Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

A strange thing happened yesterday. A group of us were taking a coffee in an Alcúdia bar and each of us admitted to having experienced the same sensations. They had occurred over the previous few days. What we admitted to was that nothing seemed to be right. Everyone's daily lives were in a state of turmoil, turbulence, confusion perhaps. One of us had to just pack up the day before and call it a day before a gasket was blown. Another said that in his bar, on one day this week, every table appeared to pose a problem, even if there wasn't. A colleague of his had said to him that she felt that things just weren't as they should be. Crucially though, none of this was seemingly only down to stress.

I myself have been in a distinctly odd place over the past few days. It has been a feeling of going mad, but I know why and I know why others have been experiencing similar loss of control or of situations spiralling out of control. It's known as August and the height of the season. This is the superficial explanation, at any rate.

"There is an air of love and of happiness, and this is the Fresh Prince's new definition of summer madness." Will Smith's summer madness is quite different to the summer madness of August in Mallorca; that of mental disruption, of a perception that you are living outside your body, incapable of getting back in and re-establishing some perspective and some control.

It could all be explained by the heat, I suppose. Is it all simply a case of not knowing what to do with oneself because of the oppressiveness of the heat over the past few days. Maybe, but we've known greater heat. This August isn't unusual. Except that it is. It has got to people. Got to them in ways and in degrees I've not known before.

August madness is heat and it is frustration. Traffic is a nightmare, one created by the regular crossings, the regular roundabouts, the regular, uninterrupted movement of slow-moving aliens with inflatable dinosaurs, the regular slow movement of a hire car undecided as to which way it should be going, which lane it should be in, which action to take when the orange lights flash, the regular fast movement of other cars squeezing into limited areas of tarmac in desperate attempts to steal one or two places in the queue.

The supermarkets are a nightmare of not knowing to have to weigh and label, of the hunt for some identity to support the credit card. The banks are a nightmare of the paying in of wads of cash; the petrol stations their own hire-car logjam nightmares.

But then all of this is August madness. We know it well. None of it is new, but this year there is something different, something intangible, something requiring an explanation. The trouble is, I don't know how to explain it. It had occurred to me that perhaps we are all carrying with us the greater troubles caused by the economy, of greater troubles to come. Maybe this is it. Or maybe there is a collective feeling of something breaking down, for whatever reason, an instinctive sense that all is not right. I can't put my finger on it. And nor, it would seem, can others.

To escape the August madness, there is always the beach, itself a potential nightmare of overcrowding, of the incessant pat-pat of beach tennis, of the interruptions for the massage or sunglasses offer. I stare towards the sun but avoid staring at it directly. For no good reason, the rhythmic pitter-patter of tom-toms comes into my mind. I can hear it clearly, Nick Mason's patented drum sound. Set the controls for the heart of the sun. I know what the reason is. I've had a flashback.

Years ago, I would have been fifteen I suppose, I was listening to the Floyd's magnus opus. It wasn't a dream, it wasn't out of body (of course not), it was a trance, that's all I can think it was. There was nothing lysergic involved, but I hallucinated. What I saw was a decaying body filled with wasps. And all the time there was the rhythm and the softly-breathed incantation to set the controls for the heart of the sun.

We've come to the heart of the sun and we now see decay. Is this the explanation for what's not quite right, a reaching into the subconscious to discover frightening imagery we had hoped we would never see, or never see again? The controls for the heart of the sun are being lost.





Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Air-traffic controllers' strike - update

It now seems that the strike will take place across three days - 14, 15, 16 August (according to the report in "The Diario"). Last-minute bookings to Mallorca are going to be seriously affected; up to 30% of bookings being lost, it is being claimed.

It Just Gets Worse - Part Two: Air-traffic controllers' strike

In early season it was the volcanic ash, now there is due to be more air chaos. Air-traffic controllers have voted (massively) to strike later this month. The date is likely to be 18 or 20 August. They haven't ruled out further strikes.

The controllers have got a real beef with the government. Rest periods and salaries have been cut, the latter - in practice - by up to 40%. There has been a sort of strike already, if one believes that taking a "sicky", which has been happening, constitutes a withdrawal of labour. Unlike their French colleagues who have been on strike and do so on a seemingly regular basis, the Spanish air-traffic controllers have historically not been militant. This will in fact be the first official strike they have ever called.

The hyperbole has of course gone into overdrive. It will be a disaster. But of course it won't be. What would be were if a lack of rest were to result in a mid-air collision. The controllers do have a point. Nevertheless, bang in the middle of high season is hardly convenient. It will cause considerable disruption, though quite how strong the strike will be is unclear. There are legal requirements as to maintaining "minimum services". The rail service, for example, is covered by these. But there are no precedents for air-traffic controllers. While the railways can help to ease the transport burden on the mainland, Mallorca and the islands have little by way of a fall-back position, as was exposed by the volcano; increased ferry services make little impression. One option, being floated by the government, would be to bring in the military, but the controllers argue that this would be unsafe as there would be a lack of expertise in handling the sheer volume of air traffic.

A wider question, set against the austerity measures that the Spanish Government has brought in and will add to next year, is whether others will follow the air-traffic controllers. A general strike of all sectors, not just public, is meant to be occurring at the end of September. Though Spain has not experienced the kind of unrest that Greece has, there was an alarming report in "The Observer" at the weekend in which the Greek security forces warned of a descent into violence, provoked by the country's own austerity measures.

The air-traffic controllers could just be a start.


QUIZ:
Yesterday - Deacon Blue, "Your Town", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm7xlyH3YsI


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.