Little differences

One of the things I like to notice when I am abroad on holiday are the differences in how things are done.  There were a few things in Majorca that struck me.  The first one that I noticed, because it is everywhere to be seen, was how they construct their walls.  In France, a wall like this one beside the road would probably have enduit,  that is a sort of plaster in between the stones on the surface, giving a smoother finish but with the stones less noticeable. These walls might well have concrete behind the stone façade, but the stones remain individual and strongly outlined.

This one was a new one - a urinal with a flap.  I wondered what it might be for, perhaps the drains are so unreliable that the urinals often have to be shut down.  I regret now that I didn't flip it down to see if anything was written on the back.

Another subject that interests me is music, and there is a high-level music conservatoire in Palma.  They were having a saxophone festival, with a free concert (of saxes) one evening.  It was a brisk half-hour walk away, and I went along.   It was .... different.

I didn't like the music.  It was contemporary, comprised for the most part of squeaks, beeps and farts coming out of the instrument.  The technical virtuosity of the players was never in doubt.   What was different in the presentation is that no player introduced the piece that he or she was playing, they just came on stage, spread the sheet music out and played.  I didn't have a programme either, but that could have been down to my lack of understanding of Spanish.

The other difference was that, for sheet music of several pages, the pages were spread out along a series of music stands, side by side.  The longest piece had eight, so that when the young lady moved from reading from the 4th stand to the 5th, I figured "good, we're halfway through".

At one point, I told myself that if the next piece didn't have either a tune or a rhythm, and preferably both, I was off.  fortunately, this was followed by a couple of  quartets that were quite tuneful.