420 metres of Stockholm

Stockholm is truly one of Europe’s greatest cities. Its clean air, symbiotic nature with the water and fantastic architecture make it the ideal place to take a stroll, go shopping or take a sightseeing tour on one of the many boats that ply their trade on the waterways that run through the heart of the city. I’ve spent many hours getting lost in the old town, where new discoveries wait around every turn, spent afternoons watching the boats go through the city lock and had some great evenings out in some bars that are at the forefront of design and fashion. There are however just 420 metres that typify this city for me and make me keep coming back time and time again. Take a line from Östermalms Saluhall, walk by Ciao Ciao pizza restaurant and then end up in the Tudor Arms – 420 metres of heaven.
Östermalms Saluhall is an indoor market as it should be. Bustling, clean and with fresh produce to tickle the taste buds and fondle the stomach. From seafood to meat, cheese to vegetables it has it all. It is not just the preserve of the rich (although they do seem to congregate here), but any serious foodie can spend hours in there just walking around and becoming inspired. Tasting, squeezing, sniffing and talking shop with one of the hundreds of stall holders that are only too willing to let you sample their produce. If you are ever at a loss to that eternal question “what are we going to have for dinner tonight?” then simply stroll round the market and let yourself be inspired. One of the things I miss about living in England is that Sweden doesn’t really have local butchers and fishmongers where you can go in and simply ask “what do you recommend today?” but Östermalms Saluhall feels like a tiny slice of provincial England, with its cheery market folk and foodie culture.
190 metres eastwards from Östermalms Saluhall you have one of Sweden’s best and longest established pizza restaurants Ciao Ciao Grande. It looks ball breakingly expensive, with the pristine white table clothes and serving staff looking like they have just come from an Armani fashion shoot, but it isn’t. The food is out of this world, with real world prices. Many a deal, first date, marriage proposal and divorce has taken place at these tables; if you ever want to really impress someone in Stockholm – take them here.
It is only 230 metres to go for the next stop, but in between you have some bizarre shops, galleries and hotels to walk by. You know the kind of shop with windows where there is only one item for sale and you can’t imagine how they afford to pay the rent. It is all very arty-farty, but in some strange way, wherever you come from, you feel at home here.
Now every ex-pat has an over-romantic view of their country of birth, but The Tudor Arms is a British pub as it should be. Open fireplace, old wooden bar, Pete the landlord serving the drinks and brasses on the walls. It is not just a pub it is an employment office, help centre, doctors, pharmacy, meeting place, citizens advice bureau and old folks home rolled in to one. English is the first language spoken and Swedish a very poorly spoken second, the carpets have that hint of stickyness through years of beer spills and the clientele are, shall we say unique. There are builders, comedy drunks, ex-pats, Barbour-wearing alcoholic pensioners, tourists, Swedes that think they are Brits and there is even the slightly oversexed, over flirtatious Swedish blonde – don’t get excited, she’s at least 60. Oliver Reed once said that the reason he drinks was because of the people you can meet in pubs and this statement is typified by The Tudor Arms. After an afternoon in here you start fantasizing about Winston Churchill and thinking of cashing in your pension and heading back over The North Sea back to “blighty”. In The Tudor Arms hours seem to fly away, you become more melancholy and realise the absolute pointlessness of running for that underground train, when there is another one only minutes behind. Mobiles are discouraged, nobody boots up a laptop and a blackberry is something you have in a pie.
So forget about the walking tour that takes hours, visiting the palace or the countless museums. You will get a better taste of Stockholm in these 420 metres than you would during a whole day of sightseeing buses.

It is election time here in Sweden. I do love elections, don't you? In fact I'm having one right now.

You can tell it is election time here in Sweden, not just because of the thousands of cheesy election posters that are springing up, but the nightly news is now dominated by the prospective parties promising perk after perk to the electorate. I swear I went to bed last week with the promise of a free electric car by one party, only to make up in the morning with it being trumped by a new Volvo and by dinner time it was a Ferrari. Surely, if all these new policies of tax reduction and better care for one group or another were possible, they would have implemented them already?
The main problem is that there is nothing to differentiate the parties. Coming from a land where one party is clearly left or right, Sweden is a muddled political jungle where no one is the alpha male (although I do have my suspicions about Maud Olofsson). To help point the hapless voter in the right direction, many of the newspapers and television internet sites have questionnaires that you can complete to give you an answer on what party you support. Is it just me or does this not smack of communist politics, where personal choice is taken out of the equation and big brother tells you where to put your valued cross? Whatever next? Before you know it the government won’t trust their citizens to buy alcohol in a responsible matter from supermarkets – oh bugger they don’t.
Having taken three of these questionnaires and been given three different answers, you are forced (joy of joys) to look at the personalities or lack of, the leaders of the parties. No Swedish hack dare put their head in the sniper’s firing line to do this, but the bar room / over the fence gossip mongers are certainly having a field day. We have Fredders Reinfeldt who has a head shaped like a Peter Nicholas and has never travelled further north in Sweden than Arlanda airport, Moaner Sahlin who has a huge turkey throat, Moad Olofsson who is more like my mother than I care to think about and the green party who by now are so drunk on the prospect of power they have overdosed on herbal tea and lost all sense of reality.
Secretly 99% of Swedes can’t stand our current PM Reinfeldt, not because he is not doing a good job, it is because of his finance minister, Anders Borg. If you are unfamiliar with Swedish life or have a pre-conceived view of an accountant in a suit, I beg you to sit down before you read the next sentence. (Deep breath) Readers, The Finance Minister of The Kingdom of Sweden has a greasy pony tail and an earring. I don’t want anyone who looks like this managing my adopted homeland’s coffers, what do the other countries finance ministers think of this rocker? You can only imagine the sniggers over lunch at the summits when the German and the Brits get together.
There is only really one alterative and that is Moaner’s reds. Unlike any other slippery politician, Moaner tells it like it is – vote for me and you will be poor. They will slap half a Kroner on petrol, take away tax relief for home improvement services and generally make everyone salute the flag at mid-day every Monday morning. Come on and play the game gobble-gobble neck, give me a reason to vote for you! The greens have some good ideas but only if your house is next to a bus stop or train station and that you are not the type of person that shuttles children to football matches or forgets to buy milk during the weekly shop. The other parties have so little support (under 10%) that you feel like a vote for them would be like a drop of Aquavit in The Baltic.
There is one person I and millions of my fellow Swede’s would vote for, but unfortuneatly he’s not standing. Someone who has done more for Sweden’s reputation abroad, who has already won the hearts and minds of the population and who understands the people. No not Sven-Göran Eriksson, but our current King Karl Gustav. He likes a tipple, is not afraid to be open, to show emotions or to make mistakes. Forget the other nation’s chinless wonders that people have never met, Charlie-boy must have met the population of Sweden several times over – everyone has a “King” story. Even I who lives in the back of beyond have been shopping with him and shared a flight with him. Other people I know have been on the same ski lift, cooked for him or worked for him. Next week I’ll tell you my favourite “King” story. Hasn’t the reds, greens, pinks and blues a lot to learn from someone that is truly blue-blooded?

© William Simons

The 25th of August – It is not a matter of life and death, it is more important than that.

The most important day in the year for the majority of Swedes is the 25th of August. This day sees a mysterious rise in job absences through sickness or holiday, children are suddenly dropped off at school earlier and picked up later. Nobody expects a telephone or email to be answered on this day, if your plumbing starts leaking or your car won’t start; not a sole will do anything about it.
Why? It might be Claudia Schiffer’s, Billy-Ray Cyrus’, Sean Connery’s and Ivan The Terrible’s birthday. It might also be the day that Matthew Webb was the first person to swim the English Channel and that Elton John first performed in The United States; all these things are true of this seemingly inconsequential day in the middle of August. However there is one more mark in the diary that needs to be entered, one more reason not to go to work – and that is that the 25th of August sees the opening day of the small game hunting season in Sweden.
This is the day that thousands of dog lovers, outdoor enthusiasts and hunters have been looking forward to, having sleepless nights over and clearing their schedules for since the first day of March the previous year. This is the day when after a long summer spent on beaches dreaming about this singularly most important day, men and women can finally get out into the forests, lakes and hills of Sweden and start hunting for quarries such as grouse, hares, capercaillie and ducks.
These types of hunting differ from your usual vision of hunting in that they are a sport for the people, for Joe The Plumber (who of course has his phone turned off) and for the thousands of people that love the outdoors, enjoy their friend’s company and take pleasure from seeing their dog do something that they have trained all spring and summer for. My favorite tipple from the bar of hunting, is grouse hunting with pointing dogs – forget your stereotypical vision of some toffs going out, dressed to the nines in tweed. This is a sport where two friends can get some fresh air, talk rubbish to each other and enjoy watching their dogs quarter into the breeze without having to worry about electricity bills and car payments. Who cares if you actually shoot anything? Days spent this way are there to be treasured and enjoyed for what they are.
So happy birthday Claudia, but I’m sorry. If your invitation to your birthday party where naked jelly wrestling is involved and the finest wines know to humanity are available, lands in my post box – I’M BUSY!

© William Simons

The 5 best action movies of all time

Ask a hundred different movie critics this question and you are going to get a hundred different answers. Before I reveal my hand on the poker table of criticism, let’s just touch on what makes a great action movie. First it has to be memorable, second it has to have real action and not just computer generated blue screen effects and most importantly for me it has to have outstanding acting.
In no particular order we are going to begin with two movies from my youth, both staring the same actor. First of course is the first (or is it third) and oldest Star Wars. Who can forget the ground breaking action scenes with light sabers flashing and that awesome sound being bounced around the cinema? Not only is this a great film in itself but it also set the benchmark for all future sci-fi movies and without this mark we would not have movies like Bladerunner and The Matrix.
Harrisons Ford’s other movie in my list is Indiana Jones. The first scene alone of him grabbing the treasure in the cave and then trying to run from the boulder is worth my vote alone. There are unforgettable fight scenes with the airplane or the truck chase where he goes under the truck – no computers used there!
Thirdly I have picked out a film that has outstanding acting, the coolest lines and one of the best reasons to buy a stereo home cinema outfit ever; namely Heat. The scenes where Al Pacino and Robert De Niro meet in the diner and the final scene at the airfield are truly electric and the peak of director Michael Mann’s work.
One movie that is not only a top 5 action movie, but also a reality check is Saving Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg manages to capture a terrific action movie and sum up the horrors of war in one fall swoop. Despite what some Europeans have criticized as American bias, the opening beach scene is not only realistic but a tribute to all military service personnel worldwide.
Finally I have a movie from left field. The Professional (or simple Leon as it was titled in Europe) has some stunning cinematography, amazing action scenes and most of all the coolest lines spoke by any actor. Gary Oldman’s lines of “Billy, bring me everyone”. “What do you mean everyone?” “EVVV REEEEE ONNNEEE!!!!” Still brings a shiver to my spine.
So there it is apologies to Top Gun, The Matrix, Cannonball Run and Gladiator and all the other movies that have not walked the red carpet of recognition, but the thing about action movies that I always say when anybody asks what the best movie is of all time – I haven’t seen it yet, but it would probably be a combination of these five.

Buying a vintage motorcycle helmet

If you own a classic motorcycle it is a must to also own a classic, vintage helmet. Forget Italian designed full-face, anti-fog streamlined affairs; the collar must match the cuffs. Don’t imagine that buying a classic helmet means trawling round e-bay for endless hours and then ending up with something that smells of 70’s brill-cream. Now you can buy a vintage motorcycle helmet that is new, comfortable and above all conforms to all modern safety standards.
If you do go down the pre-owned route, try to get your hands on the helmet before you agree the deal. The main problem with used helmets is that the foam padding inside the helmet deteriorates over time, rendering the protection virtually useless. However the avid motorcycle fan can spend hours finding the right helmet just for them – don’t forget that you have a chance to reflect your personality, your favorite era, movie or film star when you buy a helmet. Why not search for the helmet that your father or grandfather had when you were young? Of course if you go for the open face option, don’t forget the cool shades or aviator style goggles!
With new vintage-style helmets, you have the comfort in knowing that they meet all current safety standards, have not already been involved in a crash and that there hasn’t been a previous owner who has had head lice. The ranges are huge from open face, three quarter to full face helmet. Do you want to look like Evil Knievel, a pilot or astronaut? Most of the helmets are strictly in the “you get what you pay for” class. Expect to pay from around $100 for a basic helmet to up to $1000 for a helmet with all the bells and whistles.
Helmets are tested to set standards both in America and Europe, but even if you buy the best helmet possible; that can’t protect you if you aren’t wearing it. Be safe out on the roads and enjoy your vintage motorcycling and helmet!

Design takes 2

William Simons explains that it takes two to tango and what went wrong with his mobile that took photos of the inside of his pocket.

Behind every successful leader there stands a partner with a headache and behind every successful designer there is someone with a huge amount of commercial and common sense – just like Laurel and Hardy, Butch and Sundance; you can’t have one without the other. Let me explain what I mean. Not too long ago I owned a beautifully compact mobile phone, with large buttons matched for my sausage-like fingers and a large screen to see who you are dialing when drunk. No apps to download, no chat functions, email or surf capability. It worked great as a telephone, looked cool and didn’t pretend to be anything else than a phone– in short the perfect mobile for me. The only thing was that this particular make of telephone had left the design studio, by-passed anyone with a brain and gone straight to market. On average it took 40 photographs of my inside pocket a day and there was a little blue flashing light on it to show you that it was turned on, which was so bright in the bedroom at night I had recurring nightmares about being raided by a SWAT team.
On the web there are many examples of this “one person” design. In one camp, sites with so many bells, whistles, flash movies and voiceovers that make you just want to throw your laptop out of the nearest window. Take a look at this firm of Californian architects or this snowboard manufacturer, what are these guys trying to sell, what should I click on? I’m sorry but can someone tell the bespectacled hipster that designed this, that I do not have a decade to explore your over-designed site to find your telephone number! On the other side of the coin, there are sites designed by people like me – with no sense in what looks good or bad, just take me to the point websites. Look at the way America’s favorite supermarket doesn’t mess around. No “hello and welcome”, no flash introduction – just BANG “what are you going to buy today?” One of Europe’s most popular budget airlines is even more like the equivalent of the school bully. Give me you money and get the hell out of Dodge.
We can even take this one person team idea into PR. Just look at the mess BP have got themselves into. Before the now infamous Senate hearing, their CEO Tony Hayward obviously had someone with an undersized micro-dot’s worth of Senate experience advising him. He stuck to that advice rigidly; however the advisor obviously did not have time to get to the part where he told Hayward “if you keep stonewalling them you will look like a twat”. Cue the most newsworthy sound bites just falling into TV’s execs laps.
Design is a partnership, not just of form and function but of form and money – meaning that design briefs should always have dollar bills as their first point. Sure you can dress “money making” up with fancy terms – “we want to drive traffic to our site” = more visitors means more revenue, “we want to reposition ourselves” = a higher class of customers pay more money and “we want to show the uniqueness of our product” = we can charge extra for it if you think it is special. If only the company that had manufactured my mobile could have read this, but then again if all designers read this, we wouldn’t have Italian sports cars, Concorde and other form over function items to be inspired by.

Why blog

The smarty-pant’s answer is why not? The thinking man’s answer is for a number of reasons, but let’s not fool anyone here – it’s mainly for money. Sure, bloggers dress their answer up as trying to drum up traffic, increase awareness of their journalistic credentials or simply to get something off their chest; but at the end of the day it all comes down to money. Today the web has become a free-for-all orgy for any grubby wordsmith who has two cents of an opinion – it is uncensored, unhindered and above all fuelled by the desire to plant commercials in front of the unsuspecting punter’s face. More traffic equals more ads equals more dollars.

Web-savvy companies use blogging as a cheap way to keep in touch with their customers and to therefore strengthen brand loyalty (and therefore make money). You can feel like the chosen one when your favourite clothes shops messages “just you” that they are having a drive on your favorite garment, or that you are the first one in the queue for a newly released product. Blogging has gone from some windbag waffling on about taking their dog for a walk, to major blue-chip companies gaining a cheap and easy foothold in the gorilla marketing stakes.



© William Simons

OMG! BS PR by BP

William Simons charts the misuse of Public Relations by BP and wonders what went wrong.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was seeing the three stooges (Carl Henric Svanberg, Tony Hayward and Bob Dudley) outside BP’s corporate headquarters, looking like junior office workers who have nipped outside for a cheap cigarette, trying to explain why one sacked, persona non grata Chief Executive (Paul Hayward) is going east and another one is hastily being withdrawn from a country where he is as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool to replace the aforementioned Hayward in the west. Another monumental PR disaster from the company, which really knows how to turn a bad situation into a catastrophe. Rule number one in the Simons book of PR – control your environment. Instead of looking like rent boys waiting for tricks, why on earth hadn’t they invited a select TV crew into their boardroom with tasteful corporate logos in the background and answered a pre-agreed set of questions from a sympathetic interviewer?
The BP trail of economic and environmental disaster is by now well known. On the 20th April their Deepwater Horizon rig exploded killing 11 workers. This of course was an unimaginable tragedy for the families and friends of the workers involved, however this didn’t exactly make the front pages. In fact hardly anything was reported until a couple of weeks later when oil began showing up on the gulf’s beaches. Rule number 2 in the good book – be reactive in turning negatives into positives. How different our view of the personality-devoid, monotone Hayward would have been if we had seen him in a hard hat, piloting great environmental clean up vessels, ordering square-jawed oil workers to leap into action. What did we get? Nothing more than a reason to buy “Stupid White Men” and to vote green.
Enter stage left Tony Hayward at the hearing of The U.S. House Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Some American halfwit with an undersized microdot of senate hearing experience had obviously been advising Tony on how to conduct himself. He obviously didn’t have time to cover the “you are going to look like a twat if you constantly refuse to answer questions” chapter, resulting in one of the most stomach churning hearing performances in modern history and succeeding in nothing more than making the US / UK divide wider. Tony Hayward had single-handedly given news networks more 10-second, gut-wrenching sound bytes from this short hearing than Donald Rumsfeld had amassed in his lifetime.
Next idiot to come to the PR battle line – The Swede (or is he a turnip) Carl-Henric Svanberg, the former CEO of Swedish telecom giant Ericsson. Now Carl-Henric had been given as a special end of sale bonus, two dead bodies to resuscitate – BP’s nose-diving reputation and that of Paul Hayward. Next rule from my PR book, if English ain’t your first language – learn it proper like what I have. Swedes are of course very laid back and have the habit speaking English the way they speak Swedish most notably by emphasising the second syllable of each word. Hence we then have to listen to his semi Oxford English proclaiming “Paaaaaul is dooooooing an exxxxxxxxxcelent joooob”.
The question that springs to my mind is that “are these guys making so much money that they have lost touch with reality?” Certainly in the vanity, sanity, reality rating (turnover, profit, cash in the bank) they are in enviable territory and boy can you have so much fun with their figures. Based on their 2009 figures of revenues of $246 billion and profits of $16 billion, you can work out that globally BP’s cash registers are being filled up to the tune of $7000 every second and that they make a profit of $43 million a day! The shrimp fisherman, café owner and guest house proprietor whose business that these guys have ruined are so far fetched from their reality, that they can not hope to comprehend their suffering or financial loss. How indeed do you even begin to calculate loss? Sure for the fisherman he can say that last year he earned x and this year he earned y, cough up the difference BP. But what about the small businesses not directly effected by the spill? How does a gas station owner, miles from the gulf coast claim that his passing trade has been affected by these morons?
Where does BP go from here? Well replacing one failure with another isn’t going to cut the mustard. At least Bob Dudley in the short time he has been in the position hasn’t let himself be photographed on a luxury racing yacht or been overheard how sorry he feels for himself. The freshman’s business school textbook answer is obviously rebranding of the BP name and there is already some gossip that BP might just do that. The majority of the world is now going to inextricably link BP with their handling of the spill. However in my opinion BP need someone with such a unique quality that most spell-checkers don’t even recognise the word – they need a “do-er” and preferably a human one who can express feelings, give answers and listen. I’m not sure BP’s head-hunters had heard of such a person but most of the gulf coast population would be willing to help in the search.


©William Simons

Benidorm – It’s my Costa Banker!

William Simons explains why the home of the package holiday is still a safe bet.

When the word Benidorm pops up in holiday conversation, 99% of people turn their noses up as though they have just walked through a farmyard. But what if I was to tell you that you could spend all summer there and not meet another Brit or that it is one of the most popular destinations for the Spaniards and that the food there is world class?
To understand why I have been returning there on and off for the last 20 years, we need to look at the geography of the place. Benidorm is a large town of 70 000 made up of two beaches sandwiching an old town jutting out on a headland. Levante beach forms the northern border of coastal Benidorm, followed by Poniente in the south. Both beaches are massive, wide and most importantly cleaned by a groomer style machine most nights. Poniente is almost exclusively populated by the Spaniards and the same can be said of 75% of Levante, with only the most northern tip having white (well red actually!) torsos on it. Behind Benidorm to the west there are the impressive Puig Campana Mountains, providing an amazing contrast to the skyscraper apartment blocks.
Now so many Spaniards can’t be wrong – they come for the food, clean blue-flagged beaches, blue sea and almost guaranteed weather. In fact if I were a resident here I wouldn’t begrudge paying my taxes one iota – beaches are groomed, beach pavements are hosed down every morning, bins are emptied, there is always a policeman visible and they lay on a November fiesta with astonishing fireworks every year.
The old town is by far my family’s favourite part of Benidorm. Small cobble-lined streets flanked by whitewashed buildings, jostling for position on the headland. Here you can find some amazing tapas bars. If you have never eaten tapas it is an experience not to be missed. Don’t be put off by the crowds or that you don’t speak Spanish – just point at the dishes already on show and hold the appropriate number of fingers up you require! The places are so busy that the food is always fresh and the choice on offer is staggering. Don’t miss the chance to try something new – squid, snails, pig’s trotters and octopus – at least you will have something to tell the neighbours about when you get home! The floors of these places are covered in paper serviettes, for the simple reason that once you are finished wiping your mouth of meatball sauce, you simple throw the serviette on the floor and grab a new one. The floors are swept clean every night.
Our favourite excursion in Benidorm is to take a boat trip to the nearby Isle De Benidorm. For €15 a head you get a lovely half hour boat trip to the island, where you transfer to a glass-bottomed submarine. Who needs to dress up like Jacques Cousteau when you can see marine life like this? After this there is a lovely café looking back towards Benidorm and it is then that you can really appreciate the rugged beauty of the landscape behind the town.
If you ever get tired from beach life, there are other options. There are a couple of waterparks (Aqualandia being our favourite), Mundomar – an animal park with dolphins, the theme parks of Terra Mitica and Terra Natura and a whole host of charming mountain villages just a short drive away.
It is not only tapas bars. There are a wide variety of restaurants to choose from – to say “wide variety” is somewhat of an understatement; we are constantly finding “new” discoveries. Even with recent currency fluctuations food and drink is still reasonable; especially if you opt for the Menu Del Dia option. By law every restaurant must have a set, fixed-price menu including beverage. These are often prices at around the €10 mark for 3 courses including wine. For a treat, we go to the restaurant in the harbour and have a shellfish platter washed down with a cool jug of Sangria. This €60 platter will feed a family of four in a fantastic setting – watching the sun go down behind the mountains with the flotilla of small boats bobbing around in the foreground.
The “English end” for me is treated a bit like an excursion. As an ex-pat it is nice to remind myself why I left The UK behind. I must admit I do have a soft spot for the 5ft high, bald Freddie Mercury impressionist, but Sticky Vicky, Sexy Barbara, karaoke, and endless “vocal impressionists” I can do without. This part of town is concentrated to about 10 blocks on two parallel streets. “Proper” acts do come to Benidorm. Sting and The Rolling Stones have both played there recently.
Accommodation is defiantly in the “you get what you pay for” range. Expect to pay more for beach front apartments with sea views (worth the extra as we spotted dolphins on two occasions this year) with prices decreasing as you move further inland. If you book privately, beware of words such as “lively” and “in the heart of”. One can only take so much of Freddie! Surprisingly there are a number of all-inclusive hotels, but surely with all the great restaurants on your doorstep this would be like being a sheep kept in the barn with a green field outside, on a fine spring day?
The November fiesta is my personal highlight. It is here when the Spaniards really let loose in a week long orgy of celebration. The whole of the old town in turned into a cacophony of noise, impromptu bars and firework cracks. Empty shops are rented for the week by penneas, which are groups of people that save all year round to buy alcohol, dress up in team colours and parade around the old town with their own band. Just try and imagine the noise as multitudes of penneas are dancing and playing their way around the old streets letting of fireworks and singing at the top of their voices. Now I’m going to sound like I’ve been smoking something I shouldn’t here, but the most un-missable item on the programme is the 2pm fireworks. No it is not a printing error, in the middle of the Sunday afternoon the main street is closed off and all hell breaks loose. The bangs are so loud that they make your ribcage rattle – last year there were even rockets that exploded producing a downpour of t-shirts! Monday morning at 3am sees an even more bizarre spectacle. Suddenly through your drunken haze, one notices more and more young people walking around in scarves, hats and gloves. Now my temperature regulation mechanism has had so much cerveza by this point that you could put me on the North Pole in shorts and flip-flops, but even I think this is strange. The reason for this over dressing is made clear when you meet thousands of people jumping as one with Catherine wheels above their heard with showers of sparks flying everywhere – it really is time for bed!

Tips to get even more out of Benidorm

Spend the morning by your pool and then go to the beach after lunch. The Spaniards are creatures of habit and flock to the beaches in the morning. At 1pm everyone leaves en-mass for their siesta, leaving the beach free for everyone else.
Use a “menu del dia” as a litmus test for a new restaurant. If the set menu is good, it is a safe bet that the rest of the menu might be worth exploring on a future visit.
Eat local – if the restaurant is busy is going to be good. Spaniards eat very late in the evening, so make note of busy eateries and come back before 8pm.
Get out on the water. You can only really appreciate the beauty of the mountains by seeing them from the sea. Take a boat trip either to Benidorm Island or nearby Calpe.
A smattering of Spanish will get you a long way. The lack of English particularly by the young constantly surprises us.


© William Simons

How stupid do you have to be not to own a boat?

How stupid do you have to be not to own a boat?

William Simons explains why boat ownership should be compulsory in his adopted homeland of Sweden

With estimates varying from 1 in 7 to 1 in 4 households owning a boat in Sweden, my question is why the non-boat owning households are not rounded up at dawn and made to lick clean the toilets at their local IKEA? What on earth can be their excuse for not owning a boat?
It can’t be the lack of availability. On one of Sweden’s most popular second-hand websites there are currently 13600 motorboats, 2660 sailboats and 590 rowboats for sale. That is just one website. There are other more maritime specific sites, newspapers and magazines to throw into the mix. Price can’t either be an issue. Playing the “what I would buy with xyz kroner” is a real eye-opener. Prices for a used rowboat with 5hp outboard start at around $400. For $2700 – $4000 you have a multitude of Ryds, Cresents, Flippers or Selcos all with working 50hp outboards to get your motorboat juices flowing. On the sailing side of things for the same budget you have more Marieholms, Folkboats, Maxis, Triss, Ohlsons, Rocks and Belonas than you know what to do with.
Let’s just pause for a moment and let this sink in. For the same price as a well worn family car from the late nineties or a smelly caravan from the mid eighties, you and your family can get on the water, experience new places, learn new skills, meet new people and stay overnight!
Going up slightly in budget is even more mouth-watering. $6800 – $9500 will buy a fully-equipped Vega (27ft), a Hallberg-Rassy Misil 2 (27ft) or even a 31ft Markant B31. For motorboat lovers, what about a Shetland 580, a Flipper 580 or even a Century 20? The list is long!
The lack of places to sail can’t even be an excuse. With 80% of the population living within 15 minutes of the sea and the vast majority of those on the Baltic side with its non-tidal, archipelago accessible cruising; there simply is no excuse. Even for me living in the middle of Sweden in a ski resort, I could hook up the trailer and either be on the east coast of Sweden in 3 hours or in the Norwegian fjords in 2. Inland waterways are unbelievably plentiful and navigable. Vänern, Sweden’s largest and Europe’s third largest inland lake lies within easy reach of the populated south. This and most other lakes and major waterways are professionally marked and charted, with numerous cruising guides and information portals.
Of course Sweden has been hit by the global recession just as other countries have. Unemployment is now nudging 10% and people are tightening their belts just as they are around the world. Sweden is an outdoor country and the very fact that people fish, picks berries and can light a fire by rubbing a Swedish meatball against a Volvo could explain the non 100% boat ownership figure. When you are already at one with nature, do you really need to then spend your free time antifouling, cleaning the heads or changing injector pipes?

© William Simons

Penal System – Simonsland Style

Willam Simons the Supreme Leader of Simonsland explains about his new prison, that along with murders, paedophiles, people smugglers and BMW drivers; has a special wing for the most dangerous of citizens.

A cornerstone of the new world order of Simonsland would be a jail. Not any old jail but a large “Colditz” style castle, with whitewashed walls, perched inaccessible in some remote mountainous corner of the supreme leader’s state. Photographers would produce grainy, fuzzy shots with telephoto lenses of indistinct prisoners in jump suits. Journalists would use words like “infamous, feared, notorious and impenetrable”. There would be rumours of mistreatment, ex-cons would appear on cheap TV shows with hints on the conditions inside and The U.N. would raise eyebrows every time the jail got mentioned outside in the free world.
Obviously the jail would contain murders, paedophiles, people smugglers and BMW drivers. But there would be special wings for people who have never experienced sailing, everyone under 25 who weighs over 100 kilos, people who stay inside when the Simonsland weather service reports that it is over 25 ° C and motorcycle riders. Teenagers who don’t wear belts, fellow commuters that don’t give up seats to the elderly, shoppers who don’t hold doors open for the next person and litter bugs would be rounded up by the Simonsland police and left to ponder their fate and listen to pre-recorded fake screams and whipping noises, whilst they sit out open-ended sentences.
By far the biggest wing would be for two most harmful categories of scum. Architects and councillors that sit on town planning committees approving architect’s designs. Sure a murderer is a harmful member of the community causing imaginable loss and pain to those affected. But my point is that these poor people are a select group – architecture affects whole communities, towns, cities and even countries. It takes one idiot architect and one halfwit councillor to set a whole community on the slippery slope to destruction.
Architects are educated types, mostly having to qualify by gaining a degree that takes 3 – 4 years of study. How in the name of sanity, after all this time and effort, can they then produce eyesores that they stand back and look at and think “hmm that steel and concrete 10 storey building just fits in fine with the other buildings in this quaint village with its wooden houses not over tree level”. Even worse is the councillor who then rubber stamps his approval on this pimple on the un-acneed face of the land. Once this process is complete, it is all too easy for the next guy with red braces, glasses and a pencil to come up with some even more hideous – only having to point to the building next door to prove his point – “if they got away with it, so can I”.
Are you spotting some resentment here? Well yes – earn yourself a valuable “get out of jail free” card (non-transferable). The village I live in used to be that idyllic picture postcard type tourist trap that your Granny would fondly recount about that she visited in her youth. The early hotels here were nothing more than wooden, two storey affairs that sat perfectly in tune with their surroundings. Not a neon light, concrete slab, steel girder or florescent vest wearing builder in sight. This most delightful of status-quos was upset by the two aforementioned categories of criminals – yes the architect and town councillor. Now we are in the midst of an architectural orgy of concrete lawlessness – anything goes (including style and common sense). Now I am to art and design that Elvis Presley was to healthy eating, but even I constantly say “how can they think that passes in?” or “who thought that was attractive?”
Simonsland would be a stunning place to live, not just because of its Supreme Leader but with the threat of the Simonsland penal system. However there is one drawback here and that is the population of Simonsland would probably be 1.

© William Simons