Maybe my hearing is going but I’m sure I didn’t hear “go and see the inspirational carpets in La Orotava”. So there I am this morning looking forward to a concert from the 1980’s Manchester rock band The Inspiral Carpets, but they were no where to be seen or heard. It was of course the big day of the Corpus Christi celebrations, the huge volcanic sand carpet was already in place in front of the Ayuntamiento (council) building (above) and work was frantically underway on the 35 individual floral carpets in the streets.

I started out with the 343 Titsa bus from Los Cristianos to Puerto de la Cruz at 9.20 am, just 75 minutes and 7.25 euros with my bono ticket. Changing to a 101 bus to Santa Cruz (cost .95 cents but FREE as my bono was still warm) it took just 15 minutes to pull into the bus station at La Orotava. It can be a little cloudy and chilly this far and high north, but the sun was beaming and the crowds were streaming, and once I had passed Mickey Mouse and Bob Square Pants bobbing on strings from the tacky stalls in town, I was soon heading up the Carrera del Escultor Estevez to be greeted by the throng around the impressive Plaza del Ayuntamiento.

The roads around here are tight,so people were funnelled either up to the Ayuntamiento building, and inside to climb for a balcony view, or onward up the narrow hilly pavements past the roads full of developing mosaics. These smaller carpets were started early morning and are carefully built up from a sand, grass and shredded pine base, to support spectacular toppings of flower petals, all layered with love and dedication.

This amazing art form started in 1847, and although it takes place in several towns around Tenerife, no one does it with as much style , or on such a grand scale as La Orotava. It’s a wonder there are any flowers left on the island that are not naked of their crowning glory. Buckets and baskets of multi coloured petals sit alongside bags of coloured sand awaiting their addition to the jigsaw. Families get involved with children playing their small part and the men creating great art with a can of beer in one hand.

Rough drawings are made first, and they have frames to work to for the main body of the carpets, but the intricate and most creative work is done by hand. Some of the streets wind down and around the Church of La Concepcion, as fine a piece of Baroque art as you could find. I had bumped into Jack and Andrea Montgomery, producers of the excellent guide books, Real Tenerife Island Drives and Going Native In Tenerife and we tried to get up the tower of the church for some photos. Alas the young chaps guarding the door seemed to think it was a private club for their friends, and although their were youngsters in flip flops going up, we were told it was dangerous underfoot due to yesterdays rain.

It really is a wonderous site to see the mosaics take shape during the day. As well as the colours, the smells are amazing, I havent smelt as much grass since the last match at CD Tenerife. Life is about constant change and despite all the effort put in, the carpets will be worn and trampled away as the big procession snakes through town this evening. It may seem a waste, but to the people who make it all possible, it’s an annual display of their faith and they are proud to see it come and go, and will be back to make it even bigger next year.

Hardly time to sober up before heading to Santa Cruz today for the official reception for the CD Tenerife team. The police and Guardia must love CDT, it was unlimited overtime as the forces of good took up key positions around the entrance to the capital. I met some of the Armada Sur up by Plaza General Weyler, it was heaving, but we found a good spot just down the road by the bridge over the Barranco Santos, and waited for the open top bus.

Cars bombed by, waving flags as the crowds swelled, and it was clear it was going to be a late start. TV Canarias had a camera in a helicopter keeping an eye on the progress of the bus from Los Rodeos airport to Santa Cruz, when the bus swung into view, the crowds went wild. The players were clearly loving the attention, sadly yesterdays hero Kome was missing as he was back on duty for Cameroon.

Having got a few pics, we dived through the back streets, stopping for a beer, before hitting the Plaza de España. It was heaving, a giant stage was the focal point of the attention, and many people were already in the lake. As the team bus arrived and the players transferred to the Cabildo balcony, fire crackers and smoke bombs went off adding to the party mood. The players, a little worse for wear, led the singing and the crowd gladly joined in. I left them to it after a few hours but it looked like another long night, still another party to go with the last game at home next week-it’s a hard life.

Despite greed reering its ugly head, I am finally booked up and paid up for Saturdays CD Tenerife game at Girona. Like the last away game at Sevilla, the football club used Viajes Halcon to produce the promised cheap charter flights, and again the prices were inflated with overnight accomodation being pushed. This time an independent fan club one day charter looked a good bet at 180 euros, but once the official club version was announced at 300 euros, the cheaper trip rocketed, and became unviable as fans cancelled. Some of us have paid the ransom, in order to see this historic game but many will now miss it, a shameful way to treat loyal fans.

We still expect up to 1,000 CDT fans to converge from Tenerife, mainland Spain and the UK, all with our party heads on. For those left behind, Santa Cruz is the place to be, a giant screen will show the game in Plaza de España (pic), kick off 5.30pm, and the huge fines for dancing in the lake have been lifted for the promotion season.

The team arrive back at the north airport on Sunday at 1pm, and will take an open top bus into Santa Cruz, through Avenida de la Salle, along over Barranco Santos bridge, past Plaza General Weyler, down Calle Mendez Nunez and Calle del El Pilar, finishing around 3pm at the Cabildo headquarters, where the players will take to the balcony overlooking Plaza de España.

All this is of course dependent on getting that vital point at Girona, and then the week after, there is the last game of the season, at home to Castellon, a chance to ensure they go up as champions. Lots of chances to party and cheer the players for a fantastic season. Next season has just taken another tasty turn with Ronaldo agreeing to joing Real Madrid, Â Tenerife had a bid of 79 million in but Real offered 80 million-damm so close. Wouldn’t it be good to get Real Madrid at home the first game of next season, just imagine the media attention the island would get, we would even plant some extra soft grass for when he does a dive.

Just when we thought that Tenerife would be deprived of its summer concerts, they have burst into life, starting on Saturday 30 May, with a big 14 act event in honour of Dia de Canarias.

The national holiday will be marked in the Playa de las Americas football stadium with Tiembla Tenerife from 8.30 pm, tickets are 30 euros, but you do get 14 performers, headed by Murcia band, M-Clan. The mainly Spanish bill also includes Innata, Blue Child, Alex Ubago, and (below) the UK’s Brinsley Forde. A former member of Aswad, Brinsley started out as a child actor and starred in The Double Deckers – ask your Grandad-although he probably doesn’t like to admit to it.

Anyway the concert is to raise funds to help struggling Canarian families and tickets are on sale at Carrefor and from www.ticktacktiket.com.

One of the big summer music festivals, Eolica, looked under threat from lack of funds but is now happening, on July 19 at the ITER wind farm on the Granadilla industrial estate. Top of the bill will be Teenage Fan Club from Glasgow and  The Cat People, from Galicia, supported by Marvel Hill, and electro band Telephunken, more names will be announced soon.

We can also look forward to the 4th annual Platano Rock festival as part of the Santa Cruz + Viva programme. Running from June 6 to 29, it will feature film events as well as 3 concerts in La Recova and Plaza Candelaria. The groups will be drawn from Tenerife, Madrid and Barcelona. The big gig is on June 12 at 10 pm in Plaza Candelaria with Catalan groups The Right Ons and OVNI, plus local band, Line. All we need now is a few people on the island to form a crowd.

Drink, drugs, groupies and old age, rock and roll has survived it all but the credit crunch is proving a tougher opponent, especially here in Tenerife. There will be music this summer, there is always music here, but you might have to dig a bit deeper to find something to please you.

Next Saturday,May 16, Old Uncle Rod Stewart kicks things off at Golf Costa Adeje, you can still get tickets from the usual outlets, and many shops around the island. Then on Thursday May 28, a new rock supergroup pitches up in Tenerife.

Big Noize have recently formed, fronted by singer Joe Lynn Turner, formerly of Deep Purple and Rainbow. Joe is joined by Phil Soussan on bass (ex Ozzy Osbourne) Carlos Cavazo on guitar (Quiet Riot) Simon Wright on drums (Dio and AC/DC), and another drummer (you can never have too many) Vinny Apice. They are starting out covering songs that they all know so well, like Shot In The Dark and Smoke On The Water. They have a single out called Battlefields, which you can hear on www.myspace.com/abignoize . The concert is taking place at the Pabellon Municipal Deportes in Santa Cruz (turn left just before CD Tenerife’s ground) at 9pm. Tickets can be bought from www.generaltickets.com for 15 euros.

Also on that website you can buy tickets for The Pretenders at the Santa Cruz Auditorium on Thursday 6 July (scroll down a few posts on here) for 30 and 35 euros. Bad news though on the 2 big summer music events, Eolica, at the Granadilla wind farm, and Aguaviva, in Los Cristianos and Las Americas. There has been no news at all of either large and well established event, both due within the next 6 weeks. A few days ago El Dia newspaper ran a big story saying that both were struggling to find the finance needed to run this year. Seems far too late now to rescue either.

There is also a deadly hush over the usual big hispanic or latino concert for the Heliodoro Stadium, home of CD Tenerife. In past years Shakira and Mana have packed them in just after the end of the football season, prior to the pitch being relaid. Best you make the most of what music is around, and in the meantime, I will keep my ears open.

From the banks of the Ganges in India to the banks of the Atlantic here in Tenerife, the Hindu ceremony of peace and illumination brought together several cultures as lanterns and candles heralded sunset.

For Hindus the Ganga (Ganges as we know it) was brought to earth from heaven to make the land fertile and to wash away our sins. It is also known as the divine mother, which is why the Tenerife Hindu Association chose Spanish mothers day to hold their ceremony on Playa La Enramada in La Caleta.

I was very impressed at the efforts they had made to reach out to all communities in Tenerife, with open invites via newspapers and posters, and the whole event was conducted in Spanish and English. Mayor Fraga of Arona was an honoured guest but the main man was H.H Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatsi, one of the most revered religious leaders from India.

Maybe that all sounds a bit formal, but it was very much a celebration, with music and dance telling the story of the Ganga, and children chatting and playing in the sand. Speakers kept their contribution light and humourous as those seated in front of the stage were joined by hundreds more milling around the edges and skirting the shore as the sun sunk lower.

The candles were actually wicks in ghee, a form of purified butter,and as well as being held, some were placed in small hollows in the sand just beyond the reach of the tide. For the climax, the aarti, the Swami led the dignitaries from the stage down to the waters edge and he held aloft his burning lantern from a smaller stage looking out to sea. This was the signal for a forest of flames to flicker brightly as prayers were said for future peace and healing.

It was great to see such a diverse range of cultures and ages all come together, Tenerife is quite a melting pot of nationalities and beliefs, and these open events will certainly bring us just that bit closer.

Leather trousers, that’s the first thing that springs to my mind when thinking of The Pretenders. It’s great to see they are coming to the Santa Cruz Auditorium in Tenerife in Monday 6 July, one of many highlights of the Auditoriums programme for the rest of 2009.

What a fantastic rock band The Pretenders are, and as for lead singer Chrissie Hynde, what can I say except mmmmmmmmmmm. It didn’t help when I read that she never used to wear anything under those famous trousers - but maybe she had Bras In Pocket. Anyway back to the plot, I still think of them as being around only a few years ago, but I was shocked to find that their last big hit “I’ll Stand By You” was in 1994. I also noticed that they were formed in Hereford, they probably don’t shout about that, not very rock n roll is it.

Also on the Auditorium line up are Russian ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov on June 29 and ABBA stage musical Mama Mia will be in town from December 28 to January 4. I’m going for a cold shower and trying not to think about those animal skin lower garments.

There’s not a spare sandal or bedsheet to be had in Tenerife, as we gear up for the Gods to descend. Clash of the Titans is being remade in Tenerife and 100 extras were recruited at the Sheraton La Caleta Hotel last week, all part of a 2.5 million euro windfall for the island.

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A 350 strong Warner Bros production team will be here from May 15 to June 3 , and their accomodation, transport and maintenance will help to swell the island coffers. Sets are taking shape just a short spear throw from the Mount Teide cable car at Montaña Mostaza, soon lead players Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes and the rest of the cast will be busy there and at coastal areas of Icod, Buenavista del Norte, and Guia de Isora.

It’s a good chance for Tenerife to cash in on the commercial spin offs. The lookie lookie men are going to sell genuine Greek sundial watches and Mount Olympus cameras, cafes will serve burgers and chips cooked in ancient Greece, and other establishments that I have only heard of and never been to-honest-are to offer lap of the Gods dancing.

The secret of good comedy is timing, so full marks to Arona council for announcing new heavy handed rules for all of their beaches, while Tenerife tourism is at an all time low. They intend to ban smoking, drinking and even building sand castles on the beach, with fines ranging from 750 euros to 3,000 euros.

It’s another crackdown aimed at eradicating the seedy and illegal practices that go on at, and around the beach areas. I can see where they are aiming with the last two, they want to wipe out the regular bottle parties “botellons” held by youngsters at weekends and holidays, and the sand thing is about the sculptures (some of them very impressive) that people build at the back of the beaches to appeal for money from passers by.

The trouble is the tourism horse hasn’t just bolted, it’s galloping at a fair rate like in the opening titles to Black Beauty. British tabloids could have a field day with this, just after The Sun claimed that Mount Teide could be about to blow its top. Local traders are not best amused by the announcement, the only time the sand is peppered with people these days is on bank holidays when mainland Spanish and Tenerife North descend with cool bags and picnics, and clear the supermarkets.

Banning beach smoking for pollution reasons is a very emotive issue and could have been better handled. The tourist information offices are already giving out blue plastic “ice cream cones” to plant in the sand, with a flip top for ash and the eventual dog end. More publicity and bigger collection points near the rubbish bins might have a brought more sympathetic response.

Arona has some of the best beaches in Tenerife, a wonderful life guard and disabled bathing service, and a struggling beachfront economy, let’s hope the tide will turn soon.

“Help, help the sky is falling” so said Chicken Licken in the childrens story. “Volcano fear hits Tenerife” says The Sun, that well known expert on geological affairs, today.Well at least they didn’t refer to Mount Teide as being in Las Americas. And so it begins, another summer of silly stories about the impending eruption of Mount Teide.

Dr Alicia Garcia from the CSIC (Higher Council for Scientific Investigation) has expressed doubts about how Tenerife would cope in the event of a major eruption. Fellow scientist, Juan Carracedo, also from the CSIC, said there was no immediate threat of an eruption.

The Canaries are volcanic islands and there is constant semi volcanic activity, we don’t even notice the hundreds of small tremors that happen every year. Chinyero was the last notable eruption on 18 November 1909, and the feeling that we must be due another is helping to drive the latest scares. We are lucky to have I.T.E.R (the Institute of Technology and Renewable Energy) in Granadilla, as well as the wind turbines, they also have a team of volcanic experts monitoring seismic activity around the islands. They expertise means they are often called to volcanic hot spots around the world to monitor movements.

The last scare season was 6 years ago after a couple of small tremors, I was working for The Western Sun newspaper then and it was hilarious how many people contacted us and the local Canarian press reporting smoke etc coming from Teide. Bar stool experts were in their element, predicting not only the day of an eruption but also the time “a friend of mine told me it’s going to erupt next Tuesday at 3.20 in the afternoon”.

The best false alarm of all was on a clear summer day when the blue sky was interupted by one solitary elongated white cloud that at one point was just above Teide. This caused a major eruption of phone calls to the emergency services about the “plume of smoke” pouring out of the volcano. People felt a bit silly the next day when the TV stations and the daily papers ran photos of the offending cloud in its unfortunate position.

So it’s as you were really, looks like another scorching hot day and not a cloud in sight. Now about those aliens that are due to land in Los Cristianos…