Eye candy in Tenerife

Bucks Fizz is a splendid early accompaniment to the excellent smoked salmon and scrambled eggs served at the Caviar House at Gatwick airport. I know that those of you who have not experienced this delight will be trying to reconcile the expectations of a scummy busy airport, with a quality breakfast of this nature, but trust me, it works. It is the ideal precursor for sitting on an aeroplane for 4 hours and sets you up nicely for a trip to the sunshine.

We duly arrived in Tenerife after quite a pleasant four-hour flight during which I had dreamed rather rewardingly of all the new customers for the services of Currencies Direct I am certain to collect up whilst on holiday. I say holiday, but you all know that work, in the form of the mission I have to rescue people from the cloying grasp of their banks when sending or receiving foreign currency, is a never-ending toil for me. Anyway, we arrived on time and guess what? It was warm!

Tenerife from the air

Arriving a little earlier than expected, by 3pm we were sat at a beach bar, St Miguel’s in hand, looking at the splendid Atlantic Ocean waves rolling on to the seashore at the resort of Adeje. When I say St Miguel’s in hand, I mean the beer and not the pretty boy guitar player who so took the eye of That Nice Lady Decorator at a different bar last night.

Let me explain. Having had a couple of hours of acclimatisation, which means several beers on the beach dressed in shirts and a short-sleeved shirt, we had returned to the hotel room for a shower and some relaxation before tackling dinner at the rather nasty but well appointed Guyarmina Princess Hotel, our home for the next week. I say nasty because despite some nice architectural features, it exudes that unpleasant mass tourist amalgam of modernity, glass, concrete and forced charm that I instinctively dislike. No warmth in the surroundings and staff seemingly doing their best to help whilst actually being disinterested in helping at all. All I wanted was an iron and an ironing board, so That Nice Lady Decorator could iron me a shirt (clearly you can tell from this that I did not bring my butler with me). I was told that this was not possible because of fire regulations (!) but that I could avail myself of the hotels ironing and laundry service, at a cost no doubt. “But I need a shirt for tonight” I said, to massive indifference.

Anyway, back to the pretty boy. After what was a decent meal, a wide ranging buffet, in the unprepossessing huge cavern of a brightly lit and noisy canteen, we set off into the town in search of a nice bottle of wine to prepare for an early night. We have some serious walking to do today. However, as is often the case, we eventually found a bar with a guitar player who caught the eye of That Nice Lady Pretty Boy Hunter, and settled into a very nice Faustino Gran Reserva, but with one of my eyes on the clock and one eye closing with fatigue. She however had both eyes on the err… entertainment. At one stage in the evening she said to me “how nice to be sitting in sight of the sea, in the warmth of a Tenerife night with some eye candy, some nice wine and my husband”. Note the order here. I came fifth on that list.

The idea of an early night quickly disappeared in a vat of wine and the smoke of several Monte Christo cigars, two-thirds of my weekly ration on the first night. It was when she began circling the audience with the microphone to encourage the other drinkers and diners effectively to commence karaoke (successfully on a couple of occasions) that I decided that, being well after midnight, perhaps the time had come to retire for the evening.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News