Real connections between people in Santa Cruz de Tenerife
Lost on Thursday evening somewhere between Plaza de Espana and the nearest bus stop: a few keys on a loop of red wool with a small brass bell, about the size of a thumbnail. The biggest is the only copy for a garage that I cannot get into without it. Years ago I would have asked at the nearest bar and someone would have kept them behind the counter. Maybe they still would. I will check this board again on Sunday.
One Sunday you sat on a bench on the Rambla giving each pigeon a different piece of bread and speaking to each one in a low voice, with some warmth and some disapproval. I was passing with an ice cream. You looked up and said, this one is the problem, and pointed at a very large pigeon. I said I could tell. You nodded. The pigeon knew. I walked on and ate my ice cream a little faster, in case.
I was lying on the black sand at Playa de Las Teresitas in the afternoon when a man two towels away started singing under his breath, an old Canarian song, slightly flat. Without realising it I was humming along. He looked over and grinned. We did not speak. At the end of the song we both applauded softly, once. I looked up the song that night. It has four verses. I know three. I have sung it in the shower for two weeks. I think the man would approve of the shower.
When calima dust is blowing in from the Sahara, close your windows before you leave the flat, not when you get back. It sounds trivial. It is not, because the dust is fine and gets on everything, the laptop keyboard and the balcony chairs included. I learned this on a day that looked perfectly normal, which is how calima starts. Now I check the forecast before a long day around the Rambla. A cloth over the keyboard is a good idea too.
Overheard at the mercado, just before the midday break. A customer at the fish counter asked, "Can you do one more, please?" The man behind it said, "I can, but the fish can wait and my lunch cannot." She laughed, put her bag down, and said she would be back later. What happened: nothing, and nobody was upset. What I noted: shops here close for a long break, and a polite no can sound like a joke. I wrote it down under the heading Schedule.
I had a broken ankle and a pair of crutches on the guagua in Ofra one Tuesday morning and nobody moved. A woman in the third row stood up, gave me her seat, and held my crutches the whole way. She got off two stops past her own to make sure I reached the street. She waved from the window and I waved back. I never knew her name. If you are reading, the ankle is fine. I take a seat in the third row now. Nobody has asked for it yet.
I stood in front of a mountain of potatoes at the Mercado de Nuestra Señora de África on Saturday morning and could not tell the old wrinkled ones from the new ones. The man behind the stall picked out the right ones, told me which to boil with the skin on, and slipped in a small jar of red mojo for free. I made them exactly as he said, twenty five minutes, salt in the water. It was the best dinner of the month. I went back to tell him. He was busy. I told the potatoes.
You got on the tram near the Plaza de España at 4.15 holding a bunch of sunflowers so big you had to turn sideways to fit through the door. I was in the seat by the window, trying not to laugh. You sat down, the sunflowers took up half the carriage, and everyone made room without a word. A man handed you a rubber band. You got off at La Laguna and the carriage felt much smaller. I miss that carriage. I miss the rubber band.
