Some friends recently back from the Balearic Isles report a Mallorca that is very far from the lager-lout, high-rise tourist image. Their description is one that would have been recognisable to Chopin, George Sand and Robert Graves - all long-term residents of Mallorca. Our friends awakened, sometimes at 4 a.m. to the crowing of many cocks - clearly a couple on each of the farms within earshot. (But can you have more than one cock to a farm?). They breakfasted overlooking orange and lemon groves, and pondered whether there is any other fruit that blossoms with next year's fruit at the same time as the current crop is ready for picking. (Arbutus?, they asked themselves).
One morning they watched the local farmer construct an intricate trellis-work for his runner beans - no simple pyramid as they themselves erect in Ireland, but one that involves no less than 216 canes. And, as they drove around the countryside, they were astonished at the fertility of the soil. Apart from the citrus crops they saw peach, almond, cherry and olive trees, tomatoes, courgettes, aubergine and pepper plants. Yet they saw only two cows and a calf, and learned later that all the local cheeses were made with sheeps' milk.
That most elegant of Mediterranean birds, they say, the hoopoe, was everywhere, as well as the occasional Sardinian warbler (and the Scops owl heard at night in chorus with the cicadas), but not the exciting range of birds that should have been sighted at the end of April - for Mallorca hit the Spanish headlines that week with reports of hail and snow. Which our friends endured with Irish stoicism. Still, they say, there was one day in the week when they were able to sunbathe by the pool and watch the swallows swoop down to snatch up a drink of (chlorinated) water.
Their summing-up was that even though Mallorca has one of Europe's busiest airports in the summer months, bringing in hundreds of thousands of tourists, the old Mallorca is still there, largely unchanged.