All That Noise, And All That Sound

Vroom, vroom. The sound of the boy-racer. Vroom, vroom, crash. You can, or maybe could, witness the local boy-racer on You Tube. Can't say I bothered to look. And I neither know nor care if the relevant video(s) are still there. Except that their very presence, one-time or current, says a lot about the brain capacity of the local boy-racer. It's low enough as it is, but it takes someone with diminished cranial function to go post something that shows a boy race in action. It's not as if m'learned friend for the defence could deny the existence of the film, though maybe it isn't exactly clear enough to be sure, but I fancy it is.

Boy-racing is kind of habitual here, but there are two types. There is the everyday lunatic boy-racer (and man- and sometimes woman-racer) who treat the roads as their own personal fiefdoms and hang everyone else. Then there is the serious, extreme boy-racer who gets his kicks from illicit road races at night on the main roads and motorways, and then goes and does something really daft and films the event. Bit of an own goal if you ask me, but there's no limit to the vanity of the extreme boy-racer that he can offer the plod a gift horse.

One of those embroiled in youtubegate is, apparently, the son of a wealthy construction businessman. You can kind of guess the circumstances - indulged son, loads of moolah, big engine. There are any number of wealthy and indulged offspring hanging around the island, but not all of them hurtle along the motorways at night. Youthful high spirits maybe, but not if it ends up with someone dead. I knew some boy-racer crazies when I was a lad. I was in the same vehicle on more than one occasion, like the time the car left the road and took a detour across a green and through some trees. At least I lived to tell the tale. Not everyone does in the boy-racer world. Back then, I made a mental note: "don't do this again", and I didn't.

The notoriety of the Mallorcan boy-racer has, it would seem, captured the imagination of British television. That'd be good. Wouldn't have to go hunting on You Tube, just broadcast it on the telly and let plod follow up accordingly. But there's always that vanity and the prospect of the boy-racer's fifteen minutes of fame. Mind you, that fame's not much good if fifteen minutes become six feet.


QUIZ
Yesterday's chain - Bob Marley used Haile Salasie's words in "War". And from Bob Marley, how do you get to Jack Bruce? Today's title - where is it from?

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When In Romana

Another fabulous restaurant, another photo opp.

I have been going to Sa Romana to do photos for years. It hasn't really changed, and the photos tend to be similar, though one goes for new angles and perspectives. But it is one of those restaurants that is a dream, not just for the guest but also for the one behind the camera. I have certain establishments that are at the top of my list of favourites when it comes to taking some pix, and Sa Romana is one of them.

María, the matriarch of the family behind Sa Romana, is also one of my favourite people around Alcúdia. Months elapse when I do not see her, and when I do, the greeting is one like a long-lost son (her actual sons, Juan and Felix, look after, respectively, Cas Capella and Sa Romana, and María tends to boss things at Bar Mosquito). This is the María who once insisted I took a sample of the port from Mosquito, a sample that afforded a distinctly health-giving feeling of lead in the pencil (not that it is aphrodisiac, but it had a very warming effect).

Sa Romana is the jewel in the family's crown. Its one possible drawback is its location - on the road between the old town of Alcúdia and the port - though even that location, set back from the road, has a degree of tranquility. María has, in the past, waxed lyrically about the restaurant and in particular the smell of flowers, and when I was there last week the most obvious sensation, coming to the entrance, was that smell - carnations and roses.

You would think that a place of some opulence, like Sa Romana, would require a bank loan for some nosebag, But not so. Scanning the menu, the most expensive item was 27 euros; most items were within a 13 to 20 euro band, which is compatible with many a plain solely tourist place.

The one thing that I have got used to at Sa Romana is the sense of falling when going through the front door. The first few times it always had the same effect. The cause - the glassed-over excavations of Roman times that lend the restaurant its name.

Sa Romana is at Calle Pollentia 81, Alcúdia. There is a website - www.saromana.com.


QUIZ
Yesterday's chain - Eric Burdon had a band called "War" and Edwin Starr sang about it. Which leads to ... how does Haile Salasie fit in musically with "war"? Though not a question, yesterday's title had a connection - Marx, as in The Marx Brothers.

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Chico and Groucho

"There's always a chico." Something tells me I might just have spoken about this before. Forgive me if I have, but it bears repetition; at least I think it does.

There's always a chico. The reason for talking about this at all is that it says a lot about how things get done or don't get done here. There's always a chico, and rarely if ever a chica. This is how it goes. Business owner of pretty much any type of business wants stuff done, stuff like some design work, perhaps a website; it can be other stuff, but this is the stuff I know about. So the owner, needing - for instance - a logo design and some publicity material, does not go hunting the local páginas amarillas (yellow pages, which are pretty useless any way), does not get some firms to pitch, does not do anything like that. What the owner does is to know a chico, often a mate or a mate's mate. A chico who probably does this stuff as a sideline. And so the chico gets some of the stuff done. It can be quite good stuff, but this is not the real point of all this. When it comes to doing something urgently, for example, the chico is nowhere to be found, or perhaps he is; just that he's doing his shift at the bar.

Then there are the occasions when the owner does contemplate using a pro. I know. There was one bar owner who wanted a website doing. I introduced him to a contact, someone who does websites, not as a sideline but for real. The budgeted figure was too high (but nowhere as high as it would be in the UK), so, having done some preliminary work, the owner announces that there is a chico. And do you know what? The website is still not done; been under construction for over a year.

Another business, an estate agency, another website, another chico. Disaster. Ends up costing more to get it done properly. I could go on, and on. There's always a chico. And there's always a chico who, because he's a mate or is cheap, does not deliver. I see it time and time again. No wonder the real pros have enough of it and go back to the UK, where there may well be "boys" but where things are more professional and where a fair day's work is paid for with a fair day's fee.

So much for the grouch.


QUIZ
Yesterday's chain - The Blues Brothers to John Belushi to National Lampoon's Animal House to The Animals to Eric Burdon. And so what connection is there between Eric Burdon and Edwin Starr? Yesterday's title was from "Fool On The Hill"; that's what I had in mind anyway.

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Day After Day

As mentioned yesterday, the season started - yesterday. And as of yesterday, and also today, not everything was ready or how it should be, or how it really would be nice were it as it should be. Bit of a stink time down Cala San Vicente way, according to "The Bulletin". Not a pong stink, but a "fury" stink. And the fury is that of local restaurant and bar owners who, as the clock turned time to get out on the beach for a bit of sunning on the first day of the season, saw that there was nary a sunbed nor parasol to be stretched out on or under. And so, apparently, those in search of the sun and a sandy cove on which to plant their feet, voted with those feet and went away. No sunbed and parasol, no sunbathing. Fairweather sunworshippers I reckon, but nevertheless, the "fury" of the local traders is understandable as the town hall should have had this little bit of Pollensa beach sorted with some items of beach comfort. But the town hall hasn't as the town hall has not allocated the concessions as yet.

And down in jolly old Can Picafort, a place that knows a thing or three about sunbeds and parasols and their lack owing to the non-provision of concessions and also knows a thing or quite a few more about some impropriety when it actually comes to the granting of concessions, not only were the sunbeds and parasols thin on the sand, the chaps had also miscalculated by a day or two and not quite got round to shifting the seaweed. Or rather, they were in the process of doing so, at least I think that was what they were doing. Some rather attractive tractor marks and piles of sand were there for the sunbathers to clamber over to find that part of the beach that didn't have seaweed.

Smooth as clockwork.


QUIZ
Dan Ackroyd was The Blues Brothers. And a rather different type of "chain" question - how do you get from The Blues Brothers to Eric Burdon? Yesterday's title was Devo. Today's title - where is this from?

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Are We Not Men?

The first day of summer. What a difference in terms of evocativeness there is between two adjectives - first and last. The former, the first, is optimism, excitement, the new. Now some of you might say that summer doesn't actually start for some seven weeks and a bit, and you would be right except you would also be wrong. Yesterday was the last day of the Mallorcan winter; today is the first of summer. And for this inaugural day of the new summer, the weather has put on its finest gown and has danced a tango of vivid blue. The weather knew.

But so much for being vaguely lyrical. On this first day of summer what actually happens? Well, on this first day, the hordes disembark from the squadrons of charter and cheap flights to be greeted on the tarmac by groups of Gladys Pughs and Ted Bovises. "Hi-di-hi," cry the Gladyses. "Ho-di-ho," comes back the refrain. Except of course it isn't like that, but somehow it feels as though it should be. The first day of the Mallorcan summer has a wake atmosphere of the town departing for the annual holiday, of the factory closing down and of being greeted by a Gladys with a kiss-me-quick and being whisked off to the holiday camp and a round of whoopy cushions, rubber fried eggs and knobbly knees. For all the diversity of the Mallorcan tourist socioeconomics, the first day of summer sparks a celebration of proletarian hedonism that lasts till the last day. And so may it continue.


I have been known to write about toilets. I consider it a potential life's work to scour the lavs of northern Mallorca and to bring their odours and splendours to a wider audience. But for now. In a bar of my acquaintance, there is a glowing green sign on the door to the men's WC that says, "MEN". Not unduly surprising you might believe, but there is a lot of sense to it. Go to many a bathroom area and the doors are frequently decorated with confusing not to say androgynous signs or plaques. Is it the men's or is it the ladies'? You're never really that sure. So something simple like "men" can avoid all manner of potential social embarrassment, though I am told that, for the Germans, there remains all manner of "Männer" difficulty, as they (the German men that is) seem to prefer to use the ladies. Whatever.


QUIZ
Steely Dan came from William Burroughs. And in chain mode - Dan Ackroyd was part of which group that has, or certainly used to have, a strong "tribute" presence around Alcúdia. Yesterday's title was Culture Club. Today's title - the answering line goes: "We are..." Who?

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Index to April 2008

Albufera - 9 April 2008
Alcúdia Barfly blog - 27 April 2008
April Fool - 1 April 2008
Bars - 10 April 2008, 14 April 2008, 24 April 2008, 26 April 2008, 27 April 2008
Beaches - 19 April 2008
Blogs - 19 April 2008, 27 April 2008
Boat fair - 6 April 2008
Can Ramis - 28 April 2008
Cartoon characters - 9 April 2008
Driving - 11 April 2008. 23 April 2008
Education - 17 April 2008
Entertainers - 15 April 2008
Entertainment - 22 April 2008
Fishing - 18 April 2008
Gastronomy tourism - 8 April 2008
Gavin's At The Port Bar-Cafeteria - 24 April 2008
Golf courses - 8 April 2008
Grupo Boulevard - 5 April 2008
Haircuts - 29 April 2008
Highlander Bar - 26 April 2008
Hotels - 22 April 2008
Irish bars - 14 April 2008, 27 April 2008
Jellyfish - 18 April 2008
L'Aup Restaurant - 16 April 2008
Las Delicias Restaurant - 9 April 2008
Little Italy Restaurant - 20 April 2008
Los Pescadores Restaurant - 20 April 2008
Live music - 3 April 2008, 14 April 2008
Lucky-lucky men - 21 April 2008
Mallorca Photo Blog - 19 April 2008
Marketing - 3 April 2008, 4 April 2008, 5 April 2008
Parking - 26 April 2008
Pinewalk - 20 April 2008
Pirated goods - 21 April 2008
Pollensa Festival - 3 April 2008
Pornography - 25 April 2008
Posh Paddy Irish Bar - 27 April 2008
Posidonia Oceanica - 19 April 2008
Puerto Pollensa - 17 April 2008
Record shops - 21 April 2008
Restaurants - 3 April 2008, 4 April 2008, 5 April 2008, 8 April 2008, 16 April 2008, 20 April 2008, 24 April 2008
Roads - 23 April 2008
Sea accidents - 15 April 2008
Season - 12 April 2008
Segway - 13 April 2008
Sepia fair - 6 April 2008
Shamrock Irish Bar - 14 April 2008
Shops - 7 April 2008
Smoking - 2 April 2008
Smugglers Bar - 10 April 2008
Time - 30 April 2008
Tobacco sales - 2 April 2008
Tobacconists - 25 April 2008
Tourist stories - 10 April 2008, 11 April 2008, 13 April 2008
Trikes - 23 April 2008
Turtles - 9 April 2008
Weather - 18 April 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?

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Haircut (1 to) 100

Haircuts. I'm telling you it is a matter of some importance. It is a matter that tends to categorise - by hairstyle (or its absence) - the type of business. This all started to occur to me as I was waiting at a pedestrian crossing in Puerto Pollensa, and the "sailies" from Sail & Surf were meandering across the road. The guys who do sailing and surfing tend to all be of a hair demeanour of what someone once described to me as "freaky". This is hair of an unruly nature, tangled by salt, blonded by sun and invariably long. It is also hair which, once away from the surf, acquires the accessory of a pair of sun shades. The "surfie" look and hair can also be viewed in uncovered mokes or jeeps, and with the hair tossed not by the sea but by the wind, adding further to the unkempt designer-scruffiness-cum-casualness of the rare acquaintance with a comb.

At the other end of the scale is the British bar look. This is absence of hair. The Phil Mitchell. The number one. Totally slaphead or with a slap stubble. It is hairstyle of association as, observe much of the male British tourist stock, and you become aware that it has undergone a form of cloning whereby the scalp is devoid of much in the way of follicle. The Brit tourist may like his bar, lager and chips, but he also likes to view a shiny pate across the counter. Put a surfie behind the bar, and the same tourist would be thrown into a confusion of non-empathetic head furniture, and probably walk out. I have a new idea for British bars and their marketing: "We have number ones". I tell you they'd flock in.

Then there is the Spanish lothario hair gear. This is often the pony-tail. It's a kind of Spanish footballer-meets-bar-terrace-meets-nice-girlie-from-a-northern-European-country look. None of your appealing to the male tribalism of an Eastenders rogue, this is pure advertising of a come-and-get-me-girls nature.

Finally, there is the truly and utterly bizarre. The what-the-hell is that on your head look. I will not mention the restaurant or the guy, but it is a restaurant in the port area of Alcúdia. It is the "Eraserhead" style. A full-on pompadour. And if you don't know to what I am referring, here is a Wikipedia that shows Jack Nance from the film - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraserhead. If anyone can guess correctly the name of the restaurant, then there is a prize of a Jack Nance at the hairdresser of my choice.

Now of course this is male hair. But for the ladies, notably the British bar ladies, there is but one word - blonde.


QUIZ
Steppenwolf was a novel by Hermann Hesse, who wrote a poem entitled ...? Think blonde and ambition. Suzi Quatro was "Can The Can". And today also - Haircut 100. Why does the number one have a strong association with this group?

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Can The Can

For an island that is literally built on construction (in addition to tourism), there is not always a glowing record in respect of public works. The Palma metro fiasco is perhaps the most prominent, but Alcúdia has also experienced its own little local difficulty.

The Can Ramis redevelopment was meant to have been something of a signature transformation, a statement of local, municipal pride. There were glossy brochures of what was to come - a new bus terminal, a new office for tourist information, a café (always a café). Well, they all might still yet come. But at present, all there is to show for the demolition of the old Can Ramis houses by the market square is a rather nice new pedestrianised "plaza" area and a building site, a building site which, apart from the presence of a couple of guys from Telefonica this morning, was singularly conspicuous by its lack of activity. This is not suspension-of-works-because-of-the-tourist-season lack of activity, this is lack of activity through ... well, through what exactly?

There is a fine old rumpus going on as a consequence of the way-behind-time re-development. From what I can make out from the local Spanish press and from what I've been told, the town hall had parted with a goodly amount of the final budget for the works, albeit that the Council of Mallorca is stumping up much of the ante. The money had gone to the builders, Crespi, a local firm and a not insignificant employer. Except they may no longer be. I was told, with a degree of certainty, that the company had gone bust, but the press reports of what is coming out of the town hall seem to infer these are rumours. I would have thought the town hall might have been keen to establish if there were real grounds to these rumours, given that the bulk of the 1.5 million euros had already been paid.

Needless to say, the opposition political party, the Partido Popular, blames the coalition of nationalists and socialists in the town hall. And there does at least seem to be some acceptance that the original budget was wrong. Wherever the responsibility lies for the mess that is Can Ramis, the fact is that it can't just be left as a building site. The mayor, while reminding everyone that the new plaza allows for an improved flow of tourists to the market each Tuesday and Sunday, admits that the works have to be finished and cannot be a building site all season. Well, it's going to be a building site all this season, that's for sure. As can be seen from the photo, there is nothing there at all. On closer inspection, there are some foundations but that's about it.

Still, I guess it's like this anywhere. At least, they are not building an Olympic village or Olympic stadia or any things as daft as those. Now there's real public works balls-up in the making.


QUIZ
Yesterday was Steppenwolf who took their name from which author? And because I still quite like the title as questions as well, who did today's title?

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Posh 'n' Becks

There are some people who seem to drop out of one's orbit. Maybe they've moved on and away, like so many do. But then, by chance, you find they haven't. And so, by chance, I happened to be loitering with some intent yesterday evening in the area of The Posh Paddy. Hey, who's that?, thought he'd gone, hadn't seen him for, oh, a couple of years. Matt. Former Comics and Jacks, Matt. But of course he's at The Posh Paddy, one of the few watering holes in Playa de Muro that is deserving of an honourable mention.

By itself, this might not have inspired a small item on the blog. But there was more to it, in that Matt is The Alcúdia Barfly or, more accurately, the blogger that is to be found at http://thealcudiabarfly.blogspot.com, which is a pretty cool blog, albeit that time is short and the updating is, er, a bit sporadic.

Time though is also short for myself just at present, so this is a short entry today, but no less important for its brevity.

But while on bars ... When new bar staff arrive in Alcúdia, what finer an experience can there be than to enjoy a Mallorcan night, almost as nature intended? The chill of an April night, the buzz of a malevolent mosquito, the grating zip of a crap moto, the wail of a drunk, the throb of the power station. From one in the morning till eight in the morning - all of this, all of this in the raw. A Mallorcan night.

Charlie, the new chef at Foxes, and his girlfriend, Becky, enjoyed this Mallorcan night. Locked themselves out. Locked themselves out of their Siesta apartment. Locked themselves out and on to their Siesta apartment balcony. Could have been worse. Could have been a Mississippi apartment.


QUIZ
A character in the Jane Fonda film "Barbarella", and Joni Mitchell was the title. So, Jane Fonda's brother, Peter, was in "Easy Rider", and one of the tracks in that film was "Born To Be Wild" - by which group?

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Put Up A Parking Lot

Well, with slightly less than a fanfare and not even the hooting of a celebratory car horn or several, the new parking area in Puerto Pollensa yesterday became a tarmacadamed reality. No more of that wrecking the suspension on bits of old rock on what was there before (the suspension-wrecking can still be achieved in Puerto Pollensa thanks to the superbly dilapidated state of some of the roads). Now, 110 cars can enjoy the luxury of white-lined parking on the plot opposite the new school. Except there won't be 110 spaces once the art, or should that be science, of Mallorcan parking is on show. This follows a mathematical principle of why let one space do, when two will do just as well. The white lines are mere guidelines to the parking of vehicles, guidelines that steer the car to come to rest either side of the white line, thus occupying two spaces. Perhaps at driving school, they don't explain that you are meant to park inside those two parallel lines, not on top of one of them. Still, once you have tried and given up squeezing into what little space has been left, you will be able to admire the 48 trees that will be sprouting up, almost one tree for every two cars or, given the exactness of the local parking technique, more like one car per tree.

Nevertheless, this parking lot is welcome. Unlike Puerto Alcúdia (in the port that is) which has a fairly large parking area, Puerto Pollensa does not. I have largely given up driving around, hunting for a street parking space. It is altogether quicker to park a distance away and walk, that distance away meaning either on the side roads of the bypass to Formentor or by the Puerto Azul and Oro Playa hotels. One of the problems in Puerto Pollensa is that, since they started filling every available bit of land with buildings, the car population has grown accordingly, and there is nowhere to house it - as it were. 110 slots, fine, but still not nearly enough.

And while on Puerto Pollensa's parking, does anyone have the faintest idea what the deal is with the parking by the nautical club? Some while ago, they introduced this crazy system whereby the driver was meant to place a piece of paper in the windscreen on which he or she had written the time of arrival. This all required that a pen or pencil and piece of paper were immediately to hand, and also that the sign saying that the driver should do this had actually been observed, which it normally had not been. The fact is that there is still a sign there and that parking is meant to be limited to an hour and a half, but no one bothers. Or maybe they just gave up as it was a totally bonkers idea, and someone finally realised that it was bonkers. If they really want to limit parking time, why not install a ticket machine?


And ... Word is that Barrie, recently departed from The Smugglers, has now taken The Highlander. Don't know. Thought he was going back to England.


QUIZ
Kajagoogoo, and Kajagoogoo were produced by Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran. So where does the name Duran Duran come from? Oh, and for those still on title questions - who?

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Eye, Eye

I'm not bothered by most things. Indeed, I am not bothered - personally - by what follows. There again, I am not a British-tourist family unit. I do, however, get bothered by what others might think, as in that British-tourist family unit.

Cultural differences. Cultural differences in respect of things that the Brits (and mainly the Brits) have a bit of a problem with and with which much of Europe doesn't. It came to mind in the tabacos, the tabacos that is the Grupo Boulevard's tabacos in their DIY centre in Playa de Muro.

I was not attracted, honest. It was the natural movement of the eye. There is, especially in publishing, an appreciation of the natural movement of the Western eye. It differs to, for instance, that in Arabic cultures. All to do with social conditioning, and reading most obviously. The Western eye tracks left to right. Normal. Maybe Boulevard know this, though if brain-eye theory and retail practice were really at the top of their list then you wouldn't have to turn away from the counter having already made the purchase. It would confront you as you enter the store. But the eye did move. And the display was only waist high. Not top shelf.

DVDs. DVDs of a certain type. On a display in the middle of a shop. Doesn't bother me. But it just might bother some. That British-tourist family unit. Your Brit doesn't like this sort of thing at the eye-line height of a young member of his family. In the middle of a shop.


QUIZ
And something of a change. The quiz idea was, whenever it started, meant to have aped the Radcliffe-Maconie "chain" idea, but somehow that got lost on the way. Anyway, I have decided to get back to that idea. Therefore, as from now, the title will not be the question. The question will be here. Yesterday was Limahl. And so the chain asks: what group was Limahl in?

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Never Ending Story

Well, after what seemed to be an almost never-ending saga, the end did finally come. But it was an end of sadness as well as pleasure.

Back in February (23 February: If I Could Only Find Words), I spoke about the opening of Cafeteria Mediterraneo in Puerto Alcúdia - it had been a serendipitous meeting with Sam and Alison, as Alison, it turned out , was a blog reader of some vintage, and so gave rise to the notion of the "blogotee". But then it started to go rather pear-shaped. Actually, the transformation to a pear had begun even before the opening. I won't go into it all. Suffice it to say that things did not work out, which is a great shame as they are really nice people.

But as one bar-restaurant door closes, so another opens (or rather the same one opens), and - again perhaps because of serendipity - along comes Gavin. There are many people here who know Gavin. He was the local rep for Europ Foods. And that was how Sam and Alison came to know him. And it was from this that will come, on 1 May, the new opening of Mediterraneo, not as Mediterraneo but as Gavin's At The Port. The saga was of the sort of will it happen, won't it happen variety, but it has now happened, and one can sense Gavin's excitement.

There is another part to all this. Gavin is the son of Alwyn. And some will now Al from The Foxes. It was he who suggested the National Tipping League last year, the one that the Welsh would always win. Others may well know Al from his time down south at Sospan Fach in Palmanova and Magaluf. So, the emergence of Gavin's At The Port is a kind of Sospan Fach, the New Generation, albeit that Al, having retired from the kitchen and having hung up his sospan, is being pressed back into service. Just the Welsh lilt and the explanation of his signature dish - garlic chicken - were sufficient to create a certain longing in the general area of the stomach.

And so the Welsh advance on Puerto Alcúdia and one particular area of the port, with the South Walians at Gavin's and the North Walians around the corner at Sandra's. And not a sheep in sight.

Gavin's At The Port, from 1 May, at C. Coral 11, opposite Mestizo.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Oklahoma. Today's title - film and who did the song?

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The Surrey With The Fringe On Top

Twat bikes. Not one of my expressions. It comes from one bar, and I'm naming no names as there may well be customers pedalling about on twat bikes. What's a twat bike? A trike. That four-wheeled surrey with or without a fringe on top, with or without a horse's head at the front, with or without some holiday brains in control or more often out of control. That trike that is taken to the open carretera and wielded like a dodgem, while all the time the "driver" is seemingly blissfully unaware that there are some industrial twats behind the wheels of cars who could quite easily take him and his trike out.

You know, you don't want to spoil people's fun and it has to be understood that everyday life here co-exists with that of the holidaymaker, but there are some things that just make little sense. Like trikes. Like trikes on the main roads. Like trikes being driven down the centre of the main roads. Like trikes with small children hanging on to the horse's head as they are pedalled frantically down main roads. There is a dividing line between holiday brains and crass irresponsibility. My guess would be that in health and safety and child-protection-obsessed Britain, an infant atop a horse's head on a trike on an A road would have social services round in a flash. But it's ok here as it's holiday time. Of course it is.

Many a time I have written about the roads here and many a time more will I doubtless write again. There has been a further growth in no left turns from and into the carretera between Alcúdia and Can Picafort. You wouldn't know it. From one such now prohibited turn this morning emerged a tourist coach. Perhaps like cyclists, coach-drivers can do as they please. It seems like it at times. The other development, that of further speed restrictions, is destined to tax the patience of what is an intrinsically impatient beast - the local driver. I've started to take a certain perverse pleasure in sticking to the 50kph speed that is at it should be between the Magic and Pointed Thing Roundabouts and between the Eden Center roundabout in Playa de Muro right through Can Picafort. It is a perverse pleasure; to see in the mirror the mouthing and gesticulation of the driver behind. Stupid of me, but there you go. Of course, it is possible to overtake, and the roundabouts themselves are used for this purpose. You can more or less guess what will happen. The guy behind has been up your backside, the road goes to two lanes coming to the roundabout, he goes one lane, you go the other and he looks to hurtle past on the in or outside (because no one knows which lane to be in by the way). Way to go, and he does.

And the season starts to home into view and the weather will start to warm up, and the roads will fill with more trikes and more people sticking to the speeds and more impatience, and the annual nightmare will start all over again. The joy of motoring - Mallorca-style.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Queen. Today's title - where does this come from?

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The Show Must Go On

Time was when a holiday, a package holiday, meant the mere basics - flight, transfer, room and optional meals and a dodgy rep. Not anymore it doesn't, and one of the developments has placed the onus firmly on the hotel. It is the hotel's entertainment. The hotel may not offer 24-hour party people, but it is coming damn close. Kids' clubs, fitness sessions, all manner of games during the day and then the climax - the evening show. And it is no exaggeration to talk in terms of a "show". For the hotel is no longer really able to get away with some rather amateurish and low-key, low-grade cabaret; the hotel has entered the world of real entertainment, of the professional, the rehearsed and the not necessarily cheap. In part, it is perhaps a response to the reputation of places such as Son Amar and Pirates; in the north, there is nothing to compare, and so the hotels are filling the void if not as spectacularly but then sufficiently to satisfy the ever-more discerning and demanding of punter - the tourist.

Cast your eye around the Internet, and it is full of questions about entertainment at this or that hotel, in this or that resort. The evening's ents have ceased to be a bonus, they are central to the holiday, as central as the room, the beach and the bar. The demand for not just entertainment, but good entertainment has forced the hotels to keep pace. In my youth, I can vaguely recall an evening's do at a hotel in Hastings, so forgettable I have forgotten it other than the fact that it took place; I can also recall an evening out at The Winter Gardens in Bournemouth and the bill featuring, among other treats, Mrs. Mills; I can also recall a few years later staying at a caravan site on the Gower coast and the site's club having a three-piece of drummer, organist and the drummer's 12-year-old son on trumpet. Naff couldn't even begin to describe any of these.

Mercifully, this has all changed. But it has come at a price. Quite how much I was unaware of until speaking with Jay who arranges entertainment in a number of hotels and is based at the Delfin Azul in Puerto Alcúdia. I won't reveal the figures, but take it from me, the new sound system at the Delfin has cost a pretty centimo, while the payments to performers on a typical two-week turnaround is also far from insignificant. It's the price the hotel pays for attracting and retaining customers, not only during their stay but in subsequent years. And there are people who come back precisely because of the shows.

The likes of the Delfin offer a variety of shows - rock, tribute and the rest. Sea Club is doing "Hairspray". These are just a couple of examples. Many hotels have gone down similar paths, but what is still lacking is the awareness that, in many cases, you don't have to be a guest to go in and enjoy the shows. The Delfin is promoting itself as having a "show bar". You can go in there for free, and pay only for drinks. Sea Club you can also go into. The Show Garden at Bellevue has long operated on this basis, but no one much away from Bellevue knows of its existence.

This is all-round family entertainment stuff. It's easy, perhaps, to be a bit cynical. The entertainment is all a bit West End without the west or the end; it's all a bit middle of the road. But so be it. It happens to be what a lot of folk want. That the likes of Shamrock (regularly) and Vamps and La Birreria (occasionally) serve up music more in the raw is all to their credit, and they fill a void, but for the average family tourist groups, the hotels are giving them ever-better and ever-more professional entertainment.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Millie (Small). Today's title - who? Easy. And then it would be - "we will, we will ..."

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My Boy Lollipop

So where was I? Ah yes. Record shops. A subject that cropped up the other day. A surfeit there may be of fashion shops and shoe shops, but the record shop is pretty thin on the ground. Unless someone can tell me otherwise, I know of only one shop that sells records (or to be more accurate CDs and DVDs) in Alcúdia and Pollensa, and that is the German Müller store next to Alcúdia's Auditorium.

A few years back, there used to be at least one record shop in both Puerto Pollensa and Puerto Alcúdia. The former never seemed to be open and finally gave up the ghost, the latter struggled on until maybe five years ago. This was called Lollipop, and it was in the same street as The Highlander Bar; it is now, I think, a locutorio. Lollipop was run by a German woman. I used to give her challenging assignments as to CDs I wanted to buy (this was before downloading came into real vogue). One of them was by Catherine Denby, an artist no one else in the world seems to have heard of other than myself and a presenter on the national radio station, RNE3. The CD in question never did turn up, and when I went one day to enquire I found that it was unlikely to ever turn up as the shop had gone.

Since then, with the exception of Müller (and stalls at markets), the area has been devoid of record stores. Whatever one thinks of downloading, there is little to compare with the satisfaction of thumbing through racks of CDs, though even this is nought as compared with the ancient ritual of the record shop (when vinyl was all there was and there were listening boothes). That there are no record shops is no real surprise. Lollipop struggled for several reasons - the emergence of downloading (even if it was in relative infancy), lack of stock (itself a factor of lack of business success), physical theft of CDs, and pirated copies. At the time, this latter factor was probably the most significant, and it is of course still a factor.

The guys who sell the pirated goods around the bars and on the streets (so-called "lucky-lucky" or "looky-looky" men) have a limited range of products - sunglasses, watches, jewellery and CDs and DVDs. It should appal, but somehow it doesn't as the whole "business" of pirated goods is so widespread.

I was once in Singapore, and a taxi-driver asked if I wanted some good products at good prices. He took me to a shop that had its windows taped over. Inside were Gucci this, Lacoste that. The Singaporean authorities took a dim view, especially as theirs was a country aspiring to total legitimacy in the global economy. The next day, I picked up the local English paper. It was called "The Straits Times" I think. On the front cover was a story about a raid against a shop selling pirated goods. It was the one I had been taken to only a few hours before.

I say all this because, although the Spanish police do have periodic actions against pirated goods, the selling of them goes on unabated. Spain and Mallorca are not the only places in Europe where this happens, but unlike Singapore which made a concerted effort to stop the practice, here it just carries on.

The sale of pirated CDs is one of the main reasons for there being an almost total absence of record stores. The added ease of the Internet has been the real killer though for such stores. While they have ceased to be, there are still plenty of places where you can buy sunglasses, watches and jewellery, despite the fakes that are available.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Dionne Warwick, penned by Bacharach and David. Today's title - who sang this?

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Walk On By

I do, at times, wonder if we don't rather over-play some of the attributes of the local landscape. Myself, I find myself caught between wearing the blog hat of telling it pretty how much how it is as opposed to how it might like to be and the other hat of the websites and guides of portraying the area in as good or as reasonable a light as possible. But what I can't do, or try and avoid at any rate, is to bow to "brochure talk". I think the punter is too canny for this in any event. All those superlatives, all that hyperbole, all that gloss and puffery. Beauty should largely be in the eye of the beholder, not necessarily impressed upon him or her by a writer, marketer or proselytizer with a list of intensifiers to tick off. We need a thesaurus of objectivity, not of the mindless copywriter expressing him or herself in no more than casual "beautifuls" or "lovelys".

Take Puerto Pollensa's pinewalk. It is attractive, and it can attract some seriously unattractive (to the renter) rental prices, though some may find them suitably attractive in order to have THAT view and some branches of pine trees dangling in front of the balcony. In part it is what was also in that conversation I referred to the other day; that view in terms of opinion from someone of many years more Puerto Pollensa experience than myself. To sum up; is it (the pinewalk) really that deserving of the glowing prose with which it is usually defined? Maybe it's familiarity breeding contempt, or familiarity breeding, well, familiarity, but I thought perhaps no it isn't. How many photos have I got of the pinewalk? How many photos have others got of the pinewalk? Those familiar shots of the curve of the bay and a pine tree hanging artistically in the forward focus. For all this, though, that shot is iconic, and despite the apparent decline of Puerto Pollensa (as some see it), it retains the power to mesmerise, even if, in truth, in terms of physical splendours on the island, the pinewalk is more C-list than the A-list of, for example, Sa Calobra or Formentor. But that is to declare an unfairness of scale and context, as the pinewalk is symbolic of an in-resort agreeableness as opposed to a monolithic land- or seascape; an agreeableness that is, arguably, unrivalled by its resort competitors. To say it how it is, does also imply a degree of subjectivity, and one is wary of being perversely or deliberately iconoclastic, simply for the sake of it.

This all said, the pinewalk does lend itself to being an A-list location for a restaurant. The relative lack of bustle, the proximity of the sea and THAT view combine to imbue the restaurants there with an advantage that compensates for their comparative smallness. Little Italy is one, Los Pescadores another. The former, the partnership between the ebullient flair of Caryl and his floor slides, the more serious Michele and the suggested Florentine artiness of Rafa, is a place of fine and inexpensive pizzas (and other Italian cooking). I like it very much. The food is always good and the non-fake italiano ambience is rarely less than entertaining. Just a bit along is Los Pescadores, somewhere that needed a makeover and by God it's had one. If the pinewalk can, in brochure terms, be described as charming, here is somewhere that charms the pants off me, well Angie and her sister do (and no, not literally, behave yourselves). One for the list I feel, and I hope I'm not over-playing it.

Little Italy is at Paseo Voramar 57; Los Pescadores at number 45. Los Pescadores specialises in fish and seafood, tapas, lamb and paella, and there is also a lunch snack menu. Both are open every day in the season.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Terry Hall. Today's title - by whom, both singer and writers?

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The Colourfield

Now you know those things you find on the beach, the things that are like a kiwi-fruit that has mated with a coconut. No one thing has inspired so much speculation, wrong speculation, as to what it is or where it comes from. Bamboo, pine needles, algae - all have been proffered and all have been wrong. It was, therefore, with some considerable delight, not to say relief, that Gordon mailed me with a link that solved the issue once and for all. Those balls are in fact the waste-product of the Posidonia Oceanica, a sea grass as opposed to an alga. The good news is that this grass only grows in clean, unpolluted water and is therefore indicative of a healthy sea. The bad news is that it is a threatened species.

How do I know this? Because of that link, which took me to the really rather wonderful Mallorca Photo Blog. This is a real labour of love, with loads of photos, as the name suggests, and a host of informative bits and pieces on all sorts of subjects; plant life being one of them. Anyway, I mailed a comment to the blog, which, unlike the comments thing here, is not anonymous and consequently got a reply, a reply from Klaus who seems to be the one who is labouring over his love.

After all this time and all this debate as to the origin of the balls, I have to offer a hearty thanks to Klaus, and let me commend to you the blog, which is now linked but is at http://mallorcaphotoblog.wordpress.com. If you go to this blog and look up plants and scroll through, you'll find the entry for Posidonia Oceanica, and see a photo which shows that this grass is a multi-coloured thing that exists in what are effectively fields. Extraordinary stuff.


And ... I can hardly let it pass. In today's "The Bulletin" in the Lash column is a photo. The caption mentions a German Island dentist (itself a rather strange usage) by the name of Dr. Peter Dentacare. Now, I don't know, is this a joke, is it some post-modernist irony, is it actually his name, has he changed it by deed poll? Maybe he has - great move. I suspect it's none of these things.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Steve Wright. There was a character called, I think, Cap'n Fishy who had the line about the great smell of fish which was something of an innuendo. But please don't expect me to tell you what for. Today's title - the best known of this group was?

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The Great Smell Of Fish

Jesus, where did this wind come from? And what is it with the wind that it can blow in different directions at once, or seem to. This morning, going along the road into Puerto Alcudia, there was what looked like mist ahead. In fact it was a sort of mini sand-storm. In the afternoon, the wind turned round and started blowing a gale from the south. April is probably the most damn contrary and obstreperous month of all. The weather can never seem to let it lie. Always up to some trick or other. There's me wanting to take some lovely photos across the pinewalk, and the wind blows the equivalent of the Sahara straight at me. Actually, I made that up. I postponed the appointment because of the Sahara, though it wouldn't have been the Sahara as that's in the other direction, but you know what I mean, or maybe you don't.


But to matters of greater weight. The season is not even started and there is more fretting about jellyfish. Some eminent Spanish scientist is arguing that the Med is going to become like "jellyfish soup" (whatever that's like) because of over-fishing and the consequent abundance of the tentacled monsters. In fact, we may get a chance to find out what jellyfish soup is like as there won't be any other fish left apart from jellyfish. That's if Spain carries on its fishing policies, and the Government keeps handing over subsidised folding notes to the fishermen to go out and decimate the stocks of tuna etc. Haven't we been here before with the Spanish and fishing? Didn't the British have a run in over quotas and all that malarkey? There does seem a bit of imbalance in some European governments' approaches. Like the French and the farmers, ditto the Spanish and the fishermen. Anyway, this eminent scientist is calling for a 50% reduction in catches. Fat chance. They'll merrily go on fishing until the last sardine's been barbecued and then the fishermen will ask for some further hefty subsidy so that they can go and do something else, like building golf courses no one wants.

It is part of the local culture that regulations are there to be ignored, and fishing is a good example. Now, the tourist coming along with his rod is hardly deep-sea fishing and a great threat to the tuna stocks, but there is many a tourist who comes here to enjoy some angling past-time. And plenty of tourists ask about fishing on the Internet. "Where's best to go?" etc etc. I've given up letting people know that, officially, you are meant to have a licence, because all you get back is some reply that goes along the lines of "I've been fishing in Mallorca since Nelson was a lad, and never etc, etc ..." And of course that's the case. The plod don't bother, or seemingly they don't bother to check up on licences. The fact is that it is actually very cheap to get a licence - around 11 or 12 euros for a year if memory serves. But the problem is getting a licence. The nearest office is in Sa Pobla, and the form requires typical all manner of local bureaucratic nonsense. As a consequence, no one bothers. Yet if, say, there were to be fishing stamps that could be bought at the tabacs and other places, might this not bring in a bit of income? A euro for a fortnight's permission. That wouldn't be too bad. The trouble is though no one would buy them unless there were dirty great notices up saying that anyone found without a licence will be fed to the fishes. Even then, the police still wouldn't bother.

I suppose if the national government is quite happy to let fishermen trouser taxpayers' money to go and empty the sea of its fish life, then that's a good enough lead to say that actually we don't really care if you do go fishing, with a licence or not; regulation or no regulation. And finally ... I really hope we don't end up having to eat jellyfish. Doubtless there are Chinese and Pacific Islanders who swear by them, but if you've ever seen a purple stinger beached and pulsing its final moments, it's the last thing you'd want to take down your neck.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Big Country, and I can report that Geoff mailed to say he once bought a Big Country record in Cala Millor, which in itself should inspire me to a piece about record shops or the lack thereof. Watch this space. Today's title? And like the weather, I'm feeling a tad contrary myself. So, where the hell does this come from? Not a song. Radio. Think a DJ and posse.

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Wonderland

"So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality."
Lewis Carroll, "Alice In Wonderland".


There are many Alices. They come to Wonderland but find it to be not quite the reality. There was a conversation today that was one of the most insightful I have had since being here. She - British - has lived here (Puerto Pollensa) for many years, is married to a Mallorcan, has a son at school, and knows the school system well. Hers is one opinion, one perspective. It is worth relating though, in a way, I am almost reluctant to do so.

Puerto Pollensa is not as it was. Puerto Alcúdia has usurped it. Even the old town of Alcúdia has upstaged the old town of Pollensa. The town (Puerto Pollensa) is riven by cliquishness. Were it not for the son, she would go somewhere else. But even the son is a problem, a problem in terms of his future. He goes to the Institute next year (the secondary school), the one where 90% of the first year had to repeat. And so many have to repeat, not because the school is necessarily poor, but because many are unmotivated (children of those with finca after finca who indulge their offspring who can expect the booty without school effort); but because the discipline is lousy; but because the children of incomers (foreigners, like those of the British) often need to repeat as their language is not up to it and they, the children, suffer an inferiority complex as a consequence of the language issue. But moreover, there is the wonderland life that is to blame. The children see the sea, the fun, the laidback style of life and they see that as the future with no real effort needed.

She. She would prefer to be in Palma to bring up a child, as far as education is concerned in any event. That is because Palma is "serious", a place of commerce and work rather than play and indulgence.

This conversation was loaded. Disillusionment. I make no comment on the Puerto Pollensa versus Puerto Alcúdia divide, but it's not the first time I've heard this. This was not what really intrigued me. What did was the way in which she dismantled the dream, the wonderland of what is meant to be one of the island's finest places; dismantled it in terms of how that very wonderland hides the reality of life for children, the reality of what may face others who come not only to Puerto Pollensa but to other places on the island (including Puerto Alcúdia). The wonderland is meant to be a place to raise children, a place for their futures, but what is that future? Is it a "dull reality" of low-paid work that the present has failed to address? It was an extraordinary observation; extraordinary in that it was new to me.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Steve Strange (but could also have been Rusty Egan). Today's title? There are possibly others, but I'm going for one by a Scottish group who have been here before.

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New Romantics

That wonderful old curmudgeon, Michael Winner, did at least raise the profile of the Mallorcan restaurant during his attendance at the Lloyd-Webber shindig a couple of weeks or so back and then in his superbly acerbic "Winner's Dinners" column. He did also mention La Residencia in Deia, formerly Richard Branson's humble inn for the filthy rich. And La Residencia is the connection today, as are restaurants. Not those of the west coast but those of the northern bit around Alcúdia and Pollensa. Or to be more accurate, one restaurant.

It would be unfair to say that the resorts themselves do not have some top restaurants, as they do exist, but it is probably also fair to say that there is perhaps more atmosphere, or atmosphere of a different sort at any rate, away from the resorts and into the towns or in the country; restaurants where the atmosphere can truly be described as "romantic", rather than this tag being applied too willy-nilly to any eating-house that just happens to be within a partial view of the sea. To take just three examples: La Terraza at Alcanada which sits right on top of the sea in this quiet mini-resortette appended to one end of Puerto Alcúdia; Es Turó, just before Santa Margalida, with its robust and highly impressive antiquity; and L'Aup, which exists in a sort of Pollensa triangle, not anywhere in particular on the turning to Cala San Vicente but which boasts what can, with total justification, be advertised as a "romantic" terrace.

And it is L'Aup that is the focus as it so happens I was there yesterday to take photos of the place. There are worse things in life than to be granted the opportunity to photograph a restaurant with so many photogenic features, and one of the results is above.

L'Aup is a place that has long enjoyed a healthy reputation, not only for its attractiveness but also its cuisine. The previous owner-chef, José, took great pride in his scrapbook with pieces from gastronomy guides recommending the restaurant. That he has moved on is to in no way diminish the reputation. And here I come to that connection. By contrast to José who seemed in a permanent state of stress, the new owner-chef Damian seems decidedly laid-back, but you don't get his sort of CV by not putting in the hard yards (assuming one can perform hard yards in a kitchen, which you probably can't). Not only was he at La Residencia, he was also at London's Dorchester, and so now L'Aup is under his command and continuing the tradition of the restaurant's famed grill and wood oven while offering also a market cuisine with a Mediterranean flair.

Perhaps one of these days, Michael Winner might deign to visit the north of Mallorca. But if not, I am quite prepared, for a vast fee, to do his reviews for him. Problem is I'm not a curmudgeon. Yet.

L'Aup is on the turning to Cala San Vicente on the Carretera Pollensa-Puerto Pollensa. Closed Mondays. Tel: 971 532 606.


QUIZ: Yesterday - Dennis Potter. Today's title - who is widely credited as having been a founder of the "new romantic" movement and had his own hits, e.g. "Fade To Grey"?

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