Tenerife is the place to be...
When you live in a place that is sunny all year round, you may expect some long lost friends to creep out of the woodwork looking for a place to stay. Our travel diarist reveals what to do when this happens.
By Joe Cawley
We learned several things when we first moved to Tenerife back in 1991:
1. learning just a smattering of Spanish was going to make the difference between accomplishing everyday business necessities and floundering like a beached halibut
2. never insult anybody who has the opportunity to season your food order with bodily fluids.
3. we had a lot more friends than we realised, or indeed knew.
During the first three months of our Canarian initiation we had requests to stay with us from the remotest of relatives and distant friends-of-friends who were really excited to renew acquaintances 'after all these years' (Read: use our apartment for free holiday accommodation).
The influx of visitors was seemingly endless until we learned to just say no. Working 16-hour days trying to learn how to run a bar/restaurant from scratch then returning home bleary-eyed to find your fridge emptied, apartment dismantled and two drunken semi-strangers gloating about glorious days on the beach eventually proved too much.
While our sentence to hard labour in catering ended 10 years ago, we still get visits, but only from those who know our second names. At the moment, my parents are here for a week, which is great.
Living 2,000 miles from other family members does have its advantages in a lot of ways - detachment from family squabbles, and exemption from brother, son and grandson duties - but it also means that the bond between our kids and their relatives isn't as strong as either side would like it to be. However, we have to stack this up against the positives of living in Tenerife - the climate, the lack of neighbourly competition, a relative absence of politically-correct madness, and the healthy and safe child-rearing environment to name but a few.
→ Next Page: Being on holiday, at home
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