24 Hours From ...

Now, I was thinking of making a major announcement today, but thought that maybe I ought first to just run it by the appropriate body. Anyway, it has to do with a popular daily newspaper. So I will keep my powder dry for a day or several.

Still, this does not prevent me from consulting the pages of a popular daily newspaper and unearthing the odd item of interest. Thus it was yesterday. Apparently, a report reckons that Mallorca needs up to five more golf courses and that nobody on the island or indeed on all the islands of the Balearics should ever be more than 50 minutes away from a golf course. Well, two things here. Is it possible to be more than 50 minutes from anything in Mallorca, let alone a golf course? If one is walking, then perhaps so, but I suspect most golfers have some sort of transport, if only one of those lunatic buggies. Slightly baffling that, I'd say. The other thing is, does Mallorca need five more courses? Doubtless the Muro protagonists - the hoteliers and certain town hall representatives - would say yes, but while the endless debate as to that course rumbles on, we have learnt over the past few months that courses have been denied to Santa Margalida (on the Son Real finca), Campos and Binissalem, the enviro lobby having been just one dissenting voice.

I can think of many things that people should never be more than 50 minutes away from - a hospital, a chemists, an off-licence and a bunker against weapons of mass destruction. But a golf course? I am reminded of a report from April of last year (that was referred to in a popular daily newspaper) which stated that Mallorca was basically golfed out in terms of courses. Yet now we have a demand for ever more. The argument that golf brings in wealthy tourism is not without foundation but, as has been my position viz. Muro pretty much all along, I would like to know the real business case in favour of a new course, wherever it might be or however far or close it might be to anyone. But why 50 minutes and not, say, 42 or 30? There are already some 25 golf courses in Mallorca, so I would very much doubt that there is anyone further than 50 minutes from one. But were there, then is he or she or they muttering angrily that they are 51 minutes away from a golf course?


Yesterday, and apropos of what I thought I might announce but haven't, I was parked miles away from the HQ of a popular daily newspaper and was ambling back past the Plaça Major in Palma when I heard the unmistakable strangling of some bagpipes. Not the mini-local variety but the real McCoy, and a bekilted gentleman giving it large with his pipes. What was this? It was part of this international folk dance malarkey that's going on in Palma at the moment. Anyway, on the stage in the Plaça Major were two chaps with bagpipes, making a frightful racket as is normally the case with bagpipes, another chap beating a big drum, two boys holding flags and a troupe of girls dressed up in sailors' outfits who were engaged in some dancing of a folk style. Scottish, so I thought. And one of the flags was indeed the cross of Saint Andrew. It was the other flag that made me wonder. That's not Scottish, thought I. That's English. It was in fact the shield of Newcastle United FC. And the troupe turned out to be from North Tyneside. As they retired from their routine to the accompaniment of applause and the pipes playing the porridge oats thing, I wondered, since when did people in Tyneside wear kilts or indeed play bagpipes. Proximity to the Scottish border and all that, but had I just witnessed an aspect of English culture of which I had previously been unaware? Presumably I had - and it took a chance passing in Mallorca's capital to make me aware. Strange old world.

Oh, and talking of English culture, I should have mentioned in respect of the Leicester piece the other day, that Leicester does have some Roman remains, which I kind of suspected it would have, but for literary effect and what have you ...

And also ... listening to Maconie without Radcliffe, something about Twitter. Someone mailed the show to say it's rubbish. Yea, I'm still not sure to be frank, but I will persist.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Police (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeQ2yXE1mpU). Today's title - I can't think of anything that is 50 minutes from anywhere, so instead ... . Where was he 24 hours from and indeed who was he?

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