The Smells Of Mallorca’s Summer

“How the smell from a grill could spark up nostalgia.” (Will Smith, aka The Fresh Prince, “Summertime”.)

The evening air is a mixed grill: the charring from charcoal of meats and sardines, the bay leaves or sage tossed onto the coals, the marinades of paprika and cumin. Suspended over neighbourhoods is an invitation to succulence that never tastes quite the same as it does from a barbecue. The smell is the invitation. It hangs also over whole streets of restaurants, blending its aromas with curries and with the syrupy, oil-flamed egg of the pancake man.

These are the smells of summer.

Bacon frying in the morning. The accumulation of breakfast lingering outside a hotel. Chicken on a spit at a supermarket. The sobrasadas and other sausages of a delicatessen, bunched together in smoked and spiced clumps of charcuterie. The vinegar and oil of a Mallorcan salad and the garlic of aioli. Wet fish at the merchants or, for early birds, at the quayside. Melon and pineapple newly sliced.

A sniff of oak and caramel from a chilled white wine. Mint from a mojito. Coffee percolating on the stove. Dregs of San Miguel left in glasses overnight to go flat.

The raspberry of a mignonette, honeysuckle, the startling recognition of rosemary as you walk through a woods, and grass being cut while there is still a dew.

Vanilla-piped fragrance in a hotel lobby or the non-air-conditioned clinging of meat fat to the walls and atmosphere of a different hotel.

An old familiarity but a rarity, like that of British seaside; slimy green seaweed on flat rocks and the pervasive fishiness of sea. Coconut suntan lotion. The staleness of salt on a crusty beach towel that needs washing. And salt in the hair and on the skin. The cologne from a face and body freshener.

Chlorine from an over-active open-air swimming-pool. What may have been left in the swimming-pool.

Sweat and body odours. Trainers left on the terrace to be aired. Vomit outside a bar at three in the morning. Sewage from a cracked cesspit, pumped out by the Colis wagon and spewing onto the road. The general-rubbish wheely-bin before it gets collected. The garden-rubbish wheely with a few day’s worth of mulching leaves. Fumes from buses, coaches, lorries or cars long past their MOT sell-by dates or long without regular maintenance.

The burnt sulphuric gas from the marshes in the wetlands, a peculiarly reassuring odour that sits in a still air like a bouquet of molasses from a brewery, captured by the misty ozone of an English autumn morning, or which is wafted by breezes as though they were carrying the smoke of a forest fire. And then there is also the smoke from a forest fire.

The gunpowder from a fireworks display. The petrol of flame-throwing demons. The respiratory-assaulting toxicity of deltamethrin sprayed from a Zum ant-killer can. The lavender of a loo’s air freshener. The citronella of mosquito repellent. The ammonia of jellyfish treatment.

The damp wool after a burst of summer rain. The Alpine pine of a tiled floor freshly swabbed. The mango or apple of shower gel. Sheets drying on a washing line.

The pear drops of a hire car interior hopefully cleaned. The baking rubber of a hosepipe left in the sun. Cigarette smoke blowing across from the neighbour’s terrace.

The cleanness of glossy print in an information centre. The collision of Armani, Givenchy and Chanel testers in a perfumery. The leather of a shoe, handbag and jacket shop.

Plastic lilos and footballs new from the shop. Pages of a novel to be leafed through for the first time. Sandwiches in foil when the cool box is opened. Diesel from the glass-bottomed boat brought in on a shorebound wind.

And there are more. The smells of summer. Mallorca’s olfactory entertainment and nasal seduction. We are intoxicated by the sights of Mallorca, but we pay less attention to how the other senses are stimulated. The sounds of Mallorca could be for another time. For now, make the most of the smells of Mallorca’s summer, while they and while it lasts.

And what are your smells of summer?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Immaculate Misconceptions: Mallorca’s holidays

There are misconceptions surrounding public holidays in Mallorca, not least the misconception related to the day off for Immaculate Conception. It is not the day when Mary was mysteriously taken by the Holy Ghost, or whoever it was; that was in fact on 25 March, which isn’t a public holiday. What makes 8 December immaculate is that this was when Mary was conceived. Or at least I think that’s what it’s all about, unless I am labouring under a misconception. Or maybe Mary went into labour having had a misconception. I really don’t know. But on 1 May I wouldn’t be labouring under a misconception, as this is Labour Day. So, no chance of getting that wrong.

What there is every chance of is forgetting that a public holiday is a public holiday because it does not coincide with one from the land in which one was raised, as is the case with Immaculate Conception. The misconception, however, is that there is a public holiday in Mallorca approximately every fortnight. In England there are eight holiday days, in Mallorca there are thirteen. So, not so many more after all.

However, there is a bit of latitude. Officially, any municipality can have a maximum of fourteen holidays a year, which gives it room for manoeuvre to add the local patron saint’s day. I say officially, but there is a bit of craftiness that goes on. In Alcúdia, as an example, there is a saint’s day for the town itself (Sant Jaume) and one for the port (Sant Pere). A holiday in the old town is not strictly speaking a holiday in the port or vice versa, but of course this is what happens. Indeed it would be difficult to think how it couldn’t happen, given that they are the same municipality. Then there are holidays which are nothing to do with the likes of Alcúdia directly but which have sort of crept in, such as Sants Antoni and Sebastian in January. They aren’t holidays, but unofficially have become so.

Where confusion and further misconception as to the number of holidays can arise is with this business of municipalities deciding. I’ll give you a case in point. One day I happened to go along to the municipal building in Playa de Muro wherein is the local sub-post office. Tourist information was open as usual, but the post office was shut. “Fiesta,” came the word from the helpful Cati at the information reception. “Fiesta? Where? Not here there isn’t.” “No. In Can Picafort.” “But this is Muro.” “Yes, but the post office is in Can Picafort.” There was something distinctly fishy about this. The post office quite clearly wasn’t in Can Picafort. It, or rather its locked door, was staring me in the face. “The main post office is in Can Picafort,” added Cati. “But there’s a main post office in Muro town.” “Yes, but this one doesn’t belong to it. It’s Can Picafort’s.”

More fool I, of course, for having forgotten that this was the duck-tossing day off in Can Picafort and for not being intimately associated with the intricacies of postal service organization. Similarly, were one in Can Picafort and wanted, on the same day, to go to the local Eroski, it would be shut. If you were none the wiser, and why would you be, you might assume that all supermarkets would be closed. But they wouldn’t be. There would be another Eroski a short drive away in Alcúdia that would be open. Perish the thought though that Eroski, being a Basque company, might decide to apply the Basque Country Day to its Mallorcan shops as from next year when the day is to be introduced.

Despite this confusion, there is, if you are of a mind to think like this, the potential to increase your own personal number of holidays substantially. Bear in mind that on 15 August, you can be on one side of the roundabout entering Can Picafort from Playa de Muro and you will be working. Go to the other side, and you’ll be on holiday. How many municipalities are there in Mallorca? 53? Something like that. Each with its own saint’s day. Even allowing for the fact that some towns have the same saints, my guess is that you could, by moving around the island, be on holiday for at least 50 days of the year. Now you’re talking. And now you’re also talking about how those misconceptions aren’t so misconceived after all.

But to return to the hard core of nationally or regionally observed holidays, two are relatively recent additions. Balearics Day is one, Constitution Day the other, and it has been a holiday since 1979 and celebrates the referendum on the constitution that was held on 6 December 1978. But why did they choose 6 December? The Constitution had been approved on 31 October of that year. It actually came into effect on 29 December. 31 October might have made sense, as 1 November was already a national holiday. But no, 6 December it was, with 7 December between it and Immaculate Conception. It was all another bit of craftiness, as it means there is a three-day holiday. And 29 December wouldn’t have meant much, because from now until 6 January and indeed further on until Antoni and Sebastian, it’s all pretty much a holiday anyway.

Misconceptions? Maybe not. Happy holidays.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Beach Is The Only Place To Be

There are probably those who live away from Mallorca who think enviously of those who do live on the island and of their heading off to the beach on a daily basis. It is a rather false impression.

While there are those who do make the beach a daily ritual, and those for whom the whole day at the beach is the ritual, there are plenty for whom the beach is a rare event and some for whom it is an alien place. And not just those who live away from the coast.

When some first come to Mallorca, as in a permanent way and even if they are meant to be working or running a business, it can be easy to fall into the trap of feeling that life is just one long holiday. Legion are stories of those whose business went belly-up because they were toasting their bellies on the beach while packing away a cold Saint Mick or several – day after day. Life may be a beach in Mallorca, but it is also a bitch, if the beach becomes all-consuming.

Look around in some bars, restaurants and other establishments, and you may well see some pasty faces. How can this be, you might think. All that sun, and little by way of a suntan. The other day, the delightful Swedish girl at the Laberinto maze said that I didn’t have much of a tan. “I haven’t been to the beach yet this year,” I replied. It’s not as if it’s far away. More or less just around the corner.

Well, I did go – yesterday. For about an hour. Old blogotees among you might recall my reminiscing about a previous career as a beach bum and about beach life as it once was. You can never take the beach out of the boy, but is the man who is tired of the beach, tired of life? No. Just gets restless. And it’s not holiday, after all.

Perhaps that’s it. Go to the beach, and there are loads of people on holiday. And you’re not. It seems like a bit of a fraud, something to be a bit guilty of. There again, the beach, as the heat really kicks in, as it now is, is the only place to be in the afternoons – for a while at any rate. But as a place to get some freshness. The beach becomes functional as opposed to romantic; it’s like having an air-conditioned room that you can take yourself off to when the atmosphere, only some metres inland, becomes stifling.  

Perhaps also it’s the case that familiarity breeds familiarity. The same old beach. I need to re-connect with the beach, re-discover the beach, which may well mean not going to the same beach. Yesterday was quite alarming. I recognised some who are there every year, some who I know. A German family, for example. It’s quite disconcerting to note the way that the children have grown. But they’re still the same, as they were last year, two years ago, the year before that.

That is almost certainly it. So many beaches and so little time to go to them. But like all the other attractions of Mallorca, the natural ones, that is, the tendency is to just slip into the familiar and the easy. And there is another impulse to break the familiarity trap. Not going to the beach is as much of a crime as going to it every day, all day. In my book, anyway. I had this awful feeling a couple of days ago. Summer’s been here for some time, and I’d not been to the beach. I got that line from the Style Council – “the long hot summer’s just passing me by”. That would never do. I’d thought so much about it, that I dreamt about it. October was here and the beach had gone.

No, you don’t spend your days on the beach, but to not go to the beach … Why be here?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

So Lonely

Where are you planning on going on holiday in 2010? This might sound a daft question. Surely, you will be saying to yourselves, that here is this blog, purporting to have something to do with Mallorca, and I’m being asked where I might be going. The answer has, of course, to be Mallorca. Well, no, you would be wrong. “The Bulletin” is equally something to do with Mallorca, but it ran this thing the other day about the ten best destinations in the world, and not one of them was Mallorca, or indeed Spain. This was all based on what the Lonely Planet has to say. 

Top of the list, apparently, is El Salvador, a country in central America whose only claim to fame is that it went to war with Honduras over a football match. There was a photo that supported El Salvador’s bid for top place. Sun, sea, a few rocks, some sand and a part of a palm that, as always, is artistically shown in the foreground. Could have been anywhere really, except Morecambe. Or maybe they’ve got palms in Morecambe now, and even some sun.

And coming in second is, wait for it, Germany, a country that has much to commend it, but as a holiday destination? Actually, there are many places in Germany that would qualify. Freeze to death on the Baltic Sea for example, on that island to where nudists fly from Erfurt – kit off. And given that all Germans should be coralled onto other planes and made to fly to Mallorca, going in the opposite direction would be a case of taking former Chancellor Kohls to Neuerburg – or something like that.

One can’t help but feel that there is something not quite right about a recommended list of holiday destinations in a Mallorcan paper that fails to include Magaluf as one of its top ten cities. Then there are the top “regions” in the world, as designated by the oh so Lonely Planet, one of them being southern Africa. What, all of it? Including Zimbabwe? You don’t need to go that far to get some good, honest corruption. Just spend a few days in the political corridors of Palma, while it’s far cheaper to travel, your money won’t devalue by the minute and you won’t be attacked somewhere that has no rule of law and that is run by a total lunatic; at least I don’t think you would be.

 

Enviro Man

They see him here, they see him there, they see Enviro Man everywhere. Yep, it’s him again. Hardly a day passes without the environment minister, Sr. Grimalt, being photographed at some event or other. At the weekend, he was at it again, this time in Albufera, where some rare ducks were being released. In the minister’s favour, one can at least says that he does actually see a lot of the environment, which probably does come with the job. But what with a walkway opening one day, a tree planting the next and a duck flapping the following day, how does the minister’s carbon footprint stack-heel up? Perhaps he takes the ministerial pushbike, though one doubts it. Could they not maybe have a pretend minister who attends these functions? A cardboard cutout and relay his messages of support from an organically controlled bunker somewhere in Palma. Or one of those local giant things that they have at fiestas, suitably adorned with an environment minister head. Or even an inflatable minister. In fact, why not have a cabinet of inflatables. Just pump them up wherever some event is going on. And then they may as well get rid of the real ducks as well, and bring on the rubber ones from Can Picafort.

Of course the minister might, in the future, have been able to have taken a more environmentally friendly train journey to Albufera. But not once his chum in the Unió Mallorquina, mayor Ferrer of Alcúdia, said not in my northern corridor, the mayor of course preferring the southern corridor, that which would have terminated by those rare ducks’ patch and maybe terminated them in the process. Bring on the rubber ducks.

Life Would Be Ecstasy

On a Sunday afternoon. The temperature’s about 88. On a Sunday afternoon. Escape the interior furnace. Couldn’t get away too soon. The cars pull up. Out tumble children, out stumble old folk, out pops a lilo. There’s a sort of a buzz. A constant hum. A constant contentment against the wash of waves. Picnics and umbrellas. Chatter, shouts, yelps, splashes, laughs. The back-and-forth pit and pat of paddles tennis-ing. The bounce of a football, a Barnes Wallis catching the wave together with a mini boogie board. Lying and sleeping. Strolling and distant, mind emptied of anything but that hum and the sound and vision of a beach Sunday in August. Floating and rolling. Even the gulls are languid, hanging on thermals, all but motionless. Heat and breeze, and everything stops for one of the last Sundays of summer, of real summer. Yellow alerts of temperatures, as they are greater than 88 by mid-afternoon, slowing everyone down but not the kids who race everywhere, constant blurs in motion, to the water, into the water, then back, grab a mask, back to the water, cajoling, arguing, shouting; little Bobby builders constructing castles along the coast. 60s latin soul congas on an I-Pod and sunny 90s Philly rap twists and winds from a system. The beach bars packed, bowls of mussels, the coals of a barbecue, how the smell from a grill can spark off nostalgia, chunks of ice clunking into glass, excited babble and bursts of laughter. The guys drumming their washboards, checking out the honeys from the back, the summer’s a natural aphrodisiac. Summer time. On a Sunday afternoon. August high summer and holiday, but summer’s coming to an end but it isn’t. The long hours of a Sunday afternoon, the endless sun and the endless hum, the constancy of every year and every Sunday the same. Think of the summers of the past. Nothing else seems to matter in this endless summer and on this endless Sunday in August. We’ll keep on spending sunny days this way.

Face Value

Well true to form there was indeed a mention in “The Bulletin” of price controls. This followed the letter it published at the weekend, the one about which I commented a couple of days ago. This notion of price control does raise its rather pointless head every now and then. It is pointless as, in the context of bars and restaurants, there is only so little that could realistically be controlled – coffee, some beers, the price of the menu of the day (and at one time I think this was indeed controlled). But you cannot control or cap the rest. How on earth could you? Price is a facet of a business’s marketing mix, it is determined by factors such as cost and the market, of ingredients, style of menu, number and type of personnel; a statist price-fixing mechanism would not only be impossible to apply, it would fly in the face of a free (or relatively free) market. I wonder how many who might argue the case for price controls are in fact Thatcherite market liberals. The whole notion is preposterous. 

 

Rather more importantly, one does have to go behind these statements of everything’s so expensive. They are ones made largely as a consequence of perception as much as of reality. They are also ones made, in many instances, based on a lack of appreciation of prices and how they vary from establishment to establishment. To simply accept the words of one or more letter-writers as some sort of gospel of Mallorcan expensiveness, to take them at their face value is to be incurious or unquestioning. Ok, there is much that is expensive in Mallorca; land and property for starters. But it is not the whole story.  

 

Want cheap? Well try the small Spanish bars and cafés then. Even in the square in Puerto Pollensa, there is the variance between Cultural and Bony. They are totally different, and one is less expensive than the other – so be it. There are the menus of the day. Want cheap? La Cantina in Puerto Alcúdia, four euros for a menu take-away. Then there are the food stores. Want cheap? Try a litre of Aurum beer for 59 centimos from Eroski, rather than Becks from a tourist outlet. Or other types of store. Want cheap suntan lotion? Try the Müller store. On offer at a euro a bottle have been CadeaVera sprays at different factors.  

 

It occurs to me that I could list a whole load of bars, restaurants, shops and the rest and give a guide to doing the area on the cheap. It wouldn’t be difficult, but to do so would probably run the risk of hacking off those who charge more. The fact is that things are as expensive as people want to make them and to perceive them to be. And even were there to be such a list, it might strike some as being expensive. It all comes down to individual circumstances and perceptions. 

 

 

Miss Baleares

On 21 July (Childhood Dreams – Part 2), I referred to the election of the Beata at this year’s Santa Margalida fiestas, alluding to the non-beauty contest nature of the election. Little did I appreciate that the Miss Baleares contest was due to take place, and did so this past Saturday. One Verónica Hernández has been crowned Balearic totty of the year. But I shouldn’t be so non-PC. Señorita Hernández is studying journalism and “audiovisual communication”. She says, in an interview with “The Diario”, that being a “miss” and being a model are two distinct things; she is the former, a more real woman, in her words. Anyway, there may be some among you interested to know that Verónica does not have a boyfriend. In which case … here she is: http://www.diariodemallorca.es/secciones/noticia.jsp?pRef=2009072700_9_488249__Actual-Veronica-Hernandez-bonita

Sick And Tired

They’re gone. The scratch-cardists. The office in Puerto Alcúdia has closed. No-one will be lamenting the loss. All that remains for the moment is the sign – To Holiday and Real Liberty, sometimes known as right liberty. 

 

There has been a fair old turnover of the street sellers this season. More seem to have been taken on in an attempt to generate ever more business. Maybe it hasn’t worked. Maybe tourists are more resistant. Maybe those taken on did not like what they were doing. Maybe there were too many and they were not making their commissions. If there is any sympathy, it is for those who took up this employment in the hope of making some summer dosh. They may have antagonised a lot of people, but they were only the frontline operators for the backroom selling. I am told that there has been a fair amount of dashing around by people looking for transfers and flights out.

 

It was quite an impressive set-up. The offices were large. A kiddies area, the sales area, the separate offices, the plaques displaying some major names, such as hotel chains, the staff with ties. One looked familiar. There is a youtube knocking around of an exposé by the BBC in the Canaries. The salesman shown by the hidden camera looked similar to one from the Alcúdia office.

 

The website, for those who succumb to the sales pitch, is still up. It says that To Holiday is operated by Elite Holidays Royal Travel in the Canaries. The site is visually the same to that of Travelsafe, a company that the forums have been less than complimentary about. The revealing thread on the Holiday Watchdog site that has embraced To Holiday also has the names of Real Liberty and Elite in its title; its content also embraces an outfit known as Carpe Diem, which appears to be the company higher up the “organisation” above Elite.

 

The local police have, apparently, been issuing fines. Maybe they – the fines – have mounted up. Maybe business has just dried up. Maybe the pressure had been growing. Whatever. The office is closed. The police, who had grown “sick and tired” of the whole issue (as said to me,) may, from 2010, have more clout if the issue arises again. There is due to be a change in European law to deal with holiday clubs as from next year. Timeshare selling had been outlawed, but the holiday club was not. This appears to be set to change. The problem of the scratch-cardists in Alcúdia may now be over. We’ll see. 

 

 

Town hall troubles

Two town hall things lurking in “The Diario”. Pollensa town hall, which may or may not have yet set its budgets for this year, is one of a group of town hall administrations seeking credit – to the tune of slightly less than one million euros. The deficit that the town hall is running is partially due to an historic shortfall dating back to 2005. According to the head of finance, there is now also an issue in respect of unpaid taxes from bars and restaurants with terraces. And in Sa Pobla, the town hall, which had said that it would be pursuing a strategy of low- or no-cost acts in order to keep its fiesta programme intact, has more or less “exhausted” its budget of just under 350,000 euros, claims the opposition Partido Popular. 

Costalot

“It’s more expensive.” 

 

An increasingly familiar refrain and complaint. Mallorca is more expensive. Of course it is, or it at least seems so if you are a British tourist. It’s all that pound and euro carry-on. In real terms, it is not necessarily more expensive than 2008, even if some insist that it is, and there are of course those who are “outraged” at the increase in tobacco prices – more of that in a bit. 

 

On the Holiday Truths forum there is an exchange, quite a pedantic one at that, as to the relative costs of holidaying in Mallorca and the Costa Brava. As usual much of this boils down to anecdotal evidence – it cost me so and so for a pint of this and that. The pedant in the exchange is not actually wrong to demand rather stronger evidence as to Mallorca being more expensive. It’s fair to challenge statements that may have no more support than the experiences of prices in one bar.

 

One can go and hunt for cost-of-living comparisons. It is possible to compare certain prices for Palma to those in Girona. It doesn’t get you very far. Some are higher and some are lower. From memory, official statistics have always placed the Balearics towards the top of the relative costs of living for the regions of Spain, but so they also have for Catalonia. So no real clues there. 

 

Someone in that exchange argues that prices are bound to be higher in Mallorca because of costs of transport from the mainland. There is sense in that view, but not totally. Take, for example, wine. If you want a decent bottle in Mallorca, one from the mainland will invariably be cheaper. The reason is simple. Vineyards on the mainland benefit from economies of production, i.e. they can create far greater volume. It comes down to one thing – land. That bottle of wine may be fractionally cheaper in Girona than in Mallorca, but the shipping element is incidental, especially if one factors in the bulk-purchasing capacity of supermarket chains and others. However, many restaurants in Mallorca will offer Mallorcan wines; more expensive ones than from the mainland.

 

Land is an important factor. Not only does it impact on the costs of production of local produce, it also affects costs of property and availability of property. On top of this there is the use of technology which is not always at the cutting-edge in Mallorca, as typified by the production of almonds which can be supplied more cheaply from California.

 

Certain costs do not differ between Mallorca and the mainland, such as those for employment. Social security costs are as high in Mallorca as anywhere else. Certain goods are subject to centralised price controls – tobacco for instance. The prices have risen recently as the Spanish Government seeks to increase tax revenues. That certain tobacco brands have increased substantially is not a consequence of “pressure” to limit the tobacco runs to the UK. Rolling tobacco and some low-cost cigarettes have gone up significantly because they were too cheap. To hear some tourists moaning and expressing outrage is absurd, especially when the moaning relates to the fact that the profit on their “orders” would be slashed. Whatever. The prices are still no higher in Mallorca than on the Costa Brava. 

 

Tourists now see destinations such as Turkey and Bulgaria offering cheaper alternatives. Tourists benefited for many years from Mallorca – and indeed Spain – being a cheap destination. Gradually, because of the development which meant that Spain was no longer an economic basket case, wealth has accrued, no more so than in Mallorca. That wealth has been reflected in property prices and increases in costs – of all sorts. The point is that Mallorca is more expensive, because it is not a cheap place. 

 

Once upon a time, back in the ’60s when whatever you drank cost ten pesetas and workers lived in shanties, the tourist never had it so good. The costs of the original mass-tourism packages were ludicrously low as were the local prices. Without them, then mass tourism would probably never have kicked off and nor would the wealth that came from it. The tourist benefited from the exploitation of extreme low cost. It could never last – and of course has not. But there remains something of an expectation that things should still be cheap. It is an unrealistic expectation. Nowadays it’s payback time.

 

I don’t know about property prices on the Costa Brava, but my guess would be that they are lower than in Mallorca which is one of the most expensive parts of Spain. The resultant rents are probably the main difference in making the island more expensive, if indeed it is. With some produce it is, but mostly – there’s no real difference. 

Holiday, Celebrate

Forty years ago and forty years on. This blog has celebrated all sorts of anniversaries, but in a sense the forty years since the BBC started its “Holiday” programme somehow seem imbued with greater pathos than even anniversaries such as 30 years since Elvis and ten years since Diana. Those years are more personal, more intimate, more understandable.

How it’s all changed – holiday that is. I guess the BBC decided to finally ditch the “Holiday” programme two years ago because there was no need for it. Why would there be, when the internet can offer you videos, webcams, forums, informed and misinformed sites, when there are any number of books, of DVDs, any number of this and that. The “Holiday” programme was, though, its own portal, one into a world that was new, different, mysterious. In 1969 foreign holidays were the exception. The destination was largely unknown. What information that was available came from the brochure and was often a work of fiction.

My first Mallorcan holiday was in 1969. Arenal. See how things change. Arenal barely raises a mention on the Brit Mallorcan itinerary nowadays; it’s Berlin, Bremen and Baden-Baden. I can remember little of it, except that it was August and at times unbearably hot; except the scene from the hotel room of what amounted to a shanty town on some scrubland where one family appeared to live under a tin sheet. How things change. Except a bar across from the beach where my father and his mate spent many an hour and was memorable if only for being an establishment of alcohol that was not denied to minors. Except going out one night to some show – no idea where or what it was (a manor house maybe) – where they came round with one of those thin-tapered wine/sangria dispensers and literally poured it down your neck, even the necks of minors. Except my older sister and her friend meeting some local boys and there being a bit of a to-do, from which I was excluded. I guess some stuff doesn’t really change.

Perhaps there was an element of it all being a status symbol. “We’re going foreign this year. Mallorca.” Though of course we would have certainly spelt it with a “j” and probably pronounced it with one. We got a colour TV the following year, just in time for the World Cup, but we could also now see holiday destinations as they really were, rather than stripped of their blues and yellows.

The telly was our eye on holiday, it was our only eye. The “Holiday” programme – Cliff Michelmore, John Carter, Frank Bough, Des Lynam, Kathy Tayler, Anne Gregg,  Jill Dando, Monty Don. It begat the ITV version with Judith Chalmers, wishing we were there. And so it remained our eye until the devil unleashed the internet and spoiled us with information, spoiled us into becoming virtual tourists, denied the excitement of the unknown. There is of course excitement about holiday, of course there is, but we now know everything we need to know before we even arrive at the check-in. The mystery’s gone. The fascination has disappeared. No more are we innocents abroad with innocence as to where we are going. As tourists we are like lovers from  whom the spark has gone after the initial lust of newness. Instead we merely cuddle up to our destination and fall asleep in a familiar touch and embrace.

And what of the Mallorcans? Were they to know that on an island many kilometres north were people watching a man in a suit with sturdy-rimmed glasses imparting knowledge as to resorts such as Arenal? Were they to know that the name of their island was to become, for many years, a pejorative by-word for total naffness? Were they to know that this holiday movement was to bequeath Alcúdia its Mile or Can Picafort a whole new town of unrelenting hotelness or Muro a length of road running parallel to its playa and to even more hotelness?

Forty years. Not a lifetime, but millions of holiday lives. No, I don’t suppose the Mallorcans or even Cliff Michelmore could have anticipated all those.