Holiday Snaps: The message to kids about the times

A mind on the run

Wandering thoughts as the mayhem and noise around you gets blanked out for the mind to consider, contemplate, ruminate and meditate.

Between the madness of the outrageous to that goodness of the sublime pictures and scenarios are created, analysed and discarded one thought jumping to another without any sense of how they link up.

Cleaning up with English

The sign I saw, “Need? Clean you house, #”, got me thinking about how English can be so forgiving that we almost fully understand what is intended. This was no doubt a collision of Spanish and German aspiring to a global audience.

A little help from an English friend would have cleared out your house not leaving a speck of dust and the malapropisms that accompany describing a mess. “Do you need to clean your house?” or “House Cleaner Needed?” for brevity and directness, but everyone seems to have the notion of being better users of English than they really are.

Just because their command of English is better than your fluency in their language does not automatically mean their command of English is of the quality that allows for publication of good notices, it only means you can both communicate, even if barely so.

From David to everything else

Children; sons and daughters; their parents and the interactions but it never ceases to amaze me the resemblances I notice seeing that visage of the father or the eyes of the mother, evidence without the need for intrusive testing.

Michelangelo’s David is probably the most perfect specimen of how a man should look; the excess of lipid tissue or muscle just does not enhance the appreciation of that bearing.

When a child begins to take on features that prognosticate a future of obesity, there is need to worry why we do not allow kids to work themselves out a bit and keep fit for the sake that it would be good for them as much as it would be good for the parents. However, in the absence of good example the future might be bleak.

At breakfast, it was not the three musketeers but musculars if that word might be permitted, just this once. Walking with arms almost akimbo not because they have taken that pose but the gym has seen too many visits that the muscles have become a deformity. Muscle Marys, they are called and they are – Oh! Not so David, trust me.

Hard times for tough people

The times are tough, hard and difficult, more businesses have closed, bars have notices that have hung there for months and there have been no takers.

The ones that have stayed open to the high season are having brisk business, in the years since I wrote the blog about settling in Gran Canaria things have changed and people have had to adapt to the situation and circumstances.

I braved the carterista (pick-pocket in Spanish) shops for a cable and was pleasantly surprised at being offered the cable at 33% less the price tag without having even seen the price, maybe lessons have been learnt that we would go elsewhere than be fleeced.

As for the chap who has been frazzled by the warmth of Canarian sunshine that he is planning to settle here, if you can survive these times, you will definitely live here a long time.

I must spare a thought for those who gave up everything for the hard life in the sun with the hope that they will retire here and had to make the very difficult decision of closing shop, the brave and courageous fight to avoid failure in which they might have lost homes too, returning to their lands of origin hopefully plotting a return – these have been really hard times and everyone knows that.