Double Dutch

Do you get embarrassed by double letters in embarrassment? Are you harassed by wondering whether it is one or two r's in harassment? Do you accommodate one or two c's or m's in accommodation? Spanish poses a similar dilemma. The Spaniards follow a dirección where the English take t. For the Spanish it is possible to allow only a posible, which would be impossible in English.

Double letters or to not double letters? That is the doublespeak question. You can take a bet on doubles. Try it. Double your money, double or quits. Either way it's likely to cause double trouble. Where's this all going? Does it sound like double Dutch?

It is the tyranny of the double letter. And the inverse double. Take the town of Binissalem. There is another place in Mallorca. It's called Binnisalem. At least it was in "The Bulletin". Again. The battle of the grapes took place in Binnisalem, said it. Must be somewhere near to another battle of grapes. In Binissalem. The Arabs eschew n's coming in two by two. Actually they don't, because the alphabet is different, but you get my drift - hopefully. Arabic is the source of the prefix. Think Bin Laden and not Binn Laden. Mallorca's bin home to bins for centuries - Biniali, Biniagual, Biniaraix. The island may not have been laden down with bins, but they've bin there nevertheless. In their n-singularity. But Binissalem poses the double problem of potential inverse doubleness. And so it proves. It's writ large in "The Bulletin". Wrongly.

Away from all this doubling up, the great grape battle of the Binissalem Vermar festivities took place on Saturday. Harlequins wingers would love it. The blood of red grape is closer to an outpouring of Group A than a joke-shop capsule. Let Tom Williams eat Merlot in future.

A grape battle may hold all the Inquisitorial threat of the Pythons' cushions and comfy chair, but in its messiness it is supremely stupid and therefore enormous fun. It is like paintball minus the faux-militarism. A question, though, is do they have changing-rooms and showers? Or do participants drive home and suffer the smell of stale red for several weeks after? Presumably they walk. It is as well that the grape harvest has been abundant. Otherwise the battle might cause a wine shortage. It is also as well that the weather was fine on Saturday. Otherwise the grape battle would have brought new meaning to the term wine lake.

Daft it may be, as daft as tomato battles that take place elsewhere, but daftness should be a pre-requisite of fiestas. There is little dafter, after all, than the rubber ducks in Can Picafort. And talking of that, together with the street theatre of Pollensa's Moors and Christians, I would submit for your consideration that the Binissalem battle and the Picafort ducks register as the three great fiesta events.

And following the battle came the treading. On Sunday they trod and they trod during the great grape-treading contest, the winners producing 5.6 litres of juice and trousering 240 euros into the bargain as well as - along with all the teams - taking home bottles of vino partly made from the juice produced last year. And they would have enjoyed their collapso and possibly have been seeing double, though it's doubtful that even with drink they would have spelt the name of their town with two n's and one s.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Abba, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuB8xWeA59I. Today's title - who was this, and what is the link with the Can Picafort ducks?

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