We'd booked for the first time into Bloc, the Japanese-style minimalist hotel which is so conveniently right in the terminal building. The room looks fab - suede walls, nice lighting, very chic, but there are no window and the aircon is quite noisy, and the bathroom is a wet room. That means if you take a shower straight away, the whole floor is really wet and subsequent trips to the basin to clean your teeth mean you must either dry the floor with a towel or get very wet socks.
For the first time that I can remember we weren't asked to go through a passport control, but the usual chicane of baggage screening always seems to result in delays and questions which create frustration and anxiety. Not that we were short of time, but - surely they can see we are not terrorists. I feel we should be waved through - with an airy 'Ah, hallo Mr and Mrs Mussett - how nice to see you again - do come in...'
I think that winding pathway which connects from the security zone to the waiting area must be a practice run for the entry to hell. Its black marble floor tiles are sprinkled with alarming sparkles. The air is scented with - what? - the dying agony of musk whales and chemicals. Slender young people want you to wander into their expensive areas of retail.... It's hateful, nasty. No doubt it's all this retail which subsidises the costs of the airports, but we have to factor in a profit-margin for shareholders. I remember when Heathrow was an airfield off the A4, and the departures hall was basically a barn where you waited. It had nice floor tiles in a design made by an artist. (Who?)
We bought the most delicious croissants since our visit to Sceaux in December, from Pret, and sat with coffee and fruit salad and feeling as if our holiday was at last beginning. The masses and hordes of people are terrifying. The sheer numbers. We are so many on the planet. But each is a universe, a dreamer, a family-person. This is one of the great conundrums which we face.
Then we waited and walked to our gate and had a scuffle with the EasyJet employee who said only Speedy-Boarding passengers may keep their handbags outside their cabin bags. So I stuffed my two carriers into one lump and held up the queue.... Again, the shareholders' profits come before the care of customers... Squeezyjet makes you pay for everything. I remember when I used to be a person, someone. Now I am just a number, a blob of data, and they see my bank account rather than my self.
Walking onto the tarmac into the bright cold air we stood and marvelled as a Virgin Airbus taxied past - this giant, gleaming metal thing, huge and dominant. How do they do it? How has man made these enormous things which can rise up into the air, carrying souls and cargoes? How? It is miraculous.
Our own plane was smaller but not full - and that is a relief. The cabin crew not so stressed, room to move about. I met a woman whose sister is dying of cancer in the Midlands. We did a bit of yoga together at the back of the plane.
The touchdown at La Palma was miraculous, light as a feather and fifty minutes early. We could see those typically Canarian volcanic rocks - black and crumbly-looking, as if they had spewed out of the ground only last week - but perhaps those flows were a hundred years ago or more. To see it, the rock looks like cake. To touch, it's as hard as the hardest thing you ever touched, or shrank away from.
Our car - a Fiat 500 - is spot new and reminds me of the tiny space I was used to until I swapped my own 500 for a Fiat Doblo earlier this year.... We set off, trying to get the phone satnav to give us a signal, to see where our turning is, to look at the surroundings....
Eventually we're on the right road, zigzagging over the central mountain. Down by the coast are swathes of banana fields, like they have on Tenerife but looking in better condition and tightly fenced in. The houses are surrounded by flowers, everything looks bright, and there are so many plants I have never seen before along the roadsides - dragon trees, euphorbias, some deciduous woods....
We cross over a strip of land which the satnav calls Alter Flugenzahn or something - an airstrip, and surprisingly (to me) labelled in German. Then over the ridge, and into a different landscape - pine forests and broader valleys. We drift down to the western coast, through El Paso, and turning south to find Puerto Naos. We have to ring the owner of the apartment to find out where it is, evidently not in the town at all.
He meets us at 'the roundabout' and leads us along between banana plantations with their high dark stone walls, and turns sharply into a tiny narrow alley between two fields, like a canyon. The road is rough stones and dust, with deep pits. Will our little 500 make it? At the end, by the sea, is a black dusty carpark with a few cars and then a wall and a terrifying descent of these hard black rocks and a swirling mass of waves thundering and booming below. To our right is a gate and then a building.... Our guide - who is German - says 'I am Oliver'. That's about all he says. But, our apartment is right on the terrace. Not quite ready for us but two women are cheerfully cleaning it out for us. They bring us mint tea as we wait under a real palmtree umbrella sunshade, sheltering from the wind and enjoying the sun. On the headland behind us is an hotel - a bit nearer to the town. We can piggyback on its wifi.
The girls leave, and we explore our new quarters - all very practical and though not new, comfortable and bright. The waves are crashing below the terrace.
We drive the mile or so back into town to walk around and get some supplies. There the promenade lies like a harlot waiting for customers - glammed up, easy, complacent. Everyone around us is German. One beach shop is owned by a Mr Wong. Our waiter (local) explains that a Nao was large ship or boat, not for fishing but for trade. Hence Puerto Naos. The way he says it, it sounds more Portuguese than Spanish and I wonder if the word comes from 'navo'? The only boats in the port now are for tourists, though there is still a working fishing fleet at the next town ip the coast - Tazacorte.
We eat - my favourite Canarian dish of prawns in garlic, and salad, and I drink some local wine which is delicious. We shop - at Spar, that successful retail brand which appears round the whole of Europe, selling what people really want, it seems, instead of that vaporous stuff at the airports. We come 'home', fall into bed. The waves crash and crash outside. The deep booming noise every few seconds keeps me awake. I have strange dreams - of powerlessness, anger, invasion.
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