All The Leaves Are Brown

Like the cicadas in their death throes, Playa de Muro falters towards its seasonal end. Whereas the cicadas, sucked of their greenness, hurl themselves pitiably into walls or onto terrace floors, Playa de Muro is still, silent almost in its last staggering moments. It just gives up. There's nothing left, or very little. The life that is left is equally pitiable. A supermarket with lilos that no-one needs, flip-flops flopping forlornly on racks, the Pepsi and soft drinks cabinets shuttered over as the stock had been allowed to run out days ago. The tabacs stopped bothering to order newspapers at the start of the week, the girls are at their busiest in compiling closing-up inventories; no-one is even buying sleeves of cigarettes. The flags on the beach indicate that lifeguards are still on guard, but there are ever fewer for them to watch over as the hotels limp on with their last remaining guests before the whitewash and brown paper are dragged out of the store-rooms and smothered across the insides of the glass facades. Boots of cars are open, revealing suitcases and boxes of small belongings, ready for transportation to who knows where. The apartments are emptying, the season's population moving on and the "for-rent" signs being hung up.

This is how it ends. The season just fades away but not without recriminations - someone's sold off the TV or taken the fridge, so it gets said, someone misunderstands the contract terms and is not entitled to the dole, so it gets said. The season fades away and things fall apart - the centre cannot hold, it has given up trying after the months of managing to hold things together.

The streets become ghostly. At night there is no-one, no-one wandering to or wandering back, no-one shouting or laughing. Gone is the tribute entertainment of the evening that blows on the breeze from the hotels and disturbs a now-forgotten hot night on the villa terrace. During the day, the little train has stopped and been shunted into its winter sidings, the trikes no longer squeak past, their drivers no more shrieking or screaming. The wire fences go up, creating no-go areas of hotel complexes, the pine needles get tossed and pile up against every wall along with sweet wrappers fallen from litter bins and a yellowing page of a newspaper taken on the wind. The garden lawns become a confusion of renewed grass but also brittle, colourless bracts of fallen bougainvillaea, the grey-sand decayed branches of palms, ever more brown pine needles and the similarly brown leaves of this tree and that plant. This is how it ends. Every year the same, and you somehow wonder if it will come back. But it does. Because in spring, this will be how it starts - they arrive and rent their apartments, sign their contracts, sweep the terraces, scrape away the brown paper, wipe away the whitewash, bring out the lilos and the flip-flops, stock the drinks cabinets, the tobacco shelves and the newspaper stands. Every year the same, the same cycle as every year.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "I Think I'm In Love", Spiritualized, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjRXogjKHLk. Today's title - first line from one of the great songs.

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