EXOTIC FLOWER - FLASH FICTION in 100 words

EXOTIC  FLOWER

Malee’s only way out of poverty was to marry a rich foreigner, and her photograph on the Agency’s website caught Vincente’s fancy – after one carefully orchestrated meeting he proposed.

His apartment in Malaga wasn’t the palace he had described, but Malee told herself she was fortunate – Vicente was a considerate husband, she had found a shop that stocked familiar ingredients, and beneath the trees of the park she almost felt at home.

Then winter came, and the park was buried in snow. Malee spent her days sitting by the window, an exotic flower dying by slow, cold degrees in a foreign land.

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The recent snow in the south of Spain has been an unwelcome surprise to many locals and expats alike - for someone from a warmer country it must have been a horrible shock.

This week's photograph was taken by Roger Bultot and posted on Rochelle's blog  https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/  From there you can follow the Blue Frog link to read how other Friday Fictioneers interpreted the prompt.

CAMPEONES & Earthquakes.

As you can imagine, last night was not a quiet one here in Tenerife.

It started in the afternoon with children chanting “España!” in the pool. Then one of our neighbours moved his television onto his terrace, lit his barbecue and invited all his friends round. 

 Every bar was bedecked with flags, and the football shirt manufacturers  had obviously done a roaring trade.





A few practice bangers exploded and my cat cowered. She won't allow me to comfort her at times like these - Canarian or not, she hates fireworks - so I built her a tent in her favourite corner and went to my daughter's apartment to watch the match in comfort.

Then there were shouts, screams, fireworks and general rejoicing. Four-nil! I am not a football fan, but the excitement was infectious.

Even the children were dressed up, and this man, his wife and his family were all decked out in Spanish colours.

I did feel sorry for Simone, owner of the lone Italian flag on our block. I found him sharing a drink with a Spaniard, and patted his back in sympathy. “No importa,” he said, but his expression was sad.

And there have been more earthquakes on the island of El Hierro - see its dedicated page on the right..

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.

CALIMAS, COLUMBUS, CAVES & CARNAVAL

CALIMAS blow in from Africa and can be as insubstantial as mist or thick as a CLOTH. CLOUDS can flow down the mountain like treacle over a pudding, or CLIMB as the sun heats the ground. It can be difficult sometimes to tell the difference between cloud and calima until the sinuses fill up with CATARRH. Then it’s a calima. The last one must have had a nasty African virus stuck to its sand-grains because I've had a CATASTROPHIC CHEST infection and hacking COUGH for two weeks. Yet still I managed to keep up the blogs – I hope you’re impressed.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS CALLED in at the CANARIES on his way to America, and the history books tell us that he picked up supplies. What most of them fail to mention is that he also COMMANDEERED some slaves, so when Spain CELEBRATES Columbus Day, we have Dia de Canarias. To the English it is ironic that the Spanish port named after him is Puerto COLON.

The CONQUISTADORES didn’t get everything their own way, though. There are CUEVAS (CAVES) all over the island, many of them almost inaccessible, and the locals who lived in them waged guerrilla warfare against the invaders for years.

Many caves are still used for storage, primarily of wine and CAVA, the local CHAMPAGNE. Some are still inhabited, with walls at the front, extra rooms CARVED out at the back, electricity and water installed.

I heard of one family who lived for years in a cave with a ladder as the only access - imagine CARRYING the shopping home!

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And of course, no C would be COMPLETE without mentioning CARNAVAL – that month of madness that CULMINATES in a parade of COSTUMES so vast that only the strongest can wear them. The buses fill up with transvestites as the macho males reveal their feminine side, the CRUZ ROJA sets up a tent hospital in Santa Cruz, and every COLEGIO has its own COLOURFUL parade.

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.