Appearing From My View

I might have mentioned A.A.Gill in the past. In fact I know I have. It was in connection with a piece he wrote about Vienna. I can't remember now how I managed to make the leap of imagination from that to something about Mallorca, but presumably I did. Gill, some of you may be aware, does the telly review in "The Sunday Times". There is no need to have watched any of the programmes; Gill does a more than adequate job in describing them and usually explaining how dreadful they are. He was writing yesterday about Nicholas Crane's Britannia, rubbishing it indeed. There was much in the review, though, that struck a chord. Here is a flavour: "a sort of sentimental fascism about (series of elegiac rambles across England), an overromanticised geological jingoism, (an) England (that) doesn't contain any suburbs or tower blocks; no motorways, airports, no industry, no trading estates, no you and me." As with so much that is "travel" documentary or literature, the default setting is beauteous landscape and the selling of what amounts to almost mythical status, often with the assistance of dollops of hyperbole - the brochure talk of which I am so wary. Gill may be speaking of the perpetuation of a "bogus" representation of England, but this could just as well apply to Mallorca, in the sense that what is often presented is solely as some sort of KGB-censoring promotional unit would want it. Not because there is any such attempt to keep the image of Mallorca unsullied and only beauteous, but because there is so much unthinking writing about the island; unthinking in that it doesn't attempt to go beyond the superlatives of land and seascape.

In a sense, I suppose, part of the point of this blog has been to address this; to take a different view and to also look at different things. It's why, for example, there have been - in the past - the likes of features on streets and their names, on toilets, on the apparent absence of planning when it comes to architecture and on the curious - such as the Poblat GESA as one goes into Alcanada. Looking at things differently might, I guess, be a sort of sub-heading for the blog. And so ... On Friday, I became aware, for the first time (and in keeping with a theme of "rubbish") of the municipal dump in Alcúdia. The "Punt Verd" (green point). I was watching from the road as some chap moved white goods around on a large skip-style container. I knew the dump was there, but I had never been or indeed stopped to have a look - until Friday. I was hanging around because the car was having a new belt fitted at Arbona. This might let you be able to locate where the dump is, if you don't know. Arbona is on the coast road between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa, but right by the roundabout as you come into Alcúdia. Around the back of it, there is and has been much apartment building. There was one block. It was quite nice in a Taylor Woodrow grey and white way. Plenty of signs for sale and one or two to rent. There seemed little evidence of much occupancy. But despite these apartments looking quite pleasant, there was one major drawback: they overlook that rubbish tip. Who is going to buy a place with that sort of a view and with the noise of the carts that goes with it? It may not be a tip with all the everyday household garbage (it is essentially a recycling tip), but it is still a dump.

There is another block of apartments that is a work in progress close by. It has a huge sign as you drive past on the main road heading off to Palma. "Venta de pisos." Like there wasn't much evidence of sales at one block, there was equally little evidence of work happening with this other one. This area has been earmarked for development. Nothing wrong with that, but it can be to no-one's advantage if you build nice, fairly expensive apartments slap bang next to the council dump. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense, and of course there is another possibility - which is that the train extension may well mean a line just over the main road, if the terminal is to be sited near the auditorium. A tip and railway line. I can just hear the beauteous language of the apartments' sales literature.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Monkees. The alternate title was "Randy Scouse Git". Today's title - from a song by a new romantic act; think squawks on, or indeed above, the beach.

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