October 10, 2015 by elegsabiff

The rain in Spain falls mainly well you know where. And there’s a local book if you’re planning a visit …

Recently I left misty Scotland for a week in sunny (and, it turned out, unusually humid) Spain. Bold blue skies, looming mountains, olives in profusion and splashes of colour everywhere, wow. I was visiting a sister who lives there half the year and reluctantly returns to beautiful Hampshire for the rest of the time, and her villa is halfway up a mountain in an utterly beautiful town with a nice mix of Spanish and ex-pats who have embraced the lifestyle and struggle manfully with the language and are integrating pretty successfully.

A surprising number of those I met are in my favourite Indian Summer age and have thrown over the conventional ‘wind-down towards retirement’ to follow a dream. I met two lively interesting women around my age who moved there for (or with) a fella and stayed when the wheels fell off because they had fallen in love with the country, hats off to them because I didn’t have the courage but boy, are they enjoying their lives. I met writers and painters and actors (there is a thriving theatre group, currently in rehearsals for a Federico Lorca play) and a fair number who were semi-retired or retired but following dreams and hobbies and activities of their own with vigour and enthusiasm.

Being a fish out of water does appeal most to eccentrics, and those I met were lively, deeply tanned, and interested in a far wider range of things than they would have been at home. I was delighted to be greeted in a soft Glaswegian voice by one man I had particularly wanted to meet because I swotted up for the trip by reading his book: Jim Mackie moved to that part of the world with his wife and the declared intent of saying yes to anything (however bizarre) that let him follow his love of music. His book, if you are a music lover (especially boogie) is a treat, just skip the bits on Bedar, Almeria, and the surrounding Andalusia. If, on the other hand, you are only fascinated by interesting Brits abroad who have found lovely places to live, skip the music. The book is selling fairly briskly so there must be those who like both but hey, look for yourself: Boogie Man book or, to give it its full title, Boogie Man (And His Cat) In Andalusia.

There are things about Spain that I loved – walking up to the fuenta to get pure fresh water (there are fountains in every town, no matter how remote, and residents will argue fiercely over the merits of driving the extra few miles to nearby Serena because their fuenta was better than the local one) and that deeply blue sky and the friendliness of everyone I met. Hola! Sitting sipping wine with my feet in a swimming pool (only my feet. The locals decreed it was too cold to swim in water that was a mere 24 degrees and I was for sure not going to cavort like a slightly portly dolphin on my own). Entertaining is cheap, with very drinkable plonk at around a euro a bottle, and paella for dinner can stretch to cover a surprising number of guests. Tapas is around a euro a shot so you can try several different ones, enjoy wine with your choice, and still waddle away with change from a fiver. We partied every single day for a week. I need a holiday to recover from my holiday.

There were things I found daunting: it is a seriously big country, and I speak as someone who hails originally from Africa. In Africa, when something is an hour’s drive away, you shrug and change your mind about going. In Scotland, you can pretty much cross the country in the kind of time that Spanish residents think is an acceptable drive to a good restaurant. I last experienced that kind of relaxed thinking in Florida but one important difference is that roads in Florida don’t wind round mountains, and I wasn’t being driven there by a sister who defaults, as often as not, to driving in the middle of the road rather than trouble her head about remembering whether she should be on the left or the right side. I am apparently the worst backseat driver ever but I wasn’t the only one to come away with new grey hairs, we met a few drivers around blind corners who are probably still palpitating.

And it was HOT. Even in October. Sleeping fitfully through the sound of a creaking fan, the windows thrown open to attract any flicker of a breeze and therefore a nightlong deafening chorus of cicadas, not to mention the unbearable weight of the sheet, was challenging. Forever sweating up a slope, or scuttling awkwardly down, is always going to make walking a problem when you are living halfway up a mountain.

When I landed back at Edinburgh it was 12 degrees, with a fine misty rain. NICE.

April 21, 2015 by elegsabiff

Going bananas

The die is cast, and Thirteen Fourteen Maids A-Courting has been loaded on Amazon, officially publishing on May 1^st, unofficially available a few days before that, at the pre-release price which is a touch under what you would donate at the office for the birthday of someone you barely know. Here’s a thought. Buy them my book instead?

You can pre-order by clicking on this cover pic on most Amazon sites, then you won’t miss the intro price. The cover was created by Lacey O’Connor from a photo I took of Los Gigantes, a fairly typical Tenerife picture.

However, this isn’t the blog where I nestle on your lap and try to slip my hand in your pocket. That follows in a couple of days and shouldn’t be missed. This is a blog for those who haven’t been to Tenerife and might be intrigued enough by my descriptions of the banana plantations to want to look up a few photos.

You won’t find many. For some inexplicable reason the plantations, which are everywhere and spectacular, are not on websites. Since they fascinated me, and play a distinct role in the book, there was nothing for it but to produce a banana plantation blog, even though I am a poor photographer with a cheap camera and an unrivalled genius for capturing unwanted poles, overhead wires and bits of cars.

Tenerife is a volcanic island, and there are very few places where you aren’t on a slope. As bananas are conservative, and like life on the level, the plantations have to be built up to keep them as flat as a billiard table. The retaining walls are often built of volcanic rock, and the effect is extraordinary. Once you are out of the tourist centres, they are everywhere, even cheek by jowl with built-up (non-tourist) areas.

Some plantations are neatly terraced. Some are neglected. Some balance on the edge of ravines (it is a challenging landscape, once away from the beaches) and others line the highway. They’re quite something.

Introducing the banana plantations of Tenerife.

Oh, why not. A mountain and ravine as well. In for a penny, in for a pound. It isn’t a pretty place. More – gobsmacking.

February 10, 2015 by elegsabiff

Getting in early. Happy Valentine Day …

I had really hoped to be doing a St Valentine’s Day book launch, the next book is Thirteen Fourteen Maids A Courting, and what possible better publication date could there be than February 14 for a title like that?

The main maid courting in this one is Kirsty, Edge’s lovely young niece, who is taking a brief holiday break from her job with Police Scotland to be wooed in the romantic surroundings of Tenerife. Unluckily for Kirsty my books are whodunits, not love stories, so it will be no surprise to any regular reader that Drew vanishes, leaving her alone in the Canaries, unable to speak a word of Spanish and finding surprisingly little professional cooperation being offered by the multiple policing services on the island.

Edge, Donald, Vivian and William fly to the rescue (by private jet – all part of the story) and things, unsurprisingly, get complicated. In fact so complicated that there is no chance I’ll make this excellently appropriate deadline, the draft isn’t even at beta reader stage yet. It was almost impossible making Eleven Twelve’s Halloween deadline, but it seems I never will learn to plan ahead properly.

Oh well, maybe next February! I have thoroughly enjoyed writing Thirteen Fourteen but have learned a short sharp lesson about writing books set in another country: I have now been to Tenerife three times and the phone lines hum between visits with difficult questions. How many morgues in Adeje? How many hospitals? Why would the Guardia Civil not call in the Policia Nationale instantly if there’s a possible kidnapping? How do you start a Segway? Why is the area where bananas are cultivated called a plantation, if the estate owning multiple plantations is also a plantation? Is the whole estate a finca, or just the villa? All the time humbly aware that there will be at least one crashing error which will make canny readers roll their eyes and say for goodness sake, did she do no research at all?

When I do visit it is an effort to remember that sipping the addictive Café Canario (espresso coffee layered with condensed milk and topped with cream) while tourist-watching on the beautiful beaches and boulevards doesn’t butter those research parsnips.

I just hope the book does well enough to justify at least one of the trips as business expenses, I’d hate to make HMRC officials rupture themselves laughing at the very thought. Be nice to someone special on Saturday, and have a great day.