You'd have been so impressed if you'd heard me on our arrival at the Bodega, chattering away in Spanish as if I'd been born in the Costa del Cerveza. "how cosmopolitan!" you'd have thought, as you watched the man with the snow white knees and the orange face consulting the waiting staff on whether the table by the door under the shade of the enormous eucalyptus on the front terrace was up for grabs. Of course there was every chance that on receiving my tapas order, the waiter might return armed with a snooker cue, a 1979 train spotting annual, a feather duster and a confused expression, but no, the food that appeared at our table looked pretty much like what we were expecting to see. The two years of evening classes had obviously left something vaguely Castilian lingering in the space between my ears. Quietly we haggled over who was having the last walnut from the Rubicon Salad. Probably Ali, as she pointed out that she wasn't touching the queso de cabra under any circumstances, piling all four of the neat triangular slices onto my plate next to the small mound of papas arrugadas. It seemed fair enough. Meanwhile, as you do, we furtively watched the party who'd arrived a few minutes after us, congratulating ourselves all too smugly on the fact that we'd already bagged the best table.
"Sorry, you can't use that one. There will be some people using it for filming in a while," the waiter announced as the new arrivals gravitated towards a nearby table nestling appealingly under the dappled sunlight that had filtered its way through the canopy of the eucalyptus. "Filming!" we murmured to one another. "Wonder what that's about?" For a while we forgot about it as the second round of plates arrived. We'd probably gone a bit gung-ho on the ordering front in truth. Might need a snooze and a coffee after this lot. And we always forget how much bread comes with your order in most Spanish feeding stations. And then, as I forked a few chunks of protein onto my plate, a strangely familiar looking figure appeared at a side door, sporting a multicoloured suit in which he could have auditioned for a "street" version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. I leaned across to Ali, who had her back to all of this and whispered "I think that's Joe Lycett behind you over there. In fact I'm sure it is."
The figure had gone back in through the door he'd appeared from. Meanwhile, a succession of directors, runners, key grips, production accountants, make up artists and various other people essential to the business of making television programmes shuffled back and forth. And then they all disappeared through that side door, into a large conservatory. A stroll past in the direction of the washrooms confirmed that they were having lunch. In advance of Joe and a yet to be established fellow celebrity being filmed having lunch.
At this point I should probably pause for a moment, especially for those of you who hail from other shores and explain a little more. Joe (for indeed it was him) is a comedian from Birmingham who is the current presenter of a show called "Travel Man - 48 Hours in ________ ." The blank changes for each show, as with another TV personality he visits a city, or in this case an island for 48 hours and together they explore half a dozen or so of the location's delights. A travel show really, but with people we find gently amusing. In the new series so far we're visited Split, Vilnius and Dublin. We liked Joe.
By now we'd finished the coffee and we really needed to get going. We had tickets to visit Cesar Manrique's artist's retreat in Haria, across the island from here. Nowhere is that far away in Lanzarote of course, but when you want to squeeze in a sunset shoot in the northeast corner of the island afterwards, you really can't be hanging around to watch the filming start. So we retired to the car and prepared for departure; at which point Joe reappeared and walked in our direction towards the car park. "Alright Joe?" came a chirpy cry from somewhere. It seemed to have emanated from me in fact. "Hello, how are you? Are you on holiday?" came the reply, accompanied by a cheerful grin. Joe was friendly. I'm sure not all people off the telly are this warm when they're recognised by over excitable members of the public. "We got here this morning, and we're leaving on Friday," he confirmed. Today was Tuesday, so 48 hours was indeed 48 hours - more or less. We had a chat about the weather, as all British people do, agreeing that the Canary Islands must have one of the best all year round climates on the planet; Ali told him she liked his suit; in reply to my question he told us he was filming the show with Jessica Fostekew, and then probably watched my brow crease as I tried to remember who she was. And then he very gently dismissed us by saying he'd come out to the car for some more sun cream before he began to burn.
And away we went, grinning daftly and sharing Ali's phone snap of me and Joe having a natter to my family on the Whatsapp channel. They were all suitably impressed. It doesn't happen very often at all of course, especially when you live in the back and beyond of nowhere as we do, but when you bump into someone who you feel you know well from seeing them in the public eye, it's an almost surreal sensation. I'm going to the England v Scotland Rugby international at Twickenham next weekend, where no doubt I'll cross paths with quite a few famous people, but I'm expecting to see them so the element of surprise isn't there. I once bumped into David James, the then England Goalkeeper at a service station. He was a nice chap too. Even gave me a wave from his BMW as he drove off after getting his petrol. Former Blue Peter presenter John Noakes was the one I remember most fondly though. My childhood TV hero and his wife happened to sit at the table next to me in the departure lounge cafe at Gatwick Airport. We chatted for ages, and it was I who had to leave before the plane went without me. Now we could add Joe to the list of people we have a special affection for whenever we see them on the telly.
So it was much later, after an educative visit to the self-built house where Manrique spent the last few years of his life, that we finally arrived at the Mirador del Rio. The attraction itself was by now closed, but we'd never intended to go there in any case. We'd been reading about how we could get exactly the same views from a big slab of rocky ground beside the single track road. Hop over a wall and all of this would be ours. And in the moments before sunset, the land, sea and sky seemed to turn to shades of pastel blue with only the tiniest hint of pink trying to escape a fissure in the layers of cloud. Quite a crowd had gathered here, as they no doubt do each day, and one couple had even brought a bottle of wine with them to sit and enjoy the show. And yet again, the long lens was the one that did the job. Even up here the air was still enough to get a twenty second exposure at 135mm as I pointed the camera towards the west and the distant volcanoes on the other side of the island. By now Joe, Jessica and the army of television people might be heading towards Playa Blanca for an early supper before filming themselves eating supper and drinking Ron Miel in one of the local establishments. We won't know until the show appears on our screens of course, but if you happen to stumble across it at some point, you'll probably be able to see where we sat beneath the eucalyptus tree, stumbling in Spanish to a poor harassed looking waiter.
