fun and laughter, tenerife part deux.
Well, I'm back, largely unscathed apart from blistered feet. The hotel we were working in covers some 15 acres horizontally, and about 500' vertically, and, because it was designed to be a magical place where the moneyed stroll about, having a leisurely dip in the multitude of swimming pools carved from the volcanic rock on which the building is perched, there are no direct routes to anywhere. To get from our production office to the room where the main event was being set up took at least ten minutes, involved six cutesy bridges, two rustic staircases, several flights of stone staircases and a lift. It is just as well that this was all good for us, because it was pretty terrible otherwise.
I had fairly typical spanish electrics to contend with, as the pictures can demonstrate, the taped up cable hanging out of the ceiling (and with water running over it intermittently) is a 125 amp three phase supply (the equivalent of six houses) and wasn't in the end used by me, the other, is the back of a socket that I did use. We had no end of trouble with the technical equipment, there was nothing on the island, and bringing our own equipment over from the UK was vetoed on grounds of cost. As it turned out, bringing our own from the UK would have been a cheaper option, lighting hire cost 18.000.00 euros (for one day), and we'd have expected to pay about £3000.00 for the same gear over here for a week, and we would have been able to pick the equipment we wanted rather than the equipment that they were prepared to rent us.
Having said that, the lighting company were very nice, and their equipment was mostly very good, they were being stitched up by the intermediary facilitator just as much as we were.
On the other hand it was nice to wander around and see bananas growing and strelitzia alba too, oh, hang on, that's here in my flat. There were some seriously good specimens growing over there, the local hooch appears to be some sort of banana spirit, I've bought some, but I'm not sure I have the courage to open it, let alone drink it.
The gig went quite well, Lemar and his band were quite nice, although musically not to my taste, they did disconcert me somewhat (I was standing offstage) by having a group hug and prayer together before they went on stage, each to their own I guess. The gala dinner was not entirely a success either, the combination of the spanish taste for meat that is still twitching, and car dealers from Beckenham was not a happy one, and I watched many dozens of uneaten tenderloin steaks heading back to the servery. Mine was lovely, and the grilled langoustines that preceded it were lovely too, although I think the absinthe sauce was a bit unneccessary.
That's all for now, more later...
posted by Lampy @ 2/06/2006 07:23:00 pm
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