November Rain

The first cold winds blow. Like the sudden leap in temperatures in spring can catch you by surprise, so the transformation from pretend late summer takes you unawares. But unlike the spring, the change makes you wince and you remember how houses' heat retention in summer gives way to the inadequacy of insulation and the chill of interiors. Storms have different consequences. In November, they bring a fast descent in temperature and what can even look like snow but is in fact hail.

The air that in summer engulfs and smothers now just hangs, damp and rheumatic. Though the sun and warmth will return during the winter, the dampness is now a constant, insinuating into bones and brickwork. The floods of storms leave the streets and roads mud patches of piled sand turned a constituent of cement. Yet, the storms wash away and clean the sky of the last haze of summer; it becomes bright and transparent, late-afternoon sun wrapping the peaks of the Artà mountains in a fire glow, beacons across the bay where in the other direction the Tramuntana tops, in their barrenness, look to hold snow but is just light on grey that can make them seem snowy even in summer.

There is a smell of wood-burning. It competes with the shifting sulphurous scents of the wetlands, drifting into cracks and lying on the liquid atmosphere, awaiting a further smack of thunder and an avalanche of cleansing rain. Winter comes now. It makes moss and algae the flagstones and walls, a sign, though, of the purity of the air. The first cold winds of winter. And you think of spring and that first assault of heat and wonder how it can ever be winter.


TUI price reductions
TUI may not have had anything to add to the reprimand issued by Thomas Cook to the Spanish Government over the rise in IVA, but the company has reacted to the uncertain economic circumstances by announcing that prices for holidays to Mallorca will fall by some 5.5% next year. In Menorca, where the tourism market is considerably less favourable, prices will go down by 10%. Good news you might think, and it is, but the boss of TUI Germany, making this announcement (he was the one, you will recall, who helped to plant the first pine in the TUI forest) admits that there will be more tourists coming on an all-inclusive basis in 2010. But not all is lost as there won't be anything like the numbers travelling all-inclusive as there are to Turkey.

While there is all the angst about all-inclusives in Mallorca, one does wonder at the impact of such a style of offer across Europe and into Turkey. Greece, for example, has been hard hit by the increase in AI. Consumers may be demanding this undoubtedly cost-effective way of holidaying, but what type of tourism will this all lead to? It is becoming increasingly clear that holidays are being sourced less on the basis of resort or country but from the point of view of the best AI deal. The actual destination is becoming less relevant. It is often said, in criticism of AI, that the holidaymaker who stays largely within the confines of his or her AI complex, could be anywhere. And so it would seem. Mallorca, Greece, Turkey - it's all the same, just varies in how hot it is and what brands of booze can be obtained. Is this really what tourism should be? Destinations as dumping grounds for northern Europeans who hand over most of the holiday cost to tour operators and airlines? Most of Mediterranean Europe becomes a collection of resorts, polarised by those who live there and the wristband brigade who pay no attention to their surroundings. I'm not sure that this was how it was meant to be.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Rupert Brooke was the poet. And the band was Pink Floyd, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV9AwB-DnoI. Today's title - hard rock goes orchestral.

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