Not a silly hat in sight, just some great live music at the other Aguaviva concert in Plaza del Conquistador last night. On a scorching evening Lanzarote band Oscartienealas (below) started things off in front of a sparse audience, well Spain were still playing in Euro 2008. People started to gather as the excellent 3 piece band leapt around and belted out some rocking tunes.

After a lengthy gap, Fiction Plane hit the stage and launched into a selection of tracks from their recent “Left Side Of The Brain” LP. In the pre Aguaviva publicity, no one seemed to pick up on the fact that Joe Sumner, son of Sting, is the bands lead singer, armed with that knowledge, I had arranged an interview earlier in the day and met Joe (centre) , American drummer Pete Wilhoit (right) and guitarist Seton Daunt (left).

Just flown in from a pre Le Mans show in France, the trio were looking forward to enjoying a few days relaxing in Tenerife, with a bit of surfing and sun. Fiction Plane pride themselves on their live performances, and racked up 200 gigs last year, including supporting The Police on their American tour and The Feeling on their UK tour, after a decent rest, they are off again later this year, this time to North America, supporting Snoop Dog.

I had to ask about the group name, it has been widely pointed out that it is an angaram of Infant Police, but Pete scotched that idea as just another bizarre and unintentional link to The Police, 3 piece band with 2 Brits and an American drummer, a lead singer who plays bass, sings and writes lyrics, are just a few other similarities.

Fiction Plane have built up a strong following in France, Holland and Belguim and have 2 sets of fanatical followers, The Harem and The Fictionaires, I met Fictionaires Shan (blue) and Jo Jo (pink) who had flown over from the UK especially for the concert. Both looked lovely in their colour co-ordinated outfits but I couldn’t coax Jo Jo to reveal if there was more to her match than the hair and nails.

Back to the concert, and Joe’s voice has striking similarities to the old mans, but although the bands guitar sound does evoke thoughts of The Police, they have a much harder edge and their lyrics are much sharper. As the set went on, the crowd swelled, and what an interesting mix it was, dedicated music fans, passing holiday makers glowing from the beach and a sprinkling of hippies with their dogs, juggling and dancing.

As the sun dipped behind La Gomera, the concert drew to a close after an hour and 15 minutes, and there were a lot of converts to Fiction Plane. The finale was a storming rendition of Two Sisters, one of their strongest tracks, and Joe mounted the amps for one last leap, a wild ginger haired mountain of a roadie joined in dancing across the stage and lifting his kilt to reveal the only bum note of the evening. Definately one of the highlights of this years Aguaviva.

Long, long ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, before electronic games like Nintendo and XBox were invented, there was a kids game called Flightdeck. The aim was to land a plane on a small aircraft carrier deck using a joystick. Things have moved on a pace and most kids now have access to amazingly realistic games, but if you want to go one better, how about using real flight training simulators.

Granadilla has an annual event, where you can try out some of these hi tech machines within sound of Reins Sofia airport. Next Saturday and Sunday June 21 and 22 from 10 am at the Casa Cultural in San Isidro, it’s your turn to play at being a pilot. This is the fourth annual event, if you go to the website www.migranadilla.com you can see You Tube footage of previous events. Apparently to add to the realistic feeling of being at an airport, they take your bags off you as you arrive and then lose them, and they sell you a dribble of coca cola for 4 euros.

I shall pop along and see what it’s like, not being into computer games, I’m sure I will manage to either crash the planes or black out the entire south of Tenerife for a few days. Hmm I wonder if they will have cyber stewardess’s doing other simulations – smiling and serving tea is what I was thinking of course.

They like to make us suffer, but thanks to a strong first half display, CD Tenerife beat Nastic 2-1 at home to make sure they can’t be relegated from the Segunda division. A few months ago, the talk was of promotion but 9 games without a win saw Tenerife slip worryingly near to the trap door, such are the ups and downs of being a football fan.

Coach Oltra made a few changes bringing local boys, Hector and Rosquette back into the squad, with Hector starting in defence. Just 5 minutes into the game, and from a Longas corner a Nino shot squirmed under the goalie and Culebras got a foot to it to push it in for a goal. The home lead didn’t last long and a defensive slip after 10 minutes let Calle in to level the scores. Tenerife played some good football and created plenty of chances, Oscar Perez and Longas both went close. The one player that has been outstanding all season is forward Nino, and when a Hector cros came to him just out side the goal area, he brought it down well and lashed it into the Nastic goal for his 18th of the season.

 The second half was pretty awful as Tenerife sat back and let Nastic take control of the game. Jandro forced a great save from Navas in the home goal and Sanchez hit the post as Tenerife rode their luck. Somehow Tenerife manged to keep the visitors at bay and there was a huge sense of relief at the final whistle with Tenerife finally safe from the dreaded drop.

 It was a low key (6,900 crowd) end to a home season that after the early promise faded away and left us fearing the worst. At least now the chaps from the Armada Sur going to the final game at Malaga next week, can relax and enjoy their beer. Our despair has been all the worse for seeing Las Palmas rise up the table into the top 6, if only we had won away to the Pios, but they added on extra time until they got their equaliser. In the meantime, planning is already underway for next season, and I can reveal that the first big signing is a Brit. Peter (see pic) is a lively front man, always on the sniff, and he is always willing to work his way down the white lines. There is just a small transfer fee involved, payable to the Central London magistrates court.

If I close my eyes, I can still see Hot Gossip dancing to Supernature by Cerone, not a confession, just tenous link number 457, to get me onto the subject of nature’s bounty here in Tenerife. Today I popped over to the lovely fishing village of Las Galletas, and after frightening the fish I went to see the opening of the 3 day Plant and Flower Fair.

This annual show takes place in Las Ramblas (straight on past the beach) and features stalls of local flora as well as honey, mojo sauces, cactus etc. It’s well worth a look, even if you are not tempted to buy, during the weeekend, 10am until about 8pm, there will be various music and dance offerings on the stage, and the judging of a local photo competition.

Whizzing back to Los Cristianos, I caught the opening of the evenings Wine Fair, just before the dock area. All the exhibitors were bodegas (vineyards) from Tenerife, only 5 are listed in the official programme but I counted 8 stalls. Despite the arid soil, Tenerife has a history of producing some fine wines, Guimar, La Orotava and Abona, were among the areas showing off their produce. I was of course hoping to do some sampling, and had specifically taken along my pint glass, but they weren’t making free with the vino. I believe the idea later, was to buy a ticket for a nominal fee, to sample wines, and then that price would be knocked off any purchase. By the way, the young lady in the photo isn’t miserable, she’s just popping one off – a cork that is. If you are into your wine, many of the islands bodegas do tours, followed by sampling, just check your local tourist information or cultural centre.

Well, as this seems to be turning into a weekends “What’s On” I might as well cover a couple of other things. On Sunday, there is a big cycle ride starting from Guia de Isora at 9 am and ending back there at about 1.30 pm, after going through Chio, Tamimo, Santiago del Teide, Arquayo (high point 1,250 m) , Tejina, Armeñime, Alcala, and Playa San Juan, that’s a total of 71 kms. It’s organised by the Chineje Cycle Club, click on the name for more details.

And Sunday is a sad and worrying day for me, the last home game of CD Tenerife’s football season. With promotion chasing Malaga away in next weeks finale, we still need a point to make sure we can’t get relegated, so there will be plenty of singing juice imbibed before the 5pm kick off. Vamos Tenerife.

Well I returned to Tenerife the way I flew in, via Manchester, and I must say I was impressed with the city. It must be around 15 years since I last went there to watch Manchester Storm play ice hockey at the MEN arena. A lot of money and effort has been put into the city and it shows, from Salford Keys (pic) to the city centre with its own millenium wheel. The big Premier Inn building had Peregrine Falcons nesting high up, and a camera trained on the nest showed pics on a large city centre screen – with not a word from Bill Oddie.

One warning though if you are flying out of Manchester Terminal One, it’s under redevelopment and has little in the way of services. My flight was midnight, and the few shops after check in, were closed, as well as the American muffin cafe, and worst of all NO BAR, that’s unheard of, even Camberwick Green airport would have a bar. It was bad for familes with children, and passengers for a Malaga flight had suffered a 3 hour delay. Of course the large duty free shop was open and you are channeled through it on the way to the boarding gates.

My flight was with Futura Airways, who have the less then reassuring shortened title of FU Airways. Once on board it was ok, although the stewardess’s wear black leather gloves as part of their uniform, maybe they make specialist movies as a sideline. Anyway, back in Tenerife at 4am on Saturday morning, and a taxi soon had me home, at 21 euros thats pretty reasonable.

Now it’s catch up time, this looks like a busy month, Aguaviva has started some of its events as it builds up to the big music concerts. I’ve only scratched the surface of the papers and news sites from the last few days, but already there is a lot to look forward to and the small matter of the last 2 games for CD Tenerife. They drew 2-2 at Celta Vigo on Saturday, that’s 9 games without a win, and still a point needed to make sure they can’t be relegated. I’m raring to go, come on June, lets be having you.

So today is Bank Holiday Monday, Whitsun holiday to be precise, and of course the rain has been coming down in stair rods. The big event of today here in Oxford is the Lord Mayors Parade, the first event in the year of the new mayor, actually its a Mayoress this year. For the full realistic feeling of the parade, you need to empty a few buckets of water over your head whilst standing in front of a wind machine.

In the past I have taken part in the parade, the Ice Hockey club had a float for 2 years, a good excuse to dress up and drink beer, one year the theme was childrens stories so we went as Babes In The Wood, you really dont want to see those pics of me in a nappy! This year there were no floats, just a few tree huggers on foot and some people banging drums. The weather was terrible, pouring rain and a driving wind, but hey, this is where us Brits excell. Never mind that they were getting soaked, and never mind that noone seemed to give a shit that the parade was hsppening, they still marched on in their make up and costumes to Hinksey Park where a quagmire of mud awaitied them.

It was a lot different from the Santa Cruz Carnaval, with its lavish costumes, and through the night music and dancing. I did feel quite proud to be British, who else would subject themselves to this soaking parade, and all for the sake of charity.

So what does a boy do on a day like this, stay at home with my parents watching The Railway Children or The Great Escape? I don’t think so. There is a teeming city of pubs and  its my mission to explore them and check out the real ale on offer. Yesterday I went on a crawl with a few mates, we discussed the works of Shakespeare, the political system in Russia and the meaning of life in general, over a few cold lemonades and a fruit scone or 2, well something like that. Onward ever onward.Â

Tenerife has a big motorbiking scene with a lot of clubs and groups that organise regular rallys. This Sunday May 25th, there is the 4th annual Gran Vuelta a Norte (the great north tour) featuring the Honda 70 in its many forms, originals and replicas.

This is a good point for me to confess to knowing very little about bikes, apart from Westlakes and Jawas from watching years of speedway, but they are probably regarded as relics now. I had to look up the Honda 70, expecting it to be a powerful brute of a bike, but it is just a small four stroke ( said he, trying to sound knowledgeable) and some of the photos I saw made it look almost like a moped, not that I’m knocking that.

Anyway , back to the research and apparently it was known as The Rocket, because of its ability to power up steep roads fully loaded, now it starts to make sense. Sounds like the perfect machine to explore the hills and mountains of the north of Tenerife.

I remember a friend of mine in Oxford was the secretary of the southern Honda Goldwing club, and once a year they would descend on Oxford, set up camp in a far flung field and do a charity pub crawl in and around town before being ferried back to the camp site in a convoy of 12 coaches. One year I went round town with a few of them a week before the event, on what they laughingly called the dry run. This was to visit the chosen pubs and square things with the landlord so he wouldn’t panic when an army of hairy arsed bikers descended on him. Dry run? this advance party of 10 beer monsters nearly drained the pubs on their own, I dread to think what the real event was like.

Meanwhile on an island in the Atlantic, it’s back to the North Tour. Last year they had 101 bikes and will be looking to do even better this year. The main run starts from San Geronimo Industrial estate in La Orotava at 9am and ends in Icod de Los Vinos. The southern enthusiasts will be starting a little earlier from Bar Davimar in Buzanada. So if you see a swarm of bikers on Sunday, don’t be afraid, they are just out to enjoy their passion for bikes and Tenerife.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing in the red corner, Arona council weighing in with a 4 million euro beach renovation project, and in the blue corner, a cute little old Canarian lady with a beachfront house, undefeated on a 24,000 euro valuation. Let the contest begin.

Actually it’s getting quite near the last round. The 4 million euro project in question is the ongoing renewal of the front at Los Cristianos, and the house is No 3 Paseo Maritimo, half way along the old beach. At first site it may seem run down and deserted but Casa de Laureano, has a tv aerial and power lines and is plumbed into the main drainage system. It’s been in the same family for generations and is far enough away from the shoreline to be outside the law of the coast and cannot just be demolished, so the council are trying to buy it.

The current bid stands at 24,000 euros but it must be worth more than that, and as the occupant is old and partially disabled , it would cost loads more to get somewhere as central and away from steep hills. The council are confidently predicting that a solution will be reached by the end of June, personally i’d say good luck to her, push that price as high as possible.

In the meantime, other work is going on at the old Los Cristianos beach behind the house. The sand is being dug up and turned over as part of a cleaning operation and a few truckloads of sand were dumped on Los Tarajales beach, further on towards the Arona Gran hotel. Back on March 24 I did a post on here about a 12 million euro council project that had been announced to give Los Tarajales a long promised new look over the next 2 years, that would include new headlands, rock pools and breakwaters to protect the new beach. Sadly the stop gap measure isn’t really working as the beach wasn’t cleaned or levelled first, the back walls are still covered in graffiti and with no protection the sand is just washing straight out. Maybe the promised long term solution will come about, once they decide whether or not the old houses, illegal under the law of the coast, will have to come down.

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.

I hope the passengers on the Independence Of The Seas cruise liner enjoyed their day in Santa Cruz, I certainly did. I arrived early afternoon, armed with my camera, and made for the docks to see the monster new ship that had arrived from Southampton on it’s maiden voyage. The port authority had taken a full page colour spread on the back of all the local Canarian papers to welcome the liner, and with a month of celebrations going on in the capital, the bunting and flags were out.

The roof of the Fred Olsen ferry terminal was the best vantage point, so I joined the rather small crowd to snap a few shots, at this point I suppose I better drop in some stats about the ship. Built in Finland, the Independence Of The Seas is the biggest european docked cruise ship at 339 metres long and 56 metres wide, it weighs 158,000 tons, has 18 storeys, 1,815 cabins – 844 of them with a balcony and 120 suites. The facillities are amazing, an ice rink, theatre, casino, an on deck surfing area and masses of shops, restaurants and bars. The 11 night cruise it is on now had already called at Funchal and was going on to Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Lisbon, Vigo and back to Southampton. It was a little disconcerting to see someone welding low down on the bow of the ship, just below the cabin portholes, worrying if you have paid anything from 933 euros.

On to the football and hopes were not high with Sporting Gijon the visitors, needing points to help their promotion push, both Tenerife and Gijon had missed out to Madrid the day before in the contest to host the Davis Cup tennis in September, so at least they had something in common. The game was frustrating, Tenerife had loads of chances in the first half but couldnt score and Sporting took their only 2 chances well with 2 cracking strikes into the top of the Tenerife net after 27 and 40 minutes. There was no way back and the few hundred Sporting fans celebrated their move into second spot.

As the Armada Sur coach drove off I stayed on and met up with a mate of the General’s, Tony, and we took the short walk to the Palicio Municipal de los Deportes to see a tribute show to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. The sports hall is tucked just behind the football stadium, this was my first visit, and I was impressed, bright and modern with raised seating on 2 sides and more seats put out down at floor level in the centre. The Wall is a pretty ambitious work to tackle, Pink Floyd only performed it a few times on stage, Gonzalo Valdivia and his 6 musicians did a great job of it though. When they came out, there was a small wall built at the front of the stage, which they duly kicked down, there was a big screen behind the band and one in front at each side that showed a mix of clips from the film version of The Wall, new images and the lyrics in Spanish, they sung in English.

It’s a shame the hall was barely half full, most were pushing middle aged, aren’t we all, and there was a nice mix of Spanish, Brits and some Germans. Beer was widely available, and due to a miss calculation over bus times , we had realised we would either have to leave before the end or kill time in Santa Cruz until the 2.30am bus to the south, so we started as we meant to go on with the beer.

For those who don’t know The Wall, it’s a dark epic about a rock star descending into madness, with themes of islolation and a bullying state. The bands excellent playing and singing skills managed to capture that, with Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell the highlights for me. As the story reached the climax, the band took a breather for The Trial, leaving the film clips running with the superb animation of Gerald Scarfe. They returned to  raptourous applause and launched into other Pink Floyd classics like Wish You Were Here, Time, Money and a soaring version of Shine On You Crazy Diamonds. After Echo and the Bunnymen 2 weeks ago, this underlined the great musical delights that the north of the island has to offer.

A slow crawl around Santa Cruz brought us to the vibrant bar area just by the Plaza de la Iglesia, it was packed with no sign of slowing down even at 2am, and several Sporting Gijon fans were still toasting their teams success. The bus ride to the south slipped by in a snooze and I headed home with Pink Floyd tracks replaying in my little happy brain. Just a small footnote, I checked my emails this morning and found I had won a ticket to the concert from La Gaceta de Canarias, the mail arrived just after I had set off yesterday – never mind, it was 12 euros well spent.