It´s difficult to find a joke today without a dirty word or two in it but, here´s one: Two tall trees, a birch and a beech, are growing in the woods. A small tree begins to grow between them, and the beech says to the birch, "Is that a son of a beech or a son of a birch?" The birch says he cannot tell. Just then a woodpecker lands on the sapling. The birch says, "Woodpecker, you are a tree expert. Can you tell if that is a son of a beech or a son of a birch?" The woodpecker takes a taste of the small tree. He replies, "It is neither a son of a beech nor a son of a birch. It is, however, the best piece of ash I have ever put my pecker in."
So prince Harry went to a Slough lap dancing club just before he graduated from Sandhurst; I can’t see the problem, it’s in the genes. "An overgrown schoolboy, loud and stupid" - that was the view of the author Edmund Gosse. It is the view of plenty of people today about Prince Harry. But it was written about George V, that epitome of the middle-class monarchy, not long before he became king in 1910.
The Marbella corruption investigation rumbles on whilst the Mayoress, Marisol Yagüe, is sharing a cell with her deputy Isabel García Marcos, at the provincial prison in Alhaurín. I would have thought with all the council dosh they have ripped off they could afford the single room supplement!
And the coppers are up to their chins in the brown stuff too as the head of the Local Police force in Marbella was questioned in court, particularly about the concession for a municipal truck service, as it is suspected that the mayor had been given several luxury cars by a businessman in exchange for being granted the concession, and that the police chief, Rafael del Pozo, knew about this. He was allowed free after paying bail of 20,000 euros but faces charges of failure to investigate an offence, covering up an offence, and possession of firearms.
There was an interesting, but hardly surprising result of a poll held by the local edition of El Mundo newspaper asking if their readers thought that there the same corruption in Mallorcan politics as there is in Marbella. No contest 78% said yes.
My God! I was on the Paseo Maritimo in Palma at around 07:30 on Easter Thursday morning. The amount of crap and broken bottles next to the moored yachts is mind boggling with mounds of it up against the gates of the various marinas. OK, it appears that there is no law to say that people can’t drink in the streets in Palma but what about litter. Why don’t the police get out and grab a few of them, sling them in a wagon and give them the maximum fine? The word would soon get around surely and the crowds would bugger off to somewhere else.
Incidentally, try to stagger around the streets Magaluf with a bottle of booze in your hand: you’ll be fined before you can say “botellon”. If Calvia can pass a local law banning public drinking why can’t Palma?
I noticed that Es Carrero restaurant in Bunyola were advertising German asparagus. I don’t know what’s special about it but perhaps it’s all to do with the phrase, “Ve hav vays of making you stalk”!
Did you get the impression that every single hire can was out on Easter Sat. Well, you weren’t far wrong as according to the hire car companies’ association 90% were rented out- a staggering 35,000! Having said that just to prove the old phrase that there are lies, damned lies and statistics it has just been announced that in the first quarter of this year 16% less tourists landed! Here’s a tip. They are instantly recognisable and I recommend a wide berth. The front screen is blocked with a map and the rear with a dolphin or crocodile inflatable.
Which very neatly brings me to when I was getting my annual reality check of the Great Brit abroad when I strolled around Magaluf recently. I came across a “beach gear” shop. Outside they had a big sign, “Christian airbeds 25 Euros, Muslim airbeds 35 Euros”. I went in and asked a shop assistant why Muslim beds were more expensive. I was told, “Because they blow themselves up”!
Congrats to Lincoln and Mari owners of Palma Engineering on the arrival of a baby girl.
The local anoraks are, as expected, cutting up rough about the extension to Port Adriano which features big boat berths. Will someone tell these wallies that big boats are far more environmentally friendly than the pissy little punts that they pollute the calas with.
The marina management however are very bullish about the project and a couple of local companies are marketing options on the berths.
Interestingly enough they are only taking names of people who do not already own a berth there. For further info call Paddy on 636477448.
Here’s a quickie for all you golfers. A foursome is waiting on the men´s tee while another foursome of ladies is hitting from the ladies´ tee. The ladies are taking their time, when finally the last lady is ready to hit the ball. She hacks it 5 feet; goes over to it, fluffs it; and then hacks it maybe another 10 feet where it hits a tree and lands back on the men’s tee. Collecting her ball, she looks up at the men saying apologetically, "I guess all those efing lessons I took this winter didn´t help." One of the men immediately replies, "Well madam perhaps you should have taken golf lessons instead."
It has been scientifically proven that if we drink one litre of tap water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than one kilo of Escherichia Coli Bacteria found in water that contains faeces. In other words, we are consuming one kilo of shit. However, we do not run that risk when drinking rum, gin, whiskey, beer, wine or other liquors because alcohol has to go through a distillation process of boiling, filtering and fermentation. It is my duty to communicate to all of you people who are drinking water, to stop doing so. It has been scientifically proven that it is unhealthy and bad for you. Therefore it is surely better to drink alcohol and talk shit than to drink water and be full of it !!
Well it appears that Owen Cox of Palma Yachts has “done a runner” to the UK. Word on the quay is that Keith Pender has taken over the workshop and if anyone needs to know anything else he can be contacted on 679 518151. And, yet another! Scott Comben, who previously ran AME has deserted “fantasy island” with allegedly a few unpaid bills.
If you have any doubt that sat. navs. are “aids” to navigation and should not be relied on entirely, the unlikely location of Brook End on the edge of Luckington, which is near Malmesbury, Wiltshire should be a lesson. Every day since the main B4040 was closed after a wall collapsed on April 8 one or two motorists have been towed out of the ford, having either failed to notice or ignored warning signs. Some farmers have been charging £25 to give a tow with tractors. When the car conks out the driver looks stunned. When asked what happened, they say, ‘My sat-nav told me it was this way’.” Normally the water — the start of the River Avon — is about 2ft deep but it can swiftly double in depth after heavy rain. Other motorists have been sent to the edge of a 100ft drop on an unclassified road at Crackpot (no I didn’t make it up) in North Yorkshire.
Now then, has anyone else received a nasty letter from a British law firm based in Crawley, Sussex demanding back-dated Balearic port taxes? Please get in touch if you have because, “Bates is on the case” which all smells a little fishy to me!
Look out; they’re out to get you! In what was believed to be the first case of its kind, the Guardia Civil stopped a driver just outside Ovieda in the north of Spain last week and fined him 60 euros for smoking while driving. The incident happened just as the Traffic Authority in Madrid launched a safety campaignwhich was aimed specifically at the risks of smoking at the wheel.
How’s this for twisted logic? The director of the At-Tawa, a local mosque in Granada, Zakaria Maza, called on the government last week to consider issuing full immigration papers for the multiple wives of many Moslems living in Spain and to make polygamy legal. He argued: "If the government made same-sex marriages legal, why can´t it do the same for polygamy."
I feel that you, gentle reader, would probably suffer from withdrawal symptoms if I did not to bleat on about the almost complete lack of promotion (again)for this years Palma “International” Boat Show.
Has anyone see anything in any international yottie press previewing the event?
Can anyone find it listed anywhere, with the other international boat shows?
I wager a guinea not!
Unaccustomed as I am to agreeing with an Aryan cousin’s opinion in general, I’m delighted to quote the statement made by a Drettmann International representative to a local newspaper which in my ‘umble opinion just about sums up the show,
“Many German and English clients come by accident: they don’t know that it exists”.
It is with great regret I heard about the passing of Dave Cook, the locally based yacht engineer.
Dave left us in the morning of the 3rd of May after a long battle in hospital.
He was 59.
Dave will be missed by the local yottie and rugby community.
I will always remember him as a man of “no half measures”. Alas that was probably his undoing and now I’m sure we’ll see the share price of Wood’s Navy Rum tumble!
I’m sure we all send our condolences to Jane, who lives here and his family in the UK.
Until next month,
Bates