​This Mediterranean beach resort feels just like being at home - Vladimir McTavish

​I am writing this week’s column on the last day of my holiday in Mallorca. The sun is beating down, people are lounging on the beach in swimwear or walking about the resort in T-shirts and shorts.

The ocean is gleaming and the mountains are a majestic backdrop to the view from my apartment, but bizarrely I feel at home. The weather forecast is predicting thunder but so far we are basking in thirty degree heat and brilliant sunshine. Yet still I feel home.

This obviously does not sound like Edinburgh in September but there are many similarities. For a start, this place is utterly heaving with glaikit tourists, dawdling about the streets and wandering into busy traffic to take selfies. Just like home. Thankfully there is no Silent Disco here.

Hang on, I hear you point out, surely I’m a tourist too. Yes, I am. However, one of the benefits of living in a tourist destination is that one can recognise the annoying traits of the glaikit visitor and not reproduce them when one is a guest abroad.

Sadly our fellow tourists are not all on the same page. The bars are full of lots of very loud, drunk, posh English people. Just like Edinburgh.

But that’s not the only reason I feel at home. There is a beach party down at the resort and the music is wafting up the hill. Not all the music, just the thump, thump, thump bass line from some dance tune. My view may not look anything like Ferry Road, but the soundscape is identical.

Before we left home last week, the street was being dug up yet again and there were temporary traffic lights set up outside our front door. From early morning until evening rush hour there was the same constant thump, thump, thump bass beat coming from someone’s sound system as they were stuck on a red light. I swear I am hearing the same bass beat coming up from a beach party in a resort on the Mediterranean.

I’ve just looked out of the window of our apartment as I’m finishing this piece. The wonderful sunshine of an hour ago has disappeared. We don’t have the predicted storm but the weather has turned into a grey drizzle. It really does feel like home.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​