Have just returned from Tenerife [the rough part].

Sorry I didn't send any post cards, but I was far too busy being thrown out of supermarkets. We had a good time, although I can have a good time on the train from Datchet to Waterloo.

I picked up a few more holiday tips such as;

• Never, never, never travel anywhere on a 'First Choice' aircraft. Don't even make them your second or third choice. The space between seats is only wide enough for 'above the knee' amputees. Luckily for Gary I prebooked him an extra leg room seat on the emergency exit, so he sat there with his legs splayed out like an over-sexed lap dancer. Meanwhile Lizzie and I sat behind gathering crush injuries. How I didn't get a DVT I don't know. Clearly the gin helped thin my blood. So my advice if you can't book flights with BA, then don't go.

• Agree with your partner about how you are going to transfer to your hotel before you land. Once we had pushed our small mountain of luggage into the arrivals area, I located our 'rep' to find out what coach we had to get on. I registered a look of absolute horror on Gary's face as he realised he was in grave danger of being herded onto another communal form of transport, which was going to stop at ten other hotels before ours. He then swept past all the other passengers [as if they had been told they had bird flu] and I caught up with him at the taxi rank swinging our cases into a cab, like he had just 'done' a bank. It was all too much for me, because I then had to walk back to tell the rep that 'No we didn't want to go on the coach, nor attend the welcome party or visit Mount Teide or go to the lizard mating park. By the time I got back to the taxi Gary was practically fluent in 'Cab driver Spanish'.
  
  
• Don't let your spouse talk you out of taking your extra warm fluffy dressing gown with you, and try to bluff you with the average night time temperatures of 16 degrees. That may well be the case, but when we arrived Gary whacked on the air conditioning and I went blue with frost bite. It was only when I threatened to phone home and apply for cold weather payments that he relented. I spent the rest of the holiday trying to make dressing gown shapes out of the towels. I have the pattern now if you're interested. It can also be used as a rope ladder for climbing out of burning buildings.
  
  
• Avoid the Country & Western bars. Apart from the fact that most of all the C&W singers sound like they have parts of their anatomy trapped in their car door, there's a limit to how many morose 'my wife ran off and left me and my dorg died too' type of songs you can listen to and stay sane. By the end of the second week I developed a sort of nervous tick when I heard 'Ruby don't take your love to town'

That's all from my handy book of travel advice volume 1. Hope to catch up with you all sooner or later

love

Charlotte
April 2006