At Your Leisure

Right, getting back to something like normality, not that matters round here can ever be described as being particularly normal. But here we go - the new year effectively starts here.

Know what the word "ocio" means? The answer is leisure, with an emphasis on activity. Muro town hall is putting up for bid some land designated to be used for "leisure" in Playa de Muro. The news reports don't actually spell out where this land is, but apparently it is currently not being used; to the tune of some 7,000 square metres not being used. I'm scratching my head. Where is this? Other than saying that it is located next to an important hotel area, it doesn't specify.

7,000 square metres. Sounds a fair amount of leisure I suppose. I can think of some plots, but none that immediately springs to mind in the main part of Playa de Muro. Down towards and in Alcúdia Pins though ... : I reckon this might be the land in front of the last Iberostar hotels before you hit the forest. That would be about 7,000. Then you think again, well actually it isn't that big a piece of land, despite the town hall reckoning that it will be a large area of leisure. The question of course is what they would do with the land. And here, one loses a bit of heart. The town hall itself doesn't have any firm ideas. The mayor says that it might be a minigolf. A minigolf. If it's not a full-blown golf course, it's a sodding minigolf. And this, we are led to believe, will - in the mayor's words - add dynamism to the tourist offer. Give me strength.

It's not as though minigolfs are not popular. There are many who lament the passing of the tropical variety of minigolf down Bellevue way some three years back. The Golf Fantasia is a good enough attraction in the south. No, there's nothing wrong per se. It's just that it's the same old thing; just like real golf is the same old thing. Bit of spare land, let's hit a small ball with a stick. Oh well, maybe they'll actually do something else. Whoever they are, as the town hall's looking for a minimum of just under a quarter of a million euros - not including the IVA (VAT) and plus the annual concession fee - to take the land off its hands.


There was this thing in yesterday's "Diario" about some old-trout tourist who has donated some 20 grand to an association in Calvià known as SOS Animal which protects and cares for abandoned cats and dogs. It wasn't actually her personal moolah, but that raised through the sale of second-hand goods somewhere in the depths of the shires of England, i.e. Worcestershire. One has, probably quite mistakenly, an image of stout walking shoes, tweeds and giving the master of the local hounds a thorough ear-bashing and a sound thrashing with a walking cane.

I find this charity malarkey all rather difficult, I'll be honest. Difficult because I know I'm likely to offend and to give off an impression that I don't care for animals, which I do. But I really do wonder what many locals make of what they probably see as interfering foreigners involving themselves in animal-welfare matters. It's not as if this is an isolated example. It most certainly is not. At times, one senses that there is a whole army of Brit expats, many of them at a stage of advanced troutdom, wandering the bars of Mallorca with a tin for some animal or other charity. Why? The answer is complex. They haven't got anything better to do. It makes them feel important or acts as a lever for some other purpose. Some have a missionary zeal, believing that the locals are there for the converting - to the word of St. Francis. There are, of course, those who are genuinely altruistic, and the lady in Worcestershire is undoubtedly one of these, though of course she is only a tourist. But there are others ... No, not so sure as to the motives.


But I shouldn't be so uncharitable. Today is the big day in the local Christmas fortnight. Three Kings. The day of giving pressies. Yesterday evening, the Kings - not the same ones in every venue - arrived across the island, in the likes of Puerto Alcúdia, ferried there on a very biblical and nativity-style Submarine Vision boat. And after today, we can really start to get back to normality. The grinding normality of the remainder of winter. Except. There is another fiesta. A week or so's time. Always a fiesta.


QUIZ
Today's title - from a single by one of the great electro-pop acts, known best for "destroy(ing) everything you touch".

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