BLOG LIST SURGERY

 Just to cheer you up - this is one of the many flame trees I see on my morning walks. It's amazing how putting one foot in front of the other clears the mind, and today, as well as untangling a bit of plot, I made the decision to indulge in a spot of surgery.

  When the A-Z Challenge came along I was fairly new to blogging, and I was enthusiastic enough to sign up for it. Great fun it was too, most of the time, though there were moments when I thought otherwise!

One of its attractions - and let's be brutally honest here - was the promise of more followers. I started out with 10 and ended up with 40, so they were right about that.

 I also found some blogs I wanted to follow, and have checked on them regularly ever since, but half of them seem to have ground to a halt. 

So today, with surgical precision, I cut the list of blogs I follow in half. Two of those who only post occasionally I have kept because when they write it's always worth reading - the others have gone. I doubt they will even notice my absence.

Now I shall concentrate on proper writing for a while, and maybe, when I've got this damn book sorted out, I shall find the time to look for other blogs to follow.

A-Z AFTERTHOUGHTS

A-Z AFTERTHOUGHTS.

The A-Z Challenge was just that – a challenge – and I was drawn into it for three reasons. Firstly, I hoped it would take my mind off the fact that I was waiting to hear if an agent would take my book. Secondly, I was new to blogging and enthusiastic enough to blog every day. And thirdly I was tempted by the promise of more followers.

It was almost too successful - the challenge took so much of my time that my other writing went by the board. I made an alphabetical list of topics in March, but I was still caught out occasionally with nothing written on that day’s letter. Sticking to my theme of living abroad - specifically in Tenerife - became a challenge in itself, but it was only in the last week that I wondered if I would last the course.

Trawling through the list of entrants was the hardest part. The sheer number was daunting, but although I didn’t find a like-minded blogger living near Toronto (my youngest moved there last year) I did find others I enjoyed. And my own list of followers increased from 10 to 34, which pleased me inordinately. Two have dropped out this week, which I am trying not to take personally.

So, in the best traditions of the English essay, I end with my conclusions. The challenge was addictive, partly a chore but mostly enjoyable, and I have already thought of how to approach it next year.

ZYMOLYSIS & ZZZZ!

ZOUNDS! Having reached the end of the A-Z Challenge relatively unscathed, I thought I would post a blog for the OH, who has made mugs of tea but otherwise kept out of my way (most of the time) while I sit at my laptop.

 ZYMOLYSIS is the process of fermentation.
No, I didn’t know that either until I looked it up. Presumably that means fermentation of any sort, from A to Z (sorry - couldn’t resist that) but for today I will concentrate on alcohol.

ZYMERGY is the science of brewing, specifically of beer  In the UK there are any number of beers, and of course the Real Ale aficionados will all have their own favourites, but the most popular beer in Tenerife is Dorada. Anyone who has holidayed here and likes beer will (or should) have tried the local beverage.

Dorada has been brewed by Compañia Cervecera de Canarias for half a century and almost every Canarian bar serves it – CCC practically has a monopoly. There’s the Pilsner type – normal lager - Especial which is stronger, and Dorada Sin which, despite its name, means alcohol-free (sin = without!)

 It’s a really tasty beer – the one I choose when a real thirst hits me – and much better than any of the imported stuff that costs twice as much. Try it next time you’re in Tenerife.

The OH drinks Dorada all the time, so it must be good, although he wouldn't dream of drinking Sin. After a few too many jarras he snores even worse than usual.

ZZZZ !!

ZUG is the name I have given an old woman in the second book of my Living Rock series. She’s a game old bird who loves nosing into the affairs of her clan, and the name suits her. Isn’t it difficult choosing names for our characters?

Z is the end. The end of this challenge at least. Thank you to those who have stuck with me for the whole month, and to those who have joined me along the way. Most of you are writers too, so you will understand when I say it will be nice to get back to normal. I shall still blog, but not every day -

I have a book to edit, another to re-write, and some ideas to get down on paper before they disappear for ever!.

YO, YUCCA & YACHTS

YO means simply “I” which is what I am going to concentrate on next month! 


YUCCA The first time I saw a yucca in flower I was amazed – the yuccas I’d seen in England were pot plants. Then I saw these strange roots for sale and learned they were yucca too – known in some places as manioc or cassava. You can boil it and serve with a mojo (sauce) – it’s rather bland on its own – and it thickens a stew beautifully. It can be fried in slices or made into chips – in fact you can treat it as you would a potato. Apparently you can also put the flower petals in a salad and eat the fruit.

YAMS are another favourite, though yam is what my OH calls them – batatas is the Canarian word, and in England you know then as sweet potatoes. I love them, though it’s difficult to tell whether I’m buying blanca or naranja unless I scratch one – I prefer the nananja. Its orange flesh tastes divine, particularly when roasted like a parsnip, and like the yucca they go beautifully in a stew or curry.

YACHTS are everywhere here – not surprising on an island – and some of them cost more than a house. There was speculation in a local newspaper last week about who owns a luxury yacht in Los Cristianos harbour – if it’s going begging I’ll take it off their hands!

Many little fishing harbours, like this one in Las Galletas, have gone up-market in recent years with marinas, but alongside the luxury yachts you will still find the local fishing boats, and the beaches will still be scattered with battered rowing boats.

A friend of ours is repairing his yacht after sailing it across from America singlehanded. I typed up his personal log of the 40-day journey, and although he makes light of it, I was scared silly by the laconic way in which he wrote of a tanker just missing him, or of losing half his drinking water, or climbing the mast to effect a repair. At least he wasn’t attacked by pirates.

YOUNG As the OH is fond of saying, with such a name we will always be young. Shame it’s not true, and the body lets us down more often, but age is a state of mind too. So as the YEARS pike up inexorably, nil desperandum!   

XENOPHOBIA & XEROPHYTE

What we have here is the Tenerife flag behind the Spanish one, to illustrate my point that if you dislike foreigners, Tenerife is not the place for you. For one thing, XENOPHOBES would find it hard to accept that they – in fact anyone other than the native Canarians – are the foreigners here, including the mainland Spanish.

Being an island a long way from Europe we attract more than our share of people evading the law, and that tends to colour our attitudes. A lot of drugs come from Columbia, so we are wary of Columbians. Many muggings are perpetrated by Rumanians, so they all get tarred with the same brush. The area around the Home for young unaccompanied illegal immigrants is plagued with robberies, so any black face up there is suspect.  The Russian crime lords and Italian mafia have toe-holds here, so we mistrust those people, and cheered when we heard that a gang of 30 was flown to the mainland for trial recently..

And yet, at the last count, we had friends and neighbours from – in alphabetical order - Africa, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, England, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Venezuela and Wales. We have been to an Italian christening, a Spanish First Communion, a Scottish wedding, an Irish St Patrick’s Day bash, and our Venezuelan friends have invited us to several barbecues, more than one Christmas dinner, and a wedding.

There was a restaurant in our town that has had many tenants, none of whom lasted long. The owner was a crook who doubled the rent as soon as each hopeful began to show a profit. He also pocketed the tenants’ money for electricity while running an illegal wire from the community supply. He was notorious, and he was also from La Gomera. When his wife divorced him and took over the building, no-one was sorry – El Gomeron had got his comeuppance. He’d be just as crooked if he was local, but he gives all Gomerons a bad name, and they're regarded as backward anyway, just because their island is smaller than Tenerife.

We can all be racist in small ways without realizing. The one African watch seller who is too pushy puts you off them all. The table-cloth hawker whose nimble fingers steal cash out of your purse makes all of them robbers. The  Spanish boys who ripped my friend’s handbag off her shoulder in broad daylight have made her wary of all such groups. A Canarian who hates all tourists and makes it obvious can spoil your impression of the entire population.

I was reading in a local paper that El Fraile, a village a few kilometres from us, has seventy different nationalities. Xenophobes there would expire of apoplexy.

And years ago we visited a Ugandan friend who had just had her second baby. “He’s lovely,” we said. “He’s the wrong colour,” she replied. “What do you expect – white babies?” I asked. “No – he’s too black, like his grandfather.”

 It’s not only white people who are prejudiced.

XEROPHYTE refers to any plant that can reduce its water loss during dry periods and/or has a system of water storage – such as cacti and succulents, of which we have thousands in Tenerife.

The prickly pears that you see growing wild used to be cultivated for the cochineal beetle they support and many of them still belong to someone. The fruit is edible but be warned - you need thick gloves to pick it unless you want to be removing tiny spines for days. I find the taste insipid, but they’re full of vitamins and thirst-quenching in an emergency.

Another xerophyte that’s good for you is aloe vera, which the Cabildo often use to decorate the roadsides. The juice is good for the digestion and soothes sunburn instantly. It can be squeezed straight from a leaf – I’ve seen locals picking them from the town gardens. Of course you can save yourself the bother and buy refined aloe vera products – my daughter sells them in several hotels on the island.

The cacti that look like a set of organ pipes are protected in Tenerife – like trees might be in an English town. When our road was due to be up-graded the Cabildo sent a team of specialists to build a protective wall round one. It was a lovely wall – a real work of art. Pity the new road is several metres above it.

Cacti don’t flower very often but when they do they go all out. A twenty foot cactus dotted with huge flowers is quite a sight, and the last time there was a flower on our cactus the community cleaner called her friends to take photos. ¡Que bonita!

WALKING & WRITING

WALKING

Ten years ago I set off from the top of Adeje town, with my daughter, son-in-law, a friend and a dog, to WALK the Barranco del Infierno = “Hell’s Ravine”. There was a track of sorts, rarely level and very narrow, and there weren’t many places at which we felt safe meeting other WALKERS. Some of the steeper stretches had knee-high steps rough-hewn out of the rock – in other places we were scrambling on hands a knees. Each time we rounded a bulge in the mountainside we could see the track WINDING ahead endlessly, and the sea behind us vanished. Despite the other people on the track, we felt like genuine explorers. There was no shelter from the fierce sun, but WE WERE WEARING hats and sensible shoes and carried WATER. We saw many painfully-pink tourists in flip-flops who hadn’t been that sensible.

Gradually, as we climbed higher and further inland, the reason we had come on this comparatively arduous trek became apparent. A stream trickled over rocks by our feet, ferns and shrubs grew beside the cacti, and trees reminiscent of those in an English WOODLAND shaded us. WITH renewed energy we walked through this WONDERLAND to reach our destination – a small clearing at the foot of a vertical cliff down which a WATERFALL fell into a black pool. This waterfall only flows when there is snow-melt or rain-water from the Adeje mountains, but on an island with no natural springs it was a treat just to sit on the small beach and listen to the splash.

We paddled, of course, and dipped our hands and faces in the icy pool, and then started back. The 90 minute return journey took us from cool woodland to baked goat-track again, and by the time we reached the car I was knackered, but it had been WORTH it.

Six months later I had a hip replacement, and I haven’t done anything like that since, but there are many lovely walks to be had on Tenerife. If you’re fit and WANT to tackle any of them as a change from the beach, look on the relevant WEBSITES -  Try  http://walkingtenerife.blogspot.com.es

The free paper Island Connections reported this week that nine Cabildos (Councils) in the south of Tenerife are planning to open a website in the next few months featuring walks, among other rural tourism options. You will be able to download GPS co-ordinates too – technology goes trecking!

The following advice comes from Maurice, an online Tenerife friend who is miles fitter than I am!

 I suppose you could say, "walks are what you do daily but serious walks are actually Treks.” 
If you look at www.webtenerife.co.uk/activities/amongst-nature/footpaths/ you will find a list of good treks & descriptions etc.
Not too many people know that the Teide National Parks Authority do 'guided' walks - mostly in Spanish - and they also have easy walking maps (graded walks) for the National Park. They are written in Spanish, German & English and are available from The Park information centres at El Portillo, the Parador & Boca de Tauce.

 There are quite a few walking groups based in Puerto de la Cruz, Los Gigantes, Los Cristianos, Teno & Anaga. Some are 'private' and some are small businesses (usually self employed guides). Various nationalities are involved but German, Spanish & English prevail.

WATER . Regular followers of my blog will have noticed how often I mention water – or rather, the lack of it. We manage remarkably well for an island with no rivers, and this is due mainly to geology but also to hard work. Rainwater and snow-melt from the mountain filter down through the permeable volcanic rock to 1000 underground galleries and 500 WELLS. The pine trees in the forest contribute by condensing moisture from the clouds – the needles on Canarian pines point the ‘WRONG WAY’ to ensure the water doesn’t evaporate. 50% of the water collected goes on agriculture and the rest must supply the needs of 2 million residents and 10 million annual visitors. So please don’t WASTE IT! (The photo below is one of the water galleries, which can be full of toxic gas, so don't walk into any!)

WRITING It wasn’t until I had lived here for a few years that I considered writing a novel. I have always loved WORDS, so perhaps it was bound to happen sooner or later, and retirement gave me the leisure to try. Also when I told my younger son I was bored, he told me to write a book!

I find Spanish cafeterias strangely restful places to write, because although I can speak Spanish it isn’t my native tongue, and it’s easy to filter out the background noise. When I am finally published I shall have to get my book translated into Spanish for the cafeteria owners who bring me coffee and turn the light on so that I can write.

I belong to a tiny writers’ circle here, but I am too far away to attend many writing events in the UK. I took out a subscription to the Writing Magazine last year, and its online forum Talkback helps to lift the feeling of isolation from the English literary WORLD – I WISH I had started reading it years ago!

U for UK - UNFORTUNATELY

UK. There are many advantages to living in Tenerife. The climate is kinder on arthritic joints, for one thing – we know of one man who arrived here on crutches and within months was teaching badminton again. The cost of living is lower, as long as you go native and don’t do all your shopping in stores that import everything from the UK. We have fleeces but no winter coats, we don’t even possess wellies, and the beer and wine is cheap.

The downside is that we left friends and family behind – it is ironic that the first long word we learned from out flash cards was desgraciademente = UNFORTUNATELY. The space we left in the UK has filled up now, of course. Friends are pleased to see us when we go over, but we don’t have the minutӕ of daily life in common any more, and those friendships are fading.

We left six children there too, and four grandchildren. Since then three more grandchildren have been born and are growing up without us. So when people ask, “Do you regret moving?” obviously expecting the answer to be “No”, we tell them that.

This photo is of my four children, their other halves and my two grandsons. The OH's family is more scattered but still UK based.

UNSOLD. The old bull-ring I featured yesterday was full of unsold cars for a couple of years. In hindsight it was definite proof of the coming crisis. They were parked in sad rows, their varied colours rapidly fading UNDER a layer of orange dust. Then one day there was a procession of gruas (tow-trucks) and they all disappeared. Did someone buy the lot or was the rent, even of an UNUSED bull-ring, too much for the company that owned them?

There is also a veritable rash of unsold apartments everywhere we go. “¡Oportunidad!” the posters scream from the balconies. We know it means another family has lost the battle to pay their mortgage.

UNEMPLOYMENT in Spain is around 26% - in Tenerife it’s worse, and el paro (dole) doesn’t cover the mortgage for long. No wonder the camp-sites and caves are filling up. One of our Columbian neighbours comes round regularly to fill some water bottles – his has been cut off – and the poor man is so embarrassed. He asked me last week if I could give him a euro to visit his child – he hadn’t even got one euro for the bus. Out by the basura at night, it’s not just tramps you see dumpster-diving for food, or clothes, or anything that might raise a euro or two at the Sunday flea-market.

UNDERTAKER. Not a cheerful subject, but moving abroad sharpened our minds. So we paid for our funerals in advance – you can do it in instalments if you like – and it was at 2001 prices. The kids were shocked when we told them – “Oh Mum, you’re not ill are you?” – but now we can all relax in the knowledge that arrangements have been made. The cheapest funeral these days costs about £2500 – could your family afford that?

U is a bit of an orphan letter – USUALLY the least USED vowel – which I bear in mind when I do a codeword puzzle to relax before sleep. It starts so many negative words, as in UNATTRACTIVE or UNWRITTEN, but where would Q be without it?

UGH! Cucurachas – I hate them. In England, if something scuttles across the floor just on the edge of your sight, it’s likely to be a spider. Here it’s a cockroach. We put stuff down that they are supposed to take back to the nest to kill themselves, their babies and the eggs, but still they come. We double-wrap our rubbish, but if we put the kitchen light on in the middle of the night, there’s always one of the UGLY buggers. They are UNINVITED guests at any evening meal on the terrace, and we never leave a drink UNCOVERED outside – a mouthful of cockroach is decidedly UNPLEASANT.

They say cockroaches can survive a nuclear blast. Maybe so, but they don’t last long after a direct hit with a flip-flop.

UP is the only positive word I can think of today that begins with U. Bottoms up. Chin up. Fill ‘er up. Gee up. Hurry up. Looking up. Mix up. Pop up. Stir up. Wake up. The only way is up.

Even the word ‘up’ looks odd when you use it too many times, doesn’t it? Cheer up!

ROCKS, RUINS & RBL

RUINED buildings have always fascinated me – they leave so much to the imagination. The holes in a castle wall where joists used to be conjure up images of floors and furniture, spiral stairs make me wonder how servants carried trays of food up to their masters. The skeleton of a shed in a French field was so striking that I took several photos and wrote it into a novel.

Until a firm of speculative builders scraped the surface from the former agricultural land around us, I could explore ROUGH-WALLED terraces and imagine the fields filled with potatoes or cabbages. There was a one-room house too – a ROOF-BEAM leaning against one wall and a tangle of herbs that was once a kitchen garden.

Overlooking the nearest banana plantation is a ROW of workers’ cottages, roofs and doors long gone and walls collapsed. Older locals remember when they were occupied by agricultural workers. If someone had bought them before the roofs fell in they could have made a lovely home with a grand view of the sea.

The builder’s ROADS are now as abandoned as those fields were, and are already going back to nature – I wonder what future generations will make of them?

ROUNDABOUTS

Tenerife has only had roundabouts for a few years. Before that, if you wanted to turn left you turned RIGHT, drove ROUND an island, and ended up having to cross traffic from both directions. The roads weren’t wide enough for feeder lanes.

Then the government discovered roundabouts and put them everywhere. Drivers who had lived on the island all their lives didn’t know what they were or how to use them. Each roundabout was soon strewn with glass, the number of cars with bashed-in doors increased, articles appeared in newspapers, and heated arguments RAGED in every café and bar. The Cabildo sent every household a letter explaining, with diagrams, how to drive round a roundabout. It appeared to have been written by someone who had only READ the theory.

And those striped triangular patches on the approach roads – the cross-hatching that indicates “Do not drive on this bit” – are considered a great place to park if you need to visit a nearby shop.

Things have settled down now, but any sensible driver avoids what the Brits call “The Magic Roundabout” in Los Cristianos. It has two lanes, which are always a RECIPE for disaster here - the local drivers regard the inner circle as an overtaking opportunity for those in a hurry. If you take the inside lane to turn left you could be stuck there all day, and if you opt for the outer circle you can practically guarantee that someone will carve you up by shooting across your bows to turn right.

And mini roundabouts? I saw a van yesterday approaching a mini-roundabout in Guaza from the wrong angle. Sensing danger, I waited. White van man overshot his left turn, slammed on his brakes, REVERSED practically onto my bonnet, and shot off up the road he’d been aiming for. You need to keep your wits about you, driving in Tenerife.

ROCKS

I had never really thought about rocks until we came to Tenerife, and was surprised by the different colours, textures and formations. Simply driving along the motorway, where the rock has been chipped away for cuttings, is a mobile lesson in how the layers of lava overlaid each other when the island was formed. There is rock so porous that bees can build hives in it, and rock so hard that a chipped edge is like a knife. There is blue rock and green rock, black and white rock layered like a cake, brown and red, yellow and orange, terracotta and cream.

No wonder my series of fantasy books is called “Living Rock”.

ROYAL BRITISH LEGION

We transferred our membership to the Tenerife branch of the Royal British Legion soon after we arrived. There were about 25 members then and, due to what is euphemistically called “natural wastage” we now number 17 – the youngsters don’t join, which is a shame.

For the past 5 years we have won the Noel Rogers Trophy for the overseas branch that raises the most Poppy Appeal money per member. Last year we got €11,000 and change – around €500 per member – our nearest rivals raised €44. Big is not always better! The photo was taken at Westhaven Bay in Costa del Silencio, where we hold our service, with (L-R) the British Ambassador to Spain, the OH who is Chairman. Paul our Vice-Chairman and Welfare Officer and his wife, and the previous Canary Islands Consul.

We exist mainly to deal with any welfare cases that come our way, which have ranged from the widow of an RAF pilot not being able to afford a new fridge to a young serviceman and his wife severely injured in a car accident and stuck in hospital for months. We also have a Remembrance Service each year, in the open air overlooking the sea, which is attended by about 350 people, some of whom book their annual holiday around that date. One year the crew of a Royal Navy vessel, in Santa Cruz on its way home from the Antarctic, joined us. That was a particularly emotional morning, the young sailors’ voices loud in the hymns and even louder later at the barbecue with karaoke!

POLITICS & PENSIONS

POLITICS

It’s a chicken and egg question, isn’t it? Are cheats and criminals attracted to politics or does becoming a POLITICIAN corrupt?

Tenerife is divided into PRINCIPALITIES, based on the ancient Guanche kingdoms. They equate roughly to counties in England – subject to central government but with some autonomy. Each Principality has its own Cabildo (Council) and Alcalde (Mayor) and Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) and a council of elected representatives.

We live in Arona and as foreigners with Residencias we can vote in the local elections. The first time there was an election we studied all the bumph and voted as we thought appropriate. Since those early days we have learned it's not worth the bother, and smile cynically when the hoardings go up – huge things with space carefully divided between the PARTIES, lots for the biggies and tiny slivers for the also-rans. 

There’s always a flurry of PRE-ELECTION activity – roads are repaired (or actually finished!) PUBLIC gardens get new PLANTS and trees, street lamps get bulbs. Then the candidates come round the bars and stand looking sheepish while a PR girl explains who they are. One year everyone got a free lighter.

Once we went to a nearby campsite where a candidate was hosting a free barbecue – great slabs of beef were cooking on old metal bed-frames over fire-pits, huge saucepans of Canarian POTATOES were bubbling, there was a token bowl of salad on every table, and barrels and barrels of wine. We even got to speak to the candidate himself, and he told us that he was in favour of English residents. We voted for him simply because he’d made the most effort – it was as reliable a way as any other of picking our man, though he was PROBABLY as corrupt as the rest.

Whole Councils have been sacked and/or PROSECUTED for corruption. Land designated as Agricultural land suddenly acquires a building PERMIT and you know there's a brown envelope involved. The first sign of any Cabildo PROJECT starting is a board telling us how much it will cost, to the last centimo. The work stops and starts, the contractors change,the PLANS are altered, and it all ends up costing ten times the original quote - if it's finished at all. 

So a PLAGUE on all Politicians.

PENSIONERS ABROAD

I read a remark by one British politician that included the PHRASE, “These rich expats living in their luxury villas, playing golf and drinking sangria.” That was his excuse for trying to deny us the same rights as “POOR PENSIONERS in England”. PERHAPS you agree with him?

Well, we’re not all rich. The OH and I live in an apartment in a block of eighty identical ones, in a small town composed mainly of such blocks. We couldn’t afford to play golf at €100 a round even if we wanted to, and we both hate sangria.

The truth is that we moved here because of a lack of money, not an excess of it. After a nightmare of debts in England we’re managing nicely now. There’s enough to PAY the bills, run a small car, eat out once a month, and drink cheap wine. And of course there's the sun - except in the winter months when we get a cold wind off the mountain and need our electric fire. The Tourist Board don't want you to know about that! :Last month the OH was wearing a jumper even in the sun.

Some pensioners are worse off than we are. Most of their income goes on rent – no housing benefit here – and they get their clothes from flea markets. They couldn’t afford a flight home to avail themselves of the Welfare State even if they wanted to.

Yes, we chose to come here, but that’s no excuse to regard us as deserters. We PAID into the British system – there are many PEOPLE still living out here who fought for it – and we are only asking to be given our due and treated equally.

PEPPER TREES are so PRETTY – here’s a PHOTO I took this week. It's laden with bunches of tiny pink peppers - the kind used to make a pepper sauce - millions and millions of them just falling to the ground to be raked up and dumped.

And this PLANT is a lantana. They come in a variety of colours, mostly two-tone. I have seen yellow and white, orange and yellow, red and orange, but this is pink, white and yellow.  I took a cutting of one back to UK years ago and it grew to a sizeable bush – and it survived the English winter under a blanket of snow! 

OSTRICHES & OBESITY

OPERATION

My medical blog on Saturday seems to have come across as a disaster story, which was not my intention. We’ve had good medical treatment here – it’s just different, that’s all. And the funds to keep it going are limited, hence the delay in building the hospital. Tenerife is subject to the whims of mainland Spain, and consequently its infrastructure is second class. The individual care we get from our GP is not.

 OIL. Talking of the mainland – the Peninsula, as the Canarians call it with a definite sneer – the Spanish government has told Repsol that it can prospect for oil off these islands. This agreement – this sell-out – was rushed through despite the Canary Island government saying oil drilling will ruin our environment and our tourism. The sea around our islands is so deep that whales live here all year round, regulating their temperatures by diving to colder water in summer. Can you imagine the impact drilling would have on them? The OPINION here is that Spain will take what it can, particularly in view of the financial crisis, but give little back.

 OSTRICHES

If you fancy something completely different, try a meal of OSTRICH at the ostrich farm and restaurant near San Isidro and the airport. Ostrich meat is low in cholesterol and calories and tastes a bit like steak, and the set meal with drinks is around €20. You get the tour thrown in for free if you eat there, but of course, having seen the gangly youngsters you might not like the idea of eating the adult version!  If you take a lot of people with you – about a dozen might be enough if they have big appetites – you can have an ostrich-egg OMELETTE cooked in a huge paella dish.

They have been having some problems lately, though. There’s a dog rescue place next door, from which the inmates have been escaping and killing the ostriches – presumably the smaller birds, as an adult ostrich has a killer kick.

 OBESITY.  At the risk of OFFENDING some people, I must say a word about this modern plague with which, according to the papers, Spain has a major problem. I’m not talking just nicely rounded or a tad OVERWEIGHT – the number of seriously OBESE people is growing. When you see the piles of unnecessary food they consume you can see why. With apologies to those people with genuine glandular problems, the majority of obesity is caused by eating too much – you don’t see many obese people in a refugee camp. I saw a woman pouring sweetened condensed milk into her child’s feeding cup the other day – what chance has the poor child got?

 OVER-OPTIMISTIC building is another problem here. The construction bubble has burst, leaving rows of houses and apartments unsold and prey to vandalism. And a law - quite a sensible one for once - that forced speculators to install basic amenities such as paved roads and street lights before building homes, rather than selling what they'd built and buggering off, has left our town at least with streets and lamp-standards but no houses where once there was untouched land.

OLIVES. ON special OCCASIONS Geoff and I used to take our children to Al Forno’s in Brighton. We’d always have a pizza which we could see being cooked in the brick OVEN, and Geoff always ate my olives. He wouldn’t get near them now - the olives here are fat, juicy and delicious.

NAVIDAD & NOVEL

NAVIDAD = Christmas. We spent our last two Christmases in England and they were the best we’ve had in the past twelve years. Christmas isn’t the same without family, especially our grandchildren.

The Tenerife shops display  decorations, gifts, and cards - the usual commercial glitz that you see in England - and we've got used to seeing them against the background of sunshine. Wearing thin summer         clothes, we push our trolley between aisles loaded with festive food.

Some families buy a leg of Jamon which sits in the kitchen for weeks covered only by a tea-cloth, to have slivers cut off for tapas or sandwiches. You can buy a leg for 30 euros but the best ones (with black hooves) can set you back 130 euros. 

Then there's Turron = a sweet sold in slabs mainly at Christmas. Most varieties contain almonds, and it can be hard like crunchy toffee or soft like nougat.  If you want traditional English food there are shops and restaurants that cater for that too, and people book early to have their Christmas dinner with entertainment in the sun.

The locals have their traditional family meal late on NOCHE BUENA – literally, GOOD NIGHT – which is Christmas Eve, and we’ve been lucky enough to be invited to a few homes. We have had Italian – strange to be eating pasta on Christmas Eve! – and twice we joined a family of good friends for their dinner of traditional Venezuelan food.

NATIVITY PLAY

One year my mother was here, and she and I went to the nearest church for Midnight Mass.

The churches here are lovely. Some are centuries old and dark, with the scent of candles, flowers, fabric and ancient prayers. Others, particularly in the south of Tenerife, are newer and brighter.

The doors of the church we attended were left open to the air of Noche Buena, and children ran in and out. Their mothers and grandmothers were inside the church, praying on behalf of the whole family, one assumes, but the fathers stayed in the square drinking beer - except when the Nativity Play was performed, when they buzzed around the church like paparazzi. One memory I treasure is of a girl who played the Virgin Mary. Her portrayal of a heavily pregnant woman was so realistic that the entire congregation was in hysterics.

NIGERIANS

Last December, just before we flew off to England, we were attracted to our village Cultural Centre by the sound of music. We found open-sided marquees full of Nigerians celebrating a national festival. Every single person was dressed in their best, in every imaginable colour and pattern, and the women in the most elaborate head-gear. I stopped a toddler from straying onto the road and found his mother – she bowed low several times with clasped hands to thank me. We wanted to stay and asked one man where we could buy a beer – he gave us four cans from his table and said, “It’s all free.” We had a wonderful time and the dancing was great. The next morning there was no sign that anything had happened – no marquees, not a scrap of litter – only our aching feet told us it hadn’t all been a dream.

NOVEL An agent asked for the whole manuscript of one of my novels a month ago. If she doesn’t get back to me soon with a decision I shall have NIBBLED my NAILS to NOTHING. 

LINDA & LOS ABRIGOS

LINDA means “pretty” in Spanish – an appropriate name for my daughter-in-LAW - And of course, L is for LOVE.

LANDING in Tenerife you will see, LURKING in the terminal, LINES of tour operators waiting to LEAD their LAMBS to the coaches and whisk them off to their hotels. Too many of these are all-inclusive these days and consequently the average tourist LEAVES again without catching more than a glimpse of our LOVELY island.

LUCKILY there are some who will venture out, board a bus or hire a car, and LAUNCH themselves into the unknown. It’s almost impossible to get really LOST because if you’re going up there’s Mount Teide as a LANDMARK, and if you’re going down there’s the Atlantic. So LEAVE the beach or the pool for a day and explore - even the most ordinary of towns can be hiding secret treasures behind the tourist façade. For example ---
LOS ABRIGOS is a village near the airport. The seafront has been pesestrianized in recent years, and when you walk past the tiny church you will find, overlooking the small harbour, a wealth of restaurants. It's worth visiting just for the food. There's a langostera in a side street that guarantees your seafood will be fresh, though I'd better warn you - even my OH can't manage more than five langostinos - they're huge.

But to work up
an appetite before you eat, take a stroll up the slope on the far side of the harbour, where you will find a rocky cove with the original landing–place for boats – a LETHAL one-in-three ramp with planks inlaid for purchase. Above the cove, a narrow pathway winds round a house and along the steep cliff-face to the top road.

Steps near the ramp take you past a boat-shed where they still make and repair boats, to a tangle of LITTLE LANES between the houses of the old village that LIE clustered together for protection against the Atlantic winds. My daughter-in-law, who is an artist, took some wonderful photographs of old doors and windows for her thesis.

After this dip into the past you can spend a LEISURELY evening eating your dinner overlooking the harbour, LISTENING to the wavelets LAP the rocks, LAZILY LOOKING at the stars, and watching the LIGHTS reflected in the LIMPID waters.

And this is spooky. When I LOADED this photo of a terrace garden onto my LAPTOP, it asked me “Who is this?” But there’s nobody in the picture. LOOK very closely at the white wall in the front of the picture and you might just see a crack and a spot that could add up to a face – or a ghost?

LABELS ARE LIMITING. What exactly does LITERARY mean in the writing world? We’re advised to check out an agent before submitting, and the word literary has always puzzled me. I write stories – who decides if they’re LITERATURE or not?

Sitting on my computer is a completed book about a young LABOURER-cum-petty criminal who rescues an abused boy, and how the Strange Adoption changes both their LIVES. A professional critic and my writers’ circle say it should definitely be published, but if I can’t fit it into a category, how can I pitch it to an agent?

LASTLY, for anyone who has been missing my Toy Poems – go on the poem page to read about Boofuls the LAVENDER bear.