It has been some time since my last pair of glasses gave up the ghost. I’m not sure if the final straw was when my son accidentally dropped them in the toilet or if it was the dog sooking off the elastoplast that held the glasses’ legs on that finally did it but finally, sadly, I bade my beloved old specs goodbye and resolved to get a new pair in the following few days.
Well, one thing after another and days turned into weeks and weeks into months. I think the world has a certain special charm when seen through a constant fuzzy haze and who cares about littering and graffiti when they are perceived only as pretty colours anyway? No doubt I have offended or confused more than one person as I sailed past them in the street totally oblivious to anything that is going on outside of about a five-foot radius.
I am dreadfully short-sighted but it doesn’t bother me too much. After all, I work at home all day in front of a computer. I only need to see far enough to recognise the keyboard. I suppose I could have gone on quite happily in my soft-focus bubble had I not taken a trip to Carrefour with my nearest and dearest.
After my mother and I had wittered round the shops for a while and hubby had stamped off to the car, my mother decided she needed to visit the loo. There was a bit of confusion between her going in and me coming out, and before you know it I was stranded alone at the door to the carpark. There was a vast sea of cars in front of me and not a nearest or a dearest in sight.
Okay, so there was nothing for it but to plunge off into the murk and trust my sense of direction. Some time later I was rescued from spending the night wandering about the Carrefour carpark by my mother and husband who had been watching me from afar (probably giggling hysterically and taking bets on how long it would take for me to get arrested).
After that experiences glasses were placed firmly back on my To Do list but first they had to fit on my Can Afford list. I was horrified at the quote I got in the first opticians I tried – €500! Jeez I need a pair of specs not the Hubble Telescope!
Next stop was a shop in San Eugenio which had Rebajas signs plastered all over its window. The sales woman talked down to me and stalked my husband round the shop like a hungry lion. The ‘great deal’ at this shop included not charging for an eye test if you end up buying specs from them and a 10% discount on frames. Big deal! Specs from here would cost about €360. My husband was quite happy for us to go ahead and order them but the sales lady had put me off and I would have rather gnawed off my own leg than throw any of my hard-earned cash in her direction.
And then inspiration struck. Hubby looked up a shop he knew from Paris called Afflelou on the internet. Yes! There are two in Santa Cruz. Had I but been able to see it in the first place, Afflelou, is right there in front of the food checkouts in the same Carrefour that kicked off my latest quest for specs and they have a great offer on right now. Buy one set and get a second for €1!
Brilliant. But even better is that the first pair have a standard price. It is about €79 for under 16 (it is some time since I could claim to be under 16 so I didn’t pay to much attention to that offer), €129 for those over €16 and €329 for bi-focals. Imagine that, two pairs of bi-focals for €330!
In my case, I wanted a pair of ordinary glasses and a pair of sunglasses both medicated for my short sight. I had to pay an extra €50 for the sunnies but in the end, I have now got two fab pairs of specs for a total of €180!
So happy as I am at the outcome of my tale, I have two bits of advice to share. The first one is, if you need specs get yourself over to the Afflelou store in Carrefour Santa Cruz before 28 February at which time this fab deal will expire. And the second is to Mr. Alain Afflelou himself. If you are kind enough to offer such a fabulous deal to the optically-challenged and cash-strapped, I suggest you make the posters advertising it at least ten feet tall so people like me can actually see it when we are shopping in the supermarket right in front of your store.
Credit to Dimitris Kritsotakis for the great picture!
Tenerife went crazy when local football team CD Tenerife broke through into the first division. Having finished the 2008-9 season in third place in the second division their breakthrough to the premier league in June this year after a seven year absence was heart-stoppingly exciting. It was as if the whole island had won the lottery. There was dancing in the street, flag waving, lakes of celebratory beer and wine and car horns tooting through the night.
Of course, getting back into the premier division is only the first step on a very steep ladder but CD Tenerife fans can keep an eye on the competition via Sportal Maps – a clever mash up of Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google maps and Google street view which provides a pretty unique look at sports facilities around the world. Football is one of the topics and there is also Nascar, Forumla 1 and 360 degree views of international stadiums.
Once on the site you can manipulate the images in several ways and come up with some excellent views. This is a part map, part 3d shot of the CD Tenerife stadium. Although you might not see it on the screen shot, the view is close enough to see players in action on the field (still shots).
You can choose to see 2D, 3D, arial, bird’s eye or with labels – all of it a very cool and clever use of web services. You can click through on the picture to get to the CD Tenerife page on SPortal and have a fiddle. 
It is not only Spanish Premier league home grounds you can spy on either. Look up the English and Scottish first league teams, Germany, France and more.
In a bid to cause as little disturbance as possible the final asphalting of the Añaza to Caletillas stretch of the Southern Tenerife highway (TF1) is being done between 22:00 and 06:00 hours right through the night. This caused signifcant tailbacks on Saturday night but quite likely was nowhere near as inconvenient as if the twenty kilometre stretch had been closed off during the day.
Even so, from today and for the next four or five days there will be one lane cut between Taibaba and Añanza(going to Santa Cruz) so expect delays if you have to drive to Santa Cruz this week. The lighting and signage has also to be done so some interference or blockage of the slow lanes of the carriageways in both directions can be expected until that is finished.
Among the many other wonders in store during the Tenerife Design Festival 19 to 22 October you can expect the magical flying grass carpet to make an appearance.
The flying grass carpet makes its way from city to city around the globe briefly touching down to let city dwellers play and stretch out on it as well as being a temporary base for a variety of public events.
What a lovely idea. The picture shown is from the carpet’s short trip to Budapest but you can find many more on the Flying Grass website.
The Tenerife Design Festival (TDF) is dedicated to fusing the ‘current trends of design with the main features of the Canarian identity’ and focusses on the three key concepts of local identity, landscape contrast and tourism.
Expect the unexpected during that week as designers from around the world get together to turn Tenerife into a ’seething mass of creativity and design’.
Oooo er. I’m not so sure about the seething mass bit. Whoever wrote the English blurb on the TDF website has done so in that annoyingly arty-farty nonsensical wittering beloved of those who think design concepts have to be drowned in a bucket of words before the rest of us plebs can get the point (or lack thereof).
Here slighty toned down are the descriptions of the TDF sections taken from the Tenerife Design Festival website.
TDFSigno – designers, industry and craftsmen collaborating on new products and ways of development which involve both fresh ideas and traditional Canarian concepts.
TDFAtmósfera – ominously threatening to ‘involve the public’, TDFAtmósfera promises to bathe Santa Cruz in a wash of exhibitions and urban interventions. If you venture into large spaces within the city during this week in October such as the TEA, La Recova or the port itself expect to be pounced on by a creative installation or two.
TDFLab – three-day workshops for professionals, students and general participants to experiment with different ways to generate new objects, graphics and interventions in different spaces with a focus on the interaction between design and the Canarian environment.
TDFAward cunningly sponsored by Turismo de Tenerife proposes Tenerife Design Paradise, an international prize, which encourages designers to work on elements that will make up a dream beach of the future. Based on the idea “Design Paradise” the aim is the creation of products that may be further developed later by the sponsor to enhance the tourism experience.
TDFSolution brings together different professional approaches to spread and support advances in culture, innovation and design. The Symposium will consist of the presentation of works by businesses, local, national and international designers, stirred into action by a critic or analyst. The point of departure will be TDF’s three central concepts: nature, local identity and tourism.
See the Tenerife Design Festival website for more information including a Programme of Events and a Registration page which showing fabulous international creativity is only available in Spanish. According to the translation it seems registrations will not be open till September:
Inscriptions
To participate in various workshops and activities of TDF, you can simply register by filling out a form. In September the program will be more detailed for you to decide which section is more suited to your interests …
But you should be aware: the seats are limited!
Mago de Oz are the Celtic metal band responsible for the Costa Del Silencio song that had half the world turning up on Tenerife Tattle’s doorstep a while back. Wondering why all these lost souls landed on the blog from search engines using ‘Costa Del Silencio’ a search phrase that would bring them to information and articles and yet seemed to leave almost immediately afterwards, I found that in fact they were searching for the Mago de Oz song.
As part of their El Leyenda de la Mancha tour the band will be playing Tenerife (at Plaza Maritim in Santa Cruz and not in Costa Del Silencio sadly) on 23rd, Lanzarote on the 24th and Gran Canaria on the 25th of April.
The last release the band made is called ‘Ciudad de los Árboles’ which is intriguingly described as “.. un disco lleno de armonías ninfómanas…”. I can’t quite get my head round that one but nymphomaniacal or not, the music is brilliant.
If you are not familiar with the band or with Celtic metal for that matter, you can click on the Amazon wotsit below and see if the music tweaks your fiddle strings. The concert starts at 22:00, seats cost €18 and you can book tickets at General Tickets though you’ll have to search for the event once you get there because they make it stupidly difficult to link direct to particular events. (Or maybe it is difficult because I am stupid? No se. )
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