Rise To The Occasion: In-store music

Eroski's a strange old shop. Not just one. They all seem to be at it. I mean, when were they transported back in time to the days of ooh, Gary Davies and converted into 1980s' radio stations circa the era of Gary or Bruno or Simon Bates? What will they do next? Have the shoppers weeping in the aisles not because they've run out of stock but because of "Our Tune"?

There aren't actually any what were once called disc jockeys as such (they're now presenters, a job title with far greater gravitas), but you never know. Wasn't Chris Moyles discovered as the in-house DJ at Top Shop in Leeds or something like that? And look what happened to him. What has happened to him?

There has to be some method to the Eroski 1980s music madness, though I am blowed if I know what it is, why it is and who's responsible. What thought process is applied in order to come up with Climie Fisher's "Rise to the Occasion" while one is helpfully trying to explain the intricacies of weighing your own fruit and veg to a disorientated British tourist, rendered even more disconcerted by straining to recall what the song is and so completely incapable of taking instruction. "Look, see that picture. It's an apple. And its number is?" A complete waste of time.

There is, as with most things shopping, a psychology to all this, but what it is in Eroski's case is anyone's guess. I posed myself this very conundrum the other morning when attempting to figure out the point of Tears for Fears' "Advice for the Young at Heart". A pleasant tune, but was it having any discernible influence? Apart from making me tarry longer, simply because it is a pleasant tune and I wanted to listen to it, then no. The same Gouda slices as usual were launched into the bottom of the new, extra-deep, extra-non-customer-friendly trolley thing they've introduced, bouncing off the familiar iceberg lettuce, bunch of green bananas and bottle of moderately priced vino tinto. Was I inclined to draw on the inspiration of the music of the two largest egos known to the history of popular music - Roland and Curt - and indulge in an impulse purchase? Was this the thinking? Well no. Besides, who actually makes impulse buys in supermarkets? Oh, it's Tears for Fears, I must acquire that toaster or half a ton of mangoes.

There again, tarrying may have something to do with it. Find yourself propelled back to a nostalgic time when men turned themselves into wimpish extras from "Star Wars" (as with, for example, A Flock of Seagulls), and you are motivated to lurk and linger (possibly), and the longer the lingering, the greater the embarrassment that you aren't actually buying anything: only listening to the music. Oh well, might as well get some toilet rolls: you can never have too many anyway.

Yes, there is a great deal of psychology, and some of it which isn't total Horlicks (not that Eroski sells this). For example, it has been found that playing classical music can induce a tendency to spend more (this was from a study in a wine store): all to do with an implication of sophistication. Some of it does make sense. No music at all, and the store is unwelcoming. Hence, you would spend less because you want to get out quicker, though not as quick as if thrash metal was being played at high volume.

But while accepting there is this psychology, I still struggle to understand it in the Eroski context. Why 1980s music? Why all English? It has occurred to me that maybe the music is not for the shoppers but is to make shopworkers' lives more agreeable, but then wouldn't they benefit from selections by Enrique Iglesias and other Spanish hitsters? Probably not, as all Spanish hitsters sound exactly like Enrique and only have one song between them.

No, I don't get it and indeed I'm inclined to believe that it has nothing whatsoever to do with shopper behaviour or making workers' days more pleasant than the constant grind of having to ask for "Tarjeta Eroski" and try to flog you an almond cake or deodorant that's on special offer. It's all to do, I suspect, with DJs. Not Gary Davies or Bruno Brookes, but the DJs down the local fiesta, the ones who insist on putting DJ in front of their names just in case you hadn't realised they were DJs. (No self-respecting "producer" with a USB stick and a Mac armed to the hard-drive gunwales with mixing software would pitch up at, say, Magalluf's BH with DJ in front of his name.) No, the fiesta DJs are in thrall to Climie Fisher and the 1980s. It is from them that Eroski has taken the lead. Or is it the other way round?

MALLORCA TODAY - New Eroski supermarkets for the Balearics

The Basque Country-based Eroski supermarket chain is planning 60 new stores this year which will include seven new franchises in the Balearics where there are currently 66 supermarkets.

See more: Ultima Hora

What A Waste

It has long been something of a mystery quite why the local supermarkets are so liberal with their giving-out of plastic bags. Go to your nearest Eroski and at the check-out you will end up with four or five half or quarter-full bags of groceries when one or two would do the job equally as well. Not for much longer though. Perhaps. Eroski has produced a 20-page booklet all about reducing the number of plastic bags and energy efficiency. There are two "savings" to be made in the form of a "win" for you and a "win" for the environment. The booklet seems to be on recycled paper, which is just as well. The company's director of social responsibility tells us on page five that Eroski is going to make it easy for us all to save the world (well, he doesn't quite use those words, but whatever). For any bag not used, the customer gets a discount of one centimo. That should get everyone rushing to the store.

How do they figure out how many bags you don't use though? As I say it has been common to get several more bags than one actually needs. Do they have some means of calculating - by volume of sales - the resultant discount if one hacks along with a shopping trolley or reusable bag (bags) instead? "No, I think this lot's worth a three centimo discount, not just the one. Come on, hand it over."

This environmentally correct approach is all well and good, but there is also the slight matter of all those plastic bags that are used to gather fruit and veg to which are attached those sticky-backed labels with the bar code and price, assuming you know that this is the procedure. They can't be much cop when it comes to landfill either. Anyway, the huge incentive to not now use the bags at the checkout will probably lead to an increase in the sales of rubbish bags, as the checkout bags, especially when they are doubled up, have long been an alternative to actually buying rubbish bags. But the latter are at least eco-friendly in that they don't give off toxic gases when burned, or something like that.

On leaving Eroski, 20-page booklet stashed inside one of the checkout bags, there was a noticeable pile outside the front doors. A pile of newspapers, bundled and tied up, just left there. How many? Fifty, a hundred maybe? It was a pile of "Euro Weekly's". First time I had seen them at the local Eroski for some fair while. Erratic is the distribution one might say. But more importantly, what was going to happen to them? Who knows? Maybe they get turned into Eroski booklets about the environment.

To a different environmental matter. No sooner has the golf course in Muro seemingly run its course as an eco-cause célèbre than up pops another affront to the town's environment. It is the curious case of the Son Perera finca on which there has been some earth moving in readiness, or so it is being alleged, for a go-karting track. GOB, those noble defenders of Mother Earth, had "denounced" this work to the town hall which has now paralysed it, saying that there is no licence for the development. What is extraordinary about this is quite how anyone can apparently set about converting what is protected land and hope that no-one might notice. A go-karting track is pretty conspicuous, or would be were it to be built.



Alcúdia - Day of the Tourist
Well it must be said that this was a pretty good effort. Hats off to the town hall. A rather attractive Danish girl by the name of Nana who works in one of the local hotels told me that those hotels participating get the teams organised, which did at least settle one of my questions. As to other questions, such as what is the point of all this, I refrained from putting them to the chiefs of the tourism department who were talking with rather concerned expressions into mobile phones like Conservatives during an election-night kicking. Quite why they seemed concerned I was unsure, unless they'd got wind of news that the Michael Jackson tribute lined up for the evening had taken his tribute rather too far.

It was pretty obvious, though, that not all the beachgoers yesterday morning had any idea what was going on, but the music booming from the step and aerobics stage, the footy and volleyball games and all the people wandering around in "Fun 4 U" t-shirts would have given them some idea. I now know what this is all intended as - it is a major promotional campaign for the town hall's tourism website. Not that anyone's told me that, but as all the t-shirts have got the address on, then one would presume that it is at least an element of "the day".

But it was good. And fun, funnily enough.


QUIZ
Today's title - and I'm doin' very well.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

What's The Difference Between?

Two supermarkets, same company, three kilometres apart, same stretch of road, same town - different prices. How does that work, do you suppose?

Let me be more precise. Two Eroski stores, both on the Carretera Artà, the main coast road from Puerto Alcúdia, one store close to the port, the other close to Playa de Muro. Now, would you think the prices would be the same in the two stores? You might think it, but you would be wrong to do so, because they're not. Take, for example, the bakery-provided "pan integral cortado" (smaller pack). 65 centimos down the near-to-Playa de Muro end of the Eroski empire, 67 centimos near to the port. A bottle of bog-standard Rioja, the Siglo - 3.50 in one and 3.66 in the other. A pack of plain-flavour crisps (small family size), a difference of 6 centimos. I daresay that there are other price differentials. I'm not about to check the whole stock. Who or what do you think I am? Watchdog or something? How can it be, though, that two stores in the same chain so close to each other can have different prices? It could just be an aberration in the close-to-the-port store, i.e. a cock-up, though cocking-up more than one price sounds more like policy. In the Pollensa Eroski, the one close to the old town, the prices for the above items are as in the near-to-Playa de Muro one. So, all I can say is that, unless you have to use the one near to the port, I wouldn't bother, because it's cheaper to go to the one down the road. Now, I wonder what the prices are in the one near Hidropark and the one by the Can Picafort roundabout ... .


Shop theme today. Despite its name, Alcúdia Pins - both the area and the hotel - is not in Alcúdia; it is in Playa de Muro, very much in Playa de Muro, almost into Can Picafort very much in Playa de Muro. Alcúdia Pins is not really an area that people would go to, unless they were staying there. At least you wouldn't go there, if you were local and Mallorcan and wanting to go shopping. Not only are there not many shops, what shops there are can be avoided elsewhere. Alcúdia Pins is a hundred per cent tourist zone; it serves no other purpose.

While the eponymously named Alcúdia Pins hotel (or is it that the area is eponymously named?) is very strongly British, the tourist mix in the area is varied. Germans, Scandinavians, the new tourists of eastern Europe, Irish, mainland Spanish. There may well be the odd Catalan speaker knocking about, but not many. And what number there might possibly be would not be as great a number as the other nationalities, even the Irish. Why, therefore, is there a shop selling gifts and clothes with a sign in English and Catalan? Easy, you might say, because we are in Mallorca, and they speak Catalan. Well of course. But who is this shop's market? Tourists. Tourists from places that do not speak Catalan. If you were to choose a second language for that sign, then go for German. You could stick Gaelic up and it would probably be understood by more people.

Now I don't know that this is the case, but it is just possible that the sign is a beneficiary of the linguistic subvention. Which is? The system by which local authorities grant money for the use of Catalan for promotional purposes. And these promotional purposes include shop signs. It doesn't matter that there is no-one there to read it. In other words, they chuck money around in support of the language even when it serves no purpose. I could of course be wrong, and there is no subvention in this particular instance, but the principle behind it might just be deserving of some attention.


Ben's Classic Car Rally link
When this went up yesterday, there was a fault. It was fixed later, so if you tried yesterday and it didn't work, apologies. It's all correct now.


The Can Picafort cyclist accident
A 66-year-old cyclist from Luxembourg was killed in a head-on collision in Can Picafort at eight o'clock yesterday evening. Without wishing to pre-empt the thorough investigation, the report (from "The Diario") says that the cyclist was in the centre of the road and not wearing anything reflective - at eight o'clock it is dark.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Stranglers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy9-epdDw9E). Today's title - you may have noticed I don't go with rap too often, but this was something really good - three willy-holders together.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

Wherever He Laid His Hat Was His Home

Shopping Trolley gets around. One moment he's in the Magic area, pushing himself past Kroxan, and then he's down by Eroski, lurking under the branches of pines by the Platja d'Or. Not far, in this latter instance, from where Doggo is getting out the ghetto-blaster in the warm early March sun; he'll be bending balloons before we know it. Shopping Trolley must have a good fifteen bags; I underestimated the amount when I mentioned him before. Fifteen, could be more. One of them has a TV in. He was seen watching it once; it had been plugged in to an outside socket. Perhaps he looks for one such when he comes to pitch his tent at night: after all, a chap needs a reliable electricity supply to watch the telly before turning in for the night. The trolley itself has to be pretty sturdy. All those bags. It must take some pushing as well. I once saw him in the old town, just by the church. If he'd ventured up there along the cemetery road that would have been a push and a half - all those bags, some with household electrical goods in them: if only there was a house to hold them.

I used to think that Doggo, the Local Colour, wasn't a Man of Ideas, but I've had to revise that. Last couple of times in Eroski I've seen him handing over coins in return for cans of beer. He is incomprehensible, which is part of the definition of a Man of Ideas. At least the dog seems to know what's going on. I certainly don't. Every time he speaks to me, I haven't a clue. Shopping Trolley though. No, I don't think he has Ideas. I've not seen him with a drink. If he were going to have one, then you'd reckon he'd crack open a can when he was watching the telly, but seemingly not.

A while back there was someone begging by Eroski, someone who had moved in on Doggo's manor. I only saw him once. Maybe there's some honour in this alternative world. Shopping Trolley once took a seat by the sports shop, the one with the Mallorca triathlon beach towel, but that's kind of on the periphery of Doggo's patch. He would have to wait for an invitation to come into Doggo's territory probably, and if he got one it might be by mobile phone. Or maybe Doggo just talks into a phone with no credit. That would seem about right. Not that I wish to do him down. It could be that the phone works, but speaking to an empty mobile with no-one on the other end would be the epitome of Man of Idea-dom. Perhaps Shopping Trolley hasn't got a mobile; put it this way I've not seen him with one. There again, I've not actually seen the TV; I was told about that.

Eroski seems to have got a manager. Well, there's a bloke working there where there used to not be one. A few years back, there used to be another bloke who was obviously in charge, or maybe thought he was. He used to shout after tourist kids who were running in the aisles, and he'd follow men of bellydom to make sure they didn't nick anything. Then he disappeared. No more Mr. Manager; that was in the days when it was still Syp. And for all this time, it has been almost completely female-run. No-one seemingly in charge, a sort of co-operative non-hierarchy that somehow worked; well, usually. But now there's this chap. You might think he would get tough, but appears not to. Doggo was there next to me in the queue yesterday morning, rambling on about something to me, or was it to the checkout girl, or maybe it was to the ceiling. Doggo's dog was sniffing around the checkouts and the café as well. I thought this manager chap would be bound to kick him out; the dog anyway. Said nothing. At least the girls at the checkout don't pick the dog up and give him a cuddle now though.

Maybe I have this all wrong. A few minutes later, Doggo was talking to a chap making a delivery. Maybe he's the manager. No, can't be. And as I drove away, there was Shopping Trolley, sitting. Sitting like he sits all the time, except when he's pushing the trolley. And when he sits, he just stares. Every day, just sitting, the bags of different colours and different sizes mounted on his trolley, tied to each other and to the trolley sides. Just sitting and pushing.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Arcade Fire, "In The Backseat" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpikhegY-Vs). Today's title - one of the great Motown songs, not that the group responsible were that keen on it.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

And A Packet of Crisps Please

You can tell when the season is drawing to a close. The Eroski supermarket lets its stock (admittedly limited) of foreign products dwindle. The true state of grocery xenophobia - Spanish and Mallorcan products alone - returns to the supermarket shelf. And no product typifies this more than the crisp. The summer months' variety pack of crisps augments the voluminous but dull array of Spanish crunchy snacks in a bag. The German-sourced Crunchips paprika flavour, a prince amongst the paupers of the local crisp world, packs up its seasonal court and winters in the obscurity of its Lorenz headquarters in Neu-Isenburg, a town notable for having the highest number of restaurants per head of population in Germany - not all of them serving only crisps. The Spanish crisp can't even do paprika, as it can't do most things, flavour-wise.

Despite the voracious snacking habits of the Spanish and the vast amounts of shelf space devoted to the crisp and its off-shoots, the Spanish are ill-served by their local producers. The Lays packs offer an appeal in the uniformly attractive look of their contents, but an obsession with the Iberian ham flavour as a staple results in potato-slice ennui as does the sheer number of the non-flavoured crisp. I have long since failed to see the point of a potato crisp that tastes only of potato. Crisp eating for the Spaniard is an act of habitual indifference as opposed to one of taste sensation and surprise. Worse still are the crisps that provide the equivalent of munching through a brick of Trex. Grease may be an essential ingredient of the crisp, but there's no need to boast about it. The Spanish crisp is all too often the junk of the junk world. Where is the diversity of a Walkers or a Marks and Spencer? Last time I was in England I was introduced to a sweet Thai (or something like that) Walkers. It was crisp heaven, or hell perhaps if one has personally just nosebagged an entire family-sized packet.

The one concession to crisp internationalisation that survives the late-summer stock purge lies with the Pringle, the pretentious wave in a cylinder that can't quite admit to being a crisp and indeed lawyers, for VAT purposes, argued successfully that it was not. However, its very packaging (in addition to it being unquestionably moreish) gives the muncher the pleasure of realising that, even as the contents of the tennis-ball-style container dip well below the halfway mark, there are still many more crisps awaiting than might have been imagined; it's a clever trick of packaging illusion. The Pringle is the Tardis of the crisp universe.

Unfortunately, no such cleverness exists in the world of the Spanish crisp. The one positive of its almost unrelenting awfulness is that offered to the waistline through crisp abstinence. As the Crunchips head for the snow of Germany, so items of clothing will begin to once more gradually become winter-wearables.


ELDERLY TOURISTS
The late-season tourist is a mixture of economy class, small infants and earnest senior citizens, many of whom are readily recognisable from their kit of backpack, khaki shorts and knobbly-knees. These are the walking tourist seniors of autumn, blessed with a hardiness of constitution that defies wild, windy and wet weather - as was the case yesterday. Among the ranks of this older October market is also the ex-colonial who insists on a Panama hat even under a weakening Mallorcan sun. One of the wonders of this Saga-ist invasion is its unfailing courtesy and good manners. The very numbers may make driving a slower than normal procedure owing to the less-than-sprightly tackling of main road crossing points, but stop for a group of oldsters and you will always get an acknowledgement and a smile, after there have been minutes of will-they, won't-they cross as they are unsure as to whether a car that has actually stopped does mean that they can use the crossing rather than be then callously mowed down.

I have great sympathy for this older market and for the at-times downright rudeness that it attracts. It's another Eroski moment. The other day an ex-colonial pair with his 'n' hers matching Panamas were getting into an awful tangle at the checkout. Yes, the store was quite busy, but it was not their fault that the pack of meat didn't have a bar code. "Not possible to pay. No price," chanted the checkout girl, indicating, not that they understood, that they should go and get an alternative pack with a code on. It was also not their fault that they failed to realise the need to weigh and then price their fruit and veg. I've said this on more than one occasion before. If there is no obvious sign - in a language other than Spanish - to advise as to the procedure, or no assistance, what can the store expect. It is especially tough on the elderly who get seriously flustered, as did this couple. Finally when it came to paying, the old boy neither understood the amount nor the coinage, so there was more faffing about and undisguised frustration on the part of the checkout girl. And amidst all this confusion, he had left his wallet down on the counter. This is a store not unknown to suffer petty theft.

The couple went and had a drink at the supermarket bar. I felt I had to talk to them. I explained what had been going on, because they still didn't really get it. I also advised the old boy to take better care of his wallet. I could have seen him being pickpocketed otherwise; he was a walking victim.

Whether it likes it or not, Eroski, a main supermarket chain, is still part of the tourist market. Not all of its staff are rude or unhelpful - some are quite the opposite - but it is unacceptable that polite but uncomprehending elderly tourists can be treated in such a poor fashion. They deserve much better.

And finally on Eroski, the one opposite the Platja d'Or in Alcúdia, that is. It is a year now since I spoke about the hole, the one of the broken bricks as you exit the car parking. Why is it still there?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Mothers of Invention. As Terence rightly got it - "Frank Zappa's ironic analysis of the 'Laurel Canyon set' ". Today's title - Two whats of what and a packet of crisps. Who was it?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

What Goes Around ...

Faffing around. It is a phrasal verb and an excellent one to boot. Let me conjugate. I faff around. You faff around. The shopper in the Mallorcan supermarket faffs around. You will notice that in the third person the normal he, she or it is replaced. There is a possible alternative which substitutes "supermarket" with "chemist's", but I don't wish to confuse matters.

The supermarket faff is partly the consequence of things like credit cards not quite having registered as a means of payment except among foreigners who attempt to do so minus the requisite identity, the prolonged search for which ... And the queue grows longer. No, cash remains the payment means of choice. But it is not all the fault of the shopper. The supermarket is equally culpable. Go to pay with cash, let's say the amount comes to 28 euros and 36 centimos, and invariably you are asked if you have the 36 or 6 or some eccentric combination of coins and notes. Cue another prolonged search - into the depths of a wallet or purse ... And the queue grows longer and longer. If you're British and unused to the euro and centimo, the queue grows longer, longer and longer. If you're Mallorcan and still operating in pesetas, the queue starts to stretch out the door.

For reasons that still mystify, Eroski has always been the first supermarket off the trolley rank. The Mercadona lobby grows louder by the day, joined by the cries in favour of the Budgen-like Bip and Hiper. (Do they still have Budgens by the way, does anyone know?) It can only be some Eroski inertia groove thing that makes its delightful red exteriors so attracting. Or maybe it is the periodic incentive promotion. Like the current one. Spend X and you get a number of points that go towards some towels. Fabulous. You also need a degree to understand which products qualify for how many points. Pigs' trotters rate the equivalent of a whole bathroom full; a six-pack of Saint Mick not a sausage. And then when you pay, it is you who invariably has to do the asking. "Any points?" you ask, stupidly, as it says so on the receipt. It's not that the checkout girls are pocketing them, they just want you to bugger off, because tearing off the stamps that equate to the points is an arduous task when they forget to perforate them. Mind you, it has its advantage. A measly two points can easily become a whole sheet as it is just so much quicker, as that queue is now down the road.

Having acquired these stamps and stuck them onto your towel-prize grid (those that you can get the back off, otherwise you have to stick on the stamps - "sellos" as they say here - with sellotape; ho, ho), you go to get your towel. 100 stamps plus a centimo shy of a whole five euros for a bath towel. The transaction is performed separately to the main purchase. And the queue is now in Can Picafort. Then it turns out ... Why is there one euro and one centimo change? It should be one centimo. Don't understand. And you drive home past the riot police controlling the queue.

"Wasn't it meant to be a bath towel?" "It is." "No it's not, it's a they - two hand towels, sort of." "Is it? Are they? That'll be why the one euro and one centimo. Know something? I owe them 40 stamps. Two hand towels are 140 stamps." "But why not the bath towel?" "I don't know. It was on the bath towel shelf. If it says bath towel on the shelf, then it should be a bath towel. And it doesn't actually say anything on the packaging." "Yes it does. Laura Ashley Home." "Laura Ashley Home for what? Wayward towels and strays?" "What's that noise?" "That'll be the police opening fire." "On what?" "The queue. Supermarket queue." "Oh." Faffing around.


BATLEY TOWNSWOMEN'S GUILD
Harking back to 22 July, I have been emailed by Alastair who points out that the Batley Townswomen's Guild re-enacted Pearl Harbor and not Agincourt. So much for historical accuracy, albeit one related to old comedy programmes. Now I was aware of the Pearl Harbor angle, but, and it is strange how time, memory and imagination intrude, I was sure that the Guild engaged in a series of battles, Agincourt being one of them. Wrong. I have even checked the whole list of Python sketches. The women of Batley appeared but twice - Pearl Harbor and the first heart transplant operation. I shall go away and do my lines.

Alastair has also discovered a youtube of Pearl Harbor. Brilliant. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vMqSmiC_xHg.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Jam - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGsyL6DhgPU. Today's title - who?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

It Bites

No, not a mosquito. The strike of Spanish lorry drivers. Different country, same public reaction. Put a bit of a scare in front of Jose Public and he'll panic like crazy and take his own tanker to the local petrol station and fill up and then strip the supermarket shelves on the way home for good measure. Not that I am aware of any problem here as such, but maybe I should join the crowds and start panicking. There again, no petrol and it would be a good excuse not to do anything. Lounge around all day in the sun. The only problem being ... The other "it bites" is the grim weather.

The lorry drivers want a minimum price for haulage, but President Zapatero's not about to go along with the demand. Quite what also he can do about the soaring rise in diesel costs I've no idea. It's not as if diesel is the only energy product that's been affected; butane gas is up to over 14 euros a bottle, not far off a ten per-cent rise in a couple of months. The costs of energy have increased significantly over the past few months, so when people bang on about prices here being high or having increased, they might spare a thought for the fact that all businesses need to try and recoup those costs, and that includes bars and restaurants. Everyone is affected.

You now start to get the feeling of a conspiracy against the season. The credit crunch was one thing, then the euro-pound lack of kilter, then the weather (and still the weather) and now the energy crisis and the hauliers on strike. You wonder if it can get much worse; perhaps a plague of locusts. A drought on a biblical scale is unlikely though.


And returning to yesterday's piece. It happened again. Same Eroski supermarket, different tourist, different bunch of bananas. Fortunately someone was on hand. Me. I watched the gentleman concerned as he returned to weigh the bananas. Put them on the scale and then looked at the buttons. What he saw was a series of numbers. Which one do you press? You have to know that the numbers are to be found next to the relevant items. I did it for him. And on leaving, I asked the girl at the checkout, from whose queue the gentleman in question had been rebuffed in his initial attempt at payment, why there was no dirty great sign in English (and German) to make it clear that most items of fruit and veg have first to be weighed and that the button corresponding to the number from where the particular fruit or veg has been taken has then to be pressed in order to print the correct label. She quite agreed. So I suggested she brought it up with the management. And you know what? There's a meeting tomorrow and she will. Maybe. But were this dirty great sign to be placed in hopefully a prominent position, the only problem then would be explaining the fact that there are certain items that don't need to be weighed. Confused? You will be.


QUIZ
Chain - Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes of Buggles were, for a while, part of Yes and Horn produced "Owner of a Lonely Heart". And what connection is there between Yes and The Moody Blues? Yesterday's title - The Band (see this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfyjhtOTy1s). Today's title - what was their one and only hit?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

The Weight

"Can you tell me where I'll find the freshly-baked bread?"

Personally, I don't expect staff in the main, national supermarkets here to speak English. Were I from Madrid, I wouldn't go into the Hemel Hempstead Tesco and anticipate that the checkout girl would be fluent in Castilian. So Puerto Alcúdia is a tourist place; so what? In a tourist supermarket, it might be different, but the so-subtly red-painted Eroskis are "Spanish" supermarkets in which the staff have a tendency to speak Spanish or Mallorquín and only Spanish or Mallorquín. Consequently, launching into a well-constructed question sentence, as the lady who uttered the above did, is likely to induce a look of nonplus.

There are establishments here who I believe have every right to absolve themselves from any duty to be multi-lingual, and the mainstream supermarkets are one such. But this is not to absolve them totally, or to excuse either their mediocrity or the seemingly perverse inability to prevent inconvenience or embarrassment. Take the business of weighing fruit and veg. Now, you might think that a counter in the middle of the greengrocery section with a balance and some buttons might just suggest to the tourist (usually Brit) shopper that there is a point to the counter. But never underestimate the blindness of that shopper. Rather than sticking up a large sign or two in English and/or German that explains the whole procedure, the only advice is that given in Spanish. As a result, the lengthy checkout queues (and let's also mention the lack of checkout staff) get longer while the non-weighed and therefore non-priced apples or potatoes have to make their way back to the greengrocery department. Often it is the bewildered customer who has to make the journey. The British, especially the British, hate social embarrassment. That is why, on more than occasion, the offending customer has returned from a fruitless return journey minus the bananas. I heard one woman mutter to her child that the machine wasn't working. Of course it was working; she just didn't know how to use it. And she didn't know how to use it because rather than spending time finding out she wanted to get out quick and spare herself any more embarrassment. If they would just put up a sign or two ...


And current weather watch. It has gone beyond the joke stage to one where it is now a bit serious. The fifth weekend in succession that has been washed out. It chucked it down again yesterday. Still, maybe a few enterprising supermarkets have been getting in stocks of umbrellas, but I wouldn't bank on it.


QUIZ
Chain - Geoff Downes who was part of Buggles. And what about the Buggles takes us to Yes and "Owner of a Lonely Heart"? Yesterday's title - Harry Nilsson. Today's title - who did this?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

Red Red Wine

I have some favourite expressions. You might recall my using “like shooting fish in a barrel”. There is another – “local colour”. Local colour, for me, is local characters, local oddballs. There is local colour at the Eroski supermarket on the carretera opposite the Campsa garage in Puerto Alcúdia. Some of you might know him. In summer, he bends balloons for the kids, directs cars and accepts euros from the shopping-trolleys. But he is all-year local colour. Hard though I have tried, I cannot make sense of anything he says, and I have given up trying to work out his name. He is a thoroughly nice chap.

Years ago in west London, there was a significant amount of local colour. In addition to the manic street preacher who ranted on one’s route to and from the shopping mall, there were the winos. There was one in particular. He and his colleagues used to frequent a launderette – for the warmth one presumes. A friend overheard him mumbling one day. What he said was this: “I’m not a drinker, I’m a deep thinker.” From this utterance came what were known for many years in that part of London as “men of ideas”. And men of ideas, such as this one chap, always came with an accessory – a dog. His dog used to wear tinsel as its own accessory, for much of the year it wore tinsel. You would see a flash of tinsel haring along the Uxbridge Road, attached to a dog at high speed in full barking mode in pursuit of the 83 or 297 bus. Dogs of ideas.

Our Eroski friend has a dog, well a few actually, or at least a few who accompany him on his daily routine – whatever that is – outside and sometimes inside the supermarket. Recently, two puppies have joined the kennels. Like all puppies, they have taken cute lessons, and like all puppies, they get everywhere, outside and sometimes inside the supermarket. Dogs in the supermarket. Dogs in the arms of the girls working there. The puppy put down, the girl who served me did wipe her hands on some kitchen towel. Am I bothered? Not really. But then I’m a sucker for puppies and a sucker for local colour. I should take to spending my days outside a supermarket. Fresh air, plenty of people to talk to – incomprehensibly admittedly – dogs to play with. I wouldn’t graduate to the Masters level of men of ideas. The chap outside Eroski doesn’t appear to have either. I have never seen him actually drinking, though there is a mate who pops in for the occasional bottle of cheap plonk or sherry.

Perhaps I would were it not for the fact that Eroski have their own idea of local colour. Outside and inside the supermarket, they are painting it … red: the cage over the grocery section, red; the posts by the checkouts, red; the whole of the front of the store, red; even the streetlights, red. Whose idea is that? Could only have been dreamt up by a man of ideas. Red for blood. Red for danger. Red for offensive, meant both as an insult and as in American Football’s “offense”. Local colour.


NATIONAL ANTHEM UPDATE
The Spanish Olympic Committee has dropped the proposed lyrics after all. There was not a "consensus", they say. Hum on.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Ian Dury And The Blockheads. Today’s title – ok, UB40 easy, but who wrote it?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)