Only a few days ago I was talking to a few other local writers, and of course we had a good old moan about the downside of living in Tenerife. One of our common frustrations was the lack of advance publicity for events in Tenerife, and when the government, council or private promoters do swing belatedly into action, it usually involves a press release a few days before the event. This is as useful as a chocolate fireguard to the Brits, as one paper comes out weekly and the others fortnightly. Anyway since that meeting, I have already come across several more examples of ” hark, hark, whisper, who cares, if we don’t tell a soul, there’ll be more empty chairs”.

Today, Saturday, the Canarian rugby champions, Nandu of Tenerife, are playing a friendly at the Adeje stadium against Trafford M.V from Manchester at 4pm. I’m sure a few rugby loving Brits would have fancied that, but I only found out this morning from a poster just put up in a shopping centre.

And the next. A couple of days ago, I discovered there is a Tapas promotion in Granadilla de Abona from May 15 to June 15, with many bars and restaurants offering tapas for 2 euros or less. This covers popular places like El Medano, and Los Abrigos but when I was in Granadilla town tourist office barely 2 weeks ago, there was no mention of it, I eventually saw a leaflet in a Arona tourist office yesterday. There is a competition on the leaflet as well, get 20 of the participating outlets to stamp your leaflet and you can win a meal for 2. I comb through all the Canarian papers every day and haven’t seen this promotion mentioned, maybe you have to go to the council website and search it out, but you would need to know it was there to look in the first place?

Well, here’s one FREE event that I saw a poster for today, a whole week in advance. It’s the Canarian Roller Figure Skating Championships in Las Galletas, next Saturday May 24 at the sports hall in Avenida del Principe Felipe, that’s the 2nd stop in on the bus. It takes place from 9am until 2pm and 4pm until 9pm and as well as the competition, features displays from a former Italian champion, Simone Fraietta and 3 times World Champion, Luca D’Alisera (in pic).

The poster was in Los Cristianos on the same shop that advertised a FREE christmas roller skating gala, so it’s probably someone who is heavily involved in the sport. The sports hall, how many know that is there, took 5 years to build and is pretty basic but most things they stage there are free. I have been a couple of times to see the in line hockey team (it’s the nearest I will get here to my ice hockey fix) the Tenerife Guanches, it’s out of season at the moment but I will do a piece when they start up again.

Anyway, all those frustrations aside, it’s been another glorious day here, and life is good. There is a big summer of events ahead, so let’s hope that they are all a big success and well attended, I will try to do my little bit to publicise those I can find out about.