In The Blink Of An Eye: Pickpocketing

I cannot explain why, but in an Eroski store yesterday I suddenly turned my head. What I saw in that flash was a woman, tall, in a greyish sort of dress. In front of her was a boy, her son, with a cap on. Why had I suddenly looked at them? I don't know. But what I didn't see was the whole picture. A moment or so later, while I was studying the green peppers in the greengrocery section, I heard a wail and a crying. It was the woman. A member of staff came to her. She had been robbed. Her purse had been lifted from her bag.

I have, or try to have, an acute sense of where I am. Especially in supermarkets in summer. As I enter I look at people. As I go along aisles, I am looking at people. Turning and glancing. I know to be aware. I have seen it happen too often. Or have I? There was one time, in front of the same supermarket, I could see it unfolding. The woman approached the two tourists. But I didn't see it. I knew what was happening but I didn't see. Or maybe I did but a momentary sense of disbelief, a suspension of belief had prevented me from seeing. My mouth went temporarily dumb. By the time I shouted and ran up to the two tourists, she had gone. Nowhere. She had evaporated.

There is an article on the BBC website about how pickpockets use not so much sleight of hand but tricks to fool the mind. The article says, among other things, that "our brains come pretty much hard-wired to be tricked, thanks to the vagaries of our attention and perception systems" and that "(pickpocketing) is as much about capturing all of somebody's attention with other movements", "it's complete attentional overload".

The article talks about how specific movements can fool us. Moving the hand in an arc is far better at holding our attention to the end point of the movement than moving the hand in a straight line. This has to do with saccade, the fast movement of the eye. In a straight line, there is a blind period. With an arc, there is no blind period, the eye follows the movement continuously.

I'm not saying that hand movements or other attention-changing means have been adopted by pickpockets at the supermarket and nor am I saying that I had some sixth sense which made me seemingly involuntarily and suddenly turn and look at the woman, but I am saying that even being hyper-alert or aware can be of little use if the brain is tricked. If it fails to see. Something had made me want to look but then, for whatever reason, I didn't see. After the event, I remembered there was someone else.

In this moment of a blink of an eye, of a trick of the mind, of guard going down, of unawareness, a holiday was ruined. The woman, Russian, was in a desperate state. She was still in a desperate state outside the store where she was waiting for her husband. Between her blubs she said that she had been abroad many times and that nothing like this had ever happened.

Her desperation was all the greater because she had been abandoned. I hadn't initially noticed the other child in the buggy. Now I did. The woman looked as though she was pregnant. What could I say to her?  Why, she asked, were there no cameras in the store? Why indeed? And why no security? Or why is not possible for a victim to be given some help by the store? Why is she left outside in the sun, sobbing, waiting for her husband?

It happens all the time of course. Opportunistic pickpocketing, the flower women, the professional gangs, the bumpers-into, the distractors, the total-attention-grabbers, the ones with hand movements. They are all here. It happens all the time. You should have taken greater care, been more aware. Ah yes, more aware. But sometimes even the aware can be tricked.

I discovered later, was told anyway, that literature advising of potential risks such as pickpocketing was not produced because it would create a "bad image". How much bad image do the resorts need which is the product of inaction, inertia and a failure to warn? How much bad image through there being no assistance for a distraught tourist?

I now have a mobile phone number for the tourist police in Alcúdia. But who else has the number? Supermarkets? Bars? And is the number for the SPAT police, the agents unveiled in May who can assist tourists in their own language? One of whom, it might just have been hoped, could have come to the help of a Russian tourist abandoned outside a supermarket.

* http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140629-how-pickpockets-trick-your-mind

So Many Men No-One Needs

Further evidence as to the problems of finding employment comes from the hoteliers and unions who are admitting that some who do get work in the hotel sector this season may get contracts for as short a period as two months. While July and August will doubtless see the "no vacancies" signs being put up by fully occupied hotels, there is a similar sign being raised in May, June and September and October when it comes to job vacancies. It's a pretty awful situation, one compounded by the numbers who arrive from the mainland and other countries looking for seasonal work. They're not going to get it. There was a lad in a bar the other day who was in desperate need of finding something or deciding to take up the option of a flight back to the UK. Maybe building was also an option? Where? Not in summer. And why would a builder take on someone who can't speak the language, even if he did have work? Communication is a pretty basic element in these health and safety times on construction sites. It's not going to happen.

As the hotels and other businesses look to get by with what staff they do have and consider employing people at the last minute nearer to the high season, the ramifications are not good. Work for a couple of months will not be sufficient to qualify for winter handouts through the social. This will just exacerbate the already lunatic situation caused by seasonality. If nothing else, perhaps the current economic problems will have made politicians really wake up from the complacency that strong summer seasons have caused and from the coma of an economy that never was that fundamentally strong. How can it be when, come 1 November, so many troop off to claim their entitlements? Not that this so many will be joined this November by those with just a couple of months work under their belts.

Against this background, one does worry about the social consequences. Crime is just one aspect. And on this ... the flower-conveying pickpockets are in action again. There was a victim along The Mile a couple of days ago. A previous target of these charmers raised the subject with the tour rep who said the matter would be mentioned and a warning given at the next welcome meeting. It wasn't. And the reason why not was that it was bad publicity. Why is warning people against pickpocketing bad publicity? I'll tell you what is, people who do get pickpocketed and then go and tell the world on the internet. Are the tour reps in the real world? Do they not understand that there is a vast communication system out there that doesn't care about so-called bad publicity, and I suppose you could include this blog in that. However, I do care, as do those who post to whatever forum issuing their own warnings. Telling people about the possibility of being fined for purchasing dodgy CDs would probably also be classified as "bad publicity". It's not quite the same as people dropping dead in the streets with swine flu. That would be bad publicity.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Genesis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d7B00rmBRE). Today's title - and women. Something of a chain thing here with yesterday.

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Pick Up The Pieces

He was an elderly gentleman. He couldn't move very quickly. He was shouting after a portly man in a green top and red shorts. His wife came out of the supermarket. She looked at me. Her husband had a heart condition. He had been pickpocketed.

I drove down the side road by Eroski and pulled the car up in front of green top. A very large English tourist was making his way down the road as well. Eventually the elderly gentleman arrived as well. Green top turned his pockets out. Nothing. The elderly gentleman was convinced. I was threatening a call to the police, but it would have been a waste of time. There was nothing. Maybe it was a mistake. I apologised to green top. He apologised. I'm not quite sure why; probably as he didn't actually have the missing wallet. Perhaps he had slipped it to an accomplice. Or it was just a mistake.

It had happened in the Eroski store, the same one out front of which had occurred the pickpocketing by a carnation seller that I spoke about back in March. The very large English tourist commented that you don't expect this sort of thing to happen here. Unfortunately, you do, or should. And so the elderly gentleman with the heart condition went back to the Platja D'Or to report his cards missing, his money gone, his hotel key also gone; at least they could issue him with a re-programmed one.

Then this morning. Playa de Muro's municipal buiilding. There are several people sitting and waiting to see the Guardia. A rep is with one old couple and she is talking with one of the staff at reception, explaining what has been taken; the receptionist says she will help to file the statement with the Guardia.

Petty crime. And it can ruin a holiday. Get your pocket picked, and you are left to try and pick up the pieces of not only what has been stolen but also the shock of its occurrence and the negativity of the experience. It can stain one's attitude to a place. It can happen anywhere, but one just worries that there is more of it about, and that it might increase. The UK Home Office has predicted a rise in property crime as recession bites. There's no reason to think it will be any different here.


OPEN-WATER SWIMMING
This Saturday (6 September) will see the latest annual "Travessa-Xtreme", the open-water swimming race from Formentor beach to the San Pedro cove in Mal Pas, a 7 kilometre dash and splash of foam, arms and legs across the bay of Pollensa, except of course it is no dash - it takes nearly two hours for Olympic swimmers to do the 10 kilometre race. It is a popular event, one about which enquiries are made to the websites from the UK. At its competitive level, the Travessa reflects the interest in the Olympics open-water swimming, which proved to be a surprisingly engrossing spectator event, not least because of the heroics of Natalie du Toit and Maarten van der Weijden. At a recreational level, open-water swimming is becoming an increasingly popular active form of holiday, but not, as far as I am aware, in Mallorca. Maybe someone can put me right on that. It could be that open waters around the island can just be too turbulent, no more so than in Pollensa bay. For the competitive swimmer, an aggressive freestyle in the swirl may be a challenge; less so perhaps for the recreational swimmer bobbing along gently with a girly breaststroke.

More information about the swim is to be found on the WHAT'S ON BLOG. Note that there is also a swim on 20 September.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Banderas, "This Is Your Life" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rcLLa5mPvU). Today's title - instrumental plus this line: easy.

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Pick A Pocket Or Two

Do you recall the ad for "The Guardian" newspaper, the one in which it looks as though a skinhead is about to attack a businessman, but it turns out he is going to push him away from falling scaffolding? Things are not always as they seem. I thought initially that it wasn't as it seemed. There was only one of them after all. I had always thought there would be two. The exchange ended with smiles, a few seconds later the day had been turned upside down. How long does it take to make a perfectly normal day less than normal? Not long at all.

It was because there was only one that I thought maybe it was not what immediately came to mind, that it had, after all, been just the offer of two carnations for two Germans who appeared enchanted at the flowers. I only saw her walk off as I pulled up. It was not as though I saw the whole thing. Then a few seconds passed before the realisation. He ran after her, I ran after him, but where the Hell had she gone? I drove off along the carretera, into the sides roads by the lake. Disappeared. Into thin air. No trace. Disappeared with 300 euros.

It happened in front of the Eroski Syp supermarket in Puerto Alcúdia, opposite the Ivory Playa. That was the other thing. It seemed like an innocuous place for it to happen. I should know better.

Description: apologies but I cannot help saying Romany appearance, woman, quite tall, long black hair, mid 40s perhaps, wearing I think a kind of leopard-skin affair.

Carnation sellers. They are not what they seem. Avoid them or raise a hue and cry or perhaps use that scream and finger-point of identification that was in "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers".


QUIZ
Yesterday - Gene Hunt - "The Jean Genie" (Bowie). Today's title - what musical? Very, very easy.

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