So Lonely

Where are you planning on going on holiday in 2010? This might sound a daft question. Surely, you will be saying to yourselves, that here is this blog, purporting to have something to do with Mallorca, and I'm being asked where I might be going. The answer has, of course, to be Mallorca. Well, no, you would be wrong. "The Bulletin" is equally something to do with Mallorca, but it ran this thing the other day about the ten best destinations in the world, and not one of them was Mallorca, or indeed Spain. This was all based on what the Lonely Planet has to say.

Top of the list, apparently, is El Salvador, a country in central America whose only claim to fame is that it went to war with Honduras over a football match. There was a photo that supported El Salvador's bid for top place. Sun, sea, a few rocks, some sand and a part of a palm that, as always, is artistically shown in the foreground. Could have been anywhere really, except Morecambe. Or maybe they've got palms in Morecambe now, and even some sun.

And coming in second is, wait for it, Germany, a country that has much to commend it, but as a holiday destination? Actually, there are many places in Germany that would qualify. Freeze to death on the Baltic Sea for example, on that island to where nudists fly from Erfurt - kit off. And given that all Germans should be coralled onto other planes and made to fly to Mallorca, going in the opposite direction would be a case of taking former Chancellor Kohls to Neuerburg - or something like that.

One can't help but feel that there is something not quite right about a recommended list of holiday destinations in a Mallorcan paper that fails to include Magaluf as one of its top ten cities. Then there are the top "regions" in the world, as designated by the oh so Lonely Planet, one of them being southern Africa. What, all of it? Including Zimbabwe? You don't need to go that far to get some good, honest corruption. Just spend a few days in the political corridors of Palma, while it's far cheaper to travel, your money won't devalue by the minute and you won't be attacked somewhere that has no rule of law and that is run by a total lunatic; at least I don't think you would be.


Enviro Man
They see him here, they see him there, they see Enviro Man everywhere. Yep, it's him again. Hardly a day passes without the environment minister, Sr. Grimalt, being photographed at some event or other. At the weekend, he was at it again, this time in Albufera, where some rare ducks were being released. In the minister's favour, one can at least says that he does actually see a lot of the environment, which probably does come with the job. But what with a walkway opening one day, a tree planting the next and a duck flapping the following day, how does the minister's carbon footprint stack-heel up? Perhaps he takes the ministerial pushbike, though one doubts it. Could they not maybe have a pretend minister who attends these functions? A cardboard cutout and relay his messages of support from an organically controlled bunker somewhere in Palma. Or one of those local giant things that they have at fiestas, suitably adorned with an environment minister head. Or even an inflatable minister. In fact, why not have a cabinet of inflatables. Just pump them up wherever some event is going on. And then they may as well get rid of the real ducks as well, and bring on the rubber ones from Can Picafort.

Of course the minister might, in the future, have been able to have taken a more environmentally friendly train journey to Albufera. But not once his chum in the Unió Mallorquina, mayor Ferrer of Alcúdia, said not in my northern corridor, the mayor of course preferring the southern corridor, that which would have terminated by those rare ducks' patch and maybe terminated them in the process. Bring on the rubber ducks.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Laura Nyro, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch0e9l9V5Lc. Today's title - often misheard as "Sue Lawley", this was?

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