For all those who don’t know, Joy Liddell is my partner and is currently pursuing a career as a TV presenter. She has started by showing you how to do Mount Teide in Tenerife, as seen below. She needs all the help she can get. If you’re a travel webmaster give her a link. If you’re […]

Read more.....

I’ve just got back from a visit to Siam Park, which is currently vying with Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia for the award of ‘most overdue completion date’. However, despite the lack of punctuality, I have to say the park is something else.  In my capacity as a Tenerife travel writer, I got to try out some […]

Read more.....

Living in the hills of Tenerife, the sights, sounds and smells seem amplified to epic proportions. Whether it’s the pungent smell of a dozen goats’ bottoms, the distant howling of my psycho neighbour or the slap-in-the-face, poke-in-the-eye, boot-in-the-balls astonishment at the night sky. I LOVE LIVING HERE.
I used to live down there (he says pointing […]

Read more.....

Well, he of the red pen, returned our sitcom efforts with a commendable amount of red scrawl and the potential was deemed as neither ‘yay nor nay’ but a solid ‘maybe’. Which is better than a slap in the face with a wet carp, but not quite as good as a letter from the Director […]

Read more.....

Life is pretty exciting at the moment. Sometimes it can be a plain bore, a never ending succession of menial features to write, facts to check, chores to avoid and kids’ toys to mend. At the moment though, it’s EXCITING. Sorry, I shouted.
I’m currently awaiting the verdict on a sitcom that I’ve co-written with a […]

Read more.....

There’s a lot to be said for the mañana attitude still so prevalent in Tenerife. Urgent tasks are re-classified as tomorrow’s duties, ‘priorities’ tossed into the same to-do-basket as everything else. Result - stress removed, but mission usually unaccomplished. Lists help, but are rarely accomplished.
Yesterday morning I stared apprehensively at such a list that my […]

Read more.....

How I swapped the delights of serving drunken holidaymakers for putting pen to paper
Being released from the bar gave us the freedom to explore Tenerife. Having spent the last seven years with our heads inside a beer chiller, to be able to drive into the mountains, breathe in the crisp, pine-scented air and indulge in […]

Read more.....

How I swapped the delights of Bolton fish market for life as a bar owner in Tenerife …
It was while holding aloft a not altogether pleasant-smelling mackerel that the decision was made. Blood dripping from a rabbit dangling overhead tinted the cold water from the fish and rolled down a white sleeve.
The March rain hammered […]

Read more.....

I seem to be getting quite a few emails from people in the UK recently asking how you go about becoming a writer. Funny how things like this come in batches.
My first thoughts when I get two or three enquiries a day is that it’s a friend winding me up. I spend time on answering […]

Read more.....

Having just returned from a press trip to Butlins in Skegness, I have the urge to rant about the hospitality attitude in Tenerife.
I have to admit that my expectations were fairly modest. I was a Butlins virgin, and as such, I had only the misconception of all-day Bingo, sychophantic Redcoats and noon-till-night knobbly-knee contests as […]

Read more.....