TENERIFE FLOODS

We don't have rivers in Tenerife - that brown flood you see is the run-off from the storm of 10th and 11th and 12th December, during which more rain fell than we have had in the last eight years combined!
While I was taking this photo I had to move to make way for a lorry tipping mud scraped from the twin road tunnels at Guaza.  http://www.islandconnections.eu/ showed the state of affairs there on Wednesday with this photo. That's the TF1 autopista on top of that wall beneath which are the twin tunnels. To exacerbate matters, half of the autopista was covered in landslides.

Tuesday and Wednesday we followed the advice to stay at home but by today - Thursday - we were stir-crazy, and the rain had stopped, so we set off to our local shopping village, Las Galletas.
The road was closed. So was the alternative route past the petrol station - and this is why.

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 Another run-off down another barranco that goes behind the banana plantations at Guaza had cut the back road to Silencio completely.
So I left the OH drinking coffee at the cafe and walked towards the village to find out why the road was closed. It wasn't difficult.

The raging river you see behind me in the previous photo had found the sea - via the seafront road, the promenade and the beach.

I'll leave you with a few more images of the power of water - and we in the south of Tenerife came off lightly compared with some.

This young man, having leapt from one mini-island to another, obviously decided that discretion was the better part of valour and legged it back home.

GYPSY, GEORGE AND GUAZA MAN

   GYPSY When Albie’s mother abandons him she calls him a “gypsy brat” and tells him that her latest man friend doesn’t want him around. From that moment Albie is determined to find out if this was just another jibe or if he really does have Romany blood in his veins.

In the early 1900s the hop-fields and fruit farms of Kent, where my novel Helter-Skelter is set, are rich in travelling folk who, although they are still regarded with suspicion by the locals, are a necessary part of the labour force.

Meanwhile GEORGE & DOT SMITH become Albie’s parents by taking him into their home. George is a big, working class man – a patient grandfather who takes pity on the young waif Albie, and Dot is strong-willed but kind and motherly. She is a typical housewife of her era, who wears a wrap-over pinny all day, makes nourishing meals on very little money, and can’t stand bad behaviour. Come to think of it, she’s not unlike me – except for the apron!




As we drive home from Las Galletas, the fishing village a few kilometres away where we do our shopping and drink cafe con leche, we pass through GUAZA, where the mountain looks so like a recumbent figure that he is known as GUAZA MAN.

THE GUAZA STRIP

THE CABILDO have been up-grading the road through Guaza for over a year, taking the opportunity to put in better drains at the same time.
They did have the sense to finish the bypass first. This is unusual in Tenerife, where it is not unknown for roads to have their directionality changed overnight. If someone gets it wrong - also a not infrequent occurrence - all the traffic ends up in a bottleneck from which there is no legal escape, and the Policia have to sort it out.

Those businesses that somehow managed to survive the upheaval - the lack of any road at all, the cuts in electricity, water, telephone and internet access for often weeks at a time - now have a proper tarmac dual carriageway. There are more parking spaces in front of the shops, a 30K speed limit to allow cars to back out into the traffic, just enough room for a bus to get through if no-one double-parks and disappears for half an hour, and after weeks of slow work the gardeners have almost finished the centre strip.

There are palm trees and palm type shrubs, most of which survived being planted weeks before the watering system was installed under alternating stretches of brown and white rocks. The rocks are very pretty, and although they will make a superb home for cockroaches they should discourage dogs from using the area as a toilet and stick to the pavements they are accustomed to using.
Then after a few weeks of nothing, this week we see Cabildo workmen rolling the last, wider bit flat, hosing the edges clean, putting down a layer of black plastic and then....

installing artificial grass! Metres and metres of the stuff, held in place by more white rocks. How much does that cost? Aren't we in the middle of a financial crisis? No wonder people are asking which Councillor had a surplus of Astroturf. ....And bets are being taken on how long before it disappears one night.

WRITING AND A BUS

A few days off writing, organizing my desk and filling the recycling bin with paper, has resulted in a refreshed mind. I have completed a 1700 word story for a competition and will send it off once I have run it past my daughter's eagle eyes, and I have the germ of an idea for another competition entry.
The OH goes away on Thursday, after which I plan to tackle the much tougher task of re-writing a novel to re-submit to an agent who showed an interest. Unfortunately the temperature has gone up and my fingers are too sticky to be comfortable for long on the keyboard. Out comes the fan!
ON THE BUSES!
Driving into Guaza the other day I was held up by a green Titsa bus. No problem - I wasn't in a hurry - I assumed there was a van parked in the bis stop, as often happens. When the bus began moving I thought, "Here we go", but it wasn't going far.
Recently the Cabildo have been re-doing the road through Guaza. It has taken them more than a year, and goodness knows how many businesses closed due to the fact that customers literally had to jump ditches to reach them, but finally it was finished.
Except that they had forgotten one pipe, so this day the road was dug up again, and the Guardia had only just arrived to direct traffic. A bendy-bus, me and half-a-dozen other cars, a very narrow road and a junction with a mini-roundabout.
   Give the bus driver his due - when the police had moved a few cars from the road on our right, he backed his articulated bus down there and managed to execute a brilliant 40-point turn. He didn't even run over the roundabout.

CACTUS
Those of you who followed the growth of my cactus flower will be pleased to learn that, far from being slung in the bin by the gardeners, the cactus has been relocated and given its own water supply. Alfredo even took some cuttings from my huge lemon geranium to surround it. So we may even yet see the other flowers emerge from their hard black buds.