Las Palmas

‘I don’t want to go on camel rides, do you?’ asks Madam.

‘Umm,’ I reply, ‘I remember donkey rides on the beach, but not camels, my sweet.’

‘I don’t want to visit the crocodile park, do you?’

‘Crocodiles? No, I’m fairly certain there aren’t any crocodiles in Eastbourne. It would have been in the paper or somewhere.’

Madam sighed. ‘Not here, in Gran Canaria,’ she says.

‘Oh, Gran Canaria. Are we going there sometime soon?’

‘Next week! We are going next week. I told you ages ago! Don’t you ever listen to anything I say?’

One advantage of growing old with corresponding memory issues is that I can claim forgetfulness, instead of admitting that I had probably tuned her out while I was reading. Most husbands have this ability, although few will admit it. A small part of my brain automatically says ‘yes dear,’ ‘no dear,’ or ‘you look lovely’ as appropriate, while leaving the majority of my brain to focus on watching the cricket or daydreaming about Scarlett Johansson. I call this Husband Mode.

‘Oh, yes, I remember now, my sweet. Next week, right?’

There was a long pause while she stared at me suspiciously before she said, ‘Go and print out your travel list.’

A long time ago, I created a document on the computer with a list of things to do before, and stuff to take, on a trip. It saves getting to the airport without a passport, or arriving for a two-week holiday with no clean underwear.

One of the items on the list is to get a haircut, so I duly present myself at one of the lower-priced barbers in town. I sit down, and he says ‘number three? Four?’ He inspects my rapidly thinning hair and says ‘number two?’ I have no idea what he is talking about. I’m perfectly familiar with ordering a Chinese takeaway by number. You want two spring rolls, sweet and sour prawns, and rice, so you just say ‘Two number six, one number thirty-two, and a small sixty-four. It’s quick and easy and avoids language problems. Our delivery of flied lice last year further convinced me of the value of this method.

I look around the barbers for photos of haircuts or a menu with a corresponding number. There are none. His electric clippers are buzzing furiously, close to my ear.

‘Umm, just a trim, please,’ I say.

‘I’ll start with a two then,’ he says, ‘I can take off more later.’

I get home, and Madam looks at me. Her mouth drops open. She tries to suppress a laugh but fails. ‘What happened to your hair? Where is it? You are going to need your hat,’ she says, ‘maybe wear it indoors as well.’ She pauses for a moment and says, ‘and go to a more expensive barber next time, please.’

The good news is that I now only need a teaspoon of shampoo and won’t have to visit a barber for at least a year.

There’s a recent convention in meteorological circles to name storms as they blow in from the Atlantic. I’m not sure why. Once upon a time we were happy with the weather man telling us it was going to be a bit windy tomorrow and to hold down our hats, secure our garden gnomes and to keep the cat indoors. Now it’s all drama and amber warnings with train cancellations and constant news alerts telling us to stay in the understairs cupboard all night.

The day before we leave for the airport we are told that storm Isha is on the way and Madam is stressed.

‘There was a plane crash in 1984 caused by wind shear!’ she says.

I start to explain that strong winds are different from wind shear and that planes are designed to fly in the two-hundred mile an hour jet-stream, but she is already scrolling on her phone to look for plane crashes caused by wind.

Monday.

We are kept awake much of the night by the howling wind, but it has abated somewhat by morning and Madam is a little calmer. In spite of an email warning that there might be delays, our flight is listed as on time, and we are all boarded ready for take off at 9:20am. Then we sit at the gate for forty-five minutes without any explanation. It would have been nice if they told us that the co-pilot was just finishing his breakfast, or that they were looking for the dipstick to check oil levels or something. We finally push away from the gate and take off almost an hour late.

The pilot must have put his foot down, or whatever it is they do on planes, and we land only thirty minutes behind schedule. We expect a coach transfer to the hotel where they invariably stop at half a dozen hotels before ours, but we are led to a private taxi and are dropped off at the hotel after only twenty minutes. We are staying in a city centre hotel in Las Palmas, the capital of Gran Canaria.

‘This room isn’t as big as the hotel in Tenerife.’ says Madam.

I am going to point out this was a city centre hotel and half the price of Tenerife but find that going into Husband Mode is easier while Madam is unpacking and rearranging the room to her satisfaction.

‘No dear.’

‘There’s a pillow menu!” she says.

‘Yes dear.’

‘This isn’t much storage space!’

‘No dear.’

I lay on the bed while Madam unpacks, moves furniture, checks under the bed for dust and dead bodies, test the water pressure and moves all of the pillows to her side of the bed.

A little before 5pm, she declares the room arranged to her satisfaction so I get up and put on my shoes.

‘Shall we head to the beach and find a restaurant for dinner?’ I ask.

‘Not yet! I have to decide what to wear and fix my hair!’

I take off my shoes and lay back down on the bed.

It is 5:30 and she looks ready to leave. I get up and put my shoes on.

‘Are you ready my sweet?’ I ask.

‘No, I have to message my friends to let them know that we have arrived and I’m still not sure about which pillow to order.’

I take off my shoes and lay back down on the bed.

She finally finishes with her phone and puts down the pillow menu. It is 6pm. I’m getting smarter and don’t get up.

‘Are you ever going to be ready?’ she asks, ‘you know I don’t like to eat late.’

We find our way to the seafront. It is lined with restaurants, all with outdoor tables perched on the edge of the promenade directly above the beach. We walk a long way before settling on an Italian restaurant. I forget the exact name, but it was something like Luigi’s Tourist Ripoff.

We take a seat on one of the tables alongside the beach and study the menu.

‘They have banana on their pizza! You can’t have banana on pizza!’ says Madam.

‘I’m sure you can ask for it without banana. Besides, what’s wrong with banana?’ I reply.

‘It’s just wrong. It’s like putting sweet corn on pizza. Wrong. Did you check Trip Advisor? You were supposed to check. I bet the best restaurants don’t put banana on their pizza!’

I quite like sweet corn on my pizza, but Madam is well into her large glass of Sangria and can become fractious after wine, so I remain silent. We are too tired to go anywhere else, so we order a couple of pizzas. They arrive twenty minutes later, almost cold. There is no sign of any banana.

We walk back towards the hotel, past endless pavement cafes, and stop for a drink in a neighbourhood bar. I order a Spanish brandy. The bartender warms my glass with hot water then pours in what would be a triple measure in England. It costs less than three Euros.

‘We need to remember this bar,’ I say.

‘It’s The Good Life’ she replies.

‘It certainly is,’ I say, as I sip my brandy.

Tuesday.

The hotel has a British news channel on the television and they have announced yet another named storm. This one is called Jocelyn. Trains are cancelled in Scotland where eighty mile an hour winds are predicted. Eastbourne will have fifty mile an hour wind and rain all day. Gran Canaria is sunny and twenty-two degrees.

I look on the website for the bus company. It seems there are two separate companies, one for the Las Palmas city buses and one for the inter-city island buses. The city bus company, Guaguas Municipales, has parts of the website in English and parts in Spanish. The fare for a single journey of any distance is €1.40 but there is a prepaid €10 card that gives you twenty journeys. At least I think that is what it says. Another visitor website tells me that the card is good for only ten journeys.

After breakfast at the hotel, we present ourselves at the bus station office in Santa Catalina Park, a few minutes walk from the hotel. I have already forgotten the name for the card we need.

‘Umm… tarjeta del autobus…diez euros..?’ I ask the woman behind the desk.

She replies in English, ‘It’s only for the city buses, good for twenty journeys.’

One day I will get to practice my Spanish.

Our intended destination for the day is the cathedral and old town, recommended in most guides to the city. I look on the bus company website but it’s confusing and all the stop names are in Spanish and mean nothing without knowing the street names. I try Google maps and it suggests various options; one is bus number twelve leaving from Santa Catalina Park.

‘It’s bus number twelve,’ I tell Madam.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Umm, yes absolutely. Well.. fairly sure…probably.’

‘But what stop do we need?’

‘The one closest to the cathedral.’

‘But what’s the name of the stop? How far is it? How many stops?’

Madam is, as you may have derived, is a nervous bus passenger. I tend to take the approach that if we are on the wrong bus, we just catch another in the opposite direction. We might even discover somewhere new and interesting.

‘No idea what stop but Google tells me it’s a twenty minute journey and I’ve set a timer.’ I say.

I hadn’t really, but I figured that a cathedral is hard to miss. The cathedral does come into view as we turn a corner and Madam is calm again as we leave the bus. I am pleased to receive a €2 discount on my admission to the cathedral on account of my advanced age. Madam, still being in the prime of life, has to pay full price. She declares it to be the best cathedral she has seen.

‘Better than the one in Seville?’ I ask.

‘Well, no maybe not better than that one…’

‘Better than Canterbury?’

‘No.. but this is definitely in the top five!’

I wasn’t as impressed. It was nice but I’m not sure it was even in my top five. There are some pictures on Instagram so you can judge for yourself. Construction was started in 1497 but bits have been added on over the years, right into the 19th century. The result is a mix of different architectures, differing greatly from the original building. I have a dutiful look round while Madam goes off to light some candles and we meet at the entrance to the tower.

‘Did you see the dead bishop?” I ask.

‘There’s a dead bishop? A real one?’

Indeed there is. Buenaventura Codina y Augerolas was born in 1788 in Catalonia and became bishop of the Canary Islands in 1847. He shuffled off his mortal coil in 1857 and was buried in the crypt. In 1978, for reasons unknown, he was exhumed and put on display in a glass case in the Chapel of Our Lady of Los Delores where he rests today.

Madam dashes into the chapel and joins the throng of people around the glass case.

‘What did you think of him?’ she asks.

‘Oh, once you’ve seen one dead bishop, you’ve seen them all.’

There is, thankfully, a lift up to the cathedral tower. There’s a small kiosk with a sign saying entrance to the tower is €1.50, but it is unmanned and we follow other visitors into the lift. We linger on the tower for a while taking in the views over the city. A short set of steps lead up to the top of the tower with a narrow ledge where you have to shuffle sideways past other people. Neither of us is a fan of heights so we don’t linger.

We leave the cathedral and walk around the cobbled streets of the old town, then head north into the shopping district. The shops are mainly chain stores but there are cafes in the side streets with outside tables. We stop at one for a lunch of papas arrugadas, calamari and bread. Neither of us have any desire to shop, so we catch the number twelve bus back to Santa Catalina Park. Madam is less stressed on the return journey, either because she is tired or because she will recognise our stop.

I’m looking on Trip Advisor for dinner recommendations.

‘There’s a sunset cocktail bar at the far end of the beach my sweet. we could have a drink and watch the sunset.’

‘Is it a long walk?’

‘It’s a bus.’

There is a long silence. ‘A bus?’

‘Yes, a number forty-five or a forty-seven from up the road.’

‘And you know the stop?’

‘Yes, absolutely. It’s Parada del Autobus.’

‘That means bus stop in Spanish.’

‘Yes, that’s the one we need.’

After resting our sore feet, we catch the number forty-seven which drops us off a few yards from the bar. Madam orders a strawberry daiquiri and I a beer. The sunset is behind a hill and not much to see, but the bar overlooks a surfing beach and Madam smiles as the muscled surfers walk by. I don’t know why.

I ask Madam if she would like to eat here, but she tells me that they only have nachos on the menu and she doesn’t want those, so we walk along to another bar, where I order another beer and papas arrugadas.

Papas arrugadas is a dish made from small new potatoes which are cleaned (but not peeled), then boiled in salt water. After cooking, the water is removed and the potatoes are briefly left in the pot on the stove to dry off, until they become shrivelled with a fine salt crust. In Tenerife, they were served with two sauces, one red and one green. The sauces are unique to each restaurant but usually involve chilli pepper and garlic. In Gran Canaria, I’ve only seem them served with the red sauce.

‘What would you like to eat?’ I ask Madam. She looks at the menu for a while and says ‘I think I’ll have the nachos.’

The bar is crowded and noisy, some tourists but many locals. A table of six people order a shisha pipe which they pass between them. Our food takes a while to arrive but the papas are good.

‘How are your nachos?’ I ask Madam.

‘Nice.. but different from American nachos. They don’t have as much beans and cheese,’ she replies.

It’s true. Proper American nachos come with at least a three inch layer of processed cheese on top.

She eats a little more and says ‘I quite like these.’

We start to walk back towards the hotel along the crowded promenade. I know vaguely the right direction as Las Palmas at the north end is fairly narrow with the sea on one side and the port on the other, but I’m not sure exactly how to find our hotel. Madam does something clever with her phone so that her watch gives her turn by turn directions.

‘Turn right here!’ she says.

‘Now turn left!’

‘No, wrong way, we should have gone straight on!

‘Turn right!’

‘No, wrong way, left!’

And so it continues. We end up wandering random back streets and backtracking. We eventually find the hotel but my feet are sore.

Wednesday.

We catch the number twelve bus to Calle Triana, the upmarket shopping street in Las Palmas so that Madam can shop and eat churros. The bus is crowded and we have to stand. Madam has worked out that she can somehow plot the bus route on her phone and her watch will vibrate near the correct stop, so I just watch the view of the sea through the bus windows.

Calle Triana has a lot of familiar stores, Marks and Spencer, Benetton, Sketchers and Zara. We walk the length of the street, but it’s hot and I can’t summon much enthusiasm for shopping. Madam goes into a few stores while I find a shady spot by the entrance. She buys t-shirts for the grandchildren and looks for Christmas tree ornaments in January. We stop for a coffee but have both had enough by 2pm and head back to the hotel. The bus back is equally crowded. I later learn then residents pay only for the first fifteen journeys each month at forty-two cents a journey. Any after the first fifteen are free. It explains why the buses are often full in spite of running every ten or fifteen minutes.

We look on the internet for restaurant reviews. A tapas bar just around the corner is highly rated but it is full. Another restaurant nearby is out of our (my) price range.

‘Let’s try the one opposite,’ says Madam.

The restaurant is small, but there is a spare table indoors. The waiter doesn’t speak any English.

‘Comida?’ asks the waiter.

‘Si’, replies Madam.

‘Vino?’

‘Si!’

We wait for a while expecting a menu but he arrives with a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a small plate of sliced meats.

‘Por favor, no carne! says Madam.

The waiter looks confused. His shoulders slump. ‘Pescado?’ asks Madam.

He brightens. ’Si, pescado!’

He takes aways the meat and brings a plate of local cheese and bread. Still no menu but we are hungry and eat. We finish the cheese and bread and he brings a fresh sea bass the size of a small boat and presents it to us.

Madam’s mouth drops open. ‘Uhhh, para dos?’ she asks.

‘Si, para dos!’

Madam seems happy at the thought of only having to eat half a giant fish so she just nods. We are well into the bottle of wine by now, so we might have agreed to anything the waiter said.

‘Tentaculos de pulpo crudo?’

‘Si!’

‘Testiculos de toro a la parilla?’

‘Si!’

‘Mi marida es fea. Podemos intercambiar conyuges?’

‘Si!’

The fish came on a large plate with only one small potato. Madam declared it delicious. It is followed by two generous sized servings of cheesecake. The bill is €78 including a bottle of wine and water.

We waddle back to the hotel for a much needed nap.

Thursday.

We are going to Maspalomas in the south of the island. This is a more popular tourist destination with massive hotels and visitor attractions. We are taking one of the inter-city coaches which also leave from Santa Catalina Park. Coach number thirty takes about an hour, winding down the east coast with a few stops on the way.

Madam doesn’t like coaches and is reluctant to agree to this trip. She once read about a coach crashing into a deep ravine with multiple casualties, forty years ago. She is happy to sit in the back of a taxi, weaving in and out of traffic at seventy miles an hour, but is convinced a large coach pootling slowly along the coast is going to overturn, resulting in a fire ball and the death of everyone on board. I can understand her concerns in Gran Canaria though. The driver loses concentration. There is a skid. A screech of brakes. Passengers scream and clutch their loved ones. The coach tips and there is a horrific, hair-raising plunge onto the soft sand three feet below.

The journey, as expected, is uneventful. The road hugs the coast for much of the way giving us sea views until we reach the outskirts of Playa del Ingles. The bus stops a few times and I’m not sure when to get off, but we eventually reach a small bus station where the driver pulls in and turns off the engine.

‘I think this is our stop,’ I say.

We buy bottles of water from a small supermarket, then follow the signs to the beach. The promenade is crowded with tourists, most of them English. We stop in a seafront cafe with open air tables for coffee. It is €3.50. Not expensive by England standards, but I had paid €1.20 in Las Palmas. We walk down to the beach, past more cafes and shops, and stop to admire impressive sand sculptures.

‘Let’s walk on the sand!’ says Madam.

She loves to walk barefoot on the sand at the water’s edge. We walk along the beach for a while dodging many other visitors with the same idea. The sand is soft, the waves gentle. The sun is strong and it’s hot so I’m glad I had water.

‘I can see the sand dunes!’ I say.

Maspalomas is famous for its thousand acres of sand dunes. It looks remarkably like a part of the Sahara desert has been moved three hundred miles to the west. It is thought that the dunes were formed by sand from the now subdued marine shelf, when it was laid dry during the last ice age, and the wind blew the sand towards the coast of the island. Strong Atlantic winds continue to move and reform the dunes. The whole area is now a protected nature reserve and access is only permitted on the marked footpaths.

We walk towards the sand dunes and try to take a short cut back to civilisation across one dune. The sand is soft and shifts under our feet as we try to climb. Two steps forward and one step back. Then it is one step forward and two steps back. I watch while Madam tries to climb to the top. She gets two thirds of the way up then stops. I watch as she starts to slide back down.

‘Let’s walk on the beach near the sea, the sand is firmer.’ I say.

We walk a little further along the shore line then realise that we have walked over a mile. I drink the last of my water and look back at Maspalomas and forward to Playa del Ingles. They look the same distance, so we decide to carry on. I had neglected to bring a hat and I was starting to suffer from the heat. I wrap my shirt around my head. We walk on, but Playa del Ingles never seems to get any closer. I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but it was like a trek through the Sahara Desert. I could have died out there in the sand dunes, my desiccated body covered by sand and lying undiscovered for years if there hadn’t been a snack bar every five hundred yards.

We knew that there were nudist beaches in Gran Canaria but didn’t realise how enthusiastically they were embraced. We start to feel overdressed. Very overdressed. We walk past a large section of sun beds where everybody is naked. Men are walking past us, their attributes swinging as they walk. It is hard to know quite where to look.

We are exhausted when we finally reach the outskirts of Playa del Ingles. It is like reaching an oasis in the desert.

‘It’s good exercise, walking on sand, we will feel better for doing it,’ says Madam.

‘Absolutely,’ I reply, ‘why don’t we walk back to Maspalomas and get more exercise?’

‘Fuck you!’ is her succinct reply.

I take this to be a refusal and she seems a little fractious, so I don’t press it further.

We stop at a beachfront restaurant for lunch, then a long climb up into the town. It seems deserted with almost everything closed. Playa del Ingles is supposed to be a lively tourist town with bars, restaurants and clubs. I don’t know if we are in the wrong part or they are having a down day. Either way, we are too tired to explore further, so we catch the coach back to Las Palmas.

Dinner at a local empty restaurant then Madam goes back to the hotel, while I go in search of chocolate. A lot of people don’t realise that chocolate is one of the essential food groups. I got a pretty good grade in Human Biology ‘O’ level and I distinctly remember proteins, carbohydrates, fats and chocolate. I head into Santa Catalina Park and find a supermarket that is happy to pander to my chocolate addiction. Santa Catalina isn’t a park in English terms, more of a square lined with restaurants and shops on two sides and the bus station on the other. It is crowded as I walk through and the restaurants are noisy with every table full.

Friday.

Madam isn’t feeling well today, so she goes up to the roof of the hotel to lie on one of the sun beds and I go out for a walk. I go to the north end of Las Canteras beach, then up the coast path, heading further north. The land rises here and I’m soon thirty or forty feet above the sea. There are viewpoints marked along the patch and I stop to take pictures. There’s a link on the top of the blog to my Instagram feed if you want to see them. I’m away from the tourist areas here. The only people I see are out shopping, or joggers puffing as they climb up the hill. I reach the end of the path. Ahead are only rocks and the hills Malpais de la Isleta, literally translated as Bad Place of the islet. It doesn’t look that scary but the hills are steep, so I head back inland through Isleta.

Isleta is a working class area, more like a typical Spanish town. Many building are faded and neglected. There’s occasional graffiti on walls and doors. I don’t find a central area but there are convenience shops on most corners along with pharmacies, bakers, cafes and greengrocers. Two women are talking on a street corner, their arms waving expressively. I stop to listen, feigning interest in a shop window. They are laughing and smiling, but are talking quickly and I can only pick out a few words. I think they are joking about their husbands.

I walk back to Santa Catalina, then to the adjacent mall ‘El Muelle’. It’s almost deserted, many shops are closed and shuttered. The liveliest place is the McDonalds on the top floor. It has seven customers. I message Madam and she has had a nap and is feeling better, so I go back to the hotel to collect her.

We catch the forty-seven bus to the south end of Las Canteras beach, where the surfers hang out, and order tapas from a bar, then walk north, alongside the beach. We find an ice cream shop and eat ice cream on a small rickety table by the door. Navigation is getting easier, we can recognise streets and landmarks and we find our way to the Good Life bar without getting lost. I decide that I like Spanish brandy.

Saturday.

The breakfast buffet today has Brussel sprouts, rice and a white chocolate fountain. Yes, I find that a little odd as well. There are cut strawberries for dipping into the chocolate fountain, or you can dip your fingers if you are a small child or an immature pensioner.

I imagine the conversation in the kitchen this morning.

‘Chef, what shall I do with the left over sprouts and rice from dinner last night? They look a little… tired.’

‘Oh, stick them on the breakfast buffet. The English will eat anything.’

I’m finishing my breakfast coffee and Madam is looking at me impatiently. ‘Are you ready my sweet? I ask.

‘Yes, are you?’ she replies.

‘Mmmm, well maybe I’ll have just one more helping of sprouts.’

I am finally finished and Madam asks ‘What are we going to do today?’

‘We could spend the day on the beach.’ I reply.

‘Are there sun beds? Parasols? Toilets? How far are the toilets? Are they clean? Is there toilet paper? Is there somewhere we can get churros?’

‘I don’t know my sweet, shall I walk down and check while you get ready?’

I walk to the beach. There are ample sun beds, parasols and toilets under the promenade. I message Madam and she seems happy with the answers, so I go back to the hotel to collect her.

We settle on a sun bed and I am sent to Starbucks. I wait behind a queue of five people, carefully rehearsing my order in Spanish.

‘Un cafe latte descafeinado y un chai te latte con leche de soja por favor,’ I ask the woman taking the orders.

She picks up two cups and a pen and replies in English ‘What’s your name?’

For some reason Starbucks likes to write your name on the cup. I’m flustered by her English response, so I give her my real name. I prefer to tell them it’s something like Hieronymus or Xzavier to test their spelling. She asks for my name twice then misspells it.

I get settled on a sun bed in the shade of the parasol and drink my coffee.

‘What’s the weather like in England?’ asks Madam.

‘I’m not sure I care,’ I reply.

Madam looks on her phone and tells me it’s eight degrees. It’s twenty-three degrees here.

Dress codes on the beach seem pretty relaxed. Many women are sunbathing or walking on the beach topless. I’m reminded of an article I read about the police in Florida being issued with tape measures to determine if a woman’s swimsuit met the beach regulations. I’m not sure if the intention is to measure the swimsuit itself or the amount of flesh revealed. Being sceptical, I checked the regulations myself. Florida beaches do indeed the ban wearing of the popular thong-type bathing suits. Specifically forbidden is exposure of the buttocks, the genitals and the female breast below the top of the nipple. I would like to think the police in the USA would have better things to do than roam the beaches measuring women’s bottoms.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, there was a negative review of a hotel in Tenerife. The reviewer complained that the hotel beach was next to a nudist beach, and that her husband was unhappy. He was constantly distracted and unable to concentrate, due to the proximity of naked breasts. I, of course, have no such problem as I have eyes only for Madam.

The beach here is partly protected by a line of low volcanic rocks a hundred yards or so from the beach. Waves crash against the distant rocks but there is only a gentle swell inside the rock barrier. I lay on the sun bed for a while, shifting to stay in the shade, watching the sea and thinking of nothing much at all.

Madam is reading, so I take off my flip flops and walk on the soft sand down to the water line. The water is cold at first, then it becomes refreshing. I walk along the water line, heading north. I leave deep footprints in the soft, wet sand. I stop for a while and look out to sea to watch the distant crashing surf. I feel the cool water wash over my feet with every gentle wave. I look back and the sea has already washed away any trace of my footprints.

I head back up the beach where Madam has put down her book and is starting to fall asleep. I lay on the sun bed and watch pigeons look for discarded crumbs. While we are on the subject of pigeons, why do their heads bob when they walk? And why do they pick up cigarette butts, then put them down, only to pick up another and repeat the process? Are they just really stupid, or is it an example of optimism over experience, like second marriages?

We have a takeaway lunch from Burger King. Two meals are nearly €20. They even charge us ten cents for a paper bag.

We go back to the hotel to shower and change. Although it’s very much shorts and t-shirts weather during the day, after sunset it becomes distinctly cooler and jackets are needed.

‘Are there churros today?’ asks Madam.

There are indeed churros con chocolate for dinner and afterwards we stop in at the Good Life bar, conveniently located on the same street, for a brandy.

Sunday.

There are Brussel sprouts on the breakfast buffet again. I wonder if they are still there from yesterday. The chocolate fountain is still going strong, but looks like it had a long night.

Another day at the beach. We are there before 9am, so that we can get a prime position on the sun beds, nearest to the water. It’s low tide, so the sea is calm. I have developed a sore throat so I go to Starbucks for a hot drink. It’s the same woman serving so I order in English this time. I give my name as Consuela, but she isn’t phased and spells it correctly.

African men are wandering the beach, selling sunglasses, fake designer handbags and beach sheets. A woman comes by asking if we want a massage. By 3pm the tide is high and the wind has picked up. The sea is above the rock wall and a crashing surf on the beach is knocking over bathers. They disappear below the waves and jump up laughing. The beach is packed today and I have to weave between sunbathers to get to the water.

Monday.

My sore throat is worse and I’m developing a cough. Could it be covid? Over the past few trips we have always carried tests with us but forgot to do so this time. I make a mental note to add them to my packing list. I’m going to continue as though it is a cold and hope for the best.

We catch the number two bus to Doramas Park and Pueblo Canario for a change of scenery, then walk back along the coast on the east side of Las Palmas. There is a sign by Playa de Las Alcaravaneras, pointing to Plaza Espana. We hoped it would rival its namesake in Seville, but it isn’t worth the long walk. Our feet are tired and I am exhausted from fighting my cold. There is a small shopping centre nearby and we stop in at Starbucks.

‘There’s jam inside this blueberry muffin!’ exclaims Madam.

‘It’s probably blueberry jam.’

‘You can’t have jam inside a muffin!’

I think it is nice but don’t say anything.

We spend the afternoon on the beach. It’s less crowded today and we find a spot on the beach instead of renting a sun bed. I go off in search of an ice cream in the nearby Spar shop. I return to the beach then realise I have no clue where we were sitting. I walk up and down the beach for a while, the ice cream getting softer and starting to drip over my hand. I finally find Madam and have to sit on the hot sand and lick the remains of the ice cream out of the wrapper. As I look at my sticky hands, I think that the smart thing would have been to find a shady spot outside of the shop.

We are looking for a restaurant for dinner but is appears that Monday is closing day and our normal restaurants are shuttered with their tables taken inside. We end up going to an Italian restaurant on the seafront, where we are able to snag a table on the balcony overlooking the beach and sea. The service is slow but the food is good.

Tuesday.

I’m sneezing and coughing. I have a few cold relief tablets and start taking them sparingly. It’s definitely just a cold I tell myself. I stuff my pocket full of tissues and try not to cough near anyone.

We walk to the beach through Santa Catalina Park. It is barely 9am but the tables are already full of old men playing dominoes or chess.

‘Where are all the women?’ asks Madam.

‘The men are probably getting away from their nagging wives,’ I reply without thinking. I blame my cold.

She gives me a look. I begin to think that wasn’t the answer she wanted.

‘No, they are probably widowers,’ she says, ‘seeking solace from their sadness now that the love of their lives is no longer with them.’

‘Umm, I’m sure you are right my sweet.’

I still think my answer is more likely though.

At lunch time, Madam finds a local bar that is happy to freshly prepare us a couple of delicious sandwiches for less than half the cost of our Burger King meal. She celebrates by buying a punnet of local strawberries which were equally good. The sand is hot by 3pm, too hot to walk on barefoot, and we struggle to find shade, so we come back to the hotel to change and shower.

‘I found lunch, you decide where we have dinner,’ says Madam, ‘but not Italian… and I want churros’.

‘How about the one restaurant nearby that serves churros?’ I reply.

‘So are we going to the churro restaurant? You decide today.’

‘Why don’t we go to the churro restaurant that you like my sweet?’

‘It’s your decision today.’

They also serve us some great tapas, for far less money than the tourist restaurants, as well as churros for Madam. We are tired after a long day lying on the beach, so we go back to the hotel for an early night.

Wednesday.

My cold is worse, I’m eking out the few cold tablets I have but I’m suffering with a runny nose, coughing and sneezing

We are late for breakfast. I say late, it is still only 8:40, but it is packed and almost everything has run out. There’s no jam, only a little bread and we have to fight the Germans to get close to anything. And there are a lot of Germans today. Not even a chocolate fountain to dip my finger in. I don’t mention the war.

It is our last full day and we are going to the aquarium. We plan on spending a couple of hours there, then spending our last afternoon on the beach. It turns out to be one of the largest in Europe and we are there for much longer. There is an auditorium with a massive glass tank with several sharks and other fish. We sit here for a while and watch the fish. I’m secretly hoping that one of the sharks will eat a smaller fish but they are well behaved, or maybe just well fed.

‘Where do you want to eat?’ I ask Madam.

‘There’s a place nearby that has great reviews for churros!’

I don’t know if you have picked up on this but Madam likes churros. We find the bar which is attached to a small market. It’s tiny and well away from the tourist area. We order crab sandwiches and papas bravas.

‘How many crisps do you have with your sandwich?’ asks Madam.

‘Two. How many with yours?’

‘Two.’

I count mine again carefully. One.. two.

‘Yes, definitely just two.’

We finish our sandwiches and I ask Madam, ‘Would you like churros now?’

She thinks for a moment then says ‘no.’

We go back to the hotel and Madam is tired, so I go out for one last solo walk. I walk along the promenade, It’s busy and I’m constantly dodging meandering groups of people. There are arrows painted on the ground asking you to walk on the right but these are ignored. Tables line the promenade closest to the beach, waiters dash between restaurants door and tables adding an additional hazard. I get tired of fighting the crowds, so I go back to the hotel through back streets. I know my way around these streets now, so I don’t have to look at a map or concentrate on my route. I reach Santa Catalina Park and the old men are still playing dominoes or chess.

I find a bench and sit in Santa Catalina Park for the last time. I watch the men slamming dominoes or pondering chess moves and the buses leaving for other parts of the city. I’m sad to be leaving Las Palmas. Sad to be leaving Gran Canaria.

Postscript. I had a negative test for Covid. It was just a cold, but I’m still suffering several days later. I need a holiday in the sun.