined to think of this as indifference or lack of respect; it isn't, or well it is, indifference at any rate. Because that time spent is not time; it is neutral, it is indifferent.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Tears For Fears (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1OduoZAUeM). Today's title - pretty easy, but think androgyny if a clue is needed.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Time Won't Give Me Time
Let's talk about busy, shall we. Or rather, don't talk to me about busy, with the stress on the "me". I know all about busy. A one-time sort of mentor, himself a one-time youngest professor of marketing in Britain and an astute businessman and management theorist and practitioner, had a maxim: "busy people make time". Resistance was useless in front of his maxim. But I had already been schooled in the art of busy. Want busy? Try a dozen or so titles all with the same monthly deadlines. That's busy. And so it is here.
When people tell me they're busy, I often think of this maxim. "Make time". I've spoken before about Spanish time. It is not so much the mañana syndrome. That's too easy and clichéd an explanation, though it is not without truth. It is the non-specific nature of Spanish time, one that creates a "midday" that can have a meaning of anything up to a variance of a couple of hours or more. This is the real nature of Spanish time. And because there is so high a degree of flexibility about Spanish time, it is imprecise and far removed from the Anglo-Saxon rigidity of time. A couple of weeks back, I had an appointment at 9 in the evening. I arrived bang on 9. The Mallorcan chap I was seeing said, with a degree of surprise: "muy puntual". I replied: "soy inglés".
I don't for one moment doubt that people are busy or indeed very busy. But busy people have to make time. And here busy people do not make time. They lose time. And they lose it because time is fluid. And everyone seems to get afflicted. Brits, Germans; they eventually go native. There is another factor. The social nature of busy. This dawned on me today. I was at the design and print place in Alcúdia. Copy Art I think it's called. Jordi. A lot of people know Jordi. I was in the back office with him as he was attempting to retrieve some photos for me. Someone came in and he was called to the front office. Ten minutes or so went by. I could hear clearly how this busy was going. It was basically a what we did on our holidays conversation. I mention this as what hit me was that, in small towns like Alcúdia, everyone knows each other. So even business transactions are social events. Combine this with the time mentality, and you begin to appreciate just why nothing gets done, or rather it does get done - eventually. This is just one little anecdote. But you can see busy happening all over the place. A thirty-minute coffee with a couple of mates. This qualifies as busy.
What really makes me believe that people lose time and do not make time here is the fairly simple process of phoning or sending an email. I have a kind of rule of thumb that when someone says they will phone or send an email, there is a 25% chance of it actually happening. Of course, there is always forget. And I wouldn't claim to never forget myself, but forget is a symptom of busy and a failure to make time, a very short spell of time, short enough perhaps to write down what you then hopefully do not forget. When someone is busy and I say; "so you'll phone me". The response is often a hand wave and gesture that says "of course" allied to a "si, si" in a tone of voice that conveys the same meaning. And I walk away and file that reply under the 75%.
QUIZ
Hesse wrote "Madonna". And while on authors who have inspired group names, as we were, William Burroughs lent which 70s rock-bit-jazzy American group its name. And Haircut 100 was "Love Plus One". Where does today's title come from?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
When people tell me they're busy, I often think of this maxim. "Make time". I've spoken before about Spanish time. It is not so much the mañana syndrome. That's too easy and clichéd an explanation, though it is not without truth. It is the non-specific nature of Spanish time, one that creates a "midday" that can have a meaning of anything up to a variance of a couple of hours or more. This is the real nature of Spanish time. And because there is so high a degree of flexibility about Spanish time, it is imprecise and far removed from the Anglo-Saxon rigidity of time. A couple of weeks back, I had an appointment at 9 in the evening. I arrived bang on 9. The Mallorcan chap I was seeing said, with a degree of surprise: "muy puntual". I replied: "soy inglés".
I don't for one moment doubt that people are busy or indeed very busy. But busy people have to make time. And here busy people do not make time. They lose time. And they lose it because time is fluid. And everyone seems to get afflicted. Brits, Germans; they eventually go native. There is another factor. The social nature of busy. This dawned on me today. I was at the design and print place in Alcúdia. Copy Art I think it's called. Jordi. A lot of people know Jordi. I was in the back office with him as he was attempting to retrieve some photos for me. Someone came in and he was called to the front office. Ten minutes or so went by. I could hear clearly how this busy was going. It was basically a what we did on our holidays conversation. I mention this as what hit me was that, in small towns like Alcúdia, everyone knows each other. So even business transactions are social events. Combine this with the time mentality, and you begin to appreciate just why nothing gets done, or rather it does get done - eventually. This is just one little anecdote. But you can see busy happening all over the place. A thirty-minute coffee with a couple of mates. This qualifies as busy.
What really makes me believe that people lose time and do not make time here is the fairly simple process of phoning or sending an email. I have a kind of rule of thumb that when someone says they will phone or send an email, there is a 25% chance of it actually happening. Of course, there is always forget. And I wouldn't claim to never forget myself, but forget is a symptom of busy and a failure to make time, a very short spell of time, short enough perhaps to write down what you then hopefully do not forget. When someone is busy and I say; "so you'll phone me". The response is often a hand wave and gesture that says "of course" allied to a "si, si" in a tone of voice that conveys the same meaning. And I walk away and file that reply under the 75%.
QUIZ
Hesse wrote "Madonna". And while on authors who have inspired group names, as we were, William Burroughs lent which 70s rock-bit-jazzy American group its name. And Haircut 100 was "Love Plus One". Where does today's title come from?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
All The Time In The World
I thought to say that the Spanish don’t understand time. But I have reconsidered. They understand it only too well. They take the abstract and extend it to its extremes. How else can one explain the – literal – moveable feast that is midday and hence lunchtime?
Perhaps it’s a trait of Spanish culture that they can treat the abstract with such regard. Picasso was but mere canvas to a national pastime, as it were.
The mañana ethos is too facile a description of the Spanish ambivalent adoration of time. It implies a tomorrow, when that tomorrow rarely, if ever, comes. Except when it suits.
To the northern European expat conditioned – variously – by WASPish or Prussian punctiliousness and punctuality, the void that is Spanish time can be hard to fathom.
And so is the Spanish attitude to communication. This is especially unfathomable, given that the Spanish nation has had a mobile phone surgically grafted onto to one of its collective ears. Yet, they don’t phone. They never phone.
I say all this from experience. I still don’t get Spanish time or Spanish communication. How long have I been here? I can’t say. To do so would be to seek to make tangible the abstract. Perhaps I should go native.
To other matters … Here we go again. Summer’s barely on us and the papers are screaming about jellyfish. Unlike last year’s plague, which didn’t happen, it might be a tad more likely this year. Apparently the little blighters have been loitering with intent in the waters around the Balearics during the winter rather than pissing off elsewhere, as is normally the case.
Some of you may know that the Spanish for jellyfish is “medusa”. I have an awful confession to make. I was once in a rock band that was called Medusa. Wasn’t my idea, honest. It was a lousy name especially as we were part of what was the at-the-time south-west Surrey music scene that spawned Graham Parker, The Jam and The Members. Medusa. How embarrassing.
(PLEASE REPLY TO info@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE. TA.)
Perhaps it’s a trait of Spanish culture that they can treat the abstract with such regard. Picasso was but mere canvas to a national pastime, as it were.
The mañana ethos is too facile a description of the Spanish ambivalent adoration of time. It implies a tomorrow, when that tomorrow rarely, if ever, comes. Except when it suits.
To the northern European expat conditioned – variously – by WASPish or Prussian punctiliousness and punctuality, the void that is Spanish time can be hard to fathom.
And so is the Spanish attitude to communication. This is especially unfathomable, given that the Spanish nation has had a mobile phone surgically grafted onto to one of its collective ears. Yet, they don’t phone. They never phone.
I say all this from experience. I still don’t get Spanish time or Spanish communication. How long have I been here? I can’t say. To do so would be to seek to make tangible the abstract. Perhaps I should go native.
To other matters … Here we go again. Summer’s barely on us and the papers are screaming about jellyfish. Unlike last year’s plague, which didn’t happen, it might be a tad more likely this year. Apparently the little blighters have been loitering with intent in the waters around the Balearics during the winter rather than pissing off elsewhere, as is normally the case.
Some of you may know that the Spanish for jellyfish is “medusa”. I have an awful confession to make. I was once in a rock band that was called Medusa. Wasn’t my idea, honest. It was a lousy name especially as we were part of what was the at-the-time south-west Surrey music scene that spawned Graham Parker, The Jam and The Members. Medusa. How embarrassing.
(PLEASE REPLY TO info@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE. TA.)
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