Whether you see the point of battering a wee ball around with a big stick or not you can’t have missed the importance of the game of golf to the island. There are certainly more quality golf courses in Tenerife than you can shake a stick at and even a pint sized one at Las Galletas for those who’d like to squeeze a round of golf into their lunch hour.

Rattling about in my head is the story that golf was once a sport for ‘Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden’ hence the name GOLF. Somehow I doubt that as there were once so many things that were open only to the hairier half of the human race that everything from voting booths to public bars could have been called GOLF.

Anyway, only the very odd or criminally insane would dispute that the Auld Game originated in Scotland so who better to discuss the finer points of golfing in Tenerife and Scottish golf than Sir Old Golfer, a golf writer who divides his time between his home here in Golf Del Sur and his home on the golf course bonny Ayrshire?

There are times when in the process of getting the kids out of bed or into bed, into their clothes or out of clothes and into jammies, to play nice, to be quiet or to just leave me alone for FIVE DAMN MINUTES! (ahem,… ehm.. sorry…where was I…)… that I just feel so shrill.

Surely I can’t be nagging at them ALL the time, can I? It feels that way sometimes. I used to wonder if I was missing some vital part of DNA that meant instead of a Hollywood nurturing nest, my home was doomed to be a chaotic pit until the kids grew up and moved away. That was until I received the following clip which I am setting to replay until the kids are about 27 or so:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6P2w5GkXmU&hl=en&fs=1]

The clip is of the comedienne, Anita Renfroe, who condensed her own (and every mother’s)daily experience into 3 short minutes and set it to the William Tell Overture.

A wee while ago I posted about the latest Carmen Mota spectacular, AIRAM. Since reporting on the experience had by my mum and her posse I’ve been myself and I can honestly say I loved it. Every minute. It is very emotional and exciting. Beautifully produced as all of Carmen Mota’s shows are.

If you are looking for an unforgettable night out go and take in the dinner and AIRAM show at Piramides de Arona. It’s not only romantic but its steeped in hot, fiery Latin passion. Just the ticket for a successful night out, don’t you think. It fairly kindled my fires, I can tell you!

You can book online via Isango (ignore their insipid description of the event. It does not do the show justice at all.) you can get 10% off the cost of dinner and show by using the voucher code WGN_7L6KG.

According to Typically Spanish, new details have been released of a drug bust that happened last October and resulted in four Brits getting banged up in Spain until their trial in Madrid.

Spanish and Scottish police forces collaborated in an operation codenamed Sendero which resulted in the two Scots and two Londoners getting caught and their assets seized including several properties in Tenerife.

The construction site of the new hospital has long been a source of exasperation and heartbreak to residents in the South of Tenerife. While it sits there as dead as any ghost town, residents in the South are sent North to join increasingly long queues for treatment up there.

Forward appointments at the current clinic at the Mahon site are for months in the future. My boy has a squinting habit. He peers from under his furrowed brow like a mouse keeking from under a rock and while I suspect this is a habit he’s picked up from watching me squint myopically at the television, I still need to know for sure. There was a news story not so long ago on a little girl who looked perfectly normal, except that in one photograph of her the light reflects differently from one of her eyes. Luckily this was noticed and the girl examined by doctors who found and treated a brain tumour.

With this story stored away in my memory box I now have the image of a plum-sized malignancy growing silently in my boy’s head. But that’s all right. I’ve got an appointment for him in May.

May?

You always have the option to go private, which in this case I did. It cost me €90 and three hours of my time at Clinica Verde for an eye specialist to tell me that my boy’s vision is 20/20, there are no sinister shadows lurking behind his eyes and that his squinting is most likely caused by a dust allergy which is irritating his eyelids. Given that I suppose they will tell me the same thing in May, he would have suffered unnecessary discomfort till then.

Anyway, rumblings from on high indicate that whatever problems caused the close down of the El Mahon obra seem to have been resolved. Work is due to start again and to be completed sometime in 2011.

About bloody time!

A recent poll suggested that more Americans would switch on to watch the Oscars if movie stars would just shut up about their political views. Other gripes about the Academy Awards included an excess of Jack Nicholson. It seems the producers rely on cutting away to his wolfish grin to make the on stage jokes seem funnier.

Poor old Jack! I can’t think why, but when I read this little ditty by Ramón de Campoamor, he sprang to mind immediately.

“Porque, lo mismo a mi que a todo viejo,
Eu materias de gracia femeuina,
Me hace feliz el genero diablejo.”

Campoamor. El Quinto No Matar

Go ‘Bama!

While I am as hopeful as the next person that Obama may somehow stop this out-of-control train and let us all off, I wonder if the man is on a hiding to nothing. I believe that he is a good man and will do his best but it seems the whole world is waiting with bated breath for him to solve all problems, stop all wars, feed all the hungry and then tuck us all in and read us a bedtime story.

Obama is known as a fabulous communicator so probably does not need any advice from a dusty old poet. Nevertheless Pedro Lopez de Ayala spent many years immersed in the treacheries of Castillian court life in the late 1300’s so he obviously knew a thing or two about tact and diplomacy.

” Debe considerar el buen predicador
Qual es la qualidad de su escuchador,
E segunt aquella forma sea rasonador;
A resios como a resios, e á flacos con amor.”

Ayala. Rimado da Palacio, 1157.