On the first Sunday of every month, the port car park gets taken over by a flea market. It’s only small, but I love it. This morning a couple of hours slipped by very fast. There’s an amazing variety of stuff on sale. For some reason there are lots of flowers, plants and vegetables. This morning I stocked up on herbs. Most of the stuff is cheap, but this stall…
La Palma is a confusing island to drive around. There are so many steep ravines that the roads tend to be twisty. If you want to go north from Cancajos, you have to start by taking the road south out of the village. If you want to drive southeast to the lighthouse from the Teneguía volcano, you have to go northwest to begin with. I’ve lived here for seventeen years,…
Last year I decided to take “localvore” to its logical conclusion, and grow a bit of food on the balcony. I had mixed success (see “Peas”). Well, last night I harvested the solitary cabbage, and we had about a third of it with pork for dinner. It was delicious. I suppose it figures – organic cabbage harvested twenty minutes before we ate it. And then I looked at the half-circle…
Escape Velocity have bought “The Dodo Dragon” for Issue three. This story’s been published before, (once in Greek!) but it still makes me feel good all over. And the novel’s up to 80,771 words, which also makes me feel good. But I don’t think I’m going to finish the first draft by the end of the month after all. Which is a puity, because I’m starting a writing course in…
For its size, La Palma has a surprisingly vibrent music scene. On Friday, the local Hip hop group La 38 released their first CD, “Cintas Perdidas” (Lost tapes) on the Monkey Family label. Of course all the lyrics are in Spanish. The group consists of four artists: Falcon, Lese, Soulo y Split, and they’ve been together since 2004. You can hear clips of their CD at Myspace:http://www.myspace.com/treintaiocho or see their…
Last night I went to the delayed Sardine’s Funeral in Los Sauces. I finally discovered why people say it’s better than the sardine’s funeral in Santa Cruz. They say it because it’s true. The crowd was far bigger than in Santa Cruz, and over half of them wore fancy dress – mostly Halloween theme costumes. This is my hairdresser. I didn’t recognise him until he spoke. First they had a…