Well, the realistic alternative to scribbles is the making of snaps. I think I've snapped pretty much all that's around me (that is obvious enough for me to see) and so the alternative lies in the recounting - largely to myself and for my own benefit - of my mundane, daily tasks.
Thing is, life here has become fairly routine (thank God!) and excitement as much a threat as a need; events that might have once seemed positive now look very much more like menace to stability and calm. Progress, as she is called, always comes at a huge price: the place where I dine most days was always a bit dodgy regarding parking as the nearest was a sort of unofficial lay-by under some plane trees which, in the frequent windy spells most islands enjoy, provided both shelter and threat from falling branches. I used to try and time my arrival to fit between local people vacating those few spaces after work, and my own needs as dictated by the restaurant's working hours.
A couple of years ago, in its wisdom, the local council took over a field behind the planes and shaved it of its vegetation, thus creating an uneven, jutting small rocks obstacle course for cars. In daylight this can be navigated, but as I never go there at night, I don't know how much damage has been done. Maybe somebody on the council also owns garages. The zone has also become a sort of cemetery for old cars, which isn't all bad: I know which is which, and so parking beside one offers protection on at least one side. Anyway, this has helped me to park at lunchtime, but it has also been a magnet for tourists trying to visit Pollensa. Unfortunately, they dump hired cars and leave them there all day as they explore. (Did I mention that it's free?) Scientifically, it's something to do with nature abhorring vacuums. However, nature also has a sympathetic card up her sleeve: if it rains, those tourist discover they are trapped, as the place turns into a bog. The downside, of course, is that off-season dining has become difficult because I don't use that new "facility" in bad weather because I obviously know what it entails. But on the bright side, the restaurant closes for a couple of the coldest, wettest months, and so I do for myself at home because many of the lesser local alternatives close for winter, too. On reconsideration, maybe that isn't a bright side.
(To explain: local means the port of Pollensa, some six or so klicks from Pollensa, the old town that I really enjoy. I should be able to tell the actual number of klicks because I often check the trip meter at the start of the drive, but never when I arrive. Back in '66 the port was the magnet: beautiful little place; today it resembles every other concreted and pedestrianised little coastal town on the Med, not that I've seen them all, of course. Consequently, I mainly go there to visit the bank and the post office, and for the obligatory hour's walk that takes in Moira the horse, and the yacht club's moorings. You have to live in a tourist town that itself lives off sea and sunshine to see what a desert it becomes in winter, with the beach blowing back up across the promenades - just like in a spaghetti western, the gales in the distant rigging making a cheap copy of Ennio Morricone's soundtracks. (Morricone must have been a difficult name for a European child to grow up bearing.))
Rob