REMUS AND GREG

Remus and Greg are dragons whose mother lays her eggs on the wrong planet.

I am writing their story for my early-reader grandson - the first two chapters are on my KIDS' STORIES page.

INCENTIVES

I was talking to my ten-year-old grandson yesterday and asked him how he was getting on with the book he had told me about a fortnight earlier.
"I'm halfway through it," he said.
"That's a bit slow," I said, "Aren't you enjoying it?"
"Oh yes, it's good, but I've got five books on the go at the moment."

FIVE? One of my ambitions has always been to have my children and grandchildren read my books - if he reads that voraciously I had better write a lot faster!

His seven-year-old brother sent me an email the same day to say that he liked the dragon story I had sent him and could he have more.
A good review is wonderful wherever it comes from!

 I am writing Remus and Greg in serial form, and if you would like to read it, go to my short story page.

Oh yes - and a Happy New Year to all my family, friends and followers.

 

STILL HERE

A quick post from England just to prove I'm still alive!
Simply to be woken up that first morning by a grandson saying, "Can I come in with you, Nanny Liz?" was worth the trip.
Yesterday I walked up to the village in the rain - a rare treat after the drought in Tenerife - and stopped in a very English tea-shop to wait out a downpour. You enter this shop through a florist and step carefully over floral arrangements to enter the cafe half of the two-woman business. You can choose where to sit from a variety of odd tables and chairs, or sit in the overgrown garden when the weather is nice. There are huge home-made sponge cakes under glass domes, and the slices they serve are enormous. Last time I was there I had a sandwich with smoked mackerel pate, made by the fishmonger next door, and it came in fresh granary bread from the baker next to him.
I have picked out a couple of houses for sale - all I need is a lottery win!

CAMPING

My gorgeous grandson is at Cub Camp this weekend at Ardingly Showground, West Sussex, and it looks as if the weather is dry - at least today. Let's hope that miracle lasts all weekend because the camp is for the whole county and there are 1000 cubs there.  Can you imagine all those young voices raised in song around the campfire? It should be a blast whatever the weather.
Mind you, that sleeping bag looks warm enough to keep out an Arctic blizzard!

In honour of this momentous occasion, I have posted a poem about Camping which draws on various camping memories from my children's childhoods.  Go to my poems page to read it.

MEDICAL MOMENTS & MONKEYS

MAYBE you never get sick? MANY expats in Tenerife live by that MAXIM. There are three ways to deal with your health when leaving your home country – cross your fingers and hope you stay well, buy private MEDICAL insurance, or join the system.

We were getting on a bit when we MOVED here so we MADE sure we were covered for medical care. We brought E111 certificates for tourists, (you could get one from the Post Office in those days) which gave us a sense of security until the OH turned 65. Then it was all systems go to get a MEDICO here. We had learned the hard way to take with us, on any official occasion, every piece of paper we possessed, plus photocopies of everything, and we had to visit several different offices, but eventually we had a GP. Our treatment is paid for by the UK, using the contributions into the British National Health system that we had paid during our working lives. This is our small Medical Centre.

Within MONTHS I had seen traumatologists in Las Americas and Santa Cruz and was on the list for a hip replacement. They said it would be done in about a year! I panicked – an operation, in a hospital for a week or more, and my Spanish was still basic. OMG! Another reason to learn Spanish fast. My printed diagram of the female body, with every part labelled, caused much amusement at subsequent consultations. The MAIN hospital is in Santa Cruz, so some patients are dealt with in the private hospital in Las Americas – I was one of the lucky ones.

MODESTY? Forget it. As a MOTHER of four I lost all false modesty years ago, but it was a shock not to have curtains between the beds. MY first blanket-bath served as the MORNING entertainment for the two other women in my room, plus the person who ignored the closed door. I wasn’t allowed out of bed for several days and MANAGING a bedpan discreetly was a challenge. A visitor to the next bed actually emptied mine once. My first shower caused some MAYHEM – I still wasn’t allowed to stand, so I sat on the toilet while the MALE nurse held the shower hose over me. Unfortunately the room sloped the wrong way (a common design fault out here) and we flooded the ward.

Our Outpatients Department is up the hill at El MOHON, and there’s a half-built hospital there, but the Canary Government have run out of money and can’t finish it. There was also a crisis recently when it emerged that the Farmacias hadn’t been paid for the MEDICINES they had supplied on prescriptions – for a whole year! They've been paid now, though not until they threatened to stop dispensing.

MONKEY ZOO


MONKEYS are engaging creatures, and if they have to be in a zoo, at least the one near us gives them room to move. you are allowed inside some of the cages, which entranced my grandsons. The tiny MARMOSETS were rather shy but some ring-tailed lemurs took fruit from their hands.

My daughter-in-law spent ages talking to a parrot - she had to leave her own behind when she moved to the UK and MARRIED my son. The parrot seemed happy to get so much attention - you could almost see it smiling.

MEANWHILE  my son had a long conversation with a chimp. He shouldn't have climbed the barrier to tickle its armpit but there was no-one to stop him. The chimp eventually had enough of him – he had been chatting up the females as well, which probably wasn't wise - and sprayed him with a mouthful of water. "Sod off" in Chimp!

For those of you who couldn’t find MY MYSTERIOUS ghost in the Los Abrigos photo (yesterday’s blog) here is an enlargement. I drew the ring round the relevant bit.

Only a computer would recognize this as a face!

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?