Well, where did that go? Summer. I know, I know, there are three weeks until the equinox but September cannot disguise its name. It is a synonym for an ending, for a hastening descent towards the real end: September and summer, slip sliding away.
The natural rhythm of summer and so also its September conclusion has been disrupted. Once upon a time, in an English sense, September was a month of the Gillette final, misty morns, the occasional summer of an Indian variety and the start of the autumn TV series, timed to climax with the family glued to the box at Christmas. Now even "X Factor" starts in August, thus maximising the potential for the latest victorious product of the Cowell factory to ratchet up ever more million-plus sales in the pre-Christmas chart race.
Oh for the days of yore when a dewy Lord's would stage the season's final, played by cricketers knackered from having shoehorned into August roughly eight three-day matches, four one-dayers and the occasional festival match against the tourists. What do we have now? England's one-day captain, Eoin Morgan, takes the whole of August off, having managed a less than impressive three-ball duck in his last match on 1 August. 'Twas never thus.
All the while of course, footballing hegemony has edged closer to 365 days a year. Even without there being matches, there is the transfer window and the consequent opportunities for 24-hour sports news to blather on about the likelihood of an Armenian centre-back making his way to Burnley. (All other sorts of options are available.) With the Premier League reversing in Cowell-like stealth fashion to an ever earlier start, this does bring joy to the Brit bars of old Mallorca: one more weekend of nectar, an amber one, the tills overflowing with the revenues of Fosters or Saint Mick.
The bars, however, like Septembers and not just because of the football. August, the main summer month, does not necessarily bring forth foaming rivers of gold: too many damn families not out on the lash, assuming they have been let out of their all-inclusive internment camps, that is. Whatever movements there are, sporting or otherwise, in the UK or other main markets have generally small disruptive impact on tourism. It is as it has been for many a year, August giving way to the September prospect of greater spend per head of tourist population.
Yet in a different sense - Mallorca's political summer - there is disruption. Massive disruption. For one particular observer, let's say myself, there is much to be said for Eoin Morgan's desire to recharge energy levels through an August lay-off. Chance would be a fine thing. Through the enervating heat and increasing humidity of August, there has been no time to rest, to recharge, to recuperate. The politicians have denied themselves adequate periods of lounging on a beach, away from the machinations of politicking. They have been too damn noisy. They have, as a consequence, demanded too much attention.
If not the tourism minister Barceló charging around resorts with which he was presumably unfamiliar, then it has been the president and her aide at finance, Cladera, issuing daily bulletins (sic) regarding the parlous state of Balearic finances: all with a target date in mind, that of tomorrow, 2 September. The great meeting with Rajoy at which Armengol will hope but doubtless fail to extract any less parsimony than at present has overshadowed the rare shade of August. The month was one of a carefully crafted propaganda event, laying the groundwork for public opinion when the Rajoy-Armengol summit goes in a direction opposite to that which Armengol might have wanted.
It was a month when there was too much of the politics thing, bolstered by the 24-hour news chatter of the eco-tax: a subject of speculation like the transfer window and no less capable of endless comment. And then there were the appointments, those of senior officials, about which there were disagreements among the partners of government. How could the politicians have relaxed, taken August off when they had eyes constantly trained on what their so-called partners were up to and their potential infidelities?
With so many of them new to all this, it has not been surprising that they have chosen not to stay silent. Plus, they are of the new age, when a politician needs to be able to demonstrate - transparently - that he or she is earning the crust granted by the citizens' taxes, even if this means getting it wrong. Far better to be seen to be doing and speaking, rather than not doing and keeping mum.
This is not how August should be though. Not in Mallorca. Everything is meant to close down. The rhythm has been disrupted. And now it's September. Oh well, soon be Christmas.
Showing posts with label Summer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 01, 2015
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Un-Weather: Retail and alcohol therapy
In the days, and there were once such days, when I enjoyed a holiday - a summer holiday, of the type which Cliff had invented - there would be this occasional bad dream. Maybe Bomb The Bass were to blame. They had, after all, or rather he had - Tim Simenon - provided the electronic lament "Winter in July". Into the dream would come snow: right around the time when the plane was on the tarmac ready to whisk us away to hot and sunny climes.
Fortunately, it was only a bad dream. Snow in summer never materialised. Climate change hadn't been that dramatic in spinning in a different direction and creating the new Ice Age. But the realisation did occasionally involve precipitation. Rain. And a glowering sky. What a strange word "glower" is. The addition of two letters and a change in pronunciation converts "glow" into the complete opposite. The Germanic branch line of English is to blame for a glowering sky, and the German language is littered with the vocabulary of meteorological foreboding and pragmatism: the frightening "Gewitter" or the explanatory "Unwetter", un-weather, a word of linguistic genius.
Likewise, Spanish has granted us "tormenta": the torment of weather akin to the tormenta of a differing kind - that which the Inquisition engaged itself in. The national meteorological agency tells us, and it is not wrong in this regard, that tormenta in August is not uncommon, but it is knowledge dissemination greeted with little satisfaction. When the sky glowers, when the rains doth fall, what the hell is there to do?
It is the lament of many parts of coastal resort Mallorca that if, only temporarily, one part of the sun-and-beach equation is removed (meaning, in practice, that both are), there is nothing to do. An answer is to get hold of the last available hire car in town and head off in a storm in order to go and get soaked somewhere else. Or to make the pilgrimage of the car-rental sector to the capital, and bring Palma to a standstill in the process. The Cathedral car park, the only one most visitors are familiar with, creates its own traffic jam. The inner lane of the Paseo Marítimo becomes almost impassable because of the queue to get in. If you can get in.
Palma does, though, provide a clue to the bad-weather conundrum as it offers the palliative of retail therapy for the beach-denied. Shops have been reporting that business is up by 40% in some instances. For the retailers, it might as well, as Carole King once observed, rain until September. What is everyone buying? They'll be declaring a crisis in the umbrella market on account of the shortage. Supply, demand, and the price of umbrellas suddenly sky rockets. But if shopping is the principal alternative, then the regional government might pay heed. Its anger at the "aggression" of Madrid and national government's constitutional challenge to local law limiting vast retail centres should be diluted. In the absence of fallback theme park and attraction alternatives in most of Mallorca, there should be vast retail palaces, prepared to admit the beach diaspora a couple of times each high summer.
Were they ever to get round to developing theme parks or at least attractions on any type of scale away from the thematic epicentre of the island's south-west, here's a suggestion. The Noah's Ark theme park. It is surely a better idea than that Christian theme park thing, about which we mercifully no longer hear anything. Animals two by two. A zoo perched above the floods. Perfect for the conversion of old arks which are lying around and rotting in small ports of the Mallorcan coast. There won't, of course, ever be such attractions. For the same reason as there won't be vast retail malls. It's the environment, stupid, the one that is buried under the weight of the car-rental sector when the un-weather rains of August are unleashed in their torment.
The shopping solution, and the impressive sales figures, will presumably reveal a sudden and high upward blip on the tourist spend monitor, and in so doing will contradict a further lament - that of the all-inclusive killing the complementary sector. Yet, it should be acknowledged that not all all-inclusive comes with an economy-class rating. It is here, at the lower end of all-inclusive, where the greatest torment is felt. Receptionists reduced to tears by guests demanding they do something about the weather, demanding that they tell them what to do. Deprived of the yellow thing, even low-grade beer, never tasty anyway, tastes that much less tasty when the sun don't shine. Drink, nonetheless, is an option, and not one that requires hiring a car in order to sit in a queue for a car-parking space. The bars love a good spot of un-weather.
Fortunately, it was only a bad dream. Snow in summer never materialised. Climate change hadn't been that dramatic in spinning in a different direction and creating the new Ice Age. But the realisation did occasionally involve precipitation. Rain. And a glowering sky. What a strange word "glower" is. The addition of two letters and a change in pronunciation converts "glow" into the complete opposite. The Germanic branch line of English is to blame for a glowering sky, and the German language is littered with the vocabulary of meteorological foreboding and pragmatism: the frightening "Gewitter" or the explanatory "Unwetter", un-weather, a word of linguistic genius.
Likewise, Spanish has granted us "tormenta": the torment of weather akin to the tormenta of a differing kind - that which the Inquisition engaged itself in. The national meteorological agency tells us, and it is not wrong in this regard, that tormenta in August is not uncommon, but it is knowledge dissemination greeted with little satisfaction. When the sky glowers, when the rains doth fall, what the hell is there to do?
It is the lament of many parts of coastal resort Mallorca that if, only temporarily, one part of the sun-and-beach equation is removed (meaning, in practice, that both are), there is nothing to do. An answer is to get hold of the last available hire car in town and head off in a storm in order to go and get soaked somewhere else. Or to make the pilgrimage of the car-rental sector to the capital, and bring Palma to a standstill in the process. The Cathedral car park, the only one most visitors are familiar with, creates its own traffic jam. The inner lane of the Paseo Marítimo becomes almost impassable because of the queue to get in. If you can get in.
Palma does, though, provide a clue to the bad-weather conundrum as it offers the palliative of retail therapy for the beach-denied. Shops have been reporting that business is up by 40% in some instances. For the retailers, it might as well, as Carole King once observed, rain until September. What is everyone buying? They'll be declaring a crisis in the umbrella market on account of the shortage. Supply, demand, and the price of umbrellas suddenly sky rockets. But if shopping is the principal alternative, then the regional government might pay heed. Its anger at the "aggression" of Madrid and national government's constitutional challenge to local law limiting vast retail centres should be diluted. In the absence of fallback theme park and attraction alternatives in most of Mallorca, there should be vast retail palaces, prepared to admit the beach diaspora a couple of times each high summer.
Were they ever to get round to developing theme parks or at least attractions on any type of scale away from the thematic epicentre of the island's south-west, here's a suggestion. The Noah's Ark theme park. It is surely a better idea than that Christian theme park thing, about which we mercifully no longer hear anything. Animals two by two. A zoo perched above the floods. Perfect for the conversion of old arks which are lying around and rotting in small ports of the Mallorcan coast. There won't, of course, ever be such attractions. For the same reason as there won't be vast retail malls. It's the environment, stupid, the one that is buried under the weight of the car-rental sector when the un-weather rains of August are unleashed in their torment.
The shopping solution, and the impressive sales figures, will presumably reveal a sudden and high upward blip on the tourist spend monitor, and in so doing will contradict a further lament - that of the all-inclusive killing the complementary sector. Yet, it should be acknowledged that not all all-inclusive comes with an economy-class rating. It is here, at the lower end of all-inclusive, where the greatest torment is felt. Receptionists reduced to tears by guests demanding they do something about the weather, demanding that they tell them what to do. Deprived of the yellow thing, even low-grade beer, never tasty anyway, tastes that much less tasty when the sun don't shine. Drink, nonetheless, is an option, and not one that requires hiring a car in order to sit in a queue for a car-parking space. The bars love a good spot of un-weather.
Thursday, July 09, 2015
A Summer In Mallorca: Heat and novels
According to one particular website, the highest temperature ever recorded in Spain was in Murcia on 29 July 1876. It was 47.8C. After this is another high in Murcia, a slightly lower 47.2C on 4 July 1994. Then come Badajoz in Extremadura on 26 June 1864 with 47C and three positively shivering recordings of only 46.6C at Moron de la Frontera (Seville) on 19 July 1967 and on 23 July 1995 in both Cordoba and Seville. Palma, which for the purposes of these records appears to mean the whole of the Balearics, is quite a long way off the pace: 40.6C at Son Sant Joan airport on 30 July 1983.
You do have to be careful with these records though. The Murcia 1876 temperature is considered unreliable as indeed are ones which have been pretty well discarded from meteorological history - the 51C and 50C of Seville in 1876 and 1881. The Murcia 1994 temperature, however, is reliable. Officially, it is the highest temperature ever recorded: 116.9 in old Fahrenheit money. It is important in the context of Mallorca's weather, too. At the time of that particular ultra-heatwave, the highest temperature in Mallorca was registered, and it was 44.2C in Muro: the Palma high eleven years before didn't even come close.
When the temperatures get as high as they do, though not as high as 1994, they are treated as unusual events and so evidence of something or other. They may indeed be evidence of something or other, or they may just be relatively common. Those unreliable highs back in the nineteenth century will have had some basis in meteorological fact and they would have doubtless coincided with exceptionally high temperatures in Mallorca, though what these might have been is not possible to say as there are no records.
As I write this, the thermometer not far away inland is - according to AEMET - nudging the 40 mark. It nudged it and passed it three years ago at roughly the same time of year. Evidence of something or other. Which may just be that this summer will bear a great deal of similarity to that of 2003: Spain's hottest in terms of duration if not specific records. For almost three months, nighttime temperatures didn't fall below 20C, while daytime highs were not under 30C. If this summer does turn out to be a virtual mirror of 2003, then expect an almighty great storm as 31 August becomes 1 September, which is what happened that year.
It would be nice, mainly because I have a like of unearthing less than well known anniversaries, to be able to apply an anniversary to this summer's weather, but there isn't one which suggests itself. Instead, and because the high temperatures will inspire some to wax lyrically or more likely in clichéd terms, there is a summer literary anniversary which should be remembered. The year in question was forty years ago, so 1975. It was the year when a novel appeared entitled "A Summer in Mallorca". Or more accurately, it was "Un estiu a Mallorca", as its author was Majorcan, and his name was Llorenç Villalonga.
For the uninitiated, Villalonga is generally regarded as Mallorca's greatest novelist. As such, and because he was mightily influenced by the likes of Proust, he wasn't the sort to be inclined to pay overly much attention to the accuracies or otherwise of weather records (which had, by the time he wrote the novel, been systematically kept for some years by then). Instead, he devoted an entire novel - his last - to what was in essence an ironic refuting of George Sand's "A Winter in Mallorca", or "Un hiver à Majorque", given that she was French.
It's a curious novel in which Sand herself is referred to and blended with an of-the-times female writer, a character called Sílvia Ocampo, whose resemblance to the real Sílvina Ocampo (note the distinguishing "n") is only passing, other than that the character is a writer.
Villalonga based his novel forty years before he wrote it, and so the Mallorca of his summer wasn't vastly different to how it would have been had Sand spent a summer rather than a winter in Mallorca: a hundred years hadn't really changed Mallorca fundamentally.
It would have been more instructive, for those of us in contemporary tourism times, had the novel been based in 1975, but then it couldn't have been because in effect Villalonga was placing Sand in 1935, a time when more aristocratic women were still to the fore, which wasn't the case by 1975. So his summer in Mallorca is only partially (very partially) a reflection of a Mallorcan summer as it now is, and so, as with other aspects of modern Mallorca, there is a great work about the summer waiting to be written. Until such time, we'll have to content ourselves with descriptions of how hot it is.
You do have to be careful with these records though. The Murcia 1876 temperature is considered unreliable as indeed are ones which have been pretty well discarded from meteorological history - the 51C and 50C of Seville in 1876 and 1881. The Murcia 1994 temperature, however, is reliable. Officially, it is the highest temperature ever recorded: 116.9 in old Fahrenheit money. It is important in the context of Mallorca's weather, too. At the time of that particular ultra-heatwave, the highest temperature in Mallorca was registered, and it was 44.2C in Muro: the Palma high eleven years before didn't even come close.
When the temperatures get as high as they do, though not as high as 1994, they are treated as unusual events and so evidence of something or other. They may indeed be evidence of something or other, or they may just be relatively common. Those unreliable highs back in the nineteenth century will have had some basis in meteorological fact and they would have doubtless coincided with exceptionally high temperatures in Mallorca, though what these might have been is not possible to say as there are no records.
As I write this, the thermometer not far away inland is - according to AEMET - nudging the 40 mark. It nudged it and passed it three years ago at roughly the same time of year. Evidence of something or other. Which may just be that this summer will bear a great deal of similarity to that of 2003: Spain's hottest in terms of duration if not specific records. For almost three months, nighttime temperatures didn't fall below 20C, while daytime highs were not under 30C. If this summer does turn out to be a virtual mirror of 2003, then expect an almighty great storm as 31 August becomes 1 September, which is what happened that year.
It would be nice, mainly because I have a like of unearthing less than well known anniversaries, to be able to apply an anniversary to this summer's weather, but there isn't one which suggests itself. Instead, and because the high temperatures will inspire some to wax lyrically or more likely in clichéd terms, there is a summer literary anniversary which should be remembered. The year in question was forty years ago, so 1975. It was the year when a novel appeared entitled "A Summer in Mallorca". Or more accurately, it was "Un estiu a Mallorca", as its author was Majorcan, and his name was Llorenç Villalonga.
For the uninitiated, Villalonga is generally regarded as Mallorca's greatest novelist. As such, and because he was mightily influenced by the likes of Proust, he wasn't the sort to be inclined to pay overly much attention to the accuracies or otherwise of weather records (which had, by the time he wrote the novel, been systematically kept for some years by then). Instead, he devoted an entire novel - his last - to what was in essence an ironic refuting of George Sand's "A Winter in Mallorca", or "Un hiver à Majorque", given that she was French.
It's a curious novel in which Sand herself is referred to and blended with an of-the-times female writer, a character called Sílvia Ocampo, whose resemblance to the real Sílvina Ocampo (note the distinguishing "n") is only passing, other than that the character is a writer.
Villalonga based his novel forty years before he wrote it, and so the Mallorca of his summer wasn't vastly different to how it would have been had Sand spent a summer rather than a winter in Mallorca: a hundred years hadn't really changed Mallorca fundamentally.
It would have been more instructive, for those of us in contemporary tourism times, had the novel been based in 1975, but then it couldn't have been because in effect Villalonga was placing Sand in 1935, a time when more aristocratic women were still to the fore, which wasn't the case by 1975. So his summer in Mallorca is only partially (very partially) a reflection of a Mallorcan summer as it now is, and so, as with other aspects of modern Mallorca, there is a great work about the summer waiting to be written. Until such time, we'll have to content ourselves with descriptions of how hot it is.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
All Summer Long
I can't wait till October. I even found myself saying it yesterday. What on Earth was I thinking? Well I know what I was thinking. Having been up and out early to do the hotel rounds (if it was Monday it had to be Can Picafort) and having been doing much the same for God knows how many weeks, I thought - jeez, I could do with it being October. You what. Why would you wish the summer away? There are, after all, worse things that I could be doing than visiting hotels and tourist offices and rent-a-car offices and golf clubs and shops and ... and and and ... across the northern zone - oh and the airport. Worse things like running a bar. Now that can be tough. And it is in bars that you most often hear the bring-on-October refrain. The wish falls into two categories - we're so busy, we're knackered or the season's been rubbish, can't wait for it to end. On balance I guess most would opt for the former. If it's the latter, don't go wishing too swift an end to this season - there's next year to come yet. Then there are also those who want the more moderate weather of October (save for the tornadoes if this one is like the last) because it's been and is too hot. I don't quite get this one. Why are people living here? Isn't heat a part of the whole deal?
October does start to loom in the mind around this time in August. It may well still be high summer with temperatures due to be nudging the 100 mark again today, the beaches and the poolsides may well be packed, but the middle of August brings with it a psychological shift. For some it is that the end is in sight, albeit that the season is effectively still less than two-thirds through; for others it is the realisation that it (summer) is going to peter out in the not too distant future. Whatever one says, one lives for the summer. Back at the start of June for instance, the summer seems infinite. Time plays strange tricks with the mind. Now there are but three weeks till September; September that feels like the leftovers after the meal. Winter is not far away. This psychology is of course the same elsewhere, but for somewhere that lives for summer it is accentuated. And this year there is the concern that the looming winter will be harsh - not necessarily in terms of the weather but from the point of view of mere living. The summer may have been difficult for many; winter will be even more so. It is rare, but this season staff have been laid off by businesses sustained by tourism. The cycle of economic difficulty only speeds up during winter. For some, it is a question of how can they survive; what will they have to live on. And they will be willing the return of summer, but willing a return, one fears, with little confidence.
MARKETS
Following on from yesterday, I have to hold my hand up and say that I got it wrong. The "market" in the paseo is not a market at all; it is just things like kids' "workshops". I really must not trust to reports and town-hall handouts. Like the chill-out zone on the beach, far better to check it out personally. Should have known better. Anyway, it doesn't change the basic idea of yesterday's piece but I have re-written the end so as to reflect better what actually is going on. Apologies for that.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Kooks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yCvYA3t6Mc). Today's title - personally I can't understand why this is such a big hit.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
October does start to loom in the mind around this time in August. It may well still be high summer with temperatures due to be nudging the 100 mark again today, the beaches and the poolsides may well be packed, but the middle of August brings with it a psychological shift. For some it is that the end is in sight, albeit that the season is effectively still less than two-thirds through; for others it is the realisation that it (summer) is going to peter out in the not too distant future. Whatever one says, one lives for the summer. Back at the start of June for instance, the summer seems infinite. Time plays strange tricks with the mind. Now there are but three weeks till September; September that feels like the leftovers after the meal. Winter is not far away. This psychology is of course the same elsewhere, but for somewhere that lives for summer it is accentuated. And this year there is the concern that the looming winter will be harsh - not necessarily in terms of the weather but from the point of view of mere living. The summer may have been difficult for many; winter will be even more so. It is rare, but this season staff have been laid off by businesses sustained by tourism. The cycle of economic difficulty only speeds up during winter. For some, it is a question of how can they survive; what will they have to live on. And they will be willing the return of summer, but willing a return, one fears, with little confidence.
MARKETS
Following on from yesterday, I have to hold my hand up and say that I got it wrong. The "market" in the paseo is not a market at all; it is just things like kids' "workshops". I really must not trust to reports and town-hall handouts. Like the chill-out zone on the beach, far better to check it out personally. Should have known better. Anyway, it doesn't change the basic idea of yesterday's piece but I have re-written the end so as to reflect better what actually is going on. Apologies for that.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Kooks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yCvYA3t6Mc). Today's title - personally I can't understand why this is such a big hit.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
