Child’s Play: Football and bouncy castles

I am reluctant to say that it was a case of the ridiculous to the sublime, but it was a case of what I have a habit of packing into not just an afternoon but an hour of one afternoon. The last day of the Premier League season, and I stop off at Foxes for a coffee. I am en route elsewhere. The bar is – to use the vernacular that it appears we must now do – rammed. The boozerists of Manchester United, Chelsea, Stoke, Wigan or no team in particular. “Jamie’s throwing knives,” says Lee. Leicester have lost.

This is the English at play. Pints, boisterous, laughter, tattoos, lots of white skin having gone red, “come on, you’s”. You couldn’t, in all honesty, ever describe it as refined. A substantial frame heaves into view. “Oi,” I shout, with my best lack of refinement. I need a word. Grizz, aka Minty, is on foot patrol back to the hotel. Along with Pater Minty. I think to suggest that pater looks younger than offspring, but he can read about here instead. A somewhat, how can I put it, bulky child with a pink face asks Minty about later entertainment. “Statues.” It seems to do the trick. Child’s play and the English at play. Refinement is the word that has lodged into my mind as I depart the lager laager. It may be elsewhere.

I have an appointment. Have camera, will spend some time on a Sunday afternoon pointing it at a bouncy castle and a small child on a space hopper. This is the Mallorcans at play. Child’s play and older. There is beer, but it is being served in more dainty receptacles. There is boisterousness, but it is that of children hurling themselves on the bouncy. The tattoo-ing is hidden. The only obvious body adornment is the white clown’s face paint of three “chicas” whom I take to be play leaders.

This is Sa Romana, the impressive Romanesque pile on the road from Puerto Alcúdia into the old town. They have opened a children’s play garden. It seems like a good idea. There is a deficiency of such places. The beer, and the Coke and the juices, come from the “chiringuito”, also a new development. In the evenings it becomes a sort-of chill place. It is the domain of Luis, formerly of the now-defunct Mestizo. The play garden is large, large enough to accommodate a small football pitch as well as all the brightly-coloured paraphernalia and plastic of a Toys ‘R’ Us display area. And as it is all grass, it has a natural safety factor.

The Romana clan is there in force – from Mosquito and Cas Capella as well. The tourist office is represented, though not necessarily in an official capacity. Other restaurateurs are, too. Juan from Varadero, for example. I wander about the garden, photo here, photo there. A large and multi-coloured Swiss ball affair, minus the Swiss as it appears insubstantial, rolls up against me. I’m sure I can hear air escaping, so I ignore it. Slowly deflating oversized beach balls are not my job. Mine is … . Well, what is it? I do at times wonder. The English at play, the Mallorcans at play and earlier I had written the longer story of the Jolly Roger and the piece about tribute acts. Easy. A Sunday afternoon. Child’s play.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Breakfast At Tiffany’s

One of the oldest of truths regarding footballers is that they always take their holidays in Mallorca. Not so long ago, Frank Lampard was seen in the VIP lounge at Magaluf’s BCM; Graham Le Saux, albeit he has retired, is a not infrequent visitor to the island’s west coast; Brian Clough had a holiday home in Cala Bona, and Mallorca features in the film about him, “Damned United”. Well, it used to be the case that, the season finished, the airlines would be filled with footballers heading for the fleshpots and beaches of Mallorca. Until, that is, they started to earn huge amounts of money and new resorts sprang up in which they could spend those vast amounts – Dubai, for reasons best known to them, for instance. If the Premier League is nowadays more likely to decamp to foreign playing-fields further away, Mallorca is still the stuff of Leagues One and Two. And so indeed it was yesterday at Puerto Alcúdia’s Foxes Arms. For there was Tranmere Rovers central defender Ben Chorley, one time of Arsenal and Wimbledon. The “other” Liverpool club just missed out on the play-offs, so time to head for the sun and also to partake of the full English breakfast. Away from the gaze of Ronnie Moore and the Rovers dieticians and nutritionists, Ben was happily tucking into bacon, sausage and a fried egg. Those were the days, before pasta for breakfast, when Cloughie would send his sides out full of a steak and chips lunch and a whisky, and John Robertson would have double helpings. But they are still here, up to a point. Bear in mind, though, that when Chorley pitches up as Leicester City’s new strong man at the heart of the defence, it was probably all due to a chance breakfast and thereafter the direct line to Nigel Pearson.

In the environmental pressure groups league, local agitators GOB remain something of a Blackburn Rovers compared with the Champions League-spot top four of Greenpeace. GOB may aspire to playing in the Nou Camp, but they have to settle for a Monday evening away date with Stoke. Greenpeace can court the Hiddinks and Ancelottis of the enviro lobbying world, while Blackburn make do with a Bill Oddie-style Sam Allardyce. And so it is that, when Greenpeace make a pronouncement, the world is inclined to take a bit more notice – possibly. Greenpeace offer a regular assessment of the island’s environmental blackspots. It’s a sort of footballers of the year award without the footballers and only aimed at the turkeys of the Premiership. Step forward, therefore, the Son Bosc finca and its damn golf course. Yep, it’s still there on the roll call, and perhaps rather more controversially is a list of four municipalities grouped under what is termed “corrupción urbanistica”, one of which is … Pollensa.