In the town where I was born.
We both love travelling and going away but no matter where we go nothing ever beats home. Norwich and Norfolk have a unique feel all their own. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but sometimes though it takes going away to really appreciate it though.
This morning in Lanzarote we woke to hazy sunshine which was a vast improvement on the day before. It was warm enough to have breakfast on the balcony again.
We were in no rush and so it was quite late morning when we started on our planned second walk to Matagorda. It seemed that everyone had the same idea as the start of the promenade was quite busy with people.
We passed the guy who was still building his sand sculpture of the Last Supper. The sand here is perfect for sculpting. However, I am not convinced that there had any progress since we had seen it 3 days ago. I now have this theory that it always in the same state and that he thinks he will get more ‘tips’ if it looks like he is still working on it. If anyone else goes past it later this year perhaps they could let me know.
Today there seemed to be a steady flow of airplanes coming in and we amused ourselves by looking to see where they were arriving from. Karen started to worry that the island would be full tonight and start to sink under the weight of all the extra people.
Once we got to our destination of O’Sheas we were lucky to get the prime seat overlooking the sea. We placed the same order as before and again thoroughly enjoyed it. Karen was exceedingly pleased with herself when she got todays Wordle in 3, and promptly had to text Barry to tell him. He was suitably not impressed to be interrupted whilst working to be told this. She also then had an influx of messages of job offers of odd days through to June which she had to respond to.
We had a slow leisurely walk back as Karen was now being stopped by getting responses from friends, she was planning to meet up with during the half term week.
I persuaded Karen that we should contest the Lanzarote Golf Open on the way back and so we paid our 7 Euros went in. It seems the course revamped had been carried out by some British people and their friends were today manning the stall and bar.
The course looked from a distance much better than it was. It was poorly designed and not thought through at all. The outside barriers had been reused from the previous course and were still inadequate in preventing the ball leaving the course at random points. The ‘putting green’ itself had some interesting joins. The worst part though were the holes (or rather sink plug holes) themselves. There was a very slight incline around each one (presumably for drainage purposes). This meant getting the ball to rest in the hole itself was all but impossible on many of the holes. This didn’t frustrate Karen one little bit.
After the first few holes the scores were quite close. But then Karen just got annoyed and had a run of scoring 6 (the maximum that is counted by our rules). By the time we got to the last 2 holes I knew I couldn’t be caught. Karen was very gracious with her congratulatory wishes at the end, and it took some persuasion for her to take my photo.
Before we went back to the apartment, we bought some rolls to pack up for our journey tomorrow. However, when we tried one once back we realised they were already dry and that I would need to pop out again in the morning to get fresh ones.
We then caught the last of the sunshine on the balcony both reading our Kindles until it started to get dark. We did the little packing we had to do in preparation for tomorrow and then got ready to go out for the evening.
There was no plan of what we were doing for tonight which I think we both knew we would end up with us back at Pinocchio’s. There was nowhere else that took our fancy by the time we got there and so we took our usual table outside. I had another Pizza whilst Karen went for the Chicken Breast. Both again were excellent. Karen decided to finish this holiday with a final Irish Coffee.
We asked if the wooden Pinocchio that sat outside the restaurant was a new one as we showed them the photo, we had taken of it with Karen on our first visit back in 2005. The waiter assured us it was, but it had just been repainted. He was able to verify the repaired broken leg on our picture with the current one.
As we headed back, we realised the promenade was quite deserted again, almost as if people had decided to eat early or stay in their apartments. Karen also realised she felt a little bit squiffy as in just over 2 hours she had drunk a large glass of Red in the apartment before we left, followed by 2 more smallish glasses of red with the meal, then had a strong Irish Coffee and a decent shot of Baileys at the end. She got up the hill at the end with no complaints about her knee so it obviously helped.
We watched a little bit of TV before retiring, tired but happy.
There was more on the news about the NHS. It is a wonderful institution, one of which the UK should be rightly proud. For me though there are a couple of issues. The first is that if you were going to create the NHS today you would do so very differently. It could and should be so much more efficient and slicker at the top rather than lots of component parts shoved together. This needs a top-down approach and firm leadership and funding to rectify. I am not sure though any Government is now brave or clever enough to tackle it.
The second relates to one of the initial reasons given for the lockdowns 2 years ago and that was ‘to protect the NHS’. This we all just about did. The problem here is that we run the NHS at over 95% capacity all the time all year long. Any crisis like Covid or Flu and it struggles to cope, and we run the front-line staff ragged and risk overrunning it. Two years later and nothing has changed. If we are not going to do my first point, then why haven’t we at least tried to address the second and up the capacity. I know it cannot be done overnight but I see little real effort or incline to do so.
It had been a good trip, just the paperwork checks and flight to get through tomorrow.
