This Expat Life: AlcudiaPollensa.blogspot* and perceptual gaps

“I’m surprised anyone talks to you.” Eh? What?

It’s a perception thing, you know. It’s what people think you write or think what you might write. I wouldn’t talk to me if I did write what people thought I wrote or might write. But the above was said to me the other day, if joshingly, by a local bar-owner.

This blog will be five years old in a couple of months. There have been over 1500 entries. I’m struggling to think of any occasion when I have slagged off a local individual or business, except obliquely; or any occasion when I have broken a confidence. There are things I know, but they won’t appear here.

No. One moment. There has been the odd occasion, like with the “Sun, Sea and A&E” lady, but there was that perception thing again, as in had it been read carefully it would have been clear that it was a piss-take, hardly for the first time, of “The Bulletin”. I have no reticence in rubbishing something which affronts me with its Palmacalvia-centricity, mistakes and rotten English. And it’s the media. Like politicians, political parties and town halls, it’s there to be shot at.

I’ve known this perception thing before. When I was at university I became the one who was most closely associated with a scurrilous publication that was eventually banned when the local police threatened an obscenity charge (and this was just a few years after the “Oz” trial). The only reason why I was thus associated, and I was neither a member of the particular college from which the magazine emanated nor one of its editors, had to do with a higher profile on campus than others. I was personally responsible for only one of the many controversies that the magazine spawned.

The perception thing was also evident when this blog was commended in “PC Advisor”. “Thoughtful and witty descriptions of the expat life.” The quote needs to be seen in context, but I don’t know that the blog has ever been about expat life, other than occasionally specific pieces. And the perception thing blends into the profile thing. You might take that quote, you might take that surprise at anyone talking to me as evidence of high profile, of hanging around bars and hanging on all the gossip and then churning it out – here. Both the perception and the profile are inaccurate. What can also surprise is when I say that I am an habitué of very few bars, and certainly not for the evening piss-artisting, have never been inside many and have never met or had anything to do with so-and-so expat who does, on the contrary, have a high profile.

The perception thing is wrong because the blog is detached. It is this very distance that creates a diversity of subject and an absence of pressure to somehow act as reportage of this “expat life”. It is, essentially, observational. A part of but also separate. It is the observation and the diversity which, despite times when I have wondered about stopping, keep the blog going. There simply is no end to what you can write about. Were it about “expat life”, were it about the local who’s doing this, who’s doing that, then it wouldn’t have legs, not long-running ones. People would not only not talk, they would also, in all likelihood, be somewhat aggressive. But more fundamentally, I have, despite that perception thing, no interest in being a conveyor of tittle-tattle, a slagger-off of who’s been slagging with whom. That said, there is a file of what I presumptuously call the blog’s basement tapes: stuff that has been written but which has never appeared. Even these pieces don’t name (though it might be possible to assign a name), but they are very much darker or more off-the-wall.

There have been recently, as there have been in the past, some highly satisfying compliments both of the blog and of HOT!. I even received a letter, remember them, from someone who had enjoyed the newspaper. Sometimes, though, I wonder if I don’t become self-indulgent, such as with yesterday’s piece. I had thought of consigning that to the basement tapes. And then I got a compliment about it (Glen’s), as similarly I had one a couple of weeks back from Derek who referred to the more poetic stuff being inspiring. But the danger is I end up taking myself seriously, which would never do. And I might end up understanding who the hell it is I’m writing for.

It’s this very unknown, among all the thousands of you who come to this blog, that make it as worthwhile as the compliments. The unknown also as to which pieces might interest more than others. The unknown as to who will be in the inbox on a given day, saying they have been following the blog for this or that length of time. The blog is self-indulgent. By definition, I suppose, most blogs are. But as to people not talking to me, I don’t think so, because I guess most don’t know what the blog is about, other than by some fault of perception. And I couldn’t help. Because neither do I.

* Please note that this version of the blog is a back-up to the original – http://www.alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Cold Comfort – Winter in a Mallorcan house

The afternoon coffee and cake is a German tradition. Walk the promenade of little Germany, Can Picafort, and, in summer, boards outside the bars will invite you to “Kaffee und Kuchen”. Be invited into a German-owned house and you will be presented with a jar of coffee and a plate of pastries. A further German tradition is that houses in Germany tend to be like ovens. Germany has cold winters, but its houses and apartments are pretty much air-tight, they are like vaults, nothing can come in, nothing can escape. In Germany, there are laws obliging landlords to heat rental properties to a certain level. No-one, theoretically, be they owner or tenant, should freeze through inadequate heating.

It snowed, after a fashion, yesterday. A brief flurry, at sea level. It looked more like hail, but it was snow, some said. Meteorological definitions didn’t matter, save for one – cold. Mallorca, unlike Germany, doesn’t have cold winters. Of course it doesn’t. Well not on a German scale it doesn’t. But it has cold spells. Even during these, like the current one, daytime temperatures at sea level rarely fall to freezing, and when the sun puts in an appearance, it can still feel warm – outside. The problem is not outside, it’s inside.

There are new German neighbours. Kaffee und Kuchen. It’s a tradition. The icy state of the living-room, for them, most certainly isn’t. Surprises there can be for those new to Mallorca: one that most do not bargain for is just how cold it can get and just how cold their newly bought houses might be. I hadn’t put on the ski socks (to compensate for the stone floor) and the long-johns (to compensate for the air). The coffee cooled rapidly. Even the cream in the cake seemed to crystallise as though in a freezer.

There was a wood-burner, unused. There was wood, but lying next to it. The cost of wood is astronomical. There were radiators, not on. There has been publicity about the rising cost of electricity. Moreover, the room was large, open plan. The oil-filled radiators give out some warmth, but only so long as you’re more or less sitting on top of them, which is not a wise thing to do. “Do not cover” is the warning they all carry. Gas, I said. Eleven euros for a bottle of butane. It might last a week. Possibly. That’s not so bad, they said. Certainly against the cost of wood. Mind you, the one dehumidifer, the one that eats electricity, might need to be added to. Someone, a Mallorcan, rubbing his upper arms in a gesture of “qué frío”, said the other day that the problem in Mallorca is the damp atmosphere. Clings, he said, in winter. Damp and then sometimes cold, like an invisible fog. This will be why damp course is a rarity, like insulation and double-glazing. All this in a country that is meant to have committed to energy efficiency and the saving of Mother Earth. Don’t make me laugh, or make new German neighbours laugh.

There’s no natural gas, they enquired. Not outside Palma. It will take them years to run pipelines across the island. Think of all the endless environmental discussions, the politics, the bankrupt state of state finances. And then there was a coincidence. An announcement two days ago that there are indeed plans to develop a gas network. That will teach me to go around saying it would take twenty years. Or maybe that might not be wrong. The announcement also referred to economic conditions and planning regulations. Projects have a habit of taking years to be implemented, and even when there is funding in place, agreement cannot be reached by competing political interests.

There’s another German tradition, among Germans who have adopted Mallorca. And this is that they all seem to have read George Sand. A winter in Mallorca, and the health of Sand’s poor old husband, Chopin, deteriorated because of the dampness and chill of Valldemossa. But that was when? Some time in the nineteenth century. A long time ago. When they had wood, but didn’t have butane or electricity. And when they didn’t have double-glazing or insulation, or natural gas.

These things take time, you know.

** (Last night it snowed. Properly snowed. Snowed as in covered the grass.)

Mallorca Daily Photo Blog
And while on matters German, yesterday I met Klaus Fabricius who does the Mallorca Daily Photo Blog (http://mallorcaphotoblog.wordpress.com) and whose work I first came across when I was alerted to an entry explaining and depicting the sea-grass origin of those kiwi-like, oval balls that proliferate on the beaches. If you have not been following Klaus’s blog, let me issue a recommendation once more. It is highly informative and the photography is outstanding, as it also is on a sort of sister blog – Plantarium (http://plantarium.wordpress.com).

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Starting Over

Today marks the blog’s fourth anniversary ** – the first archives are no longer online, but they are still there, somewhere, on a disc. It is also two years and one month since the blog became a daily occurrence, save for the occasional planned or unplanned absence. 

** That of the original http://www.alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com

 There are certain questions that you raise – what actually is the blog, how do I find the time, where do I get the “inspiration” to write something every day. Of these, the second is probably the easiest to answer. I just do. Rarely does it take a huge amount of time. What can is redrafting pieces and sometimes junking those I’m not satisfied with and starting over. I’ve started this piece more than once. The third is also quite easy. It boils down to being open to any sort of tag or lead, be it from the media (of all sorts), what someone says, what one observes. There is no shortage of “inspiration”, so long as one keeps eyes and ears wide open. 

The first question is the most difficult. Blogs vary in their style and purpose. Originally, many were in effect diaries. And that was pretty much how this one started out. But it has moved on, a long way from that original concept. What it is not, and has never set out or claimed to be, is a news service. That there may be news is generally the starting-point for something broader. But to give an exact definition is hard. 

Much of what appears on the internet as personal contributions has found its voice through not only blogs but also social networks and now also Twitter. Defining any of them is not straightforward. Indeed one of the people behind Twitter told “Wired Magazine” recently that “I don’t know” would be one of the ways he would define it. In other words, these vehicles emerge and are shaped by those who make use of them. It is the very looseness of purpose that is appealing and stimulating but also unfocussed and potentially dangerous. And by dangerous, I mean a tendency to vilification and vendetta. Blogs, social networks, Twitter are all means of expression and of self-publishing. They should all be approached with responsibility. Unfortunately, this is not always so. Publish and be damned? No. Publish and damn someone or something has become the principle. 

But two words above tend to give a meaning as to what happens on this blog – looseness and the opposite of “unfocussed”, i.e. focussed. These may seem contradictory, but there is looseness in the sense that subject matter is broad while focussed within a context, one of Mallorca and Spain. If one trawls through October’s entries alone, there were few specific main features about Alcúdia or Pollensa. But as it says on the tin, the blog is not just about Alcúdia or Pollensa; the focus, the angle is wider. And the subject matters are equally wide – from abortion and smoking to football and the Olympics, but all within a Spanish if not a Mallorcan context. 

In this respect, the blog is largely a series of observations – of society, politics, people, places and more. And one situates Alcúdia and Pollensa within a broader framework of these disparate elements. It is, for example, impossible to have an appreciation of local politics without some nod in the direction of what went before, no more so than the Franco period, and of the current politics of language. 

More than this, however, I have come to realise that the blog is, to a great extent, a reaction against not only the lameness of much writing about Mallorca but also its sheer absence. To explain. There have been two recent stories – the BNP and Stephen Gately. I considered both of them, but apart from the fact that Gately just so happened to die in Mallorca, there was no obvious Mallorcan or Spanish angle. Why do them? In fact, I have a not uninteresting story about the BNP, one that I have outlined to more than one of you in an email, but I couldn’t justify it as a blog story. 

Yet both these stories have been given a good airing in the English-speaking press, as do, of course, all sorts of stories that have nothing to do with Mallorca or Spain. I don’t criticise this as such, but what I do question is an over-abundance of British and international news and comment at the expense of the innumerable stories that exist either on the island or in the country. In this, there is an additional problem, and it is one of credibility. While I will take note of what a Simon Jenkins, a Matthew Parris or even a Richard Littlejohn might have to say about British politics, why should I take any notice of what someone living in Palma or Calvia might have to say? They are not credible witnesses because they are removed. Their contributions are the hard-copy equivalent of a blogger who wants to get something off his or her chest. In their physical, newsprint guise, they fill space to no great effect, other than as testimony to egoism.

It is this further realisation that draws me to conclude that there is little or no future for the hard-copy English press in Mallorca. The essentially regurgitated nature of British/international news and comment can be found on the internet, as can the primary contributions of Jenkins and the rest. The lack of a more local focus may indeed be better served away from the traditional press and tackled via blogs and the like. The newspaper has become simply a means of packaging or as a promotional tool for it in a different form or for advertisers. The real stories are to be found elsewhere.

I shall press on, but may soon be starting over … watch out.