Our apartment is in a small complex set around a small C-shaped pool and flowering oleander. It’s cosy and quiet and only a block from the beach.

It’s owned and run by a much bigger hotel that sits right behind us. We had to check in there and the concierge told us we were free to use the hotel facilities as well.

I popped over yesterday with Daisy to check out their pool. I noted that the most popular facilities were day-old copies of the Sun and Mirror, an Elvis impersonator on later that night (sold out!) and an on-site skincare consultant.

The skincare consultant announced herself to everyone sizzling on their sunbeds using a portable microphone and amplifer. She had sunbleached hair that looked like straw and the complexion and texture of a dried up prune. I suspect she hadn’t slipped, slopped or slapped a day in her life.

So I guess I wasn’t too surprised when she didn’t admonish the spit-roasting guests for spending too long in the sun. Or warn them about the danger of Melanomas.

Instead she offered tanning programs that delivered deeper, longer-lasting tans and various oils and ungents that would turn their red skin brown.

‘And don’t use anything more than 20+ on your kids,’ she warned darkly. ‘Their tans won’t last more than a week.

She looked at Daisy and me, in our UV vests and hats, like we were a pair of circus freaks.

It’s our first day in Mallorca.

We woke to the sound of thunder rolling around the jagged mountains behind us and fat raindrops splashing in the pool.

I don’t mind the rain, especially when it’s warm. It reminds me of the summer rains back home, at the end of a hot day, when everything smells stronger and more pungent.

On an unrelated note Joseph Fiennes was on our flight to Palma. I don’t think he can be getting too many roles lately because he was in economy too.

About halfway through the flight he got up and went off to the toilet. I’m pleased to report he went in alone. Unlike his brother Ralph who I seem to rennet needing the assistance of a flight attendent.

Just out the door on a family holiday to Mallorca so things could get a bit quiet around here for a bit.

Of course, I’ll try and update the site when I get the chance. But just between you and me I’m not planning to go out of my way to find wifi hotspots and internet cafes. More sun, sea and a bit of quality time with my girls.

Having said that, I’ll have my iPhone with me. So if I get a little bored – and the roaming data rates don’t put me off – I’ll try and do a few updates by using the Wordpress app on the phone.

It won’t update my homepage but make sure you pop by here at my blog here to see if there’s any news.

Now where did I put that straw hat?

With the Aussies playing a warm-up match just down the road in Hove the start of the Ashes is getting closer.

And today, for me at least, it got a little more real.

My Ashes ticket arrived in the post!

I can’t tell you how excited I am.

I’ve got a feeling we’ve got one helluva summer of cricket coming.

Popped over to Calais for the weekend. After seeing a couple of reports about the illegal immigrants camped there trying to get to the UK I figured I’d check out another immigrant experience. One that is the polar opposite to mine.

On Saturday I helped out with a church group that hands out clothes to the immigrants. They do it once every two weeks. The immigrants file in ten at a time and have ten minutes to pick out a pair of shoes, trousers, a shirt, some underwear and a small towel and soap. (The picture above is the ‘chart’ they use to find out their shoes size.) On the way out they get a chocolate and a piece of cake.

Other church groups run mobile soup kitchens, handing out meagre meals at lunch time and at night.

The immigrants ‘live’ in two areas. The Iraqis, Iranians and Afghanis live out in The Jungle, a scrubby wasteland on the edge of town. The Africans – Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis mainly – live in the centre in abandoned buildings beside the canal at the bottom of Rue Descartes.

I walked past the Africans on my way back to the ferry terminal on Sunday morning. The immigrants were washing in the canal or hanging their clothes to dry on chainwire fence. A girl with a towel on her head and soap in her hand crossed paths with a guy heading down to the water to clean his teeth and a shy smile was exchanged between the two.

It struck me that it was a scene I’d witnessed every day in Africa. People living beside railway tracks, in shanty towns, washing, cleaning and cooking beside stagnant pools of water. It wasn’t shocking, it was mundane.

Life goes on. Even when you’re thousands of miles away from home in Calais.

Life is so much easier for blonde wannabe ’socialites’ in France. When they want a sugar daddy all they have to do is pop into their local Carrefour and pick one off the shelf.

Even the stylish pink container has been designed to match the outfits they’ll be wearing in Cannes this season.

This particular Sugar Daddy belongs to Sam, the French student I stayed with in Calais.

It seems even biology students with musketeer beards and moustaches need a Sugar Daddy.

I got to vote in my first European Election last Thursday.

I didn’t have to, of course. Voting isn’t compulsory here in the UK like it is back home. But I got a kick out of the thought that my vote would have reverberations beyond the borders of the country I voted in.

Well, it would have if I hadn’t decided to cast my vote for The Roman Party Ave!

I had no idea what they stood for. Or who the hell Jean-Louis Pascual, their sole candidate, is. But confronted with the usual bunch of expense fiddling toffs, I was drawn to the party’s jaunty appendix of Ave!

I have since discovered that Jean-Louis is a French taxi driver from Reading and that the party’s sole guiding policy is ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ Apparently that involves opening direct discussions with Vladimir Putin to outsource British prisons (and prisoners) to unused gulags in the former Soviet Union. With the savings made sent directly to the NHS.

I just checked The Guardians interactive guide to the European elections and discovered that 5,449 other people voted for the Roman Party as well. They garnered 0.23% of the vote, sadly short of the numbers needed to get am MEP. (But enough, I think, for Jean-Louis to get back his deposit).

Looks like Vladimir’s going to have to find another use for the gulags.

Is it just me, or has the joy and spontaneity gone out of travel?

Not only can you book every aspect of your trip online, you can see 360° picture of it, watch a couple of YouTube videos about it and read what thousands other traveller’s thought of it.

Guidebooks like Lonely Planet and Rough Guide have become mouthpieces for tourist boards and travel companies.

Rough Guides publisher Martin Dunford canned a line by one of his authors about the the Côte d’Azur being full of ‘dollar-dripping dickheads.’

‘In the old days we used to cherish such lines,’ he said. ‘Nowadays people get offended by stuff like that.’

I would suggest that the only people who’d get offended by that line would be the dollar-dripping dickheads themselves. Perhaps they are Rough Guide’s new target market.

And don’t get me started about people who insist that every journey has to be invested with ‘meaning’. Or Rolf Potts claiming he is a Post Modern travel writer.

Travelling is about seeing places, meeting new people and having fun. Sure, you’ll learn stuff. Sublimely, mainly, and more useful for being so.

I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m ranting here. But it worries me that so much stress is being attached to what is essentially a leisure activity.

It doesn’t have to be glossy or perfect. There’s no right or wrong way of doing it. And if it all goes wrong, so much the better.

More chance of it really being a ‘trip of a lifetime’ that way.

When I passed through Afghanistan on The Wrong Way Home the locals were smuggling TVs in on camels.

Now the Daily Mail reports that enterprising Afghanis are slipping in small Japanese sedans on the top of buses.

Who says progress hasn’t been made?

Before:

After:

Just ‘tweeted’ that I was heading to Mallorca for a couple of weeks at the end of June and asked if any one had any advice on what I should do or where I should go.

Within seconds I got a notification that Come2Mallorca was now following me.

Turns out it was spam. Sent by a room/tour booking company that must have some little robot working for them that picks up every time someone uses the word Mallorca.

Luckily, I don’t automatically start following everyone who is following me. Slackness, mainly. But it is a bad habit that just saved me from endless tweets about the latest deal on a holiday condo on Magaluf.

Got me wondering though. What do you call spam that you get via Twitter?

Spitter? Spatter?