The Joys of Travel

Here I am, throroughly enjoying my short break on El Hierro. Meanwhile, my suitcase is enjoying a short break on Tenerife.

No, it's not the airline's fault. By the time I knew I could definitely book a flight, all the planes were booked solid. (I think this is from people going back to Tenerife in time for the new school term which starts on Monday). So I came on the ferry.

There´s no direct ferry on a Friday, but the Benchigua Express goes from La Palma to La Gomera to Tenerife to La Gomera to El Hierro. It´s a very fast boat, but the full trip takes five hours, and I get sea-sick. So I got off the boat in La Gomera and got back on again 90 minutes later, after a walk, and a writing session with the laptop and another travel-sickness pill. I told several crew members I was doing this, and nobody seemed to think I'd have a problem. Although, to be fair, I never mentioned that I was leaving the suitcase on the boat. Same boat, right? What could go wrong?

I got a bit of a bad feeling when I saw the luggage van drive off the ferry at El Hierro. It looked a bit different.

It was different van. Since Tenerife is the main stop, with far more passengers, they have two vans. That way they can fill one with luggage from Tenerife before the boat gets in, and just drive it on. Meanwhile, the van from La Palma drives off the boat, and stays on Tenerife, so that people can still collect their suitcases after the boat's left.

Only mine didn't get collected, because I was happily wandering around San Sebastian de La Gomera.

Well, the free luggage service is "At your own risk", (and I'd have had the exact same problem if I''d paid for a locker) but the staff were very helpful. My suitcase is almost certainly still on Tenerife, but they could put it on the next ferry for me.

The next ferry arrives 70 minutes after my flight leaves.

Yes they can, and will, send the suitcase to La Palma for me. I will get it back. They took my details, although I haven't heard anything because mobile coverage at my friend's house is very poor.

It could have been a whole lot worse. I kept my camera gear and the laptop with me, to use on the way (and I got a fair bit of writing done). My friend is supplying me with toiletries. Really, it was just a question of buying a new toothbrush and some emergency underwear.

But I really hope I do get that suitcase back. It's got some presents for my friend, which I'll post, and a one-of-a-kind jumper which took me ages to knit.

Sneaking off.

Today is the last day of Christmas in Spain. Tomorrow I ought to start a grand session of housework: taking down decorations, tidying up and cleaning everything.

Sounds boring, doesn't it?

So I'm sneaking off to El Hierro instead.

Of course the housework (and the guilt) will be waiting for me when I get back, but it'll be worth it. Besides, last time I snuck off like this, I got a lot of writing done.

Happy new year

Happy new year to both my readers.

We had a fairly quiet family party for new year's eve. I was very disorganised, and kept sending my son out to the shops for things I'd forgotten, so the leg of lamb went into the oven late, and we ate late, but it tasted pretty good when we finally got around to it.

And the fireworks at midnight were amazing. We could even see flashes on the neighbouring islands of Tenerife and La Gomera.

So now it's time to make plans for 2011. I hope it brings all my readers whatever they most wish for.

Submissions

One of my new year's resolutions for 2010 was to send out two submissions per week. Note that this doesn't mean two new stories -- on average I have to send out each story about ten times before it sells, and then I often try for reprint sales. But nothing's going to sell sitting on my hard drive, is it?

Well, two sales per week comes to 104 in a year. I haven't managed that, but today I sent off my 100th submission for the year, which is pretty good going and a personal record.

The solar system in my living room

Last month I made a (roughly) scale model solar system ready for a group of school kids visiting the telescopes - and then the visit got cancelled by bad weather. Ah well, sooner or later it'll get used.

Here at last is a photo of it.

The sun is far too small - it should be about 10 x larger. And then, anticlockwise from the sun, we have marbles for Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars (Mars is a small, red marble, and rather hard to spot.) At the back we have painted plastic footballs for the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn (Jupiter should be 20% bigger) followed by tennis balls for Uranus and Neptune.

The distances between the planets aren't to scale either. I was going to spread them out over 15 m inside the telescope dome, although that still leaves the planets too big. Really, it should be 4 m (13ft) from the sun to Earth, and 12 km (7.5 miles) from the sun to Neptune!