Tenerife

I've just had a week in Tenerife and can honestly say that I'm glad to be back at work. I've discovered that there are Gods, lots of them and they are called salesmen. Timeshare salesmen, holiday club salesmen, bow down and worship for they have changed the landscape of the island.

We were in Sunningdale Village at a place called Golf Del Sur which is close to Los Abrigos, at last a genuine name. It was a circle of apartments surrounding a swimming pool and was in turn half surrounded by similar property, while the rest of the view was abandoned building sites and tower cranes stretching down to the coast- with- no- beach. Even the pool was cold, I only went in once, then abandoned it to the kids.

Current cost to stay in delightful places like this is about £14,000, then there are upgrades to 'gold', another £5000, and to 'diamond' another five grand, and lets not forget the annual maintenance fee of £1500. What you get is the right to holiday there for you and your children's lifetime. Poor sods, what have they ever done to deserve such a fate?

Gazing inland up the slopes of the volcano I could see what I believed to be actual Spanish villages clinging to the slopes of rocky outcrops, but I was wrong. They were more Holiday Club 'villages'. OK, so mountain goats need holidays too.

At the top of one 'village' was a wedding-cake/candyfloss type villa which the rep/salesbastard was proud to tell us was owned by Mr Beniton himself with his 'little red Ferrari'. And everybody smiled!!!

I've just blown 1 week of my precious holidays on this shit so I feel very low at the moment and need a course of hypnotism to make me forget. I don't think I'll ever forget though that the food was so bad I once parted with £7.50 for a double mac at Burger King as a pleasant change.
crazy, crazy, crazy.