Stop Acting the Goat

I’ve become accustomed to pretty much anything I see on Tenerife’s roads, but today was a new experience for me.

I reached a roundabout between La Orotava and Puerto de la Cruz to find my progress hampered by these fellows. They’d clearly found the grass on the island in the centre of the roundabout irresistible and, as the rest of their herd headed homewards up the hill, these two kept their heads down munching away,  oblivious that they’d brought traffic to a standstill.

After a few moments one of the Billy-come-latelys looked up, spotted they were being left behind and, deciding it was time to rejoin the others, trotted happily across the roundabout and after their mates.

I have to say that by the way they didn’t observe who had right of way and their appalling road positioning, they’d picked up a couple of bad habits from some of the local human road users.

Manchester United – 1, Barcelona – a Big Fat Zero

YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!

White Sun

There’s no escaping the heat, even the shade offers no relief. The cat slinks from one promising shady looking spot to another, seeking respite, but there’s none to be had. He collapses defeated; he could be dead. A lizard runs right past his nose, but he hasn’t the energy to open even an eye. I know how he feels. There’s no noise, it’s too hot for anybody to do anything. The only active creatures are the birds and the lizards who are feeding frantically on the thousands of insects which the heat has brought forth.
The idea of a cool shower isn’t an option; the cold water is hot and the hot water is scalding. Opening doors and windows makes no difference, except to let more hairdryer-hot air into the house.

35° before 09.00 and the temperature rising reaching 41° by midday. Crazy temperatures are being quoted like 55°. Seems impossible, but not beyond the realms. It’s a heat which pervades your brain, making it difficult to think; impossible to do anything physical. Everywhere is a tinderbox, a disaster waiting to happen, which only requires one careless moment. Fires are already raging on La Gomera, fanned by the hot dry air and strong winds which we experienced here yesterday. The calima has spread westward since Thursday, pumping up the heat with a fiery wind which gusted at up to 80 kph, taking our chimney with it. The wind seems to have past us now, leaving a fiercely hot stillness in its wake and the white hot sky is starting to show signs of blue, evidence that the calima has possibly run its course.

It might not be what anyone visiting Tenerife wants to hear, but what we really need now is some rain, just to cool things down again.

Echo & The Bunnymen rock Tenerife

In a previous post I mocked the Echo and The Bunnymen website, which announced news of their gig in La Laguna with the headline ‘Echo and the Sunnymen’. La Laguna in April, sunny? Yeah right. And then along came the calima and probably the hottest weekend that La Laguna is likely to see this year.

Tenerife’s former capital was positively balmy last night as Echo and The Bunnymen took to the stage in front of Central Campus University.
Supported by El Guincho and The Mistake, they played an impressive set to an audience made up of mostly sickeningly stylish Spanish students and a decent number of the ‘baby boomer’ generation who were probably fans the first time around.
I was never a big fan, but after last night I’m a convert. Ian McCulloch´s voice has developed a rougher edge over the years which suits the band’s Doors inspired sounds and lyrics.

It was interesting to watch the mainly Canarian audience lap up a set which included a couple of new numbers (one of which Ian McCulloch sold to us as being ‘probably crap’ cause it was new),The Killing Moon, Seven Seas and Lips Like Sugar. One stage hand seemed to be in complete rapture singing along to that one.
One of the oddest moments came when the band finished their set. As they walked off the stage, there was enthusiastic clapping for sure, but no shouts of ‘more’, or even ‘¡otra!’, even though everyone had clearly enjoyed the performance. It was as if the audience seemed to think, that was it, game over. It was left to a small band of British fans to lead the way and their shouts of ‘Echo, Echo’ were soon taken up by the people around them. So at least the band didn’t have the embarrassing situation of reappearing for the obligatory encore without the audience actually demanding it. I can only put this deviation from the norm down to live gig etiquette being a wee bit ‘lost in translation’.

Still, listening to a good British band, even if they are Liverpool supporters, on a balmy evening in La Laguna was a great way to spend a Saturday night – and the bonus ball was that it was all free.

Be Ruthless

It’s taken a long time for me to realise that on Tenerife, the northern parts anyway, the most effective way of having a beautifully lush garden here is to cut trees and shrubs right back to the bone every so often. The two orchid trees in this picture looked exactly the same three or four months ago, then I pruned the one on the left until there wasn’t a branch left on it, only five bare trunks; a skeleton of a tree. Now look at it, incredible. The speed at which plants grow is frightening. It’s no wonder that Tenerife was a botanists dream.

The Whiskas Chronicles: Angel or Demon

On Sunday I saw further evidence that Whiskas is a ‘special one’ in the feline world.
I witnessed an internal battle between good and evil, where he reached a fork in the road and had to contemplate which direction to take.

18 months ago the demon would have won, but these days the battle between good and evil has entered an arena where the sand is grey.
As it was Sunday morning, we slept late, as you do. Subsequently this meant that Whiskas’ breakfast was also late; more of a brunch really.
Clearly this didn’t go down well and the usual breakfast preparation small talk of “Would you like some Friskies with your breakfast?”, “Are you hungry?” (stupid question to ask a cat) and “Have you had your first breakfast yet?” (we know he does the rounds of the area) wasn’t met with the customary wide bright blue eyes and the ever so cute “prrrrrrp” chirpy replies. He was miffed.

So breakfast preparation was no nonsense. Food in bowl, bowl placed outside. Unfortunately it began to rain as he was eating. This didn’t help his mood. If we’d fed him at the normal time, he’d have had a dry breakfast. He left his bowl and his half eaten breakfast and legged it back inside the house. I knew immediately where this was going. In his head, breakfast was declared null and void and a couple of hours further along the day, he’d expect a replacement in full. I rescued his bowl, placed it just inside the door and pointed his nose in its direction. It seemed to do the trick and he wolfed the rest down.

Unfortunately, this also signalled that as his bowl was inside the house, he had a right to find somewhere inside to curl up away from the rain. I could see his eyes scanning the room looking for the perfect spot, before settling on the Windsor chair. He casually walked over to it and stuck an exploratory paw on the cushion.
“WHISKAS,” I tried to put some authority into my voice. The paw was withdrawn from the cushion and he did a circuit of the room, stopping at the chair again. The paw went up again.
“WHISKAS,” another warning. This time there was a delay before the paw was withdrawn. He was in distraction mode, so I thought ´third time and he’s out’. I didn’t have to wait too long. This time I got out of my chair; a sign that I meant business. After a moments defiance, he withdrew his paw from the chair and sauntered casually over to me, rubbing his body against my leg, but I could see that his half-tail was flicking furiously. The internal struggle had begun.

He looked at my ankle, then rubbed his body against my leg, then looked at my ankle again, then another rub. I knew exactly what was going on. He wanted to wrap his front paws around my leg and sink his teeth into my shin. This was his modus operandi, or at least it used to be.
It looked as though he’d beaten his demons, the attack never came and then I made the mistake of laughing at him. Whatever good qualities cats have, being able to laugh at themselves isn’t one of them. In a flash, his legs were wrapped around my lower leg and his mouth clamped firmly on my shin bone.
But…and this is the difference from 18 moths ago when my leg would have felt as though it had been caught I a steel bear trap, his claws remained retracted and his bite had all the force of a toothless man.
He held the position. I could almost hear the internal struggle. “Bite the bastard, bite the bastard.” “No, don’t. Let go, there’ll be no more food if you bite him.”
The pressure on my leg increased slightly and I decided to take the decision away from him by flicking him with a sheet of A4. It was enough. He released his grip and I ejected him from the house (this happens a lot with Whiskas).

This cat is never going to be an angel, but at least he seems to be dealing with his anger management better these days.

Caught by the Fuzz

Had an interesting week, last week. Walking beside the volcanic stream which destroyed Garachico in 1706, trying not to squash the inhabitants of the Mariposario (butterfly) Gardens in Icod de los Vinos, photographing Pat Cash and Björn Borg at the Abama Hotel in Playa San Juan prior to the Tenerife Senior Cup tennis tournament, watching Man Utd make things difficult for themselves in the race for the premiership. It was a typical week here in that it was completely untypical. Mostly ups; however, there always has to be something which causes us grief.

This time it came courtesy of the Guardia Civil. Almost immediately after leaving the TF5 motorway (more of a dual carriageway) we were waved over by the boys in green at the San Pedro Mirador.

At first I thought they’d made a mistake and didn’t mean us as, for a couple of minutes, the officer didn’t even look in our direction. We were almost about to drive off, but then he sauntered over to the car and asked to see our papers.

I don’t know about you, but the very idea of being questioned by a policeman has me behaving as though I’m in Oceans 11/12/13… etc. Actually that’s rubbish; they’re all pretty cool in those movies, and I was being quite the opposite.

As he looked through our papers, of which I carry an encyclopaedic amount – just in case, he asked for a document which it hasn’t been necessary to possess for about three years.

“You don’t need to have that now,” Andy told him.
“Yes you do,” he replied.
“No you don’t,” Andy insisted. “Not since 2004, it’s European legislation.”

One of the problems that we sometimes encounter here is that European legislation is often ignored or, to be more accurate not known, even amongst those who really should be aware of changes in legislation. It can be hellishly frustrating and if you threaten, “Right that’s it, I’m taking you to Brussels, they think you’re offering a free holiday.”

The policeman didn’t reply to Andy this time, instead he continued to look at our paperwork.
“You’ve got a lot of papers here,” he’d clearly become bored with looking through them and handed them back.
“You were speeding,” he wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to Andy. “It’s not significant, just sign this and pay the fine at the bank within a month.”
He hit us with an on-the-spot fine of €100 for doing 94kph when the speed limit was 80kph.

Andy didn’t think that she’d been driving that fast, so I asked the policeman if I could see the evidence.
“If you go to Santa Cruz, you can ask to see the photographs, but wait a few days first.”
Luckily my Spanish is still on a bit of a satellite delay, so by the time I’d translated what he said, thought of a reply, translated that into Spanish, my:
“Is that to give you time to Photoshop the picture,” was said to his retreating back.

We’re still contemplating going to Santa Cruz to see the evidence, especially as we had to pass the same way the following day and noticed that within a space of a few hundred yards the speed limit goes from 120kph to 90kph to 70kph and then back up to 80kph. It is pure loco, almost impossible to adhere to and potentially dangerous, but then this is Tenerife. Logic doesn’t always figure highly.

The Pretty Fishwife

A new addition to the harbour in Puerto de la Cruz has been causing a bit of a stir of late. Last week, Puerto de la Cruz Ayuntamiento unveiled a new sculpture by Julio Neito which pays homage to the fishwives of the town.

She’s not at all like the image I had of fishwives as a boy with their ham-shank shaped arms and legendary voices which could shatter unsuspecting eardrums at 100 paces.

The detail on her features, the pulpo in the basket on her head and the fish almost escaping the basket in her hand is quite incredible; the pulpo’s suckers glisten golden in the late afternoon sun. She is delightful and she’s gone down a storm. It’s almost impossible to get a photo of her on her own as everyone and their dog (literally) has been posing beside her, including locals as well as visitors.

She’s located right on the harbour a few yards away from where the flesh and bone fishwives sell their seafood and fish. Unfortunately, that’s where the resemblance to the sculpture ends (see para 2).

Dancing…and all sorts of other things in the streets

“Buenas Tardes,” the voice stopped me in my tracks. Not because a stranger had just greeted me in the street, but because this stranger was over 6 foot tall and was a robot.
At any other time this would have caused me some concern and thoughts like, ‘this is it; this is exactly what the Terminator movies tried to warn us about,’ would have raced through my brain. But as I happened to be in the middle of MUECA 2008, Puerto de la Cruz’ street theatre festival, I merely smiled, mumbled a ‘buenas tardes’ back and moved on.

Although the Spanish Met Office had issued an ‘orange’ level weather warning for the western Canary Islands, and winds of up to 120 kph had been predicted for areas above 2000 metres. Puerto de la Cruz remained a blue sky’d oasis for the duration of the festival. We’d only managed to get a glimpse of the fun on Saturday night as two friends were in town which we used as an excuse to go to one of our favourite local restaurants, Cha Paula. As usual the food was first class; the best chipirones (small squid) in town, glistening pimientos de padron of which one on ten really did kick you in the head; cheese from El Hierro drizzled with spicy sauces and country wine which was far too quaffable to be good for you. It was so good that we lingered too long and the waiter started moving tables from around us.
“Sorry,” Andy apologised to him. “We were too busy talking, we didn’t realise you were shutting.”
“No, señora,” he held up his hands. “It’s not a problem. Sit as long as you like. It’s just that the bar upstairs is opening and they have darts. Some people are not very good.”
He shrugged his shoulders and looked up toward the open wooden balcony above. It was a surprise to hear that darts were popular with young Canarios, but we got the point, or rather as we didn’t want to get the point, we supped up, paid the ridiculously low bill and left.

By then we’d missed most of the street performances so Andy and I headed back down the following day. The town was even busier than the previous night. It was full of Domingeros, dressed in their Sunday finest. The street festival had attracted lots of young bohemians as well and the old town was filled with fireaters, jugglers and people playing all sorts of weird instruments. One man was playing what looked like a wok; quite melodic it was too.
Most of the action was taking place around the harbour. On one side lithe young lads spinned and twirled in front of a group of adoring chicas (and I thought break-dancing was way out of date). The bottom end of Plaza Charco had been turned into a faerie grotto of sorts and whilst most faeries entertained groups of bewitched toddlers, a couple of quite vain faeries preened, fussed, fiddled with their hair and pouted to the delight of the older kids and, as they were a particularly attractive pair, some captivated dads as well.
Whilst steel bands drummed and actors played out grim tales, the highlight was the Circo en el Aire; a troupe of acrobats who flamenco’d, twirled and swirled on, and above the harbour’s cobbled streets. At one point two of them enacted a dance routine suspended in the air by silk ribbons that was borderline erotic and incredibly sensual; not what you expect on a Sunday afternoon. It raised the already hot temperature a few notches I can tell you.

It was a wonderful, magical festival with a warm atmosphere which had more to do with the fact that the town was full of people with beaming smiles than the hot sunshine. It was simply Puerto doing what Puerto does best. It was one of those special days when the thought hit us head on like a juggernaut – this wonderful place is where we live.

Did you hear the one about?

Some Tinerfeños will tell you that Gomerans are not the brightest people on the planet. There’s a whole load of jokes which have been made up to illustrate this which go along the lines of:
Q. “Why does a Gomeran keep an empty bottle in his fridge?”
A. “For his friends who don’t drink.”

Now I’ve been to La Gomera many times and these are probably unfair. Although, the last time I was there I picked up a bus timetable for the small airport which showed that buses departed five minutes before the inter-island plane touched down. Now clearly this sort of thing doesn’t help.

The irony is that many Spanish mainlanders view Tinerfeños, in fact Canarios in general, as being a bit backward. A common remark from holidaying peninsulares goes along the lines of: “You’ll always be behind us.” supposedly referring to the hour difference in time between the Canary Islands and mainland Spain, but really meaning a whole lot more.

It winds me up and obviously I’m not even a Canario, but in the last week a couple of events had me on the verge of subscribing to the mainlanders’ viewpoint.

The first was the visit of ‘the electrician’. We didn’t ask for him, he just turned up. We live between a banana plantation and a small golf course. As access to our house is through the golf course, we have an intercom thingy beside the entrance to the course. About six months ago we were leaving the house and noticed a man fiddling with the intercom.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Oh, we’re moving the entrance to the reception, so I need to move this as well,” he smiled. “But don’t worry. It’ll be much better when I’ve finished.”
Needless to say, it didn’t work after that.

The other day the same ‘electrician’ turned up to fix it. He came striding up our path and nodded to us.
“Can I come in to have a look at the wiring for your ‘portero’, it isn’t working.”

We both had two pieces of information that I felt shed some light on why.
a) Before he started fiddling about with it at reception six months previously, it worked.
b) After he finished, it didn’t.

Now I’m no expert, but that suggested to me that the problem lay at the reception end. I told him, but he still wanted to take a look and within minutes there were wires hanging everywhere.

Three hours later and much head scratching, it still wasn’t working. He disappeared down the path. Another couple of hours later he appeared again, beaming.

“It’s fixed,” he announced.
“Brilliant. What was the problem?”
“Bad wires at the reception. When the box was moved the wires broke,” he smiled, proud of his discovery.
Apparently all memory of my suggestion five hours previously, that that was where the problem was, erased.
I could have screamed.

The second situation was quite the most unbelievable. About a month ago a customer reported that he hadn’t received the ‘Real Tenerife Island Drives’ guide that he’d ordered. This is rare, in fact it was the first time, but obviously these things can happen. We immediately despatched a second and forgot about it…until yesterday when the ‘missing’ guide was returned to us with a British Royal Mail sticker showing that it had been sent back because of an incomplete address.
And the reason the address was incomplete? Because some halfwit in the post office in Puerto de la Cruz had fixed a postage label right over the top half of the address! Now in my book that takes a phenomenal and quite frightening level of stupidity to do something like that.

So next time Carlos down the Beehive bar starts to tell me:
”Did you here about the Gomeran who…” I’ll interrupt him with, “Did you hear about the Tinerfeño postman…”