When the historians of bloggery come to assess the role of this blog in that bloggery world, they will point to certain themes that have been as faithful companions since the early days, crawling from the cradle of blogger.com to be unleashed onto a wholly unexpecting public. One such is and has been the roundabout. The roundabout as in - can you or I make any sense as to how one is meant to negotiate it by means of a four-wheeled vehicle? - or as in - can you or I make any sense of the stuff that grows from the centre of the roundabout? The roundabout furniture. The adornments of roundabouts. Ars rotonda. Rotonda profunda. The meaning of roundabouts. I have an idea for No Frills, and I shall be mentioning it to Seamus when I next leave him stranded at a meeting in the town hall - conducted in Catalan - and that is a tour of the island's roundabouts with accompanying DVD for the aficionado of the roundabout art, Die Kunst des Kreisverkehrs, to take home to his relevant country and amaze and indeed bore friends and family. I actually don't think it's as stupid an idea as it sounds. Mallorca seems to have given the world roundabout aesthetics, or maybe everywhere else offers similar artistic treasures, it's just that I don't get out much. The twisted metals and carved blocks of stone of traffic circulation management are facets of that Mallorcan culture of which we hear so much; they are a heritage to European art, Victoria & Albert museum pieces for a future Tate Modern roundabout design museum. Isn't the old power station in Alcúdia meant to be modelled on the Tate Modern and to be art as well as science? Roundabouts, and their creations, should form the centrepiece.
I once had an email from someone who was doing a school project who desperately needed to know who was responsible for the most hideous of local roundabout art - the Horse (some say chicken or prawn) - and for what Foxes' Jamie dubs "Linkin' Donuts", i.e. the Magic of the Magic roundabout - boing! I did actually know the answer, though I seem now to have mislaid the information, for which I apologise as you are probably all keen to know as well. The point was that the artistic merits of the local roundabout had found expression away from this island. To foreign lands has travelled news of the strange craft of the Mallorcan roundabout. And to all the most famous - the Horse, the rings, the cock of Pollensa, the Canadair of Puerto Pollensa, the basket of Inca - we must now add the "what the hell's that meant to be" in front of the Parc Natural hotel (depicted above). I call it - "Rotonda Flagellens" or "Glorieta Gloriole", the gloriole coming from the suggestion perhaps of the metal straps as kinds of halos. Or are they streamers? If the Magic sculpture is donuts, perhaps this one's a candy floss. Maybe it is an example of a local hairdresser's skill - birds-nested hair - a Robert Smith of the Albufera roundabout. That could be it - the Cure to the answer as to what it is - a birds nest. Don't be fooled, by the way, by the pole in the photo - that's a lamp-post and not part of the roundabout. In other words, it's a lousy photo. It could also be that the artwork is not finished, though I have a suspicion it is, in which case - what is it? Answers, as ever, to the address below. I quite like the Robert Smith Roundabout. It has a ring to it. But then most roundabouts are like rings, or have rings on them, like the linkin' donuts. I still feel though that, as roundabouts are built primarily as places for the traffic plod to hang about on, there should be a sculpture of a cop, arm raised with a "papeles" balloon coming from his mouth. Like a sort of Angel of the North. It would be the highlight of the Roundabout Tour, the day of doing the rounds of roundabouts, a circular excursion of art on the round traffic islands of the island. Well, I'd pay for it even if you wouldn't.
Note: the Spanish for roundabout can be "rotonda" or "glorieta".
THE CAN RAMIS ACCIDENT
The collapse of the second level of the building work at the Can Ramis redevelopment has left five workers injured, one seriously. The redevelopment, which will create a bus station, café and tourist office, has been plagued by delay and has now been hit by another problem. And this comes three months after the accident in Cala Ratjada when four workers were killed as the result of a hotel collapsing. More on this to come no doubt.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Lily Allen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wGMlSuX_c). Today's title - should have looked for a connection with The Cure, given Robert Smith, but this was an album by which great jazz pianist?
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