Sunday, 13th November, 2016
The beach below our hotel.
We’ve been here for about 11 days out of our 28. Already, we’ve begun to feel we’ve been here all our lives. Since building our house in Greece and particularly since we retired, we have never felt we were ‘on holiday’ when away from home. Our mindset has always been that we are just living somewhere else. And so it is here. We quickly fall in to patterns of days which quickly feel familiar and ‘normal’. This is encouraged by the weather which seems to be eternally on a diurnal range of 26C/79F daytime – 21C/70F night time. We have half board in our hotel and the food is magnificent. We have Breakfast at 8.00 am and Dinner at 6.00 pm. The rhythm of the days is ordered.
It is interesting to me to set my own, calm and ordered existence against the turbulence of the world’s political turmoil and excitement. BREXIT, Trump, Marine Le Penn, voters in Germany and Netherlands, etc., etc.. Europe is in for seriously challenging times and so are the common standards it has long espoused. Leave aside Trade and Defence, Christopher Booker, writing in The Sunday Telegraph this morning, headlines his column with this:
So farewell then, climate change nonsense;
as he reviews Donald Trump’s policies. I suppose he can’t be all bad! Trump has called global warming a hoax and The Huffington Post and The Guardian are both reporting that
Trump is moving to quit the Paris Climate Agreement — quickly!
So, you see, he can’t be all bad.
Monday, 14th November, 2016
Not so Spermarket.
I knew I’d enjoyed it and now we know that 2016 will be crowned the warmest year on record. Long may that trend continue. Today has been a very quiet, routine day. We have been reading in the sun and making plans for the future. We walked out to the local supermarket to stock up on sparkling water. True to my need to bag a bargain, I like the feeling of buying bottles at 30% of the price our 5* hotel would charge us.That’s totally unacceptable.
BREXIT in microcosm.
We went for a really good workout in the Spa/Gym. The only problem with exercising here is that, in spite of the air conditioning, the gym gets uncomfortably hot. I end up swimming in my own sweat and my shirt is difficult to lift by the time I’ve finished. Too much information? Tough!
One thing that makes me laugh in this Spanish Gym is the fact they have felt the need to paste translations of the settings buttons/data labels. Only the English would require this. As with all my graphics, you can expand them by clicking but the hotel has helped us with:
Calorias = Calories / Velocidad = Speed / Distancia = Distance / Frecuencia Cardiaca = Heartrate
It takes special intelligence to work these out. Still, when we leave the EU and all holiday in Trumpland, we’ll really need English translations!
Tuesday, 15th November, 2016
Mid-November and exactly half way through our month away. Goodness, it’s been hot today. The gauge only read the statutory 26C/79F but it felt intense and airless. Every
night, we go to bed around midnight. The sky has been clear with lots of stars and moon shining over the ocean. We went outside to see the ‘Super Moon’ only to find clouds had come over and blocked it.
This morning, Pauline woke me at 5.00 am and told me I must have left the light on over the balcony. I looked out and it was like daylight as the moon floodlit the sea right over to 
La Gomera. Unfortunately, I was so drowsy, I didn’t photograph it. The papers, of
course, were full of fantastic snaps. The Times had a lovely one at Glastonbury and another from Athens which appealed to me.
The heat and the early start combined with a consistent run of daily exercise has left us feeling rather tired today and we decided to forgo our trip to the gym. Instead, we went for a light amble around the neighbourhood. Now, of course, I feel guilty. I’m still going to watch the England match!
Wednesday, 16th November, 2016
A cracking day of strong sun and 28C/82F. Apart from the normal stuff which included watching a rather poor PMQs, we walked the extensive grounds of the hotel. Previously, I’ve written about the exotic planting which towers up through the open spaces.
This concourse is at the crossroads between rooms and restaurants, pools and gardens. In the early mornings, as we go to Breakfast and the evenings as we return from Dinner, the shrill calls of parakeets echo off the walls as they flit through 20ft date palms, banana plants, cheese plants or monstera bushes, umbrella plants or schefflera, etc.The last two, of course, would be very familiar to British homes of the 1960s – 1980s but in smaller, pot form.
Gardeners are working constantly, mowing grass, mulching beds, pruning bushes, sweeping paths, maintaining the automatic watering systems. As they work and like all the cleaning staff, room maids and waiters and waitresses, managers, etc., everyone stops what they’re are doing and acknowledges guests walking past. It can almost become tiresome for people like us who enjoy anonymity.
Thursday, 17th November, 2016
Adeje Sea Front
Another very hot day again from dawn until dusk with none stop sun and 28C/82F. We chose to explore another part of Costa Adeje and did a couple of hours walking which was plenty in that heat. We called in to a few shoe shops on our quest to find the style I bought here in February. A week ago we drew a blank completely but today we found them.
Unfortunately, they only had them for midgets. These are the big challenges of retirement. Another, is coping with all these old people who are around. When you are retired, the people who are most likely to be on holiday in November are … retired people. They are so slow and infuriatingly indecisive that they drive us mad. In and around the hotel. In the streets and shops. In the airport. Old people everywhere you look.
Don’t get me started on old people in Restaurants confronted by the multiple choice question of Buffet-presented food. They are all suddenly struck down with Dementia.
Prawns or not?
Oh no! More choice.
It is so good not to be old. That is one thing I will never do.
Friday, 18th November, 2016
Have you got that Friday feeling? We haven’t. It could just as easily be Sunday here. The sun shines. The temperature hits 27C/80F and life trundles on serenely. We’ve done our 
exercise, read our newspapers and sat and dozed in the sun a bit. We have ten days left here and we couldn’t have chosen a better month if we’d tried. Our old home in Yorkshire has been hit with snow. Now, at 7.30 pm in Yorkshire, it is a tropical 0C/32F. Our new home by the coast in Sussex is not faring that much better at 3C/37F. Even Greece is only 11C/52F. (9.30 pm). Here, it is 22C/70F and will hover around that all night. If warm weather aids life-expectancy, all the Canarians should live to 100. I’ve not seen much evidence of that unless the 20 something looking girls serving in the restaurants are really all centenarians.
No photo tonight so I thought I’d share a picture from my Twitter feed which rather amused me. It fits perfectly with our current polical situation.
Saturday, 19th November, 2016
There is something invidious about us&them comparisons but what the heck. The sub tropical experience is enhanced by pictures and reports of weather back home. The Sussex coast is expecting severe gales this evening. Hope they don’t set the burglar alarm off. West Yorkshire is … well, West Yorkshire-ish. So today’s contrast is:
Playa Paraiso
West Yorkshire
After a lovely, relaxing day doing everything slowly, I had to eat Dinner fairly sharpish because Ed Balls was in Blackpool on Pauline’s favourite, Strictly Come Dancing.
Love Sparkling Water!
Wonderful ‘Starters’
No wine again, just sparkling water with Dinner. The sparkling water is lovely. I’m becoming quite addicted to it. Unfortunately, the ‘Starters’ here are delicious so we both had two – Carpaccio of Beef and Endive stuffed with creamed blue cheese.