Down To The Market

I have never quite got it with markets. The local ones are fair enough to dash in and get some cheap underpants or a pair of shoes that fall to pieces within a month or so, but all that greengrocery, leather and lace, tat of both the cheap and expensive variety and the bloody pipe-players homogenise into market sameyness. Not all: the ancient Mallorcans who live next door and also have a pile in Sineu have long suggested a visit to the Sineu market, pressure to do so from various quarters suggesting I may have to succumb. Perhaps it's a male thing, which places bone idleness or a glass of cold foamy higher up the agenda than the female inclination to blow the household budget on bags of loose olives and some curious shapes made from iron. Out of season the markets are reasonably pleasurable affairs as there is no one lurking about trying to liberate your wallet; in summer they are a hell of heat and heaving inhumanity.

Wherever you go there is a market of some sort. Even the hotels are in on the act; Sea Club for example has one of trinkets and this-and-that. Maybe it's all an inherited trait, going back to the days of trooping for several days to the nearest market to sell the settlement's goat. One could argue that the lucky-lucky men are just another facet of this; all they've done is to dispense with the stalls. Wherever you go someone's trying to sell something to someone else that that someone else doesn't actually want.

The scramble for market space has been a let's-shop-lebensraum of stall here, rack of some old clothes there. The "other" markets, i.e. not the town markets, are partly social events and partly like legalised lucky-lucksterism - all that they're missing are the wraps of coke. The flea market of, say, the Jolly Roger Saturday off The Mile is a gathering of local lags and gossip, the contents of the loft and the occasional rather tasteful - I can stare at some on the sofa when I divert my eyes from the Mac.

There are others who are none too rapt with market-mania. The shopowners in Puerto Alcúdia for instance. They are apparently seeking "legal measures" to put an end to the market thing in the marina. I spoke about this some time last year. It may be a pleasant little diversion for the tourist, but the regular traders ain't too keen, though one wonders why it has taken them this long to start really kicking up a stink. One senses the rumblings of "crisis" and diminished sales and the resultant search for a scapegoat.

An argument is that these markets bring in more people and so everyone benefits. I'd need some convincing; the Alcudiamar market may be a small attraction for tourists (should they actually know about it of course), but if they end up spending their dosh with the markets, they don't spend it elsewhere. There was a time when all these things could have complemented each other and all would have indeed reaped the rewards, but that time is not now one suspects.

The shops are especially none too happy as the regular evening children's workshops and so on that are taking place on the paseo are designed to give shops something of a leg-up during a difficult season, the belief being that hordes of people will flock to these events and spend like crazy in the shops. This, apparently I now find out , was/is the purpose of the town hall's poster advertising them. Easy to have misconstrued that poster. It is meant to say - come along to these wonderful events and then go shopping and not come along and do some shopping at some additional market, which was how it had been presented. Can't trust any reports these days, or town hall posters.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Hall and Oates - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQUMDoZ4VCg. Today's title - indie group - think David Bowie for their name.

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