WATER MUSIC - a story in 100 words

WATER MUSIC

On holiday in Tenerife, who could resist a free concert?

It didn’t take them long to get ready – the Spanish waiter told them bikinis and sarongs were the norm. They started on the vodka in their hotel, mixed generous slugs into bottles of Coke, and went to the beach.

It was heaving, the music loud, the atmosphere electric.

They danced on sand that radiated the day’s heat, and watched the lights sparkle on the sea. It looked different at night – mysterious – and they dropped their sarongs to slip into its silken coolness.

Beach cleaners found their sarongs at dawn.

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There were many beach concerts when I lived in Tenerife, though I chickened out of going to one - I have more respect for my hearing! The sand needed sifting afterwards, despite the banning of glasses or bottles, but how could police control a jam-packed crowd of holiday-makers? Swimming at night, when drunk, is not a good idea either.

Thanks to Rochelle for running our group of flash writers, and to CE Ayr for his photograph she used as a prompt on her blog  https://rochellewisoff.com/  If you'd like to join our happy throng, click on the froggy on there which will take you to the link page.

I hope you are all well, staying safe, washing your hands, and ignoring idiotic advice to inject houshold substances or take unprescribed medicine!
Yes, I'm talking like a mum, but today I'm allowed to - it's my son's birthday, and he's of an age that reminds me how ancient I am :(

RECCE - a story in less than 100 words

RECCE

Asbed scuttled up the shingle like a crab, terrified at the noise it made, and peeped between the seaweed covered beams of the breakwater.

After the filth and fear of the camp the peaceful town looked like paradise. He imagined clean beds, decent food, and freedom. If only...

From the dinghy Karim hissed, ‘Hurry up!’

Asbed sighed and took a photograph. They returned quickly to the yacht and sailed east again – just two men out on a fishing trip.

Back at the refugee camp Asbed’s photograph sold a hundred cross-Channel tickets.

*****

Sandra Crook's photograph could almost have been taken on my short break last week in Folkestone, where there is a vast shingle beach, empty on the cool and foggy morning of our walk, from which on a clear day you can see France.
That family visit, and the glorious weather over the Easter weekend, are my excuse for my absence from FF last week - I hope you missed me.

ORANGE TAPE - a story in one hundred words

ORANGE TAPE

The beach was packed, but an area at the far end was empty, cordoned off only by flimsy orange tape. There was a sign in Spanish but no guard, so Trudi stepped over and spread her towel, ignoring the shouts of a local.

“Can I explore that cave, Mum?”

Charlie’s ‘cave’ was the size of a small car – Trudi nodded, lay down and relaxed.

She was woken by a shower of pebbles and looked up, far too late to run - she didn’t stand a chance against a forty-ton rock.

It took them three long, hot days to find Charlie.

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It's only a story - right? Yes, but based on somethng that happened while I lived in the Canary Islands.  You can read the news report here:  http://www.tenerifemagazine.com/happenings/2-dead-6-trapped-in-los-gigantes-rockfall.htm

Thanks, as ever, to Rochelle for hosting Friday Fictioneers, and to C E Ayr for the stunning (!) photograph that is this week's prompt. Follow the links from https://rochellewisoff.com/  to read other stories.

And for anyone who read my blog two weeks ago, I am proud to announce the arrival of my third granddaughter - I am now Nanny Liz to five children, all delightful!

ONLY IN TENERIFE?

Returning for a brief visit to one of my original intentions for this blog, here are a few things that make me shake my head in amusement.

It's a lighthouse, right? Not really.
You could see the sea if you stood on the balcony at the top, perhaps - it's only about 10 kilometres away - but it makes a good location point in a place where street names are a metre long.

Isn't this fun - a knitted snake wrapped around a tree in the main seafront area of Santa Cruz.

It cheered us up on the way to a hospital appointment, which was presumably the intention - to put a smile on people's faces.
It worked for me!

This sign was on the boot of a car parked near our apartment -

?
- the mind boggles.

Some graffiti on the wall of the ruiined bull-ring - "FATTY I LOVE YOU"
- which could refer to any one of the dozens of obese youngsters we see around. It's good to know they're not missing out despite their bad eating habits.

Roundabouts were introduced in Tenerife about ten years ago. They were obviously designed to create handy parking for the shops nearby. This is only a mini roundabout but I've seen the same disregard for common sense in the centre of Los Cristianos!

And finally -
where else would you find melons growing on the beach?

Only in Tenerife -

- unless you know otherwise?

THE POWER OF "THE GAME"

LAS GALLETAS  seafront road is too narrow for the traffic that uses it. There isn't really room for the cars that park by the beach, and meeting a Titsa bus coming the other way can be nerve-wracking.

A couple of years ago the road was closed sporadically for months while the Cabildo installed vast pipes to take the local sewage out to sea. They even used gravel and stones from the beach to create a very dodgy-looking temporary pier on which the heavy diggers teetered dangerously.
When the pipes had gone beyond the harbour the beach was reformed, but Man cannot match Nature.

Last year's floods washed the beach back into the sea and destabilised the sea wall. They repaired it.

Then last week we had big seas, even inside the harbour, and the beach vanished again, along with some of the pavement and a bit of road. We had to drive the long way round or park in El Fraile and walk.

 This was the scene on Thursday morning - you can see El Fraile beyond the palm trees in the background of the second photograph. It looked to me as if workmen needed to drive pilings into the beach to shore the road up safely, which would mean months more work at Tenerife speed. 

But yesterday the traffic was flowing smoothly again and a neat patch of tarmac covered everything. This was unprecedented! What had happened? I came home and looked up Arona's calendar of events and the answer was staring me in the face. 

A football match - today at 6pm - in the Sports Centre in El Fraile. 

CASTLES - FRIDAY FICTION

Friday Fictioneers is an online group of bloggers who each week follow a photo prompt on Rochelle's blog -  http://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/ - and write a 100-word piece of flash fiction. 

This week's other posts can be found here - http://new.inlinkz.com/luwpview.php?id=353888

CASTLES

Juan built castles for a living. Every day he took his tools to the beach, collected damp sand from the tide-mark, and constructed dreams.

Tourists would watch and take photographs – some even threw money into Juan’s bucket, although never enough - and each night drunks destroyed his work.

“When will you get a proper job?” Lucia wailed, “The rent is due.”

“I’m an artist,” Juan replied grandly and returned to his work.

But the next night he came home to find Lucia in the street, surrounded by their possessions.

He took her to the beach and built her a house.

 

100 words plus title.

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.

DUNKIRK

  DUNKIRK BEACHES, where Albie lies  half-conscious and dreaming about home in my novel Helter-Skelter, are described exhaustively by historians, which made my job of writing about them easy.

After that introductory chapter, my novel takes you back 15 years to the time Albie is remembering, and the story moves inevitably back to Dunkirk.

DIARIES  It is early in 1940 when Albie and his pal Bert cross the Channel as soldiers, but there is a dearth of information about those first months of World War 2. You can imagine my delight on discovering diaries on-line – real accounts written by actual soldiers about what happened to them. There was even a touch of humour here and there, and true incidents which I could adapt and work into Albie’s story.

The moral? Follow every thread, however tenuous – you never know when it might lead to treasure.

Brighton Beach

Some things remain quintessentially British.

Here are my grandsons and their mum enjoying a Punch and Judy Show on Brighton beach today.

And who needs to go to an expensive Health salon for a Hot Pebble Treatment when you have millions of them warmed by the sun?

And, of course, two handsome young men to apply them!

SUN.SEA & S.....?

SUN, SEA (and another S that I can’t remember at my age) are why the average tourist comes to Tenerife. The sun can be relied upon to shine almost every day, and even a winter holiday can result in a tan to cause envy among those left at home. In high SUMMER it’s too damned hot, which the Tourist Board won’t tell you, and out electricity bill shoots up because we’ve got the ceiling fans on day and night. Especially at night, when even naked you’re too hot to SLEEP.

Our apartment block SHARES a pool with the next block – 160 apartments in all – and in the two and a half months of SCHOOL holidays the noise level is such that it seems every child is in the pool. When the temperatures reach 40+ there will also be groups of women chatting in the SHALLOW end, up to their SHOULDERS in water, and I have seen mothers holding tiny babies in the pool for a while to cool them down before putting them to bed.

My theory is that if the air temp is greater than 37◦F then your body overheats enough to make you SICK – mine does, anyway. If I was rich I would SPEND July, August and September in England, rain and all.

This of course is what SWALLOWS do – they fly SOUTH for the winter. I’m not talking about the birds, but the people. Some own apartments or villas, but many more rent for a few months at long-term rates, like we did when we first arrived here. 

            

They bring their social life with them, meeting the same friends every year, playing bridge, eating out, line-dancing. Local groups such as the Lions actually time their dinner dances and other social events to coincide with the Swallows.

                           

SEA For more than half the year the sea is packed with people SWIMMING. Local children are taught to swim before they’re out of nappies – very sensible on an island – and by the end of summer every child is a healthy brown. On Las Galletas beach I have seen grandparents being helped into the sea, where the waves take the weight off STIFF hips and bodies remember their younger days. There are also boys (oddly enough, never girls) on SURF-BOARDS riding the breakers – locals who know where the rocks are – this is not a forgiving coast for the uninitiated.       

You can take boat trips to see the whales and dolphins or go fishing in the deep waters that surround the islands. There are ferries to other islands – it’s less than an hour to La Gomera, our nearest neighbour. And the SUNSETS over the sea are SPECTACULAR when you can SIT on a terrace or promenade, SIPPING a SUN-DOWNER.

Some people would choose SANGRIA, a refreshing drink and very pretty with its fruit and mint leaves in a frosted jug clinking with ice cubes. It’s not to my taste and, like punch, you never know what’s in it. If I get drunk I think it should be my fault, not a waiter’s.

SCULPTURE or STATUE? Is it a sculpture if it’s been poured into a mould? Can it be a statue if it’s not a person? I don’t know, but this creation has appeared in the fancy new park that’s being built in our village. No doubt as SOON as the gates are officially opened it will be SPRAYED with graffiti. Cynical? Moi? Perish the thought!

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?

F-WORDS

 F-WORDS were FLYING round our apartment yesterday – the boiler packed up. FIVE years is FAIRLY average here with our water so FULL of cal. Nigel FITTED a new one, FURTHER up the wall so the OH won’t bang his head when he FILLS the washing machine – and we’re €180 worse off. “What F-word?” you ask. FIDDLESTICKS, naturally.

FIGURES – I checked my blog stats yesterday and FELL into a depression at how FEW hits I’ve had. But it’s early days, so thank you to my FAITHFUL FOLLOWERS!

FOOD - FRESH FISH is our FAVOURITE food to eat here (a very appropriate subject on Good FRIDAY) and we live on an island with more FISHERMEN than FARMERS. In the village near us there is a fish market – a dozen or so stalls that back onto the beach where the boats come in. On the terrace behind the stalls, seagulls wait by buckets for the offal to be thrown out, and on the pavement in FRONT we join housewives and restaurant owners to buy fish that was in the sea less than an hour ago. I bought some bonito once, and when the woman FILLETED it, the sardine that had been its last meal was still wriggling.

The best meat in Tenerife is pork – local, tender and FANTASTIC. When we FIRST arrived to live here the butcher didn’t understand my request for pork with the skin on, and gave me a carrier bag containing the skin FROM a whole pig. I shared it with FRIENDS, FROZE some more, and we FEASTED on crackling for months. Now the butcher is used to our strange FOREIGN ways and asks whether I want my pork “con o sin piel.”

FRUIT is another treat – oranges, lemons, mangoes, papayas, bananas and of course FIGS. I remember leaving a coffee bar one day and picking a handful of figs off a tree in the street. One of my mother’s Christmas treats was dried figs, which I can’t stand, but fresh ones still warm from the sun – that’s a different matter entirely.

And talking of food, I must not FORGET to mention my husband’s favourite – Papas Canarias – food of the gods. Small local potatoes cooked in their skins in salt water. The locals used to cook them in a bucket of seawater but now they use sea salt. Serve them with Mojo Verde – a green sauce made with olive oil and cilantro (fresh coriander).

FIRE The very word sends shivers down the spine, especially when we’ve had a drought as bad as the last twelve months. A spark can set off a FOREST FIRE that destroys acres in hours. A few years ago there was a devastating fire that reached one of Tenerife’s most beautiful places, Masca, which until recently was only accessible by goat track. The road isn’t much better now, and getting FIRE-FIGHTING equipment up there was a nightmare.

When the fire was FINALLY out there was a media appeal for help, so my daughter and I took some spare household goods and plants and went there. Our gifts were welcomed, and one man showed us his burnt-out home. It was awful - like a Dali painting – have you ever seen a melted television set? One can understand why it is a criminal offence here to chuck a FAG-END out of a car window.

But for FUN with the FAMILY and a real FESTIVE spirit you can’t beat an open fire, even in the tropics, and my son-in-law has built a FIREPLACE on his roof terrace.

E FOR BRICK

As in A for ‘orses, B for mutton, C for yourself, Dee-fer- ential.

This is my attempt to apologise for yesterday’s Dismal blog. In my Defence I had spent an hour in the Dentist’s chair while he took a hammer and chisel to a temporary crown. He smiled and said “Demaciado bueno” (too good) – I presume he meant his glue!

Be that as it may, a light-hearted topic for E ELUDES me. E is the most used letter in the alphabet – EVEN my name, ELIZABETH, starts with an E - yet my mind is EMPTY of inspiration.

Today is the first of the EASTER holy days – Jueves Santo - no humour in that.

Then there’s EMBEZZLEMENT – a lot of that in local government here - EVEN less humorous.

Or ENERGY. I’m all in favour of the renewable kind, just lacking in any myself.

There’s been ENOUGH talk about the EURO without me adding my EIGHT-cents’ worth, and I’m sure you don’t want to hear about the time I got stuck in an ELEVATOR.

Ah – got it – ENTROPY. That wonderful musical duo Flanders and Swann (remember "Mud, mud, glorious mud"?) summed up the First Law of Thermodynamics in these words; “Heat don’t pass from a cooler to a hotter/ You can try it if you like but you’d far better notter.”

Definition No3 of Entropy in my Collins goes thus; “Lack of pattern or organization: disorder.” EXACTLY – my brain in a nutshell.

Meanwhile I’d better EXPLAIN my illuminated letter E. The island of EL HIERRO has quietened down after all the EXCITEMENT of the past few months. For those of you who are new to my blog, you might like to read my El Hierro page which I started last October, when the undersea volcano first made its presence felt.

I mention it again now because, although no longer front page news, the ECONOMY of the island is still reeling from the impact of the ERUPTION, and if you fancy an away-from-it-all holiday, you could do worse than ESCAPE to an island you can drive round in half a day.http://www.turismodecanarias.com/canary-islands-spain/tourism-office/el-hierro-island/

ESCAPING from the crowds to an isolated beach can be EXTRAORDINARILY difficult. These two ELDERLY EXPATS only found this little place last year, when our son and girlfriend came out determined to snorkel with turtles. A diver friend of ours said “Go to EL PUERTITO,” so we did.

EASY to find it is not and the road down the barranco twists like an EEL. There’s only one bar which charges EXTORTIONATE prices – ESPECIALLY if you’re obviously an EXTRANJERO – but the bay is EXQUISITE, there's a sandy beach, the houses pile on top of each other like a child’s toppled brick tower, and our young couple actually stroked a turtle. One word sums up their reaction – ECSTATIC!

SUELTA/ RELEASE OF A TURTLE

A turtle released on my birthday!
We drove to El Puertito this morning to see a turtle released. Many are rescued from the sea, injured by propellers, tangled in discarded fishing nets or lines. Not all of them are as lucky as this fellow. There was a display board of graphic photographs beside the van that brought two turtles - look on my Facebook page to view the album.
We waited ages - this is Tenerife, after all, where the manana syndrome holds sway! There were children in the sea, and huge German sunbathers lying at the top of the slipway, oblivious both to the spectacle they made and the nuisance they were creating - the release route was that way..We watched in disbelief as a female TV photographer edged down the slipway with a huge camera to take shots of the waves. She was wearing a pair of those droopy-nappy pants, which aren't attractive at the best of times - filled with air by a stiff breeze, they were ludicrous. How she didn't lose her footing on the seaweed is a mystery. A child dropped her drink which rolled down the slipway and her Mum got a round of applause for rescuing the bottle from the waves. The tide was coming in and several people misjudged their dash round a path over the rocks and got soaked. The sun was hot and the spray was cool and it was my birthday and it was all part of the entertainment.
Then we had the speeches, and the expert said that the waves were too much for the turtles to manage. The bigger turtle would be released from a boat, and the smaller turtle would wait until a better day. We thought they were probably stressed enough after ages in the van and the interminable photo-calls, but presumably the experts know what they're doing.
So some divers waded off the beach with the lucky turtle in a plastic box and lifted it over the breakers. There were cries of "Ai mi madre!" from a hundred spectators as the box nearly overturned. Then one man swam backwards towing the box and waving for the cameras - his five minutes of fame - and they hauled it onto the platform at the rear of an orange dive-boat. A moment later, with no ceremony at all, they tipped the turtle into the sea.
Let's hope it makes it.