Raising Sand

With the wind in a particularly foul mood and the possibility of a sudden deluge of biblical proportions, you do feel as though you are taking your life into your hands by going for a brisk stroll to the beach. A sudden switch from a Llevant to a Tramuntana wind and a small gale-pressed tidal wave comes hurtling towards you, a mixture of grey and mucky brown. When the sea gets as bad-tempered as it is at present, it loses all semblance of that azure and turquoise brochure talk. To cut across to the other side of England from yesterday, it's rather more like what you might witness taking the train by the side of the Humber. Unpleasant, to say the least. Still, a walk is invigorating, one might argue. There is another way of describing it - cold and miserable. Let me get back for a hot cup of tea, thanks very much. However, there was time to become aware of something down on Playa de Muro beach. Or rather, to become aware of something that wasn't there. There was a hint of this as one trod through the sand, turned mud, on the road leading to the beach. And that was it of course - sand - and those barriers that were erected to stop the sand being blown onto the roads. I'd completely forgotten about them. So, I checked. It was 28 January (Stranger On The Shore) that I wrote about them. And what they were, were V-shaped constructions, made from bamboo, which were designed to act as obstacles to the sand. It hadn't actually occurred to me, until yesterday, that they weren't of course there during the summer. So, let's just get this right. At the end of January, they put them up, and, in all likelihood, had taken them down again two or three months later. And they haven't put them back up again. What was the point of all that?

The point behind them was two-fold - one to stop the roads and streets getting blasted with sand, and two to keep the sand where it belongs, i.e. on the beach. This is, after all, a stretch of beach with serious concerns for its sand, if one accepts the command, that is, of the sign further along to brush sand off before leaving the beach - as it is needed! Now, these bamboo things were not concrete - quite obviously they weren't - but what I mean to say is that they were not without gaps; gaps through which and indeed over which sand could be blown. It is in the nature of sand that it gets blown about. It doesn't, on an individual grain basis, weigh a great deal; hence it is blown. Yet, the environmental concern for its well-being and its remaining on the beach stretches merely to a stupid sign and a few pikes of bamboo. Build a ruddy great wall if it's that important. But I suspect it isn't. Rather, the vain attempts at holding back the sand have been done so that someone can say that they're doing something, albeit that they're not doing very much, right down to not very much putting the stakes back in situ for the winter - yet. There again, maybe the very appearance of these bamboo jobbies was some sort of job-creation scheme. Here you are lads, go and hammer these stakes into the beach, and when you've done all of them, you can go back and take them out again. All rather like the rubbish cleaning of beaches of a couple of winters ago. I don't know if they're bothering with that still. It was all made to sound very tourist-friendly, despite the lack of tourists, and pleasant on the eye, but when the money gets tight, they probably take the view that the seaweed and sea-grass kiwi-fruit baubles that accumulate - as they have accumulated for, well, for ever - can take care of themselves. Along with the sand.

And just to put all this weather in context - November had the most rain for 50 years, and December will probably break all records. In Lluc, up in the mountains, there were some 276 litres per square metre. Yesterday, a fifth of main roads were closed because of floods, fallen trees or subsidence. These included those between Sa Pobla and Alcúdia and Sa Pobla and Pollensa. Albufera has reached its capacity, and that means it will flood. Batten down the hatches, boys!


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Everything's Just Wonderful", Lily Allen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-vWCUvOPXM). Today's title - well, it was this blog's album of the year in 2007.

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