Stiff Little Fingers

Some more on Sant Antoni.

You can, if you are so minded, have a DIY Sant Antoni, in terms of the nosebag if nothing else. The local supermarkets, in prominent entry positions to maximise the "traffic" opportunity, deck out stalls with the food of the fiesta - the salami and the sausage - together with some vino on offer and some of the elements of fire-making, for barbecues as opposed to torching the neighbourhood, though the wood could indeed come in handy for that. What you won't see, though, are Sant Antoni "guys". Like Bonfire Night of old, before it became less acceptable to incinerate a "guy", some of the Antoni bonfires are topped with demon "guys", destined to be sent into the fiery pits of Hades from whence they came. But in keeping with a tradition of "satire", as typified by the heads of well-known local figures worn by the "caparrots", perhaps the fires of Sant Antoni should create pyres of those lagging in the popularity league, like various overseers of calamity club, Real Mallorca.

And talking of which. Here's a curious thing. A number of consuls were gathered together a couple of days ago at Real's stadium. In "The Bulletin", there was a photo of them, alongside the odd club official, standing in the centre circle. In their ranks was the British Consul who swelled the numbers to sixteen. Sixteen! That constitutes a crowd at the ONO (oh no, it's Real Mallorca) stadium. Having had their photo taken, they then all trooped off for a "roundtable discussion in the boardroom". A discussion about what, for Heaven's sake? "So, your British excellency, what's your impression of Valero's form this season?" What was this? Like a radio phone-in minus the radio and the phones? Perhaps the Consul was invited to wave a metaphorically admonishing finger and fire off a stiff missive to Sid Lowe and tell him to behave himself in future.


While on stiff missives, an outraged of nowhere actually stated had one printed in "The Bulletin" yesterday. It was about the "locals" and their lack of care and attention where the environment is concerned. Ah yes, the locals, not anyone else, only the locals, though it is fair to say that there is a tradition in Mallorca that rules apply to everyone else except oneself. Anyway, the author was bemoaning the facts that fishermen and families leave bottles and cans on beaches and that "rubbish bins are still full of household waste, plastic etc. as there is no enforced scheme of waste sorting". Eh? Of course bins are full of household waste; that's what they are there for. I think he meant to say that rubbish gets put into the wrong bins, which is undeniably the case, as I highlighted not so long ago with the photo of the palm branches in the household waste container. But what is being overlooked here is that these bins are communal. Anyone can come along and put rubbish into them, and do, not only those in the immediate neighbourhood for whom they are designed. How does one enforce or police such communal waste disposal? With great difficulty.

There was also a word about the light pollution caused by the street lights on the new by-pass in Puerto Pollensa. This is a fair point, as the lights are of older stock which which do indeed emit excessive levels of illumination. The question should be, though, who gave the green light to these lights in the first place. They should never have been permitted.


Montagu And Cholmondeley
Apropos of nothing, other than a Spanish connection and some absurdly splendid names, you may well get wind of the story, publicised by Ben McIntyre of "The Times" of a deception during the Second World War which involved the dead body of a Welsh labourer, made up to be a drowned British major, that was deliberately washed ashore in Spain as part of Operation Mincemeat to deceive the Germans into believing that an attack on Sicily was not going to take place. Fantastic Boys Own, Wizard stuff, replete with Montagu and Cholmondeley, two officers with resplendent moustaches, a coroner called Bentley Purchase and a corpse consultant named Bernard Spilsbury. They don't make names like that nowadays, and maybe it was the Bernard and Cholmondeley twosome who gave Matt Lucas his Sir Bernard Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley) character. And British Consuls should still have such names, and give foreign johnnies and their football stadia a wide berth.



QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOErZuzZpS8.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.