The Beach in Tenerife

Some 5 months ago I spotted a ‘page’ on Facebook that I had not seen before, it was for the Gran Sur Centro Comercial in Fañabe.  For those of you that haven’t heard of this, it is a lovely shopping complex in the South of Tenerife, and has a variety of shops, restaurants as well as a Cinema Complex showing English Language films.

While looking through the page I spotted a competition to win a couple of tickets for the Simply Red concert that had recently been announced.  All I had to do was become a ‘Fan’ of the page … so I did!

I have to admit that I forgot all about the competition until Monday this week when I received a message to say that I was one of 5 lucky winners and could I collect the tickets from the Gran Sur the next day!  Result, I couldn’t believe it.

So, tickets collected, after work yesterday Cathy and I went to the Scotch Corner for a lovely meal before walking over the road to the San Eugenio Shopping Centre to get on one of the free buses provided by the Siam Park to take us up to the Concert venue, Adeje Golf.  We even sat in the top like a couple of kids, it was great.

When we got off the bus we were faced with a decision, a 50 metre walk up hill or wait for a place on the wally trolley (can I call it that?).  We chose to get on the train and we were glad we did because even when that dropped us off we then had to hike up and around the concert area before were allowed in … not the best route the organisers could have chosen.

No sooner had we stepped in to the ‘arena’ then I was spotted by John Beckley and his party, several photos later Cathy and I made our way down the hill towards the stage area.  We stopped about half way down thinking it would be a good spot to meet up with our friends, from Cheers Bar, Head to Toe, The Penny Farthing and of course Simply Mo and his partner Claire – it was, 5 or 10 minutes later we spotted them and continued our way down to the level ground and nearer to the bars.

The concert started promptly, well only about 20 minutes later than advertised, and it was clear that Mr Hucknall still ‘had it’, after 25 years he still sounds the business.  The band too was excellent, loved the saxophone particularly.  They rattled off tune after tune and it was clear from where we were standing that the audience were loving it.

Unfortunately, from a comment that Mick made about half way through, he thought he was on his own ‘Are you there? I can’t see you …‘  You see, there was a large area of (mainly empty) seats directly in front of the stage area (was this the VIP area) with the main crowd way back from there, it must have been hard for him to get any kind of feedback from the crowd.

Starting with the appropriately titled ‘Out on the Range’, the band went through a number of their hits including Hold­ing Back The Years, Stars, Money’s too Tight and Fairground before leaving very quickly with If you Don’t Know Me By Now, leaving the crowd waiting for more … an hour and 10 minutes for an event like this by such a huge band just seems way too short.  17 songs in all, I believe compared to 21 at his concerts in Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

Well, a brilliant concert over, thoroughly enjoyed it and just to repeat myself Mick Hucknall’s voice is still sounding fantastic after 25 years.  Looks like a couple of days rest for him before he wows another audience, this time in Italy.  Wonder if he is staying in Tenerife until then?