Service with a snarl

I am holiday with my family at the moment. We decided to push the boat out and do the tourist thing. So we are staying in some beautiful apartments right on the beach on the east coast of Majorca (or Mallorca, of you prefer - it´s the same thing).

When I told a colleague where we had booked, he said that this was the part of the island favoured by Germans. He wasn´t wrong. The service staff at the hotels and shops all have German as their second language. We were warned that we would receive bad service if we were thought to be English - apparently English holiday makers have a bad reputation abroad. This proved true, too. After one night of incredible rudeness, and an accusation of shoplifting, we decided to set people straight. When asked if we are English, we now say, "No, but we can speak the language." This then gives rise to a major curiosity about our heritage, and how did a Swedish man and a South African woman (a) meet and marry and (b) wind up living in England? We have been treated wonderfully well and declared a "very nice family" by several people. We have been given free gifts and all sorts of perks.

Isn´t it weird? We are the same people who were thought to be so deplorable on that first night. We haven´t changed, but the attitudes of the people we meet couldn´t be more different - simply because we are not English. It would be interesting to do a survey on how people´s attitudes are formed and to what extent they are justified. When I think of the English people I know, it seems totally off.

For now, I´m enjoying the sun and the sea, oh and the food and the cocktails...