Let’s Go Fly A Kite

So much for what I was saying about the flat sea yesterday. Really whipping in today and windy. But this is not a weather report. Remember what I was saying about beach umbrellas and accidents. Well, add to beach umbrellas, beach kites.

Now we’re not talking kites as we knew them. Flimsy bits of paper or plastic glued to a shaky frame of balsa-wood. These kites are industrial. They are the beach-bound bastard cousins of the kites that kitesurfers use. Smaller than those but built with frames to withstand a nuclear attack, or certainly to withstand smacking into some hard beach at the speed of a VW cabriolet from a local car-rental firm hammering along a side road and into a passing drunk. And they smack into the beach with a heck of a thud. Missed me by a whisker. Really startled me though. Lying there knees up, eyes closed. It could have been between the knees. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Last year, I waxed if not lyrically but slightly nostalgically about beach life as it was. In the days before the entire contents of Toys ‘R’ Us and Milletts got dragged onto the beach and deposited or erected thereon. When you could lounge in a stupor and be under attack only from a passing gull dropping its payload. Not now. Now you need body armour and headgear. In fact, a cricketer’s protective equipment - from box to helmet via chest and arm protectors would not go amiss for the contemporary beach.

The German girl who nearly neutered me was very sorry. And if I’m honest, had I fancied her a bit more I might have forgiven her completely and got up to give her a lesson - in kite-flying, that is. But I didn’t. So I didn’t.


PATRONA
Starting on the 26th of July is the jolly shindig that is the Pollensa Patrona festival. I’m not sure if an English version of the programme is available, but the tourist office very kindly sent me an elaborate PDF document. As usual it was in Mallorquín. But, as usual, I’ve translated it, and it’s on the website and the What’s On Blog. The big event is on the 2nd August, the simulation of the battle between the Moors and the Christians. Catch it while you can before political sensitivities put a stop to it. (The Moors got their bottoms slapped, and Moors are/were Muslims. That’s why.)


Quiz: It was Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as Derek and Clive. Today’s title: The film should be easy enough. But who, effectively, was the lead singer?