HEALTH AND SAFETY

I was on my way into a cafeteria yesterday clutching a file with the next chapter to edit, and who should walk by but my friend Lol.
"Just been to a Health and Safety lecture," she said, "Riveting, it was, absolutely riveting." Her face said differently.
"Tell me all," I said, tucking the file away - a friend in need is more important.
Lol works in an English supermarket, and has done for years. She's so experienced that they sent her to a new store to train the staff. But these courses are compulsory.
"Hours," she said, "Hours of stuff I could do in my sleep, and then .." she took a slurp of coffee and sighed deeply, "... and then we had to have it all over again translated into Spanish."
"How many of the staff speak Spanish?" I asked, knowing Lol doesn't.
"Two - and they speak English as well."
Well, we DO live abroad.

ABROAD

ABROAD. We live abroad. Deliver the phrase as a throw-away line and it sounds exotic, but if you tell people you live in Tenerife they immediately think of stag parties and sangria. It’s true that Reina Sofia AIRPORT is a heaving mass of humanity on Fridays, the usual change-over day for tourists. The coach park is full of suitcases, frayed tempers, and people dragging on their last cigarette before checking in or their first since leaving home.

AND many of them think they’re in Spain. But they’re wrong - a thousand miles wrong.

AFRICA is only 160 miles to the east - the hot, dry wind is full of Saharan dust that makes you cough - and the reason you go home burned a painful bright red is because the sun is African, not Mediterranean.

AMERICA is the next landfall west of the Canary Islands, and when the moon is full the waves have had 3000 miles of ATLANTIC in which to pick up speed – they can be huge.

ANNIVERSARIES. There are three this week I should mention.

It is 10 years since a violent storm hit Tenerife on March 31^st 2002, killing 8 people, sweeping huge containers into the sea in Santa Cruz, and toppling half of our electricity pylons.

The worst AVIATION disaster in history happened in 1977 when two planes collided at the north airport – around 600 perished in the fire when the fuel exploded.

AND 45 years ago, on APRIL 1^st 1967, I got married for the first time.

AG = silver. Read my “Toy poem” about a little silver man.