Something like eighteen years ago, a friend of mine showed me a private property in Portocolom which was for sale. The house was amazing. It looked a bit like the TWA terminal building at JFK airport in New York, just smaller. The setting was more than impressive, right on the water front. Amazing. But what impressed me most was the private lobster tank, cut into the rocks and immersed into the sea water. The idea was that the owner could buy bogavantes or langostas straight from the fishermen and store them in his own private seawater lobster tank until he was ready to eat the crustacean. I had never before been to a private house that afforded its own private seawater lobster tank, nor have I ever since. I think it is ever such a clever idea, extravagant perhaps but nevertheless, smart and intelligent.

The man who had this house built complete with its lobster tank, a well-known Mallorcan tycoon, never spent much time at this place. Instead, the house got sold a number of times over the last 18 years. None of the successive owners ever used the lobster tank, as far as I know. The tank is now in a poor state of disrepair, not least because the metal cover, missing in the photo (above), has been stolen a few times by scrap metal thieves. Now the whole thing is a bit of a safety hazard. Oh well.

The photo was taken in Portocolom, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: June 18th, 2012. The time was 16:40:24.