TIMETABLE - 100 words for Friday Fictioneers

TIMETABLE

The island’s steep lava flows sprawled into the Atlantic like giant starfish arms, each inlet battered by waves that had gained strength across a thousand miles of ocean.

Manuel had grown up here, knew it intimately, and he had a foolproof plan. Rob the village store just as it was closing, then escape along the railway line and hide in the tunnel as he had when he was a boy. The police, having to use the winding road, couldn’t catch him.

Unfortunately, in the years he’d been away, the train timetable had changed. Jumping to the side wasn’t an option.

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 This week's photograph, thanks to Dawn M Miller and https://rochellewisoff.com/ , reminded me of La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands. It doesn't have a railway, but the road around the island is cut through each starfish arm and skirts precipitous drops to the valleys. That's the mostly yellow one on this map!

I have taken on another challenge this month - one from National Flash Fiction, to produce an Advent Calendar of flash fiction using a different prompt each day. Feel free to scroll through my archives and read them.

HONEY OR HONEY?

Most people think of honey as that mixture of nectar and bee-spit produced by bees to feed their babies and subsequently stolen - sorry, collected - by humans.

On the Canary Island of La Gomera another kind of honey is harvested - Miel de Palma - Palm Honey. The raw ingredient is guarapo which is collected from the Canarian Date Palm by the bucketful and boiled to reduce it by 90% to a syrup. It is used in cooking, or drizzled over desserts, and can be useful medicinally, just like bee honey. It is highly prized in Europe and Asia for its flavour and high mineral content.
http://palmhoney.com/

Follow this link to read more about it.

In the local paper today I read that the authorities are trying to make the Gomeron guaraperos stop using the word 'honey', claiming that word should only be used for the bee product.
The farmers say they have been calling it 'honey' since before the Conquistadores arrived - there is documentary evidence of this fact - and they see no reason to change the practice of centuries.
Quite right too.

There is no butter in peanut butter.
Laverbread is seaweed.
Lemon curd contains no curds.
Damson cheese is made of fruit and sugar.
Ginger beer isn't beer.
Soya milk doesn't come from animals.
... and there often is little trace of chicken in 'Chicken nuggets' or of fish in 'Fish cakes'.

Are the Word Police going after those products next?

GRANDSONS & GOATS

There have been a lot of photos of my GRANDSONS on Facebook this week. Their other GRANDMOTHER is visiting from Slovakia, so my daughter-in-law is camera-happy. So are the boys, judging by their happy GRINS. Me - jealous? Don't even GO there!

Las GALLETAS. The name means “The Biscuits”(!) and it is the fishing village where we lived when we first settled in Tenerife. We rented a tiny one-bedroom apartment overlooking some waste GROUND. On Sundays we had a GRANDSTAND view as local men and boys raced their off-road motos (motorbikes) and on Mondays we would wipe and mop up all the dust.

We had no TV, but the beach was round the corner, the shops 5 minutes’ walk, and we could sit at Amadeo’s bar with a GLASS of vino tinto to watch the sunset. One evening the western sky darkened unusually quickly, and we watched in amazement, with hands protecting our drinks, as millions of huge dragonflies flew in on the wind from Africa. Many of them landed on the wall nearby, clearly exhausted, poor things, and their colours were GORGEOUS.

Our next door neighbours were Indians. One hot day their door was open and such a wonderful smell wafted out that I commented on it. Ten minutes later the two elder children knocked on our door and GAVE us a plate of food! When we returned the plate, with GRATEFUL thanks, we were invited in and shown round. In that two-bedroom apartment, with parents and three children, there was a whole room lined with tall shelves for their household GODS – awesome devotion.

LA GOMERA. Sometimes when we’re driving into Los Cristianos we can see this island so clearly it looks as if you could swim across. At other times it is so shrouded in cloud that it disappears completely – La Isla Magica. It’s well worth the ferry ride. It’s shaped like a dried and shrunken starfish, with deep barrancos divided by steep lava flows, but the local taxi- and bus-drivers are accustomed to the character-forming roads and the scenery is spectacular. GREENERY spills down from the laurel forest on its flat crown, farms cling to slopes as steep as staircases, every path is a series of steps, and the natural domestic animals to keep there are GOATS. They even have their own language of whistles –sifle – which can communicate from one hill to another such simple things as "Dinner's ready" or "I'm going for a drink with the lads.".

I’m GENERALLY a GOOD-NATURED GIRL, as anyone will tell you (if they know what’s GOOD for them!) but some things really GET my GOAT.

People whose idea of conversation is to talk exclusively about themselves.

Drivers who zoom past hooting their horns because I’m keeping to the speed limit.

Ordering a GRILLED meal and having it arrive swimming in GREASE.

GREED – either personal or national – there’d be enough to go round if we were less selfish.

GADGETS that do things you can do quicker by hand.

And the word GENRE that wants to stick me – and you – in categories with fences.

GEOFFREY. My father, my brother and my children’s father were all called Geoffrey. Please share a moment of Gratitude for their lives – one life that was longer than average and the other two far too short.

GEE! GOLLY! GOSH! A day off tomorrow - what WILL I do with myself?