Well the Kid’s Parade went off very nicely yesterday although I did get into trouble for calling it a cabalgata. ‘It’s not a Cabalgata,’ my daughter informed me witheringly, ‘There are no floats!‘

In previous years the kids went dressed pretty much as they liked or possibly as they last had for Halloween which would explain the preponderance of devils, witches and mommias, but this year was different. The school chose the disfrazes and they organized getting them or making them as the case may be.

This made our Kids Parade more like the real thing where the dancing troupes called comparsas wear group costumes and pass the spectators together in a band.

First off were the traffic lights of which I have to apologise to all the other mums because my little semaforo clearly shone the brightest.

There were roving gangs of pirates, chefs in tall paper hats, American tourists in loud shirts brandishing cameras, Hawaiian dancers (who certainly seemed to be having the most fun!) and  ‘Indios de La Palma’, a nod in the direction of the immigrants who left the Canaries for the Americas and a traditional part of the Carnaval of Santa Cruz de La Palma since the ’60s.

My daughter has been teased by one of her classmates lately, who calls her ‘Ugly’. Telling her that little boys are more likely to torture the little girls that they like the best fell on deaf ears I am afraid, but guess who that is on her arm???

Ha! Change the world as much as you like but the little things will always stay the same.

I took many, many photos on Friday and in all the streets are thronged with parents, grandparents, friends and townspeople. As one local said to me,  ”This day makes us all happy. It is not only for the kids but also for the town.”

If your kids, like mine, are getting to the point where they are beginning to have their doubts about that jolly fat chap with the supersonic sled and the flying reindeer, then the Norad Santa Cam may scrape you through and let you hold on to the magic that little bit longer.

As you can see Santa has already visited New Zealand and is probably well on his way through Australia by now. Norad will keep up with him throughout the night so bookmark the link and just click on it every time you hear the questions that starts, ” But how can Santa…”

Feliz Navidad –

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’.

Ready to Go

Cousin Jan and her wild bunch are returning to Tenerife for the third time next month. There can’t be many of the activities on offer on the island that they have not tried already (except perhaps spelunking down the lava tubes) and they will be revisiting their favourite adventures this time including Bike Rafting and Bob-Diving.

It was Jan’s  family’s  enthusiastic reaction to their day Bike Rafting that encouraged me to add the activity to my Tenerife portal website (eTenerife.com) in the first place knowing that if it was equally enjoyable to 50-something parents, a teenage boy and girl and an 11 year old girl all with vastly different characters and hobbies that it was a pretty safe bet that any website visitor booking through eTenerife would also enjoy the day.

Now, I can see what they were all raving about. Nino and I and two of his French rellies an four other people went Bike Rafting on Saturday and we all had a ball!

Put simply, bike rafting involves being picked up in a minivan and transported up the mountain to a starting point from where you sail back downhill the 22 miles to Los Cristianos (or Golf Del Sur or Playa San Juan). Being downhill all the way there is hardly any peddaling involved at all – something which came as a great relief to me.

The Journey Begins…

The journey begins in the pine forest corona at the lip of the crater. The pines scent the air and the view over Tenerife South is magnificent. Where everyone else seemed to breathe deep and grin madly at the scenery my tummy was doing backflips.

I don’t know if everyone on the Bike Rafting trip that day was as nervous as I was to start with but then my biking track record is pretty grim. I have had my lip stitched back together from a bike accident when I was three, a black eye from a lonely concrete post that stood sentinel at the bottom of a scruffy hill  along from my house when I was ten. I ran my cousin’s friend’s motorbike up the school wall in Belgium (and it had a crate of beer on the back at the time), nearly cut three old Belgian ladies off at the knees as I crash landed into them after trying and failing to brake in Aalst and caused the domino effect on a long line of bikes for hire in Yangshou, China which resulted in me being chased down the road by the furious business owner.

In the ten years flocks of bike rafters have been shepherded down the mountain no-one has ever had a serious accident. Even so, my disasterous biking experinces warned me that there was a first time for everything and if anyone was going to go careering off the road and down the hill the hard way it would be me.  It didn’t help that guide Thomas quipped that should anyone’s brakes fail to remember that we were heading for Los Cristianos.

I needn’t have worried. Almost as soon as we started, I began to relax and enjoy the ride.  The feeling of the wind rushing past, the smell of the pines, the silence and the spectacular views just wrapped me up in a bubble and carried me through that first nervous patch.

The pace is easy and relaxed. For most of the time brakes are applied to keep behind the guide but now and then there is a steep downhill slope followed by an uphill surge where all brakes are off and you pelt down hell-for leather in order to maintain the momentum to get you back up the rise without pedalling. It is totally exhilarating.

While the bike riding is the main event there is more to the day than that alone. Owner Mauricio and guide Thomas have the route so carefully planned that they have interesting stories to tell on each stop.  They also play off each other like an old comedy team and you have to keep a careful eye on Mauricio to know when he is pulling your leg. On the rare occasion when  the group of bikers is required to cross lanes of traffic Mauricio positioned his van and trailer across the road like a mother hen  spreading her wings  while her chicks scampered to safety on the other side.

The scenery was not restricted to the rural lansdscape either. We flew though the villages where the locals waved and bid us “Buenas Dias!” and then on down to just past La Escalona where we stopped for a drink and traditional Spanish nibbles. From there it was small sideroads all the way down to the highway into Los Cristianos and the day finish with a gallop along the beachfront and an explosive surprise from Mauricio.

If you are looking for something to do in Tenerife, I can not recommend this day highly enough to everyone.  So far Mauricio’s oldest participant is an 85 year old World War II veteran and young kids can ride along on a baby chair fitted to their parent’s bike. At about nine or ten years old a child will have enough strength and maturity (depending on the child of course) to handle their own bike and I imagine the day would give them a huge sense of accomplishment.

Book your Bike Rafting at eTenerife (my website) or direct with Mauricio at Rafting Bikes. If you do book direct with Mauricio please let him know you read about the day here so maybe he’ll give me a freebie the next time.

My own two kids go to state school in Tenerife and have done since entering pre-school at the age of three. Overall, my impressions of their experiences have been good. The eldest, my daughter, had a difficult start as we had not been successful in getting her settled in a Spanish guarderia (nursery) for the months before she started pre-school. She had’nt been immersed in a totally Spanish environment up to that point and it took about three months for her to find her feet.

My son had been in a Spanish guarderia first and had watched me drop his sister off at the Infantil section of her school for the previous two years. He sailed through the doors on his first day without a backward glance at his snivelling mother.

Now both are fluent English and Spanish speakers and are happy at school with many friends and a real fondness for their teachers. My daughter at only eight is showing a proficiency in French which she is picking up from her myriad French relatives who descend upon us on a regular basis.

My situation is obviously different from those who move to Tenerife or elsewhere in Spain with older kids in tow. What with the stage of the education process that they are at and the squeaky onset of puberty the pre and early teens are tricky enough to negotiate without throwing unnecessary hurdles at your child after all. What is the best solution for getting your kids settled in the Spanish education system if they are entering after the primary years?

Graham Hunt of Houses for Sale in Spain and author Nick Snelling discuss the options and the choices they made for their children in an interesting audio interview which I’m sure will be very helpful to those facing this decision.

The kids finished school on Tuesday but today was the day we had to go and get Hania’s report. Although I don’t really agree with an over-emphasis on grades at this time – I mean she is only seven! – I was still thrilled with her great marks  especially as she is studying in a second language. The teacher couldn’t say enough good things about my daughter while I sat there and wondered who it was she was getting her confused with.

As a prize for doing so well I took Hania to a toyshop and bought a present for her and her brother but first we went into the bank. I’d recently got a junior account in her name and this was her first time to put money in.  While we waited our turn, I gave her €10 and her bright yellow bank book and told her the lady behind the counter would put the money in her book.

“But is she going to give me it back”, asked Hania.

“No. You give her the money and she puts it in the bank and you’ll see the amount you’ve given her written up in your bank book.”

She looked at me in total disbelief and asked, “Are you mad?”

Ha.

Two years ago the shopkeepers and townsfolk of Stone in Staffordshire were right fed up with the local tearaways that rampaged about the place breaking windows and getting out of order.

Local policeman Andy Whitehall was familiar with the young troublemakers as he had arrested most of them at one time or another. He came up with the idea of keeping them out of trouble by starting up a boxing club. But the Right Stuff Boxing Club was to be a club with a catch. In order to be a member of it, each kid had to sign a contract to participate in socially beneficial activities like picking up litter, gardening and helping the elderly.

Andy Whitehall’s brilliant scheme was not only to teach the kids to be better community members but it also kept them visibly involved in beneficial projects which earned them the respect of the very people that once would happily have lynched them from the nearest lamppost.

Now the businesses and shopkeepers of Stone are so pleased with Andy’s little army that they clubbed together to raise the £8,000 to send them off on a reward trip to Tenerife.

You can read the full story and see videos of the youngsters preparing for and enjoying their trip to Tenerife on the BBC website. Check it out. It’s absolutely fabulous to see some positive news about Britains’ youngsters for a change and Andy Whitehall deserves a medal as much as those kids deserved a break.