Requiem for the Typewriter

The news shared by this article from the April 26th Daily Mail (sorry to mention that, but it is where I found the story) spawned a tide of blog posts, comments and articles on the day, so let me add mine, because the story made me realize how important in my life the typewriter was.

Before I begin, let me explain that this comes to you from the same person who used to stand outside the basement vents of the local newspaper, listening to the “music” of the presses as they clattered out the evening edition, hoping by some miracle that some journalistic vibes would transfer from them to me.  It never happened, of course.

The typewriter was another symbol of the dream I never fulfilled.  If I close my eyes I see Spencer Tracy or Clark Gable, sleeves rolled up, hat at a rakish angle, pounding away at the finishing touches to a scoop.  One day my mom brought home an old one from her work, there were two keys missing, but how I loved writing my pathetic, little stories and imagining myself in some far-flung corner of the globe, filing reports that would change the world.  How satisfying was the clatter and the whizz-bang as I returned the carriage at the end of the page!

Typewriters = writing.  Never occurred to me that typewriters for some people equalled being a secretary. After school I enrolled in a Business Studies Course, partly because it taught touch typing – to the girls that is!  When we were learning to stretch our fingers the correct distance, the boys were having extra accounting lessons.  Clearly none of them dreamed of being a writer,  nor did any of the staff expect it of us, to my horror.  By the end of the first term I’d sussed that this new course was seen only fit to produce a higher level of secretary or account clerk.  The girls were forbidden to wear trousers for typing lessons!  Can you imagine?  I honestly find it hard to believe that this was a world I lived in.  No matter how cold it was (and it was a very cold winter) we had to turn up in stockings (tights/pantyhose were just coming out then) and neat, knee-length skirts.  ”Ladies, you will dress for my lessons just as you would dress when you go to work.”  We had one of those old dragons of a teacher you see usually only in old black and white movies of a certain era,  tight-lipped and disapproving of our youth,  but I digress.

I fled from college pursued by the demons of mediocrity and self-doubt, which took up residence on my shoulders for a very long time thereafter.  I got that secretarial job (oh it was temporary and there was a plan, but that’s a whole other story), and I pounded away at a typewriter for, well, far too long.  At some stage in those following years the clunky, manual variety became electric.  I missed the clickety-clack, but liked that I could type faster.  I did my mourning back then.

That was the state of play when I emigrated.  I’m fairly sure I must have brought my portable electric typewriter with me, but it’s not something I remember.  I certainly had one at home.  By that time they had long been the norm back in the UK, but there was zilch romance attached to them.

So I was surprised to find the old, manual ones still in use here in banks and lawyers’ offices on Tenerife when I arrived,  not so much for the day-to-day stuff, in fact, by then word processors were coming in, but for when duplicate documents were need for immediate signing.  A lawyer or bank manager would think nothing of pulling over a small table on wheels where the chunky old model sat, and applying two fingers in halting and heavy fashion to produce the document themselves.  I’ve seen this even in quite recent years, so now I am wondering what on earth they will do without them!  I would bet my bottom dollar that those 10,000 they were producing up to 2009 were sold in Spain!

One Degree Under

I have what most moms dismiss as a head cold, what Spanish people describe as a ‘flu, and that which brings most men to their knees. Before you think I am dissing both men and the Spanish, let me explain – I don’t do colds, ok!  Break my wrist, slip my disc, make me go 24 hours without sleep, or put me in the middle of a motorway pileup, and I’m tough as old boots.  Give me a common cold and I crumble.

Now, don’t get me wrong I’m not looking for sympathy here.  I just want to curl up and watch soppy movies or re-runs of “The Gilmore Girls” or “Friends”.  Unless Joe Fox is going to turn up with some friendly daisies (if you don’t get that reference, how well do you know me?!), I’m best left alone to wallow.

All day I’ve been oscillating between a profound craving for Chocolate Brownie Ice Cream (and there are two shops within a five-minute walk selling it) and an equally profound lethargy, and laziness  So, how deep is my affection for Chocolate Brownie Ice Cream, not on the same scale as my lethargy it turns out. You might as well expect me to hop on the next space shuttle as step over my threshold.  It’s almost ten at night and I didn’t go yet.  One of the shops is closed now, and the other will be closing soon.

Why is it that nasopharyngitis, acute viral rhinopharyngitis, or acute coryza (no wonder it’s so bad with all those fancy names!) turns me into a whingeing, self-absorbed sad case, when neither a recent tooth infection so bad I thought it was a brain haemorrhage, nor an excruciating, old whiplash injury, which necessitated an MRI the other week, has had even a passing mention in my blog?  Apparently, most adults suffer between 2 and 4 of these infections per year, (and a child can suffer between 6 and 12! I get my info from Wikipedia – I don’t vouch for it!) …… not this adult.  My average is one roughly every two years, which is perhaps why I take it so hard.  I like to think that I’m immune.  Indeed, I’ve worked in offices where all around me fell……and brought their nasty germs to work to spread it around a bit……..and not even had a sniffle, which is why mind and body are now screaming, “Whyyyyyyy?”

Remembering the “good old 9 to 5 days” makes it seem even more unfair.  I don’t recall being in the company of anyone with a cold within the last 10 days, probably just someone sneezing in the supermarket or a café then.  Why won’t they learn to stay home at the first sign and keep their nasties to themselves?  Which, you see, is the excuse for my lethargy.  I really shouldn’t go and spread this around, so I’m just going to crawl back under the covers.  Now where did I put “You Got Mail”?

Easter on the Island

Did I ever mention that I loathe Easter weekend?  It’s something I learned  early in life, by the time I was old enough to go into Blackpool on my own.  ”Don’t go on Easter weekend – it’s like sardines out there!”  was the advice we’d give each other, and once we learned to drive it was even worse – Sunday drivers and no parking!   The trouble with Easter is that, compared to summer vacations, everyone is on holiday at the same time, which means crowds everywhere.  Narrow Lake District roads are another place to avoid at this time of year.  Gridlock – and usually gridlock accompanied by the slapping of windscreen wipers.

Basically, it’s the same here, but without the windscreen wipers.  Chaos for the most part, especially if you are unlucky enough to be working in the accommodation sector, though I suppose these days one’s just lucky to be working, anywhere.  Next year I am thinking it would be nice to be somewhere which doesn’t holiday over this particular weekend.

Take a look at the photo below.  This was El Médano beach on Wednesday afternoon, before the weekend even, although most tourists arrived the previous weekend, given the lateness of the date this year. By Thursday the numbers had swollen, with the influx of affluent northerners, who have second homes around here.  Parking became a nightmare, and, inevitably, the weather took a turn for the worse ……… happens here too, you see……not quite windscreen wipers though!

However, apparently,  not everyone was on the beaches, even though it seemed like it.  According to yesterday’s local newspapers 23,000 of them turned up in Adeje on Friday morning for the annual passion play, that included me and Maria and Isabel.  I’d heard so much about this event, but often worked Good Fridays in recent years, so this was my first opportunity to see it for myself, and I was looking forward to it.

We arrived early, as advised, and after  coffee and tortilla we  staked our claim at the roadside barrier about  an hour before the performance was due to begin.  This, however, didn’t stop a very rude, old, Italian man from pushing in and spoiling the view with his flowerpot of a hat……..not at all Giorgio Armani!

The play takes place all along the main street of the town, so getting to see or photograph it all is impossible, unless you have a press pass, of course, and although the tv cameras broadcast it all, there seemed to be an absence of press en masse.    If you would like to see professional photos check out these from local guide Tinerguia.

We were able to wander Calle Grande, arriving as early as we did, and take a close look at the sets which had been constructed, the scene of the Last Supper with a table laden with real food, the Garden of Gethsemane with olive branches stuck into the stumps of trees, the palaces were Jesus was judged and flogged, and, finally Calvary in the small square at the beginning of the street. All the participants in the cast of 300 are townspeople, and along the street “shops” and food stalls had been constructed, and real food was being stacked onto them, pedestrian crossings had been covered over with leaves and straw, and telephone boxes and other modern inventions had been disguised as far as possible.  Everything was first-class, so much so that in one photo I snapped I wasn’t sure where the set ended and the real street began.  I saw these guys in their smocks and sneakers, and for one, horrible moment thought that this was going to be the standard, but soon realized that they were camera crew, blending in as much as practical, which was great.

Remarkably for Tenerife, it began on the dot. As the town hall clock struck 12 the “extras” entered and took up their places along the route, children played along the road, looking for all the world as if this was real life, women sold produce from those stalls, and the general public ambled along.  Truly it didn’t take much effort to imagine oneself back in Palestine 2,000 years ago.

The cast dotted about, cue the entry of the badies, Roman soldiers, rabbis and, of course, Pontius Pilate.

You can see how excellent the costumes were.  I’m not saying those breastplates were metal, but the details were amazing. Movie buff that I am (and I love noting continuity goofs etc) I tried to spot a wristwatch or two, but didn’t see one, although there were a few wedding rings.  Maybe they wore wedding rings back then, I don’t know, just that the costumes and sets were wonderful, a much, much higher standard than I expected.

We were close to the Last Supper, and yet another nice surprise was the quality of the sound system, as the performance began, which broadcast to the entire street quite clearly.  Obviously, the people waiting at Calvary were couldn’t see what was happening around the table, at the opposite end of the street, but they must have heard the dialogue just fine.

Feet washed, and Judas having stormed out of dinner, the cast prepared to move onto the next set along the street, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the police took down the ropes from the sides of the street and formed a line across, so that watchers could follow on and get a good view of the next scene.  At that point Isabel and I went in search of a loo, which we found in the Cultural Center, where  the event was being shown on a huge tv.  We opted to return to the streets, though.  We found it almost impossible to see very much from then on, however, people from higher up the street were crushing around, as were we, and we caught glimpses, but nothing more until the tableau arrived at “Calvary” where a pop-concert-style screen was showing the recording.  Everything could be heard quite clearly though.  The standard of acting and singing was outstanding, worthy of the London stage, even if the script was, at times, at little corny, but, then, perhaps that’s what it’s all about.  That said, it’s exactly that blind attachment to the fairy story aspect of all this I find difficult to swallow.  It’s clearly not the case for most of the people in the photo below.  Just look at their faces, nothing if not in the moment.

That was one of those making-lemonade moments.  The crowd was dense, and I simply held up the camera and clicked blindly.  Of course, I would have liked a better picture of Jesus, but I thought the faces were interesting.  After he passed, and that crowd following the police cordon massed behind, it seemed like time to retreat.  We had no hope of seeing anything more in detail, and the sound system and the big screen on Calvary were going to carry the rest of the performance to us.

Feeling peckish we were happy to find that the produce from those “stalls” was being given away.  This lady was tearing off chunks of bread and ladling gooey jam into it as she joked with “customers”.

As we stood in the middle of the street, munching, we thought it had come to an end as Jesus was lowered from the cross, and Mary wept over his body.  Certainly, applause rippled through the audience.  However, we grabbed our cameras again when we realized that at least some of the cast were still in character and returning in our direction.

I thought this picture might give you an idea of just how many people there were, but I don’t think it really does.

Jesus’s body returning to the church to await Sunday.  At this stage it is not the actor, but one of the plaster figures from the church.

It was certainly a memorable event, and I am delighted to have seen it.  As a spectacle it was marvellous, perfectly executed, prepared and dressed.  If there were any hitches, I didn’t notice them.  Will I go next year?  Not sure, mainly because of the crush.  Would I go to see another one elsewhere?  Definitely.  Not as a religious experience, though I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a man whose message should be heeded, I don’t think that churches have really lived up to that message in a very, very long time.  However, as theater it was quite remarkable, and I will fill in now with some faces from the day.

And a couple which made me smile!

For World Book Day

My name is Linda and I am a book addict, so this is my day to celebrate!  You can blame my mom if you like, she used to do the traditional mom thing (back then ….. and still should be IMHO), and read to me every night before bed.  Thank god there wasn’t really any television to speak of back then.  Programs considered suitable for kids finished at 6 o’clock (think it was 6), and then there was nothing – IMAGINE IT! – a blank screen until those mysterious adult programs began an hour or so later.  Truth to tell, I wasn’t really interested in what went on then because my mom took me to the wonderful worlds inhabited by “Little Women”, “What Katy Did”, “Anne of Green Gables” and “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” as well, of course, as Enid Blyton’s idyllic worlds.  Back then one graduated from Noddy and Friends to “The Secret Seven” or “The Famous Five.”

Once I was old enough to do the reading myself I travelled to the England of yore with Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte or Charles Dickens, and once I went to senior school, well, it was quite overwhelming.  I just wished that English had been the only subject (well, maybe some French and Geography and History thrown in), and the school library also opened up new worlds with non-fiction books.  Er….um…..confession time – I used to cop out of sports lessons so I could spend the time in the library, granted we weren’t always reading, but a lot of the time we were!  I’d been forbidden to join a library before going to high school (books carry germs apparently), so just wandering around those shelves was like being in church for me.  It was, actually, exciting!

I always owned books.  I still have my copy of “The Wind in the Willows” and the “Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson”.  Oddly, although I read the former to my own kids I never read the fairy tales, and I’m not sure why, but we weren’t short of books anyway.  Every trip to England meant lugging back heavy cases, books layered with clothes mainly.  In those days it was easy to get away with excess luggage, and I rarely paid anything, luckily.

I also still have the paperbacks which fired my imagination in my teens, Hemingway, Steinbeck and Scott Fitzgerald mainly, and, of course, “The Catcher in the Rye”, that was obligatory for my generation, James Baldwin, WH Auden, Wordsworth, Whitman and Tennyson for poetry, Christopher Isherwood,  Somerset Maugham and Leo Tolstoy………and, well, you don’t want a list of authors, do you?  You get the picture.

My little apartment would be a whole lot tidier without them.

There was a period when books took a back seat, but it passed and nowadays there is a lot of non-fiction, mostly travel and biographies, photography and stories of development and international problems, but recent years introduced Barbara Kingsolver, William Boyd, Isabel Allende, and some marvellous African authors like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie just to name a few (as they say).  Someone is going to say to me, “Ah, but you didn’t mention *********”, but there isn’t time or space.  Convinced now that I am an addict?  Books spill out all over the place, they aren’t only restricted to the shelves pictured above!  These are squidged in between my bed and a chair,

           and these are on the stairs, awaiting sorting,

and these have to live in a drawer because there is nowhere else to put them -

I do try to get rid of them.  I am very enthusiastic about www.bookcrossing.com which is a wonderful concept in theory – that we should pass on books, once read, either to other members (think of it as an international book club) or by wild releasing, which is fun, leaving your book in an appropriate place for someone else to find.  They then, in theory, register with Bookcrossing.com that they have found it and do the same.  Sometimes books can be tracked through several owners, and internationally and that’s fun.  Trouble is with the books I’ve enjoyed I always think I will read them again, often do, so the ones I release are the ones I haven’t enjoyed that much, or ones that are part of an ongoing exchange through Bookcrossing.  On the odd occasions I’ve released books I liked I’ve regretted it!  Why oh why oh why, didn’t someone journal “The Prodigal Summer” when I left it in the internet shop in the Outer Banks?  Seemed like a good place to me :=(

Living in Spain does nothing whatsoever to curb my passion because books are really celebrated and appreciated here.  In Barcelona, for example, today is a BIG deal.  There are book fairs and stalls (I don’t ever remember being in any other city with so many book stores anyway), and the tv cameras are there to report on St George’s Day.  This day ladies, you should be giving your man a book, and he should be responding with a rose.  You see, books are even romantic here!

I do see a Kindle in my future, and whether that will tame my collecting I have yet to find out.  It will certainly make the travelling easier, which will be the idea – lighter than most books and up to 3,000 of them on just one of those tablets. Win/win, no?  What I have to figure out is if my home, wherever it is, will feel less homely without books.  I simply can’t imagine it.  It’s my books as much as anything which make a place my home.  On the other hand, the travelling and moving around would be a lot easier without the volume.  Other than very personal stuff and a handful of cds it’s books which make up the bulk of my possessions these days.  I’ve sold and given away just about as many as I can to date, so until it’s time to move on again, I’m just going to enjoy them, oh, and excuse me, I’m off to start a new one now!

For Earth Day: Talking of Trash in Tenerife

Seems like a might have been a bit ahead of myself with the previous post. Perhaps I should have posted it today – Earth Day?  Something I could write about, seemingly, forever, even with the limited knowledge I have!  Still, there is one. particular thing which has been irking me of late, which is connected to the theme, and it is the most basic thing possible that everyone on the planet can do to help protect it and make life pleasanter for those around us, as well as ourselves, and that is pick up, take home or deposit in the appropriate place your bl**dy RUBBISH!

I write about trash in Tenerife because it’s where I live, but don’t get the idea that I’m dissing Tenerife specifically.  It happens the world over, as blogger Barbara Weibel disclosed in her blog, HoleintheDonut, the other day – even in countries which we imagine as being more “innocent” in this respect.    I simply write about where and what my own current experience is.

First the good stuff:  Almost everywhere I go in Tenerife the local councils have excellent provision for recycling.  Within two minutes of my apartment in El Médano there are three places where I can deposit paper, glass and plastics/tins for recycling, right by the containers for tossing what rubbish is left after you’ve subtracted those items. It makes it so easy, compared, say, to places in England which I know  (Sadly, no organic recycling, though I know they have it on the mainland).  This has been true of everywhere I lived over the past six years, which is 3 different towns, and two different municipalities.  Even up in the Teide National Park you can find them.

There are also places called Punto Limpio, where you can take heavier rubbish to dispose of, like old furniture, tv sets, tires, x-rays, batteries and other such things.  The nearest one to me is about fifteen minutes away, and they open Sundays.

Isn’t all of that wonderful? Simple and easy?  Now for the bad stuff:  so then, why do people leave broken chairs, bicycles, surf boards or old ovens cluttering up the street next to the garbage containers? Why do they throw everything from candy wrappers to cigarette ends to entire bags of rubbish out of cars? Why, when walking in the country  do I invariably come across abandoned cars, heaps of builders’ rubbish and tossed-out ‘fridges, not to mention tin cans and cigarette ends?  Right next to where I stood last year to take this snap

there were two piles of trash including paint cans, a burnt-out car door and fenders, chunks of concrete blocks and cement bags.  This on a famous walk to see the beauty of the almond blossoms, and much promoted by the council of Santiago del Teide and even by the island government.

I used to have a file of photos of trash, maybe thinking of doing a post like this, but I deleted them all some time ago, feeling guilty about dwelling on the unpleasant side of life, when there is, truly, so much beauty around me constantly.  However, just the other day I had to suppress my anger, when we were queuing for the casting for the Titans movie (not heard anything btw, so that’s a no-go then).  I mentioned the casting happened about a minute’s walk from my house, actually, just by where I snapped this photo a few months back -

Along the seashore, next to the dunes, there is a low wall, which was very handy on the day, as it gave folk a place to perch whilst waiting.  However, as the queue began to move along we realized that, like us, many people had taken food or drink to tide them over, and that many people were tossing their rubbish over onto the dunes, amongst the junipers which grow there.

When Cristina was spotted taking snaps she was asked, sarcastically, if she was from Greenpeace, i.e. what gives you the right to record our abuse of the landscape?!  You see, I’d like to have thought that a bit of education was necessary, but clearly they knew why we were snapping, and they were aware of what Greenpeace is.  It was so absolutely arrogant and uncaring and disrespectful of others as to be astounding.

You could say that the local council does its bit to try to improve things.  They actually have an environmental department, and they produce very good leaflet.

It covers subjects like how to use household appliances and lighting and still save electricity, including how best to wash the dishes, saving electricity in the bathroom, information about cleaning products and air-conditioning/heating, responsible use and disposal of batteries, paper and  computers.  There is even a section on cosmetics and personal hygiene items, and on the last page (above) advice about what you can and cannot put in those recycling bins.  So how come people were sitting on that wall throwing their paper cups and  food wrappings onto the beach?  And I’m only talking about the aesthetics of it here really – don’t let’s get into the subject of the damage it might do to wildlife.  I can only say that I was totally, totally disgusted, and not only by the fact that they were doing it, but that they did it knowingly and were shameless about it.

Tell me, if you lived somewhere like this -

why, on earth,  would you want to foul it?  These pictures were taken in various places in the south of the island, when walking Trixy mainly, the sort of places where people like to go to enjoy the beauty of nature, as you can see.  I don’t mean to imply that every one of the over one thousand people in that queue were irresponsibly discarding their litter, or that every car you pass on the road is tossing trash from its windows, or that everyone is so arrogant and uncaring.  The fact that the booklet is produced, that there are such excellent systems for recycling says far more for the island than those igits, but there is still something lacking, and if education isn’t working, then penalties must be imposed for fouling our living space.

My apologies to those of you elsewhere, which is most of you, I know, I need to rant a bit, and I know it’s probably boring if you don’t live here.  Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible (as the BBC used to say).

Glimpses of the Future – Bleak or Hopeful?

Last week was European Union Sustainable Energy Week.  Certainly one of the three events I went to was an intentional part of that initiative, but I’m not sure if the other two were just co-incidental timing. The Caja Canarias is running another of its social projects, making me wish again that I lived in Santa Cruz, or at least closer, to be able to go to all the events!  This one is entitled Enciende la Tierra (I think this would best translate as Spotlight Planet Earth), this follows the season of photojournalism-related events connected to the Robert Capa retrospective, and the award-winning Enciende Africa in 2008 (plus loads more which I couldn’t attend, or weren’t specifically of interest to me).  Sustainable energy is just one of the subjects which will be discussed, and portrayed on film and in photographs, in recognizing man as a part of the planet, and not apart from it, and how we are destroying ourselves as we destroy it.

The first event was the opening of the exhibition of photos by National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting.  I missed the opening night because………I didn’t know about it……….I suppose the onus is on me to find out in one way.  I know that Caja Canarias mount these marvellous events, and I should have been checking their website to see what was coming up.  It’s necessary here because publicizing and promoting events is sadly lacking.  Sometimes there is clever and well-designed publicity, but it invariably arrives in one’s inbox or Twitter or FB feed too late (like a day or two before), when you’ve already got commitments for the date in question.  It’s very frustrating, and must be even worse for press professionals.  I think it would drive me up the wall.

Still, I caught up with it a week late, and it was still all there.  The exhibition represents Lanting’s work Life: A Journey through Time, and is nothing short of stunning.  When I walked in and saw the effect of all the colors there was a sharp intake of breath, and when I understood the concept of the work, evolution and our connection to the earth, it took on even more meaning.  Just one thing, and I hate to be critical of such an impressive enterprise, I liked the photos better on his website than on the walls of the gallery.  The colors are better, and I am a bit fanatical about reality in photos!  Even so, anyone local reading this do go and check it out.  It’s on until June 30th.

Second event was a drama/doc, The Age of Stupid, featuring the late and wonderful Peter Postlethwaite, as curator of a facility where the world’s art treasures have been taken for storage to protect them from the effects of global warming which is destroying the world.  It’s ostensibly set in 2055, with Postlethwaite’s character looking back to try to understand why something wasn’t done to prevent the tragedy which has overtaken the earth.  All the rest of the movie, directed by Fanny Armstrong, is news coverage and interviews with real people and featuring real events.  My take is that movies like this often tend to be too preachy and one-sided, but this movie was sympathetic to other points of view.  The guy who lost everything in New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina also worked for an oil company, he could see both sides of the debate.  The guy who was starting a low-cost airline in India wasn’t unaware of environmental issues, and who is to deny emerging nations the same lifestyles we enjoy in the west?………. which is all the girl in Kenya wanted – what we would consider an ordinary life.  It’s a very, very complex issue, often over-simplified, and whilst the movie didn’t deal with every point it might have (how could it? Then it would have been five hours long!), it brought up was effective, although nothing new for me.  I had to laugh, though, at the supercilious bitch you will see in the trailer, who purports to be concerned about the environment…..so long as she doesn’t have to do her bit.  Her face is a picture, it really does say it all.

So – a celebration of life, a warning that we may destroy it, and now some hope for the future -

the village of bioclimatic houses situated on the ITER site in Granadilla de Abona.  They had open days last week in conjunction with the EUSEW. The initials stand for Instituto Tecnológico y de Energías Renovables, which doesn’t really need a translation, does it?  It is an initiative of and largely funded by the island’s government, although its aims and ambitions are much more wide-reaching.  It has to be remembered that this island, like others, has energy needs which make sourcing alternatives to fossil fuels perhaps more urgent than elsewhere – the fact that fuels have to be imported by sea, and that space for power stations and oil refineries is limited. It’s an interesting place to visit at any time, as well as the experimental wind farm there, a guided tour will take you through the world of alternative energies, show you how those windmills work and there is also a small cinema.  The first time I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” was there. The last time I did it we had a marvellously passionate guide, who had endless patience with all the questions fired at him.

This weekend’s tour was specifically to view the houses, which are not a part of the normal tour.  After seeing the first couple, trying to make notes, take snaps and keep up with the language, as well as sidestep other people in the fairly large group, I gave up.  It was clearly going to be too much in the circumstances, and our guide was already urging us to hurry if we wanted to see everything.  She was extremely pleasant, but it seemed as if we had deadlines to meet, which was a shame because it was an interested group, as you might expect on a tour like this.   If I try to sum it up:  there are 25 houses all designed by different architects, or teams of architects.  They are all very different, and they are situated on a stretch of coast which is pretty windy (not far from El Médano), and which would be pretty desolate were it not for this initiative and the power station nearby, in fact a desert landscape.  My first reaction was that I was reminded of those houses in the deserts of Arizona or Colorado and New Mexico which you see in glossy magazines.  It would be fair to say that every one we saw might qualify as glamorous.  Others reminded me of the sort of beach homes you see in those same magazines, but without the picket fence on the beachside.

Each house is totally self-sufficient energy-wise, and if excess is produced it is fed back into the system.  Every architect achieved energy efficiency in different ways, using air and water flows, careful siting of the windows and walls to take advantage of sun or lack of it (living rooms always faced the sun and bedrooms were on the opposite sides for instance).  There were some unusual window arrangements, as you can see;

The requirements in this climate would, needless to say, be quite different from a colder one, where heating is needed.  Here it’s the opposite, our interiors on the coastal areas need to be kept cool, and even higher up, summer is a much longer season than in northern Europe.  The aim is to NOT have air conditioning, which requires a lot of energy.  Given that, I expected that the houses might be on the dark side, but on the contrary every one we saw was light and airy, like the one below, which incorporated an interior patio, with these gallery landings.  This one might have been my favorite, except for a suspicious siting of the loo!

My favorite bathroom was this one:

For some reason I like the idea of a sunken bath, although I would probably have like a bigger one!  It was notable that all the bathrooms were fairly small, so I am presuming this was intentional in each case.  You might think you wouldn’t want to bathe next to the window like that, but that wall keeps out prying eyes as well as protecting the house from the elements.

The one above was the most futurist from the external view, but we didn’t get to see inside.  Our guide was anxious to point out that Canarians had this keeping cool business nailed hundreds of years ago.  Traditional cottages here are built with thick walls, which keep winter warmth in, and summer heat out, they also have very small windows, which means that they are invariably dark.  When Europeans come to live here, and I am definitely no exception to this, we like light.  We come and fling open all the doors and windows to let in the light and the breezes.  We’ve spent too long in the dark, northern winters, whereas Canarians will close shutters and curtains to keep out the sun and the heat.

All the houses are available to rent, and you can see details of photos of all of them on the website if you click on the link at the beginning of this section.

This water feature isn’t just to look pretty.  It is also a part of the cooling system of the property.  It runs from outside to in and underneath, but it does look pretty effective too.

One of them had its own vegetable garden. Gardens here often look parched but are producing perfectly healthy crops, as this seems to be doing.

All the interiors were cool and modern IKEA-ish sort of, stylish but practical and I could have moved into almost any of them tomorrow!  There was a worrying lack of wardrobe space in some, which I never did get to the bottom of, except that these were designed to rent rather than as permanent homes.

If you fancy trying one out, they don’t come cheap compared to the tourist traps.  They vary between €200 and €280 per day according to their website, and you have to remember that they are situated a fair way from conveniences.  That said I’d love to try one out.  Lack of buses or supermarkets wouldn’t bother me at all, and lack of bars would be an advantage, so long as I had my own supply of course!  Fact is, heck, yes, I could live there.  Question is could I afford to?

Los Abrigos: a Fishing Village Keeping up with the Times

Last week I wrote this short piece for sunshine.co.uk’s Tenerife insiders’ blog. It got me thinking about the village of Los Abrigos, and how it has changed over the years I’ve lived in Tenerife, and musing about whether the changes were a good thing or not.  When we arrived in 1987 the village had already made itself a mecca for fresh fish dining, but in addition to excellent food, it was the lack of pretension with appealed to visitors. Has it kept that atmosphere?

Looking over the harbor at sunrise

When we were making the decision to immigrate  I only had one week here to form opinions.   Having checked out the school (my only worry),  the rest of my week was all bonus, it was exploring and discovering what was to be our new home, and I think my favorite “discovery” was Los Abrigos.

We set off down a narrow, bumpy road with more twists than a slinky. At one point it was cobbled, but mostly it was broken-up tarmac, as if it had been  abandoned and forgotten. I could see that it was leading seawards, because even this close to the ocean we were elevated (there is hardly any flat ground on Tenerife).  It took us over an arid, mostly sandstone scrubland with the words coto de caza scrawled ominously all over the place.  This was a warning to keep out of the area on Thursdays and Sundays in the hunting season, from August to December.  It was hard to imagine just what there was there for rabbits, or anything else, to feed on. This type of landscape was so totally alien to me back then.  I could only relate to scenarios from my favorite westerns.  It looked like bleak wasteland,  but the power of nature was palpable.  It celebrated the ability to survive.

Finally, and not without a touch of car sickness, although it was only about ten minutes of a journey, we arrived at a little junction, where the road flattened.  In another reference to westerns, the term “one horse town” came to mind! It was a dry and hot, early afternoon, and nothing stirred.  If tumbleweed had blown along the road I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.  This was Los Abrigos, or The Shelters, so-called because the bay on which the village grew up is protected from the almost constant breezes which are a feature of this coastline.  On the corner was the village shop, and next to it a fish restaurant, Tito’s, famed for being a cheaper version of what we were about to enjoy.  Cheaper because it didn’t have the view, and it goes without saying you have to pay a bit extra for a view.

The road forked right to the seafront, and we drove haltingly along the street, taking in the vista, the sea and harbor falling away to our right, and our left bordered by slightly scruffy buildings, most of which were fish restaurants and bars.  Then, as now, one of the first things which struck you on arrival was the mouth-watering aroma of frying fish, which permeates everything in the midday heat. If you aren’t hungry when you arrive, you surely will be within a couple of minutes.  Most places had plastic tables and chairs which wobbled  on the roadside – there was no sidewalk.  We drove to the end, squeezed through the narrow opening between two buildings, and parked behind Perlas del Mar, the restaurant which occupies the most prominent position, at the end of the harbor, with marvellous views out to the Atlantic, and over the small harbor.

We were greeted with friendly smiles.  The estate agent who had taken us was well-known there, and was it any wonder?!  I can’t imagine anyone not being bowled over by the experience – great selling tool!  We  chose our own fish from the ‘fridge – that was a novelty. Then we settled in a corner table with those amazing views, for our first taste of mojo (an island sauce), boquerones (marinated anchovies) and calamari (lightly battered and fried), and salad, whilst we waited for our fish to be cooked.  If I’m totally honest, the salad was very unimaginative – lettuce, tomatoes and onions, with the oil and vinegar to be added to taste.  The salads haven’t changed much over the years, if you want a decent salad stick to the resort areas.  That afternoon the estate agent knew she had us hooked. We sat and washed down all that marvellous fresh food with cold beers, and the kids pottered safely around the seawall as we watched.  They’d spotted the seawater pool in the corner of the harbor – so that meant we would be coming back for sure, and we did, more times than I can count.

Over the years I’ve had some memorable meals there;  sunny Sunday lunches with big tables full of friends and family; a Sunday evening with friends when everything around us closed; we’d long since finished eating and were sipping our umpteenth coffee and brandy (ah, those were the days!), when the owner came out with the brandy bottle, still half full, and plonked it on our table.  He told us we were welcome to stay on his terrace as long as the bottle lasted, but he was going home to bed!

Another time, during that first year, we were sitting roadside when a small procession wound its way past, carrying a plaster saint.  It was a balmy September evening and the feast of San Blas, but we hadn’t known.  Back then it was very low-key, unless you lived in the village, but the fireworks which ensued after the blessing of the seas were the equal of The Magic Kingdom’s, and we had, unintentionally booked a front row seat.  These days the fiesta is renown throughout the south, and you have to fight for positions to view the spectacle, which is a change for the worse, I guess, except that the fireworks are ever more spectacular each year…..swings and roundabouts.

I’ve even been known, arriving back from time spent elsewhere, to go straight to Los Abrigos to eat before going home!

Nowdays when you arrive it’s by a smooth, new road which glides down from the motorway junction in Las Chafiras. As you enter the village on the left there is a smart plaza, and to your right you will spot a posh hotel, seemingly plonked in the middle of what is, essentially, still desert.  On the corner, where the village shop stood, is now a trendy boutique. Last year the church square was smartened up, and pedestrianized area was extended.  You haven’t been able to drive along the seafront, as we used to, for some years now.

These days there are a couple of upmarket restaurants amongst the traditional ones, and a couple of Italian restaurants, which seem to be surviving.  In the old days, nothing other than a fish restaurant lasted there for very long.  It’s what people go to Los Abrigos for.

I have a sentimental attachment to the place, because I lived there very happily for a while.  I was living there when I first began this blog, and perhaps one reason I didn’t do much with the blog in the early days is that I had the view below – and spent more time gazing at it than at whatever I was doing at the computer.  My desk with right next to the window!

When I lived there, sometimes I would be woken by noises and shouting echoing in the darkness, and unaccumstomed light illuminating my room,  and if I parted the curtains I could watch the boats coming in and being unloaded.  It was fascinating to hang about and observe them, doing what their families had done for years and years.  You could forget about the swish restaurants and the fancy tourists and imagine that life still went on as it always had.

This boat steamed in  excitedly, followed by a retinue of hungry gulls one early morning.

The sea must have been bountiful this day, because the harbor began to fill up with boats, and the harbor wall with vans collecting the catch.

The reason I left this apparent bit of paradise in 2008 was an influx of what promised to be the neighbors from hell. It didn’t help my unease that they were British, and seemed to assume that I needed to be friends simply because I was too.  One night of listening to their drunken, shrieking  and swearing was enough for me.  I set out to find a new home the next day. As you guys know, I like to move around anyway, so it wasn’t a problem. Thinking back, it wasn’t the friendliest place to live anyway.  I was there for two and half years, and scarcely got to know anyone, even the owner of the restaurant below my apartment, where I used to eat quite a lot,  never admitted to knowing me.  The only people I ever made friends with were waiters and PRs, who constantly changed anyway.  I guessed that the older families must have resented the place filling up with foreigners.  I really can’t be sure, because no-one would ever talk about it very much, and given the behaviour of my new neighbours, who can blame them?

More of these types seemed to be moving into the area around that time, but I went back there to eat last week, and it was all quiet on the waterfront, so perhaps the excesses have been curbed by law and neighbours.  In any event the very best time to go is Sunday lunchtime.  In typical Spanish fashion lunch begins late by northern European standards, 2 or 3 o’clock, when whole families potter down, and sit and eat companionably, as meals should be taken, with lunch drifting into dinner time.  By ten-ish most restaurants are closing up, and people heading slowly home refreshed and ready for the new week.

My favorite for quality and choice for a traditional meal is Vista Mar in the center of the parade of restaurants, but Restaurante Los Abrigos and Perlas del Mar are very good too.  If you want upmarket fine dining with a menu worthy of any capital city, then Los Roques.  It’s expensive, but worth every cent.  I couldn’t help but smile when I noticed that the two I considered worst during my time there have closed down, which is the thing about recessions – survival of the fittest.  One of my old favorites has made an attempt to go upmarket and failed miserably.  I know because I ate there last week, and the food was very mediocre, though the setting was great, shame they didn’t stick to what they used to do so well.  If you’re going to keep up with the times, you have to know how to do it properly.

Opting for Some Color in my Life

I had a grey day today, even though it was bright and sunny outdoors it was grey inside.  Grey because today they washed down the exterior of the building in which I live with high pressure hoses, and we were told to close the exterior blinds as a precaution.  I wasn’t able to go out, and so I sat all morning and half the afternoon in the gloom, as the machine clonked and hissed outside.  It reminded way too much of English winter days, when I never saw daylight and the house lights were on all day, especially as the water began to beat against the blinds, the sounds zinged along my neural pathways, and I could feel a kind of depression setting in.

It struck me, not for the first time, that living in a sub-tropical climate is living in technicolor, which is cheery and positive.  I suppose it’s possible to overdose on it, but after 40 years of mainly monochrome UK living I doubt that I’ll do that!  Take the other morning, all I did was go to meet someone for coffee, earlyish, around 9.30, and I had a blue day, not in the “having the blues” sense, but in the  cystal-clear sky and sapphire ocean blue sense.  I had what promised to be a pleasant but long day ahead, and that just set me up for it, sitting with my milky café con leche, drinking in the blue by the harbor in Las Galletas.

Someone recently in a comment accused me of dissing England, but I don’t.  I love England, I love the countryside, especially the mountains and riverbanks.  I love London and Guildford, and Torquay and Keswick and lots of places in between. I love Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Tennyson, The Rolling Stones, Hugh Grant and Marks & Sparks and a zillion other things, just not those long, dark winter days.  It’s not even the cold or the rain or the wind, it’s the dark.

Here, I feel more alive.  I know it isn’t for everyone.  I don’t even care too much for the heat in July and August, but I like the freedom the warmth and light give me.  I like that continuing on to Santa Cruz after this meeting I only had to stuff a light shawl into my bag, not don a coat or even a jacket.  I like that when a friend says, “Let’s barbeque Sunday,” we know that it’s 99.9% certain we can do that in April.  I like that when I realize I forgot to buy milk I can just grab my keys and purse and shuffle around to the supermarket without having to muffle up, even in January.  I like that I can walk my dog almost every day without it being a chore because it’s cold or wet.  I like that I don’t have to buy tights or gloves or coats.  Any that I own I owned back in 1987 or bought on winter vacations.  I like that I can have that coffee or almost any meal I want outdoors.  And I like that my day can be any color I want it to be;

Yellow

or pink,

or green,

or red,

or white,

or even multi-colored

Bienmesabe or You Could Call it Ambrosia

This, my friends, is bienmesabe, or as near to heaven on a spoon as you can get!  Food of the gods indeed.  Doesn’t really look that appetizing, does it? But it is so rich that most people can’t finish a portion like the one above. I, however, can!

I’ve never even tried to make it, because I know that once I’ve done it, I’ll do it again – and again – and again……and I really don’t need the extra pounds that would pile on!  It does sound very simple, though.  For a long time I thought it was made with honey, but basically it’s almonds, a syrup made from reduced sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon and eggs.  The almonds are toasted and then ground as fine as possible. You make the syrup by dissolving a ratio of roughly one and a half times weight of sugar to two of water, letting it thicken on a low heat once all the sugar has absorbed.  It shouldn’t take all that long.  I use the same syrup to soak oranges with some liqueur and the orange peel added for another simple but effective dessert. When the syrup is the right consistency you add the almonds, lemon peel and cinnamon, and stir well in, of course.  You let it cool, add the beaten eggs, then warm it up again, cool it down again in the ‘fridge, and voilá.……tastes good to me, which is the translation of the name.

Like many Spanish desserts and sweets this originated in Arabia, and was imported to Spain when the Moors invaded in the 8th century and after. Indeed they imported the almond trees themselves, and this is definitely not the only traditional Spanish sweetmeat made from almonds.   Later almond trees made their way from the Peninsula to the Canary Islands after the Spanish Conquest, and are as much a part of traditional cooking here as on the mainland.

The dish above was one I devoured recently in a small bar/restaurant in Santiago del Teide.  Oh, heck, it sounds so easy – maybe I will give it a try after all!

Tenerife Goes Hollywood Crazy

Fun this week, amidst the crappy stuff. Filming will begin in April or May for Clash of the Titans 2, and it seems as if the entire island has gone loca for the movies! Not surprising because the production company did a very good job of blanketing the island with posters and flyers advertising that casting for extras would take place this week, add to that the high unemployment rate and you can guess at the result!

This was the official trailer for the first movie, which was also filmed here:

Whilst I can promise you that there are no monsters here of any description (well, other than the human variety), those landscapes are very familiar. If you look at some of the photos of the Teide National Parque on my Tenerife page you will be able to spot some of them. The area around the volcanic crater at the summit of the island, where the movie was filmed, is most often described as a “moonscape”, obviously perfect for the atmosphere the makers needed to create.

Tenerife has been used frequently in the past for location shooting. Most famously in One Million Years BC – and I warn you, this trailer from 1968 is to be viewed only under advice – if you have had any surgery or dental work recently which precludes laughing for a while – DON’T watch it!

So, you guys, take your eyes of Raquel and look at the scenery. That’s Tenerife minus the monsters again, oh, and the volcano is dormant too!

So…..Cristina and I thought it might be fun to go to the casting (not to mention that the money would be useful!) to see what it was all about. Cristina is very knowledgable about the profession, but my interest is strictly amateur – going to the movies twice on a Saturday in my early teens, enthralled in Universal Studios and MGM, and a movie buff at one time, though circumstances changed that for a while.

Wednesday morning, the first call: I was busy until midday, but we met up shortly afterwards and drove up the TF1 towards Arico Viejo. Even though Cristina is Canarian, she hadn’t been there before and we weren’t totally sure where it was, but it was very easy to find (this is a small island, after all). We wound our way up from the autopista into the foothills, with that pleasant sensation of leaving the hustle and bustle behind, which I often get when I turn inland. Even when we arrived in this tiny village it didn’t seem too busy.

Then, we hit a crossroads with a policeman on traffic duty, and assumed that this wasn’t something that usually happened on a lazy Wednesday afternoon here, so we knew we were close. When we asked him where the casting was he laughed out loud, and told us that, yes, it was the road ahead, but there was gridlock, we would have to make a right and do our best to find parking. Not good, but we managed quite well, and walked back. By then we had realized that the village had been overwhelmed by the number of people who’d arrived, hoping for their “fifteen minutes of fame” (Andy Warhol was SO right, judging by the rest of what happened!). We turned a corner, the street wound upwards steeply, and as far as we could see there was a straggle of folk, waiting in the hot sunshine. We walked a little way, but with no end in sight, decided to go back and ask the first people in line how long they’d been waiting. It was around 1.30 by then, and it turned out that they had been waiting since 9.30 in the morning. “No way”, we thought. It just wasn’t worth it, so we turned back, down to the coast and lunch, and decided maybe it was worth a try the next day if we went earlier.

We checked out the location after lunch, and it turned out to be just around the corner from where I’m living, so we decided 8am was maybe early enough but not so early as to lose beauty sleep (at my age I need all I can get!). There was already, at 4pm Wednesday a guy waiting to be first in line when the place opened Thursday at 10am, and when I passed later, around 10pm, there were 20 or 30 people.

Thursday Morning, the Second Attempt: Normally at 8am I’m supping my first coffee of the day, but the next morning, bright and early, I put the coffee into a flask and strolled around the corner. Cristina arrived about the same time, and came prepared, as you can see!

Those chairs were pretty comfy. I almost fell asleep! I can’t ever remember queuing this way for anything in my life. I usually look with derision on people waiting to spot a gloved, royal hand as it waves from a limo, or for tickets to a concert, where they will be so far away from the action on stage that I can’t see the point of going, but, then, there is a difference between camping out on, say, London’s wet streets and a sunny promenade by a beach here. The atmosphere was quite cool in fact, almost party like, and the people watching was absolutely first class. The majority were “youngsters,” in most cases the girls with beautifully applied makeup and mini skirts, and the guys favoring looks which fell somewhere between smouldering Latino macho and punky rapper. I guess Hollywood is just full of people like these, hoping to be discovered and become the next big star, and reality tv has done everything to make them believe it will come true. They preened and checked their looks as the sun began to make the make-up greasy and melt the hair gel. El Médano being Tenerife’s hippie haven there was an abundance of Rastafarian hair, baggy pants and beards too. This look, in fact, is what the publicity had indicated was required, so I’m thinking these are the guys who will get the work most likely. The four-hour wait, to be truthful, passed quite quickly, what between the good company, the people watching and the guy who seemed to have taken it upon himself to provide entertainment for the crowd. A big, well-made fellow, he appeared in a couple of different Carnaval costumes, charging about with a plastic sword, and yelling with abandon. The tv cameras, there to film what people will do to be in movies,  loved him, or he loved them. I don’t know. I hid!

Then, all of a sudden our group was in. A while before we’d been given a form to complete which had a number at the top, we presented this and our other documentation at the first desk and proceeded to the next room where our measurements were taken. This tickled me. There was a space on the form for measurements, but we were told not to fill them in. I can only assume that people will usually lie about them! After that, a photo, holding our assigned number – not unlike those photos of criminals you see on tv shows, hard to stifle the giggles, and that was it. All done in time for lunch.

It was kind of fun, and it was certainly a new experience.  Local press reported 1,000 people Wednesday and 1,500 Thursday, plus those who turned up today in La Laguna, I didn’t see the news tonight.  I’d have put those stats the other way around, but it adds up to the same.  Probably around 3,000/4,000 people in all have applied for work, so I don’t expect that a fairly tall and pale woman of a certain age has much chance, but if I do this will be the first place I come to shout it out!