White Stripes: Why did the tourist cross the road?

Sledging in cricket has produced some fine moments of insult. One of the most famous exchanges went along these lines ... Bowler inciting batsman who was not hitting the ball: "it's red, round, in case you were wondering"; batsman responding, having hit the next ball out of the ground: "you know what it looks like, now go and find it". The true origins of sledges have tended to become confused. This one is sometimes attributed to South Africa's Shaun Pollock and Australia's Ricky Ponting, which is almost certainly wrong. More commonly, it is attributed to Greg Thomas of Glamorgan and the West Indies' Viv Richards. Not that it really matters. This is not an article on sledging.

The sledge has, though, occurred to me when driving along the local main roads. It would be something like: "it's white, striped, now walk on it."

The re-modelling of the main road (Carretera Arta) through Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro and ever eastwards is to enter its third phase in October when the grotty thoroughfare in Can Picafort is given a similar makeover. The whole scheme has been about giving priority to pedestrians, and to a large extent it has been successful in this aim. What has not been wholly successful has been convincing pedestrians to use the white stripes and the non-striped islands as the means of crossing the road.

Bone idleness, especially while on holiday, is pretty much a given, but the planners have failed to comprehend this. True, it might bring traffic to a complete halt were there to be crossings every ten metres - you can have only so many of them, and doubtless they'd still be ignored anyway - but there are some points along the road where the non-crossing is glaring and potentially dangerous. One of the most striking is near to the Palma roundabout on the Playa de Muro-Alcúdia boundary. The Marítimo hotel is just before this roundabout. There is an island a few metres to the left where one comes out of the hotel to cross the road. Who uses it? No one. It's in the wrong place, assuming one accepts the bone idleness theory, and I am who subscribes to it. I don't use the crossing either. Another example is given by the hordes who head out of the Delfin Azul and Port d'Alcudia hotels. The straight line to the beach is halfway between two islands. Consequently, they are also unused.

Why did they undertake the road remodelling in the first place? It was to make the road safer. But how can it be described thus, when there are pedestrians, centre road, waving damn great lilos around and attached to the ubiquitous baby-buggy? The buggy has become that de rigueur that one wonders whether it is used solely for the transporting of infants or whether it houses all the other paraphernalia without which no day on the beach would be complete. Whatever. I am uneasy as I pass a family or several in mid road whilst a truck or coach approaches in the opposite direction. And woe betide if you stop to allow them to cross. Inevitably it takes an age for them to appreciate the fact that you have stopped for that purpose, and meanwhile matey-boy behind is getting into a strop.

When they re-do the road in Can Picafort, they'll probably make the same mistakes, such as the beautification of the Playa de Muro stretch with its crossings where emerging pedestrians are obscured from drivers' vision by parked cars, hedges and palm trees and the failure to prevent the inner roads parallel to the carretera from being used as rapid rat runs. One can but hope, though. The current system of Can Picafort crossings and side roads into which or out of which you can neither enter nor exit is confusing enough as it is, without having to contend with the lilo-flapping jaywalkers. Least they can do is get a new walk, don't walk system: it's white, it's striped, now use it.


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You Give Me Faron Young Four In The Morning

It’s four in the morning. What’s that noise? It’s not a normal noise. It’s the noise of machinery, throaty peeping horns, raised voices. Bleary-eyed, one staggers onto the upper terrace. Yellow lights, man with luminous pointer and jacket, talking into a two-way. Further down the carretera more yellow lights - they approach slowly and eerily out of the night’s darkness.

They are resurfacing the carretera from Can Picafort to the bridge in Playa de Muro. At four in the morning. Sensible, in a way, unless one wants to sleep.

The smell of tarmac being laid obliterates that of the usual drift of gas from Albufera, a truck appears with another chap in a luminous jacket who is placing cones. Everywhere, the orangey-yellow flashes light up the night. The heavy machine lumbers slowly, depositing its steaming goo, the vapours a mist unlike the more common autumnal one that creeps across the wetlands.

Five in the morning. Six in the morning. Then it is quiet. Until tonight.

Can’t complain really, the resurfacing is badly needed. But ...


Statistics update. August. Well, the Balearics had the the highest hotel occupancy rate for the various parts of Spain (which surely isn’t that surprising). But the overall numbers were in fact down, in Mallorca by almost 2%. So, not such a record year, perhaps. Or maybe it was.


And. More rain about. We wait with some amusement for more stories of the flooded metro. Meantime, the political name-calling has started. It’s all the fault of the former government of the Partido Popular, allegedly. What about the firms who actually constructed it though?


QUIZ
Yesterday. Quite appropriately for somewhere with an ETA (Elvis tribute act) fixation, it was Elvis, though personally I’d go for ZZ Top. Today - “Four In The Morning” was Faron Young. But who gave us today’s title?

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It’s Got To Be, Perfect

Well more statistics if you can bear them. “Ultima Hora” today reports that it is indeed a record year. The front-page headline blares out: “The Balearics register the best tourist season in the last ten years”. With the exception of the increasing (or should that be shrinking) basket-case that is Menorca, the other islands have been faring well, Mallorca topping the league with up to 95% hotel occupancy, business profitability up by as much as 5% and activity in the restaurant sector up by 10%.

But scratch beneath the surface, and what do we find? The restaurant figure is skewed by a 15% increase in Palma alone. Not Calvia, not Alcúdia, not Pollensa. Palma. Moreover, the occupancy (and that restaurant activity) is assisted by the strength of Spanish national tourism, with the British market somewhat down.

While the figures can allow a collective pat on the back for those organisations and authorities that thrive on positive numbers, the increases are not necessarily universal. Spanish tourism, while not inconsequential in the north, does not fill the bars along the Greasy Mile nor indeed many an establishment in Puerto Pollensa.

So, as always, one takes these figures for what they are not - an accurate reflection of the local market. 


CARRETERA ARTA
One of this blog’s most popular themes, especially since the redesign of the road. I have to be honest and say it isn’t as bad as I had anticipated. The slowing of the traffic seems also to have brought a hitherto unknown courteousness when it comes to letting people cross the road - at crossing points. It is the non-crossing points that are the problem. Despite the increase in the number of crossings and the islands without actual white lines, you still encounter people appearing from nowhere in the middle of the road. It may come as a surprise, but jaywalking is an offence here.

Despite the apparent best intentions of the road’s planners, there is no accounting for people’s bone-idleness. There again, one does have to question the positioning of some of these crossings. One, like that where people walk from the boat that ferries them over from Bellevue to the beach, is eminently sensible. Another, or rather one that doesn’t exist, is that in front of the Delfin Azul (for which read also Port d’Alcúdia and Alcúdia Beach). Yes there is a pedestrian crossing up the road a bit; yes there are a couple of crossing islands close by. But behaviour isn’t like that. “I’ve walked up this road, I want to cross this big one, so I’m going to cross it here, not there.” And so they do.

And just on those crossing islands. I used the one near the Delfin Azul one day. There I was on the island. To my right, a line of traffic at the head of which was a Trafico car. What do you know? Trafico stopped, and waved me across. What fine people they are.


QUIZ
Thanks to all who suggested 1967 records. And thanks also to those who replied to yesterday’s quiz. One of the most popular yet. It was The Waterboys “Whole Of The Moon”. Which brings me to today’s: Briefly The Waterboys counted among their number a female singer who had a number one hit with her own group. Who was she and what was the group?

The latest of this blog’s contemporary music recommendations. Don’t know what it is with female singers, but here we go. Candie Payne. There’s a myspace: www.myspace.com/candiepayne

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Crash Bang

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Look. If you want me to stop banging on about the road system on the Carretera Atra in Puerto Alcúdia I will. But I think it’s worth banging on about.

This morning there was another accident. This one was on the islands between the Palma roundabout and the islands by the Campsa garage. It looked as though either the black 4x4 was trying to overtake or the other car had exited the side road and was driven into by the black one. Either way, they had managed to park themselves onto the island. At least neither had simply ploughed straight through it like with the accident up by the Greasy Mile the other day.

You are just left wondering, was it only local people who saw this all going to happen? I’m by no means alone in being totally mystified as to the logic of this road system.


Sitcom Quiz: This blog’s old chum Geoff reckoned it was The Young Ones minus Rik Mayall. In fact it was The Young Ones minus Chris Ryan. Respectively, Nigel Planer, Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson were Filthy, Rich and Catflap.
And leading on from this ... Ade Edmondson more or less reprised his role in what later sitcom? Nigel Planer took the lead in what sitcom with a rock theme? And who was originally down to play Mike in The Young Ones rather than Chris Ryan?

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Road Movies

I decided against slagging off the Carretera Arta once again. I decided against taking issue with the notion that is now an aid to traffic circulation. You’ve heard it before. So I decided instead to highlight the benefit, the possibility, the opportunity. Job creation for the police. That’s what it is. Aid to traffic circulation? There were police on point-duty at the roundabout at the top of the Greasy Mile this morning. That’s how much of an aid.

On Test Match Special yesterday Geoffrey Boycott was saying that the people who set the international cricket schedule love the sport, but they have never played it at a top level and don´t understand the sport at that level.

The people who have designed this road doubtless love roads. They love tarmac, white lines, roundabouts, traffic islands. They love data collection on traffic movement. They love operational research models of traffic movement. But have they ever driven on this road?

They can love Google Earth maps of the roads, their own personal road movies. But they don´t know the plot and the actors.

Within operational research there was a development some 30 odd years ago called soft systems methodology. Essentially, this was an extension of the consideration of the human element in systems. Behaviour, if you like. The people who love roads don´t seem to love behaviour. I’ll give an example. I nearly crossed a red at the Sa Pobla roundabout this morning. But I was doing what any driver does. Looking to the left to wait for the chance to go. I wasn´t looking skyward to the lights.

One of the additional problems of the road is that the crossings (and therefore the lights) are too close to the roundabouts. Their proximity does not take into account driver behaviour.

But I said I wasn’t going to slag the road off. So I won’t.


Apparently election fever has gripped the island (trust the good old “Bulletin”; never one to stint on the hyperbole). All I can say is that I must have hypothermia because I am neither gripped nor feverish.


“Street Life” was sung by Randy Crawford, and she recorded it with The Crusaders. Today's quiz: can anyone name any original members of The Crusaders? An hour’s point-duty at the top of the Greasy Mile to anyone who can.

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Street Life

Remarkable what you find in the street.

I’m not talking the what was quarter-full plastic bottle of Coke in a bag that was conveniently left under my car and the contents of which (the bottle that is, not the car) were sprayed into my neighbour’s garden by the force of a too rapidly reversing several hundredweight or so of Nissan. No, I’m talking the My Travel schedule of arrivals from Leeds-Bradford, replete with a dirty great tyre mark. What, I thought, were those sheets of stapled A4 littering up the pavement?

Cracking stuff that's what, though mercifully without home addresses, as I could have otherwise faxed a copy to my old acquaintance in Pudsey, Arthur “Lightfingers” Lightfoot, and recommended he got his jemmy and glass-cutting equipment out of the attic and gone on a bit of a night tour of the West Riding.

Still, you can’t have everything. But the sheets make interesting reading.

Which hotel in the whole of Mallorca is the most popular with this - admittedly limited - sample of northern sorts? Answer: the Sol Alcudia Centre. 17 of them. Lagomonte comes second, with Alcudia’s dominance only challenged by 10 heading off to the Bouganvilla Park in Sa Coma. Indeed Alcúdia is by some way the destination of choice for Tykes. Puerto Pollensa gets a measly eight, all of them in the Oro Playa. Not even Magalluf can apparently compare with Alcúdia when it comes to the affection of the White Rose.

Fascinating, I’m sure you’ll all agree. In future, perhaps My Travel (and Thomson, Thomas Cook etc). might just email me the lists so I don’t have to pick them up from the street. You don’t know where they’ve been. The email address is below.


Streets, roads. Roads, streets. Here we go again with the daftness that is the remodelled Carretera Arta. Now, the traffic has undoubtedly been slowed down. That’s the good thing. But one of the benefits that was alleged for the changes to the road, prior to their being done, was that they would aid the circulation of traffic. Wrong.

By high summer in past years there has always been a queue going towards the junction with the Greasy Mile. Now the queue can extend back almost as far as Eroski Syp. There always were lights here, but now they seem to be more frequently on red. Thing is it is only May. It’ll be murder by August, murder when it’s really hot and drivers are getting fractious, murder when drivers use the side-roads and try and jump the queues. Best advice is to just avoid the road completely.


A while since the Pop Quiz. But it’s back. Today’s title. Who sang it? And with which band did she record it?

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