Wide-Eyed And Legless

There are times when one wonders if this small world of Mallorcan existence is not almost totally inhabited by the deluded, the criminal and the insane. I am inclined to exclude mostly all nationalities other than the English from this admittedly broad sense of wonderment, though I fancy some Celtic neighbours might also creep under the wire. Jeremy Clarkson, in discussing the qualifications for becoming an expat in different countries, once suggested that anyone moving to Spain had recently held up a post office; he might have added anyone coming to Spain, well this bit of Mallorca, for the purposes of gainful employ as well. And before you ask, it wasn't me, m'lud, who did the Little Sodbury-on-Stool sub-post office job; it was my old mucker Albert "Lightfingers" Lightfoot who has appeared all too rarely on this blog, so I thought I'd give him another mention.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, nutters. There was this chef in one of the "Fawlty Towers" episodes. Kurt was his name. He got blind drunk and passed out because Manuel wouldn't kiss him. I was reminded of this when being told of a bar chef who was found closed-eyed and legless only some metres from home, the same chef who a few days later took a carving-knife to his employer. Not that it was used, merely waved around in a threatening manner. I suppose if you are a chef, availing yourself of kitchen utensils as offensive weapons makes some sense, though an egg-whisk might have been slightly less dangerous. As far as I am aware there were no suggestions of unrequited love that dares not speak its name that caused the carving knife to be engaged in a form of diversification away from the usual piece of meat - a different slice of the action as it were. Now I know all the protagonists involved in this little set-to; it was the employers who told me. The chef in question had seemed, to me at any rate, a fairly decent sort of cove with an air of a pre-Raphaelite aesthete as demonstrated by the style of his headgear. Just goes to show how appearances can deceive.

It is not the first time that chefs and other staff have got themselves involved in some fracas or other; indeed it seems almost mandatory that at some point during the summer there will be an incident which suggests that the chef is a couple of rashers short of the full English, though this should not imply that all chefs have spent too long baking fruit cakes and have morphed into their creations.

Always one for the bigger picture, it strikes me that the seasonal worker fills a category or indeed several categories of the expat. Some while ago, John, ex-Highlander, offered me a few such categories. I must dig out the email as the subject has the potential to form an entire blog in its own right. But this will be for another day.


And while on knives. One of the more curious personalities that one might encounter hereabouts is the chap who periodically pops up in what can only be described as an upturned square dustbin on wheels from which emanates a whistle that might have a passing and very stupid ornithologist scrambling for his binoculars. I am led to believe that the chap inside the dustbin is the bloke who sharpens your knives, for whatever purpose one has in mind. This is a splendidly quaint and archaic service. When I was a kid there was a chap who used to come round the estate with a bike, dragging a stone behind him for the purposes of knife-sharpening. This was quite some years ago, yet here a similar practice is still observed, admittedly with the aid of a motorised converted refuse container. Just makes you wonder why they don't also have the laundry man on a Tuesday, the Corona man on a Thursday and the fish man on a Friday. Mind you, there is always the butane-gas chap who does the Thursdays; never seen him with any bottles of fizzy drink though.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Chicago Transit Authority, when they were any good, which they were when this track was released - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHZJCJerqhM. They were cut down to simply Chicago and then weren't much good. Today's title - a blues artist who was also, curiously, a one-time teenybopper idol.

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