SUPPER WITH BANANAS

 SUPPER WITH BANANAS      

Between 2000 and 2015 we celebrated special occasions in a banana plantation! 

It was called El Cordero - the Lamb - and a vast barbecue pit was the central feature. Everyone ate meat of all types & spicy sausages. There was salad and Canarian salty potatoes, salsa picante and salsa verde, and lots of rough vino tinto.

The canvas ceiling retained moisture & kept out dust and most of the flies. There were lots of banana plants, a few ferns to add privacy & atmosphere, sparrows flying around, and a feral cat or two.

Halcyon days in Tenerife.

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Days like today, with the temperature in the 30s, remind me of the fifteen years we lived in Tenerife. It was like the curate's egg - quite good in parts: remembering places such as El Cordero fill me with nostalgia, but the heat could be oppressive. In high summer we would spend a long time in Mercadona or Hiperdino, the local supermarkets, just so we could hover over the freezers to cool down before getting back into the small Hyundai oven we called a car.

Thanks to Fleur Lind for the photo - I managed not to tell you my latest gardening story! - and to Rochelle for hosting Friday Fictioneers.

IDEAS

 IDEAS

'Where do you get your ideas from?' is a question that's nigh on impossible to answer.

Sometimes they appear out of nowhere, like a lightning flash from a clear sky. Or some incident triggers a 'what if?' thought that niggles and grows until it demands to be written.

That's just the start, of course. What follow are weeks, months, sometimes years of thinking and writing. Then editing, deleting and re-writing through multiple drafts before finally I'm certain I can do no more.

Publish - and be damned by the typos I'd read and missed a hundred times!

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Thanks to Dale Rogerson for the photo prompt, and to Rochelle for hosting Friday Ficitoneers. 

The above is definitely not fiction! 

I have seven novels and two books of poetry in print, all of which had to go through the same tortous process before hitting Amazon. You will find them there - if you can navigate past the other writers called Liz Young.

And I am within inches of the end of the first draft of novel #8, provisionally titled 'The Two Wives of Steven Denham' - watch this space!

GETTING UP LATE

 

GETTING UP LATE

Dave missed the tram by seconds, and his desperate lunge for the door sent him flying into the path of a cyclist. Cradling a broken wrist, he took a cab to the hospital, from where, belatedly, he phoned his boss.

The Foreign Secretary, annoyed by his absence, clutched a file of papers and rushed to her waiting car, but her scarf caught in the revolving doors. She was half-throttled before they could free her.

Dave watched the dramatic arrival of a stretcher accompanied by security men, blissfully unaware that his failure to get up in time had averted a war.

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Thanks to Brenda Cox we have a photograph this week that could almost be England - red double-decker bus driving on the right - but is in fact an Oriental tram! It reminded me of a story I wrote years ago, of which this is a reprise/rewrite, as I've been too busy gardening to think of a new one!

 

RUDOLPH

 

RUDOLPH

Kate and Steve had rented the Air-BNB hoping their family could enjoy Christmas without fighting. It was ostentatiously rugged, with faux log walls, but the sofas were comfortable and the fire warm. Each day the children wore themselves out playing in the snow, and the adults enjoyed long, relaxing evenings.

Then on Christmas Eve Kate suddenly screamed, “That head moved!”

Steve almost dropped his drink. “The nose is glowing red too!”

“Open the door,” boomed a voice and Steve, ashen-faced, obeyed.

On a blast of freezing air a rotund figure entered. “Come on, Rudolph, we’ve been waiting for you.”

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Thanks to Alicia Jamtaas for this week's Firday Fictioneers' image, which has prompted me to dash off a story before my day begins with a stint at the charity shop. Seeing a photo of a log cabin with a fire is an unwelcome reminder that winter is not too far away - and I'm still hoping my grapes will ripen! 

 

CHANNEL CROSSING

 

CHANNEL CROSSING

‘It’ll be fine, cherie,’ Louis Blériot assured his wife, ‘I’ll be there before you.’

Praying fervently he was right, Alice boarded the destroyer Escopette to sail to England and await his arrival. From its deck she watched the flimsy plane run down the slope, holding her breath until it had wobbled into the sky and set off across La Manche.

Thirty-six minutes later Louis landed with a thump near Dover Castle, to be met by a correspondent from the Daily Mail, who telephoned his paper with the news that their £1000 prize had been won, not by the American brothers but by a Frenchman.

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I took the above photograph at Tenerife Airport in 2013, the Centenary of the date the Frenchman Louis Bleriot flew his tiny plane into Tenerife. This was a replica, of course, but simply walking round it and seeing the bicycle wheels on its undercarriage gave me the shudders - fancy having the courage to cross the sea in that! 

This cement outline marks the spot where he landed at Dover, UK, on July 25th 1909 after a 36.5 minute flight across the English Channel, known to the French as La Manche.Apparently the owner of The Daily Mail had put up the £1000 prize, fully expecting - even hoping? - that the American Wright brothers would win it!

The image below shows the slightly damaged plane after its somewhat rough landing on a field chosen at the last minute - Bleriot had been expected to land on Dover beach, so it took his wife a little while to reach him!

                                    

BACK TO NATURE

 

BACK TO NATURE

We were used to holidays in the Maldives, sleeping in a cabin with the murmur of water beneath us. Then the pandemic struck and we spent our savings keeping the business afloat.

Holiday adverts in the Sunday papers taunted us, and in a mad moment we borrowed a tent. Struggling with poles and ropes, tempers flared, and Tom stormed off, leaving me in the peace of the woodland.

Birds chirped, light rippled through leaves, insects buzzed, but there was one rasping sound that I couldn’t identify, city girl that I am.

Then the zip on the tent began to move.

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I have never holidayed in the Maldives but I have been camping in a borrowed tent. In fact, in retrospect at least, my husband and I didn't fight, the tent went up with surprising ease, and we and the children enjoyed our break. Even though the toilet block entailed a five minute walk carrying your own toilet roll!

Thanks to A J Wilson for the photo - I wonder why he chose to camp on dirt rather than on turf? - and to Rochelle, our indefatigable host. 

I was pleased this week to learn that I have sold another few books through Amazon, though it's a faff discovering which ones. Also two friends made a point of telling me they were enjoying reading them, and a cousin I haven't heard from in months emailed from Australia to say the same! If you haven't read any of them yet, a click on the cover image at the top of this page will take you to the latest one. NB: I am not the only Liz Young on Amazon, but a list of my books is on my Author Page.

LIVING FOREIGN

 

LIVING FOREIGN

‘Living Foreign', 'Going Native’ – expats had various epithets, some of them very impolite, for anyone who chose to embrace local life and customs.

Babs didn’t care what they thought – she had come abroad to experience a new culture, not to create a patch of England with added sunshine.

The local fiesta was a wonderful event, and when her neighbour Constancia offered her a costume she wore it with pride. She hung the customary wreath of almond blossom on the door before she climbed onto the float, waving happily at the astonished, and slightly envious, expats in the crowd.

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When I lived in Tenerife I joined in the fire-building and fun at the annual Dia de San Juan, although I was a bit too nervous - and too creaky - to risk jumping over the flames. There were many fiestas: each town celebrated its own saint, and our local school held processions around our small town. The children were from many different countries, all of them had learned to speak Spanish quickly as that was the language they were taught in, and therefore the cheering crowds of parents and friends were a grand mixture of nationalities. 

Thanks to Dale Rogerson for the picture and to Rochelle  https://rochellewisoff.com/ for keeping this group going for so long. Without her weekly photo prompt I might have given up writing altogether when my life hit a rough patch. Instead of which, with FF and Twitter - @young_liz - keeping me ticking over, I have just begun resurrecting a novel I abandoned two years ago. Watch this space!