URGENT! - missed the post!

UNLESS I get my finger out I shall have failed in the last stretch of the A-Z Challenge. It was only because I was reading other blogs that I realised somewhere along the line I have lost track.
Of course it could be because I have had absolutely no inspiration for the letter U.

USELESS -As you will know if you've been following my ramblings, I am in the middle of a rewrite, and my brain has be totally USELESS today. Typing errors on every line - and my fingers used to spell so beautifully - so if I don't pull my socks up the book will come to a grinding halt.

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 our 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 share 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 this - if we had the money we would go back. Our hearts are still there.

UNSOLD. 

There is 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. It also means that our property had lost value and we are unable to raise enough to return the the UK.

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. 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.

and for those who appreciate a laugh - here is a photo I took yesterday in Las Gattetas.

JUNK, JONES & A JEEP

JUNK FILE – something no writer should be without. Not all the stuff we cut out when editing is rubbish. On days when I am stuck, organising my junk file into some logical order is a good displacement activity. Scenes that take this story nowhere could form the foundation of another one, and even the superfluous characters might be useful in another setting.

One person in Helter-Skelter I couldn’t possibly relegate to the junk file is JONES, one of the soldiers in Albie’s corps. In fact it would be difficult to delete any of his fellow soldiers because they all have roles in Part Three. Here is this week’s taster of my novel – it describes Jones’ character  perfectly (I hope!)

Jones – a hospital porter in civilian life – patted Harris's back and blew his nose and calmed him down. The entire hut called Jones “Auntie” after that, which he bore stoically.  “I’ve been called worse,” he confessed when Albie asked him if he minded and, looking at Jones’s soft body and doe eyes, Albie thought he could probably guess what.

There is another kind of junk that can be useful – the unwanted things we throw away. In every town, village and hamlet in Tenerife there are basura bins – some for recycling, others for landfill. Anything that in England we would have sent to a jumble sale we leave beside the bins, and often it is only minutes before they’ve gone. With 30% of the workforce out of a JOB, almost anything can turn up for sale at the weekly flea market.

JEEP – this photo is of my son-in-law’s pride and JOY – if he’s not painting a wall or tiling a kitchen on his day off, he’s nailing another piece of kit onto his Jeep!

ONE MAN'S RUBBISH IS ......

One thing the local government has got right in Tenerife is rubbish collection.
In a hot climate the last thing we need is stuff hanging around to rot and smell, so there are communal basura bins within reach of every home, and they're emptied every day including Sundays.
We also have separate recycling bins for glass, paper and "envases", which translates as milk and fruit juice cartons, drinks cans and the like.
And in our village the Cabildo also delivers this structure on Tuesday mornings - it's there till midday. Round the other side are several ramps up which you walk to deposit, in separate containers, batteries, electrical goods, cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, and the cooking oil that, if poured down the drain, can clog a sewage system in no time.
And there's one more container for household linen and clothing. This week I asked the supervisor what happens to the clothes etc, thinking perhaps they were chewed up to make newsprint.
"They go to people who need them," he told me. I went home and had a sort out.