When the news broke on Friday of the death a three year old neighbourhood girl, supposedly from child abuse inflicted by her step-father, I was as quick as the next person to believe in his guilt. Like the other mothers standing around, I wondered how this atrocity could happen in our community, to a child that went to the same school as my own, and yet we noticed nothing wrong?

I didn’t stop to consider what evidence had been gathered against 25 year old, Diego Pastrana Vieco, I only knew that the safest place for him to be on Friday was in the hands of the police because there is nothing more vindictive than a mob of mothers looking for blood revenge.

As it happens, the poor man not only had to suffer the pain of the death of a loved one, he also had to defend himself against the most despicable charges that it is possible to bring. The child Aitana’s mother and natural father stood up for Diego Vieco and said he had never harmed her in any way.  At a time when the shock and pain of losing their daughter had not even sunk in, they were at the police station fighting on Diego’s behalf.

How did this horrible story happen? Aitana fell from a swing and banged her head.  She was taken to the children’s clinic in El Fraile but was not sent for an x-ray from there. A few days later she went into cardiac arrest and Diego took her into El Mahon where they treated her and found marks which they thought to be suspicious, possible indicating child abuse and sexual assault.

Aitana died in the early hours of Friday morning and forensic examination confirmed the report by Canadalaria that there had been no sexual assault and no child abuse. Burn marks on her back were likely caused by an allergic reaction to cream and any bruises and scratches likely attributed to the fall that killed her.

Diego Pasterna Vieco’s lawyer has indicated that there may be legal action taken. There is no doubt that the system failed somewhere and what happened to Diego Vieco is something you would not wish upon your worst enemy – but I wonder if the doctors at Mahon are totally to blame.

In cases where a doctor finds marks on a child that may be suspicious he surely has a duty to bring the matter up with the relevant authorities. God knows, we would fall upon them and rip their reputations to tatters if they were to fail in this duty and a child that had passed through their hands were to die of abuse shortly thereafter.

But kids attract scratches, cut and bruises like honey attracts bees. I imagine there must be many more suspicious marks on kids than there are actual cases of child abuse. Surely, there must be regulations in place to protect the anonymity of families or individuals who are under investigation at least until such times as charges are to be brought?

That’s where the system failed this young man and the family of Aitana. Instead of the community pulling together to support a family in its bereavement, it turned instead into an angry mob fuelled by ugly whispers that blew like wildfire through the school, passed from child to child, child to parent, parent to parent.

As one of the parents that stood there in shock last Friday, I have learned a lesson that I will never forget. No matter how vicious the rumour, or ugly the accusation,  it is important to hold tight to the maxim of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.

The death of a three year old girl in the Costa Del Silencio, of suspected child abuse, has left the community in shock. Admitted to Mahon on Wednesday in cardiac arrest, the child’s body was found to have marks of a suspicious nature and the police were called in.

The 25 year old boyfriend of the child’s mother is being detained and questioned by police. He denies any wrong-doing, claiming that burns on the child’s body were due to overheated bath water and the bruises because she fell down so much.

Aitana died in the early hours of Friday morning. Her school held a minute’s silence for her on Friday, as did several government offices.

The tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 killed 230,000 people. The enormity of the loss of life is hard to digest.  It is hard to believe that that many people lost their lives in one cataclysmic event. But is it any easier to imagine the 260,000 men who will die in Western Europe this year from cancer? Or the 277,000 women in Central & Eastern Europe who will succumb to the same disease?

In fact, altogether across Europe over a million people will die this year from cancer. Worldwide, the figure is somewhere near 8 million.

According to the UK CancerStats site more than 1 in 3 people develop some form of cancer in their lifetime. The good news is that the average ten-year cancer survival rate has doubled over the last 30 years and more than seven out of ten children with cancer are now successfully treated compared with fewer than 3 in 10 in the 1960s.

Also according to the CancerStats site, cancer is the number one fear amongst Brits, topping that of heart disease or terrorism. How much scarier then must it be to contract the disease while living in a foreign country, with minimal medical insurance and perhaps not much in the way of family support?

The annual Walk For Life in Tenerife raises money in support of the Spanish cancer charities AECC and Amate. In a sea of pink solidarity, men, women and children walk the 3.5 km from the Mediterranean Palace to the Sal Y Tien plaza. As it says on the Carrera por la Vida website “Once a year, to walk is to support!”

As an expat in Tenerife, you might wonder if these charities are available to you should you fall ill with cancer. For the answer you should read the moving account of one British pensioner in Tenerife Magazine who received such support from AECC that she says they made a terrible time bearable.

Whether you are in town as an expat or a tourist, all you need to do is show up – in a pink t-shirt if you have one – at 10.30 on Sunday 13th December and join the walk.  Sponsorships and donations are passed on to the relevant charities under the guidance of a Notary and with full transparency so you know every penny is going to the aid of somebody who needs it.

You might also announce your participation on the Tenerife Magazine Walk for Life participants page on Facebook.

In cartoons, when a character gets his finger stuck in an electric socket he  turns into a leaping blue skeleton all frazzled and smoking round the edges. It happens quite regularly in Tom and Jerry,  almost always to Tom.

I might not look like a leaping, frazzled, blue skeleton, but that is how I feel. I am Tom.

Something mysterious has happened to the size of my day. Sort of like my favourite Guess jeans,  the day has shrunk and left me unable to squeeze as much in as I used to.  No matter how hard I try, I just can’t pull the day up beyond mid-thigh.

It might look like I have it easy. I just fall out of bed, sleepwalk through breakfast, then bumble to the computer in my jim-jams and there I am, installed at my workplace for the day. No commuting stress to worry about, mad morning clothing  crises, or grumpy boss breathing down my neck…

Well, it might be like that, if it was not for the dogs (up at 6 to walk them) and then the kids to get ready and take to school, (an entertaining adventure which includes the six hundred yard dash to make it to the second school gate after depositing child number one at the first one).  Okay, but surely when I get back from the school run, I just  sit down in front of the computer and that’s me set for the day? Ahhh, no.

The minute the key turns in the door I am attacked by 85 kilos of canine. Tito yodels and slobbers  in delight usually anointing me from head to toe in strings of doggy spit while Skye weaves round my legs  doing the Boxer kidney-bean thing. I push my way through them and survey the battlefield that is my house every morning (and most afternoons and nighttimes too).

I switch the computer on to boot up while  I throw the dishes in the sink and drown them in scalding water and switch the kettle on. Finally, cup of tea in hand, I sit down in front of the computer and KABAM! another bloody power cut! YAAARGH.

Poor Tenerife Tattle is one of the things that is suffering at the moment. Being my own baby, there’s no one to complain if I skip a post now and then except my regular readers (and I have apologised personally to each and every one of them). Unfortunately my real babies are also getting less attention than usual, a fact that came home to me the other day, when my daughter came home with a special project for her tarea. She had to draw her national flag but didn’t know which country she came from.

It is not a clear cut question actually as she has a salad bowl of cultures to choose from in her heritage – although she knows that I am Scottish.  Wanting to do something different, she opted for the Union Jack instead of the St. Andrew’s Cross for obvious reasons. Even so, the conversation we had about it led me to fret that I was not doing enough to pass on any Scottish culture to her.

Seeing as it has been quite some time since I Stripped the Willow and my Scottish dancing skills were never that hot to begin with I decided to take the easy road and start her Scottish culture classes with a spot of home cooking.

God in Govan, what a nightmare! My daughter watched me tip a kilo of sugar and a healthy knob of butter into a pan and asked me if I was quite sure that I had read the  recipe. I told her all was well, and that this recipe for Scottish fudge was said to be failsafe.  (With a name like Scottish Fudge Fer Dunderheids it had to be).

We both watched and waited for the suger to turn to syrup and I regaled her with happy memories of toffee and tablet making in my younger years.  All was warm and fuzzy and I felt like we were having a real girly moment till she yawned and said she’s better go and do her homework. “Fudge!” I muttered to myself darkly, stirring what was becoming a very dark and sticky mess.

At the point where the condensed milk is supposed to glide into the pot, the whole damn thing exploded in a Vesuvial eruption of burning sugar. My husband let out a manly scream and leapt to the fore with a metal whisk. After he beat it into submission (and to the point when all hope of fudge had flown out the window) I took over the pot again. My daughter had returned and sat cross legged watching all the excitement. “Is it supposed to smell like that?” she enquired sweetly, wrinkling her nose.

In the end, my Dunderheid Fudge turned out to be Toothcracking Toffee. In order to make anything at all out of the sticky mess, I had rolled lumps of it into little balls and stuck them out of sight in the fridge. Now there they sit, looking like black bullets and welded so hard to the plate that you have to chip them off with a knife.

I think it is safe to say that so far, my daughter is not very impressed with the riches of the Scottish culinary tradition.

I received a message of sympathy from wee Margaret, a Scottish fudge-maker of consummate skill who urged me to give it another go.  Margaret is right of course, and my daughter and I have a date carved in stone to spend more time messing up the kitchen together. In the end, it doesn’t matter if we ever manage the perfect Scottish fudge. By not giving up we are putting a different Scottish lesson into practise – Robert the Bruce’s exhortation to ‘Try, try and try again’.

This could be YOU!

Have you seen the new Tenerife Magazine yet? It is FAB! Being 100% virtual, I can’t say it has hit the streets running but the very first issue comes with a brilliant competition giveaway – a holiday for up to four at the gorgeous Sands Beach in Lanzarote!

All you need to do to enter is become a fan of the Tenerife Magazine page on Facebook. The draw is to be held on November 30th and results will be announced via Facebook.

It is hard cheddar if you are not on Facebook, I am afraid but not to worry. I have it on good authority that the next competition will be run through a different medium – maybe Twitter.  Perhaps the next competition will even be for a Tenerife related prize?

Judging by the roving bands of little demons and witchlets that were terrorising the neighbourhood last night, nobody paid much attention to the bishops’ warnings of the pagan nature of Halloween. I thought my own little devils looked great although Sami was a bit miffed with his make-up. He thought it was ugly but eventually got into the spirit after he was forced to agree that there was no such thing as a pretty pirate.

Leaving the kids with Gaga we went off into the night for a bit of trick or treating of  own own. We stopped by at The Penalty and then made our way to Scottish bar.  The owners, Pauline and Bobby cook up a fab fish and chips and great breakfasts but Bobby’s Saturday curry is so good it sells out early so get there before nine if you want to be sure you get some.

As it happens if you missed out on Bobby’s curry you could have stuffed your face with the free chilli con carne that was on tap at Our Place but as Chef Igor doesn’t do mild, you did need to like it hot. Not that that would have been a problem last night because the only people in the place were the evil and the undead.

Everyone was there from Cruella de Ville to a victim of the Whitechapel murders. There were enough skeletons to open a boneyard and more witches than you could shake a broom at.

More pics on Facebook