Meet Basil. He’s the new spokesmutt for Tenerife’s many abandoned and homeless dogs and the go to dog for information of charity events and news about the dog organisations.

You can keep up to date with Basil and his buddies at Tenerife Dogs where you’ll also find all the contact details you need to adopt, foster, donate or disseminate (information).

Online holiday supplier Xcape With Us has gone belly up. With no forewarning for website publishers to remove their banners and ads, they just ceased trading and sent out the announcement about it today. I wonder at what point they stopped taking bookings because I know I was informed of bookings made just last week.

If you visit their website you will see the following message:

We regret to inform you that XcapeWithUs.com has ceased trading as of 30 April 2009.

If you have a confirmed booking and we have your email address you will receive an email shortly explaining what steps you can take.

If your arrival date is 30 April 2009 or 1 May 2009 please email: customersupport@xcapewithus.com with full contact details including your reference number.

At the moment I have no further information but would presume that holiday makers should be able to continue with their plans by contacting Xcape through the channels specified above.

Whether or not affiliates who in good faith helped this company accept holiday bookings will receive their commission is another story.

I don’t think Wilson Pickett is in town so if you have no prior committments why not indulge in a bit of pure nostalgia and belt out all your favourite hits from the classic movie The Committments at the Tenerife auditorium.

Scary to think the movie was released in 1991! I would have been about … ahhh… never mind. Anyway, tickets cost €20 from the box office or you can visit the Auditoria de Tenerife website for more information or groan along with Tenerife Matters in the pun-filled announcement of The Committments which they published way back in February.

In the meantime  just to get you in the mood here is a trailer for the Alan Parker film.

Danny Huston who plays dodgy scientist Colonel WIlliam Stryker in the hot new X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been cast as Poseidon in the Clash of the Titans. Huston also played in 21 Grams, The Aviator, Marie Antoinette, Number 23 and zombie vampire movie 30 Days of Night.

I wonder where the cast which as I said yesterday includes  Liam Neeson,  Sam Worthington, Ralph Fienes and Gemma Arterton will hang out  when they are in Tenerife.  Not mentioned yesterday is Alexa Davalos as Andromeda, the leading female role in the movie. The paps will have a field day.

I expect this new movie will have its own spin on the story but I don’t suppose you can stray too far from the original plot if you are portraying an ancient legend. If you don’t mind spoilers read this review of the original Ray Harryhausen version of Clash of the Titans by Scott Ashlin, who saw it five minutes after it was released at a Maryland drive-in.

I came across a word I didn’t know today. Nothing surprising in that, I do it all the time. In Spanish it is more of an event when I come across a word I do know. But this is a word I should know and that should be part of the lexicon of anyone who is regularly online in Tenerife and interested in improving their Spanish speaking skills.  Surprisingly I have never seen it before (in this context) and neither has my 40,000 entry Español-Inglés dictionary.

The word is bitácoras and it means blogs. If you are living in Tenerife and trying to pick up a bit of Spanish, scanning Spanish blogs is a great way to do that. Just as in English you will find a blog for every interest so too there are countless Canarian blogs covering every conceivable subject from birdwatching to bizarre events on the islands to lifestyle and trends.  Finding one in a niche that interests you is a good way to build up vocabulary and contacts in that subject.

Tenerife is no stranger to movie crews having done a wonderful job as backdrop to bits of Planet of the Apes and Star Wars among other blockbusters. The latest movie to be shot on location on the island, Clash of the Titans  has already started filming in London before moving on to Wales and Tenerife.

Clash of the Titans  stars Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fienes and concerns the mission of young Perseus to overthrow wicked Hades before he can beat Zeus and unleash hell on earth.

It all sounds very dramatic and with Gemma Arterton playing the role of Io, Perseus’s love interest (which was not even cast in the original) you can expect a bit of bodice-ripping breathlessness thrown in.

Ooooohhhh.

Let’s hope the movie is a roaring success and converts itself into Cash of the Titans, which would encourage its investors to use Tenerife’s varied landscapes for other major projects  in the near future.

Happily, there have been no reports of Swine Fever in Tenerife or the Canary Islands which is just as well because I don’t know how easy it is to find Strepsils on the islands.

According to Michael O’Leary of Ryanair if you are unlucky enough to be struck down with the malady that has raged through Mexico claiming over 150 lives and has the UK government currently dithering over ordering 32 million face masks “…a couple of Strepsils will do the job.”

Michael ‘Foot-in-Mouth’ O’Leary also commented that it was likely only to be the people in the “…slums of Asia or Mexico” for whom Swine Fever would be a tragedy.