Sometimes (Leicester Piggott)

You may know that if there is one thing that drives me nuts it is the Alcúdia is like Blackpool comparison. Turn this around. If you were to say that Blackpool is like anywhere, where would you choose? With a degree of certainty, I can say that you would not choose Alcúdia. If it can't work in reverse, how can it work in forward? The answer is that it can't, because it isn't. If Alcúdia is like anywhere, other than Alcúdia, it is in fact like Leicester. True, Leicester is not by the sea, it is not a resort, people do not go there on holiday, it does not have a Mile, it does not have Roman ruins, a mountainous range, a first-rate marina, too many supermarkets called Eroski or, perhaps oddest of all, as far as I'm aware, a bar called Linekers. It does, though, have a football team and a rugby club, as does Alcúdia. Despite all those things being absent and the tenuous link through sport, it is still comparable with Alcúdia. Why? Well, ask yourselves this. Why is it that every other person you stumble across seems to have come from Leicester or Leicestershire? Even those who might appear to have no connection whatsoever with the city or the county, turn out not to have come from, say, Hertfordshire, but from Leicestershire.

And for the same reason, i.e. the numbers who have deserted and pitched up in the middle of the Med, after Leicester, Alcúdia is like Hull. Now, Hull may seem to have slightly more that is similar than Leicester, but that is purely down to the presence of the sea. Alcúdia does not of course have a river: Hull does, a black one, as I recall. Or maybe it was just the glowering skies that had turned an otherwise turquoise Humber into the colour of night.

I daresay that this will provoke someone to tell me that in fact Alcúdia is more like West Bromwich or Hemel Hempstead, which would of course be absurd; well in the case of West Brom certainly. Alcúdia is rarely to be found on fire, which is the case with West Bromwich; well it was on the one and only occasion I happened to go there. Hemel Hempstead, on the other hand, which may also have suffered its own local difficulty with fire, has, more importantly, its own magic roundabout, but God forbid they were to attempt anything on that scale in Alcúdia, given the difficulty that the locals have with simple, single, straightforward roundabouts as opposed to anything that resembles the Olympic rings. Then there will be the north-eastern lobby for Newcastle or Darlington and even that for the whole of Wales, and that really would be ridiculous. How could a town in northern Mallorca be like an entire country? It's not as if there are any sheep in Alcúdia. Well not normally on the beach at any rate.

But when the tourist authorities have the bright idea to go and put on a "show" in Manchester as a means of promoting Mallorca, how much thought have they applied? Perhaps there are parts of Mallorca which are identifiably Mancunian, but not Alcúdia. They should have put on that show in Leicester city centre.


Talk Of The North - Part Two
No sooner to close than Phoenix-like resurrected. Ann confirms that it will be re-launched under new ownership. So there you go. You will still all be able to talk in the north and of it as well, especially all those from Hull if not Leicester.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Captain Beefheart, "Moonlight On Vermont" from "Trout Mask Replica". Today's title - erm, well, about all I could think of with a Leicester flavour, not that it was that Leicester. This has been here before, but it's a cracker; oh and they were/are a Manchester group.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)