Gerry Anderson, writing for the Belfast Telegraph, “in Tenerife, where Britons come to feel at home”, talks about artist impersonators, ex-pats who own and have named the various pubs and that “The ghosts of old television shows haunt the casual observer. It’s as if Only Fools and Horses and Rising Damp never came off the air.”
You can understand how it comes about, when time stood still for most expats who have been here for years. Precious few learn Spanish or take on any new culture. Partly, because running their “dream” British bar does not afford them time, opportunity or motivation to do so.
Well, true, my best friend did used to do a Gloria Estefan tribute show here in Tenerife and, I’m almost certain that the real one didn’t tell blue jokes in a Brummie accent between songs (a nasty habit, in part, she picked up from a certain, occasional, karaoke compere, whom I shall not name [1]). However, a few lyrics in Spanish also helped make her accepted by local audiences, as well as popular with Italian tourists for some reason. And I like to think that was just a little more upmarket than, say, the four Elvis impersonators we once saw all in the same room, three of whom were wearing identical white, rhinestone studded jumpsuits. (The other one was red!)
And though I avoid the tourist areas and the “British colonies” here, yes, I also own nostalgic videos (a dying media in itself) that contain episodes of both of the aforementioned shows and, sometimes I felt left behind in the years BC (Before Computers) and internet, when the advances of the outside world didn’t reach the remote parts of the island.
But I was always acutely aware of the danger of getting caught in such a cultural timewarp and have done my best to keep up with the “modern world”, even if I’ve had to do it from a distance and in Spanish. Perhaps even more so than I would have if I’d stayed in my “comfort zone” in the UK, where age alone might have lured me into stagnation and “old fashioned” attitudes.
As I’m fond of saying though, it’s only in a small area of Tenerife where you will find this environment and, one would have thought that only a limited British clientele still goes abroad looking for this typical “Brits abroad” experience with a Full English Breakfast? The modern Brit has changed, even if the ones who left the UK 20 years ago, have not.
For Tenerife to successfully change it’s image, for the better (and Brits abroad anywhere, for that matter), perhaps it’s time that these “old hands” were brought, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century?
[1] Yes, OK, it was me, guilty, as charged.
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Sponzurz
