The last three months of 2008 saw an improvement in the punctuality of flights leaving the UK according to the Civil Aviation Authority. London Heathrow improved its departure punctuality by 13%, though Edinburgh Airport remains at the top of the league with an on-time performance of 83%.

• Heathrow recorded a 13% increase in punctuality between October and December 2008, but Edinburgh airport was the UK airport with the highest on-time performance

• Every airport surveyed increased its percentage of on-time flights

• Charter flights at Gatwick were the only segment to see an increase in the average delay of flights

Average flight departure delay decreased from 13 minutes to only 4 minutes although flights to  Tenerife had the longest average delay of 24 minutes with an on-time performance of 67%.

Tenerife was also the only charter destination among the top 75 destinations and it attained an on-time performance of 67 per cent and an average delay of 25 minutes.

Stop messing about with your hand luggage you lot and get on the plane already!

How is your memory? Lately Gaga has convinced herself that she is losing hers – though losing her mind is probably more accurate, given her current obsessions with all things beady.

According to Norman Wisdom as you get older, three things happen:

The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two…

Everyone has had one of those blood-stopping moments when some fundamental thing floats back into consciousness and you slap your hand over your mouth in horror at your own forgetfulness but to English playwright and actor John Osborne having a poor memory was not altogether a bad thing…

El que tiene mala memoria se ahorra muchos remordiniento

With my daughter staying overnight with a friend and the little guy tucked away at Gaga’s for the night, my lesser half and I were free from the little people on a Saturday night. Yipeee!

I can still remember when the vague whiff of freedom would have me galloping off to the nearest dancefloor but instead we opted for a sedate walk round Costa Del Silencio. The first place we meant to visit was shut and the second may as well have been as we were the only customers.

Just across the road at Coral Mar, El Botijo was doing very nicely. There was a good little buzz in the dining area and enough custom to keep Amanda busy in the kitchen. Manolo, from Gran Canaria sang and played guitar for the diners while Natalie and Paula kept them happily fed and watered (or wined).

Sitting in the bar area instead of the dining section we enjoyed listening to Natalie’s banter and watching Amanda cook up a storm. Guitar-playing Manolo sang his heart out for the diners and then came to the bar and sang some more. Unfortunately though I took lots of video of him and the girls, as well as of regulars Dennis, Ben-ben and Blackie, I accidentally formatted my camera card so can’t show you any of it. What a plonker!

So, my apologies to Manolo but you’ll just have to take my word for it. If you are visiting Costa Del Silencio and are looking for good food, served with a smile, and at a cost that won’t break the bank head for El Botijo in Coral Mar.

What is this latest nonsense from the PC brigade? Given their way, they would like to make it a crime to use any language that could be construed as offensive to gays and this includes in writing or within any part of the entertainment industry.

To me, you are gay or straight in the same way as you are tall or short, fat or thin, baldy or hirsuite, black or white. It’s part of your humanity and should therefore not be something has to be  tip-toed around like a big pink elephant in the middle of the room.

Bringing this prissy, over-protective rubbish into reality would have the likes of Kenneth Williams and Larry Grayson spinning in their graves and what’s more … it makes gays out to be victims or in need of special protection instead of quite big enough to fight their own battles, thank you.

Before long, the only humour we will be allowed legally will be kid’s limericks and that is only if they don’t feature any short, gay, Scottish, black tinkers in them.

Whew! They do say don’t believe all you read and that is SO true when it comes to following instructions you find on the digital highway.  What was supposed to be a one-click import turned out to be quite a bit more involved than that. Still, after a bit of faffing and blowing here we are in Tenerife Tattle’s new premises and although some things got lost in the shuffle (mostly video clips) I’ll get them reuploaded in no time at all.

What is more of a worry is the effect the move might have on Tenerife Tattle’s visibility. I can track down and ask any webmaster’s that have links back to specific posts to please update them but whether they have the time to do so is another matter.

The design of the site will have to evolve too. This plain blue shell is the Wordpress default and though I like the simplicity of it, it doesn’t scream Tenerife does it? SO please bear with me. I’ve got quite a bit of house-cleaning to do after the move and TT will be a work in progress for a while. But then, a website that stops being a work in progress is as good as dead anyway, right?

You can help me get the blog settled into the new domain by linking to it from a website if you have one.  Google loves links

Unless you’ve had them before the ‘boiled potatoes’ you are served in Tenerife or any of the other Canary Islands may come as a bit of a surprise. Indeed the plate of small wrinkly potatoes covered in salt that your camarero puts before you look so unappealing that locals call them ‘uglies’.

But just pop one in your mouth and you may be as pleasantly surprised with ‘Papas Arrugadas’ as was Frank Bruni, food writer for The New York Times. He was reviewing the Bazaar, by José André in Los Angeles which he called, ‘…an important and exciting restaurant.’

One of my favorite dishes was boiled potatoes. Yes, boiled potatoes. The size of golf balls, they’re given a more exalted moniker, papas Canarias. They’re cooked in water so salty it could have come from the sea — that’s apparently how it’s done in the Canary Islands. And they emerge from it in a state as close to succulence as a spud could ever hope to get. You drag them one at a time through a glittering green pesto of cilantro and parsley (with a touch of cumin), then pop them whole into your mouth. They wear that pesto beautifully.

Thanks for the tasty shot go to JLastras who includes that picture and others in his review of the Restaurant La Vieja in Adeje.

I don’t tend to buy make-up much. What I do have I’ve had for years or has been bought for me perhaps as a not so subtle hint that time marches on and leaves the most fresh-faced looking like they need a good sand-blasting

That’s why of the two mascaras I own, one is so dry it won’t open and the other so gummy it clumps lashes together and makes them look like a row of fat spiders have made camp along my eye-lids. Seeing as how the UK celebrates Mothering Sunday this week and I am as likely to get a pressie for that as I am to get one for Dia del Madre which is to say as likely as I am to win the next Euromillions while galloping bare back and naked through a field of tajinaste with a pineapple on my head, I decided to buy myself a new mascara for Mother’s Day.

There are three perfumerias in this little town. Three! You’d think they would be cost cutting like crazy to stay in business. I toyed with the idea of a super cheapo mascara from the Chinese todo shop but remembering horror stories tales of lead based Korean make-up from my youth (yes, I can remember that far back, thank you), I decided to invest in something a little more up market.

As I probably won’t splurge on another mascara until after the 2012 apocalypse, I figured I could push the boat out a little bit. I wandered into one of these scented emporiums of vanity and immediately all the salesgirls bristled with suspicion. Why do they always make me feel as if I am in there to pocket something?

Making my way to the shiny bay in the centre of the shop which sparkled and glittered with fancy wands and compacts, I looked, in vain for a price tag. Mascaras there were, by the dozen, but not one price in sight. God, I hate that, don’t you?

A powdered and perfumed sales assistant glued herself to my side and whinneyed through her nose when I asked why nothing had a price on it. The implication seemed to be that if you have to ask, you can’t afford it anyway. I asked for the prices of mascara and she babbled on about the ‘newest one’. There are lengthening mascaras, thickening mascaras, mascaras to make your lashes lustrous and ones to make them defined. Why? Why can’t they make one good mascara that does everything. Hello, Estee Lauder, there’s an idea for your next sales gimmick.

Anyway, my pan-sticked friend returned glowing to report that the mascara she was waving in her hand cost only €28. When I stopped laughing, she assured me she wasn’t actually joking. What’s more, obviously this pàrticular mascara was worth the steep price because it vibrated.

The world has gone barking mad, if you ask me.