More Ketchup Than Salsa - Confessions of a Tenerife Barman (11 page)

By now, Joy had slid as far down in her chair as she could without lying on the floor and was the focus of all the tables around her. Faith and I were doing our best to take and deliver orders and explain to people that Joy was on her break. Faith was just on the verge of hysteria when Patricia walked in.

‘Are you on strike?’

‘Work inspectors,’ whispered Joy, jabbing a finger towards the bar.

Patricia laughed and went inside. She returned a moment later with the two suits. ‘Alejandro and Raul,’ she said, introducing each one. ‘They’re in my Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation. They’ve been pioneering round here, that’s why they’re dressed up. You’re safe.’

Joy sunk a little further. Safe for now. By the time she returned, the expats had grown agitated.

‘Why your boss lets you take a break while your so busy I’ll never know. It’s just not on. We had to wait 40 minutes for our food. And the cleanliness… well, what can you say? It’s just not good enough.’

Joy smiled. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I guess we’re not up to the high standards that you’re obviously accustomed to. Perhaps you should try MacDonalds. I hear they’re very good.’ We never saw them again, surprisingly.

The scare with the officials strengthened our resolve to make Joy legal and we made another appointment to see Julie, our gestoria.

The appointment was at 4 p.m., which gave us just enough time after finishing our morning shift to move our belongings from the studio into Terry’s house, next to the mafia. It was a two-bedroom apartment at the bottom of El Beril near the sea, one of the few homes on the complex that had an upstairs and downstairs plus a small lawn in front. Compared to the studio we had been boiled in for the last week, it was cool luxury. Terry informed us that we could have it for as long as we wanted as he had bought another place for himself and his wife. We took a little time to arrange our home, taking great pride in spreading our meagre possessions as widely as we could.

In Julie’s office a ceiling fan stirred the pages of the local English language newspaper. The dour expression of a local politician flipped over to reveal a smug tourist posing alongside an enormous blue marlin on the next page. I wondered if Pat had tried this magnificent fish as an attention-grabber on the market.

As Joy and I sat and waited for Julie, I thought about what would be going on at the market at this time. It would be the final few minutes of trading time and for those shoppers in the know, the time when all the bargains could be had. In a desperate attempt to eke out a few more sales, Pat would take to the front of the stall himself, bellowing his final offers. ‘Five trays for a fiver. That’s a freezer-f of Fleetwood’s finest for just a tenner. Try saying that when you’ve had a shandy, love,’ he’d wink.

Even with such discounts, the wily shoppers who hung back until the last moment knew that for the stallholders, it was a time when any sale was better than none.

One habitual bargain hunter never failed to show up at the eleventh hour. He was a wiry man who always wore the same clothes; brown scuffed shoes stamped down at the back, fawn trousers with an increasing variety of stains each day, a dirty dark brown raincoat with matted black woollen collar and lapel, and a trilby cocked over a few strands of dull grey hair.

He would stand in front of the stall sucking his teeth, waiting until Pat shouted for us to start packing away. Then gingerly, he’d shuffle forwards and go through the routine of prodding various pieces of fish, asking how much for each and shaking his head at the response.

‘Three-fifty? Noooo, I haven’t got three-fifty. I’m a pensioner, you know. I can hardly afford to eat nowadays. I’ll give you two pounds.’

‘I’m a fishmonger, not Father Christmas,’ Pat would reply. ‘Gerroff with you,’ he’d say, waving him away. ‘You’re on more money than me, you jeffin’ robber.’

The man knew the score and would shrink a little further into his coat looking hurt before turning slowly around as if to leave.

‘Here, Grandad. Give me three quid and I’ll throw in the plastic tray. You can put some soil in it and grow yourself some new hair.’ Pat would have already wrapped the fish, aware that a deal had been reached.

Back in Julie’s office it was now approaching 5 p.m. and she still hadn’t seen us. This was normal for our gestoria appointments but nevertheless irritating.

Another British couple had joined us in the waiting lounge. Both faces were caked in white sun cream and they wore matching safari hats. They smiled nervously and hesitantly sat down on the threadbare sofa opposite.

‘Hot today,’ the man offered meekly.

‘Scorcher,’ I replied. ‘Been on the island long?’

‘No, just arrived yesterday. We’ve bought a bar, The Rum Jug, just down the road. Julie’s sorting our paperwork out for us,’ said the man.

‘I hope you’re not in a rush, then.’ Joy was becoming agitated in the stifling heat of Janet’s poky waiting room. She started to fan herself with a copy of
Island Connections
, the local newspaper.

Like many other British bar owners, the previous owners of The Rum Jug were regulars for our Sunday roasts. Theirs was one of the first English bars in the south. They’d seen many comings and goings from other sunshine landlords and landladies. ‘If you can get through the first six months and you’ve not divorced, gone mad or killed each other you might just make it in the bar world. In Tenerife it’s called the six-month itch. Ninety per cent fail in that first half-year,’ they warned. It was the end of July. We weren’t even halfway through the itch.

This was by no means our first foray into Julie’s world of ceiling-high paperwork, half-empty coffee cups and interminable waits. Time was of no importance. Specific appointments were merely general indicators of the day you were requested to camp in her office. A quick drop-in to pick up a piece of paper could take three hours – one hour waiting for her to show up, another hour before she managed to disconnect herself from the telephone, and another hour while she complained about how busy she was and what new problems this latest addition to our library of forms would bring.

When we were eventually seen, at 5.30, Julie went through the lengthy process of repeating how we were running a high risk of Joy getting deported and that we should legally employ her and pay her a wage. However, this time, she added casually as if it were old news, that if we contracted her as a part-time worker, this would save on the tax bill and mean we only had to fork out a small amount on social security payments.

‘Why didn’t you suggest that before?’ asked Joy.

‘They’ve only just changed the rules,’ replied Julie. ‘It’s hard to keep up. Until recently all businesses had to offer any jobs to locals before employing a foreigner.’ Joy was to be contracted as working ten hours per week. There was still a slight risk as the hours she was supposed to be at work had to be specified on the form, but at least if she was found out now it would only lead to a fine, not deportation.

It was true that the rules were changing on an almost daily basis. Since the foreign invasion, bureaucracy had replaced bananas as the number one preoccupation for the Canarian workforce. As the influx of foreigners was more sudden than anticipated, the authorities had to quickly develop a system of registration formalities and administrative procedures. This they did with great aplomb but nobody told them when to stop. Sheaves of triple copy forms were produced in varying colours, all demanding the submission of supporting coloured copies that could only be procured by the presentation of certain other legal documents.

Every form had to be presented in quadruplicate, accompanied by three other supporting documents, two brown envelopes plus a note from your mother explaining why you were late returning it. Invariably this was because the letter urging you to do so arrived five days after the demand date thanks to another inadequate institution of the Canary Islands, the postal service.

Meanwhile, our legal adviser had informed us that it had been decreed that all catering establishments were required to obtain a health and hygiene certificate before an opening licence would be issued.

In theory, we weren’t supposed to open the bar without this but as it was two years since Mario served the first customer, we regarded this lack of paperwork as a triviality. However, a routine inspection by two uniformed officers from the local police enforced our intention to do things by the book.

To gain the health and hygiene certificate, the kitchen department, namely David and myself, had to attend a two-day course on correct practice in the workplace, and apply for medical certificates validating that we were free from contagious disease and any other hindering impediments. An appointment was made with a local doctor who seated us at his desk, smiled and asked us if we were feeling okay. On hearing a positive response, he stamped two proclamations of good health in exchange for the equivalent of twenty quid and wished us a good day. We were now medically entitled to carry out culinary operations. We just needed to go on the course to prove we were of sound enough mind not to poison too many people.

Inevitably, Joy’s form filling involved yet another one-hour drive north to Santa Cruz, the island’s capital. We had already been this way before to register our residency at the consulate and also to apply for work permits for David and me. It was not a trip we enjoyed. The bureaucracy required both David and me, as official partners, to go and sign everything. This meant we were both out of action for most of the day, putting extra strain on the girls.

On this particular occasion, Joy, as the intended employee, also had to present herself, which meant we had to shut the bar for most of the daytime and lose money. But the most aggravating thing about our paperwork quests up north was that more often than not, they were unsuccessful. We knew that as soon as we entered the police station or foreign office or department of health and social security, a frumpish bulldog would be assigned with the sole intention of barking a curt ‘no!’ even before we’d had the chance to explain our reason for being there.

And this was no normal ‘no’, delivered with a hint of pity and suggestions of alternative routes. The ‘nos’ that we received were full-blooded, self-satisfying absolute refusals served with a strong side order of condescension. Apparently we had produced the wrong documentation, presented it in an unsatisfactory manner, at the wrong time, wearing the wrong clothes and with just the wrong inflection in our voices. The officials would not be moved, no matter that we had a business to run and couldn’t afford to return the following day and thereby lose a consecutive day’s profits. No matter that we had risen at 6.30, driven north for an hour and then spent another hour trying to find a parking space in a city that had none, driving on an interminably stupid one-way system that flung you back south if you accidentally missed the unmarked turn-off.

It might have made an inkling of difference if the capital was a pretty city. But in 1991 it wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination. The first monument that greeted travellers from the South was a shoreline oil refinery whose odour was twice as unpleasant as the sight of its steel intestines. Once in the centre, a hotchpotch of architectural styles sullied the pedestrian Plaza de España, a place where gypsies would charge at you waving linen tablecloths and frilly pillowcases. And that was your reward for enduring a white knuckle ride along the TF-1, a testing ground for kamikaze taxi drivers and 16-year-old rally wannabes.

This time, we entered the police station with a large sigh, a foreboding sense of doom, and a bulging folder containing every piece of paper we’d collected.

Inside, all seemed calm. The only noises were the low hum of fluorescent lighting and a periodic ‘clack’ as a large bespectacled man in the background cautiously poked at his computer keyboard. Every tap was followed by an uncertain glance up, checking that every letter typed was in fact making its way from fingertip to screen. Satisfied that it was, he would then gaze around looking for someone with whom to share his accomplishment.

‘Take a number’, the sign said. I looked up at the electronic counter – ‘13’, it read. Our ticket said 112. We sat down and flicked disinterestedly through a couple of faded
Hola!
magazines that had been thoughtfully provided in 1987.

The minutes moved on but the numbers didn’t. Whatever problem had befallen the elderly English couple at the desk, it was not being rectified despite their exasperated insistence in front of the shoulder-shrugging assistant. They had given up struggling with the local tongue and were now remonstrating in strong Geordie accents. The girl behind the counter had suddenly lost the ability to speak English and was having none of it. She shooed them off with a wave of her hand and summoned the next in line. The Geordies sauntered off, red-faced, clutching the wad of seemingly ineffectual forms. They had my sympathy. Several times before we had failed to impress a paper shuffler, only to return the following day with a different clerk on duty who would then process our paperwork with not the slightest of fuss.

Eventually, with a colossal leap from 18 to 112, the counter indicated that it was our turn. I passed over the bundle of papers.

‘Do you have the 123 and the 234?’

I lifted the top copy and there indeed they were. The girl scanned every detail, trying desperately to find a reason why they shouldn’t be accepted.

‘
Residencia
,’ she demanded, annoyance now creeping into her voice.

This we produced and frustrated again, she moved up a gear, converting back to Spanish to try and throw us.

‘Did you submit your double ‘O’ seven, fill in a 36C and receive a signed copy of the B52s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you ever taken an A2B, forwarded a 4-4-2 and been given a T4-2 or a 2-4T?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Last month.’

Her face lit up as if she’d tripped over a bucketful of gold.

‘Then it’s expired.’

She sat back in the chair contented. Her smug expression and folded arms evidently insinuated that she was done with me and victory was hers, but we were not giving in this time. From our folder I slowly produced another form. Our eyes locked in a Mexican stand-off. As she saw the form, her mouth dropped and we both knew I had won. We had the notorious re-submitted, double stamped, top yellow copy of form 666. A valid extension from hell. The lights flickered, horrified heads turned to stare and the girl behind the counter shielded her eyes.