Well what a match! And what a lot of sore heads round my neighbourhood this morning if all the tooting of horns and blowing of trumpets is anything to go by. I don’t get the attraction myself but it seems that after every successful game any young male worth his testosterone is honour-bound to leap into his car and drive up and down the roads tooting his horn.

Enjoy this lovely compilation of photos of Tenerife accompanied by Moises Gonzalez’ Vivo En Un Archipelago. Please forgive my mangling of the translation. Hopefully someone will help me out with a better one and that in the meantime, I have captured the spirit if not the literal meaning of the words.

Chorus (x 2)
Vivo en un archipiélago
donde tocan el tambor
y la gente se mueve.
En medio del Atlántico
donde vivimos tú y yo,
donde sé que me quieren.

Vivo donde el viento da la vuelta
donde llaman a la puerta
y te abren el corazón.
Vivo en la tierra de mi padre
donde me crió mi madre
donde tengo yo un amor.
Vivo lejos del Caribe ardiente
de su música caliente
de su salsa y su sabor.
Pero la llevamos tan presente
mira que curiosamente heredamos su calor…

Vivo en un archipiélago
donde tocan el tambor
y la gente se mueve.
En medio del Atlántico
donde vivimos tú y yo,
donde sé que me quieren. (x2)

Vivo de las prisas apartado
me dicen aplatanado
y quizás tengan razón.
Pero, ustedes y yo sabemos
que hay gente que va sin frenos
y no llegan a mejor.
Vivo por que Dios me lo permite
y no hay razón que limite
al hombre su libertad.
Vivo alejado de las penas
y me voy a las verbenas
a cumplir su voluntad…

Living in An Archipelago
Chorus (x2)
I live in an archipelago
where they touch the drum
And people move.
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
where you and I live,
Where I know that I am loved.

I live where the wind blows,
where they call you to the door,
With an open heart.
I live in the ground of my father
where my mother raised me
where I have one love.

I live far from the ardent Carib
from the heat of its music,
Its spice and flavour,
But here we are,
Look how we have strangely inherited its heat.

Chorus x 2

I live apart from hurry,
They call me lazy
and perhaps they are right,
But, you and I know
that those people who live their lives without brakes
Do not do any better.
I live as God allows me,
With no reason to limit,
A man’s freedom.
I live apart from sorrow
and for that God allows it to me
and there is no reason that it limits
to the man his freedom.
I live removed from the sorrow
and will live in freedom,
For doing his will.

Winner of this week’s No Surprises There Then Award must go to Anna Coogan of the Irish Herald who reports that alcohol consumption and neglecting to use a condom results in an increased chance of contracting an STI while abroad.

Ms. Coogan’s article on ‘Hellish Holidays‘ includes figures from a study of holidaymakers to Tenerife which documented that half of those under 25 who visited the island had it off with a new partner while the same could be said of a quarter of those over the age of 25.

Well duh! Lay off the Sex on the Beaches and maybe you won’t go home with ‘Spanish Tummy’.

Although I always appreciate receiving email through eTenerife.com, one kind of message always makes my heart sink. It usually starts along the lines of, “On my recent holiday in Tenerife I was approached by a young man/woman who offered me a scratchcard…”

The email goes on to describe more or less the same scenario as the I-Got-Scammed email before it. And the one before that one and the one before that. What is so depressing is that there really is not much that can be done to help. The victim may well have the power of European consumer law on his side but the Timeshare/Holiday Club scammers know that law inside-out and upside-down and more often than not can scrape through the cracks by delaying mail, ignoring phonecalls and such like until the mandatory ‘cooling off’ period has slipped by.

Even more depressing is that the same company names come up again and again. If I know who the culprits are, so for sure do the powers that be. Why are the scammers allowed to continue to rip people off?

If you are tempted to go along for a timeshare or holiday club presentation while on holiday in Tenerife (or elsewhere in Spain) you should at least know what to expect before you go.

Tenerife Timeshare – Know Before You Go – Rights and Protections

If you have a recognised teaching certificate and at least one year of experience you might want to apply for a full or part time position as an English teacher in Tenerife. Inlingua are looking for applicants and the job is to start ASAP!

As if its sheer fabulousness is not enough of a claim to fame, it seems the 5 star Abama Resort in Guia de Isora is also a place of romance and magic. It turns out to be at Abama that po-faced and hatchet-hearted Heather Mills ex-McCartney found her own true love.

Chunky beefcake Jamie, a holiday rep, melted Heather’s heart when she saw him playing gently with Beatrice her four year old daughter with Sir Paul.

According to that beacon of truth and fairness, The News of The World, Heather came clean to Jamie about her sordid past but he being such a stout-hearted chap doesn’t mind a bit about her ahh… glamour shots and educational sex tapes. I don’t imagine he would given that he was skint before meeting her and she’s packing 25 million of Sir Paul’s hard earned dosh in her back pocket, do you?

Well done boys. I am a bit away from any road and I am as interested in football as I am in the evolution of sea slugs but I can tell from the flurry of car horns that Spain won the footy tonight.