Flickr Foto Series 25

Oh buoy!

Flickr Foto Series 17

Palm Tree Top

Tenerife

Apologies for the hiatus. Last week was half term here and my father kindly took us off to the sun for a week's holiday in Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. The islands are Spanish speaking but lie well south of Spain parallel with the Sahara. We eight flew from Gatwick with XL and stayed in the Bahia Flamingo Hotel, Puerto Santiago, not far from Los Gigantes. We had decent weather until the last couple of days and a real relaxing time.

Sunday was something of a disaster. We set off in good time for a fellowship in Los Christianos but en route someone got on who believed her purse had been stolen. The driver was instructed to wait for the police but people slowly began to drift off. In the end we did nothing for over an hour and so were unable to attend. We had our own meeting in the evening. Lots of lessons there.

We enjoyed a trip later in the week seeing pilot whales and dolphins off the coast. My youngest son celebrated his seventh birthday and chose to go to the Jungle Park zoo to celebrate. That was good too. We were sorry not to be able to do more exploring or to see the less touristy north of the island. Perhaps another time.

Christmas Books 2007

Among other gifts, I received a few books this Christmas - all secular and all spot on for me. I suppose people think I've enough Christian books. My sons gave me QI: The book of general ignorance by Lloyd and Mitchinson (more here) and Grumpy old Christmas by Stuart Prebble, which I've started - in the midst of the humour there are some serious points made.

My wife got me Philip Ardagh's Book of absolutely useless lists (more here) and a small AA pocket guide book to Tenerife (as we're off there next month), which it turns out is written by our neighbour Andrew Sanger (see here and here).

From my parents-in-law there was a nice hardcover I Never Knew That About Wales by Christopher Winn and a Sudoku puzzle book.

While in Aber I also treated myself to Cleopatra's face fatal beauty by Michelle Lovric and two Welsh books in Oxfam. One was Llais y doctor Welsh language pieces by Lloyd-Jones, which I'll probably never be able to read and the other was the second volume of the works of Pantycelyn, which at least contains all his English hymns as well as his Welsh ones. (More here and here).