Gissa Job

It's that time of year once more. The time stretches from March till now and on a bit into May. It is the work-searching and pulling-your-hair-out time. Hair being pulled out by both those looking for work but especially by those employers who thought they had their staff lined up, only for whatever to go wrong. It can be the variation on the dog chewed my homework. Unreliability is thy middle name, Mallorca, and thy seasonal workers. It seems crazy, when there is some nervousness among employers in taking people on, that those who get a promise might get a note from their mum. But what of some of those who go in search of work? Would you employ that some? There is not always a great deal of thought given to their personal presentation. Perhaps they're just hacked off with being rejected. Can't blame them totally, but it goes with the territory: traipsing around bars, shops, restaurants making the scripted request and being told no, we've got everyone we need, not at the moment. Some leave a CV. It happened in Eroski one day. Three came in, spoke to a girl at the checkout and handed over the gen. The three CVs were probably filed fairly soon afterwards.


If you're a tourist with a hire car, you can be forgiven for getting things wrong, for taking the wrong turning and looking to hurriedly correct your mistake. Usually you will be ok, except when you effect your remedy just as plod on a scooter is emerging from around the corner. At the turning towards the port in front of Alcúdia church a hire car with what looked like Brits or maybe Germans did just this. Went right when they didn't want to, and slung a U-y across the pedestrian crossing. "Hola, hola, hola. What have we got here, then?" The car drove off, behind it a peeping plod, revving the poot-poot into something approximating maximum 40kph speed. Chances are the driver thought this was just some lunatic local hitting the horn for the hell of it. Wrong. Finally, the car stopped. I trust they had enough in their wallets. The exchange was still going on some ten minutes after it happened.


Restaurants continue to change hands or be taken on anew. In Puerto Alcúdia what was once New Delhi, next to Comics, is now a Mexican. More Mex than Tex says Jose Luis. The restaurant is called El Cuate. On the corner of this road is Alcúdia's only Dakota. Two Tex-Mex's in one street. Yet of course in Puerto Pollensa, home to the Dakota trinity, Nico's is more or less next door to one of them. Nico's, I guess, is the home kitchen contrast to the industrial Dakota, and so it seems to be with El Cuate.


And ... Who turned on the oven? Suddenly it's not just warm, it's verging on the hot. It's easy to forget the heat. It can come as a bit of a shock. Talking of warm weather. As I am launched, as of today, into the official fourth estate of Mallorca, I felt that a newspaper moment should not pass without comment. Moreover, it concerns "The Sun". Not my paper of choice, but can yesterday's front page and headline ever be bettered? Four people in deckchairs on a beach. The gloomy news about the Budget, and there it is: "At Least It's Sunny". Brilliant.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Teenage Fanclub (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAMqJP4VvdE). Today's title - which drama made this famous and who was the actor?

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