Waiting briefly on the pavement at a zebra crossing - drivers are generally very helpful here, they often stop even before you're ready to cross - I was waylaid by a voice close beside me: 'Usted es el señor Drake, no?' You're Mr Drake, aren't you?
It was a man of similar age to me and clearly Spanish. I didn't know him, or at least I didn't recognise him, but this was not unusual in the strange era of Covid-19. A face mask, sunglasses and sombrero leave little more than a couple of ears for identification. While I searched for clues in his size, shape and general gait, I briefly fought a flashback image from Live and let die where an intelligence agent watching a New Orleans funeral procession casually asks the man next to him, 'Whose funeral is this?' to which the guy equally casually replies 'Yours' and produces a long, thin knife.
I admitted I was señor Drake. The man nodded and said he'd read an article about me in GomeraNoticias, an online news site, and recognised my hat from the photo. This I could understand: the photograph, which was specially commissioned for the article, captures me posing self-consciously in the park and the hat is by far the most interesting feature. It has a broad floppy brim, a chinstrap to prevent escape and a certain rumpled insouciance in its bearing, which its owner tries and fails to emulate.
My hat being recognised by a stranger was my first taste of fame. It only lasted a week and I never got chased by hordes of adoring females, but it was fun anyway. The article was one of a series about members of a local arts group, El Viaje Interior (The Interior Journey), that I was invited to join on the basis of this blog and the paperback book it spawned. During my week of glory the hat was recognised by one or two more strangers who glanced at me as though trying to remember something, by a few casual acquaintances who hadn't known I was a writer, and by some friends here or abroad to whom I forwarded links to the web page. And that was that: my hat and I walked off into the wings, upstaged by the next featured artist.
However, I was intrigued by that alleged song about Englishmen getting ensnared by the blue skies of La Gomera. To how many had it happened? I can think of only a handful. Even if you broaden it to 'foreigner', which would include one or two Scots, Germans, Dutch, Belgians, French and what-have-you, we don't seem numerous enough to merit immortalisation in a folk song. So I asked around among my network of informants – did they know of such a song?
Indeed they did, more or less. It turned out to be not specifically about La Gomera but the Canary Islands in general and celebrates not a man but a woman, described as a dreamer. It's a very short song, just a single verse, and seems to be a popular component of potpurri medleys by Canary folk groups. This is how it goes, translated literally:
To the Canaries came one day
An Englishwoman dreamer
Who wanted to see the sky
Always blue and at every hour
Always blue and at every hour
She wanted to see the sky...
(repeat)
It's not Bob Dylan standard but it has the great merit of being old, probably dating back to the late 19th or early 20th century when many well-to-do English took their holidays in the Canaries, mostly on the much larger island of Gran Canaria. The lady in question was probably a particularly enamoured London socialite who not only stayed in hotels in Gran Canaria but built one there as well.
Being also something of a dreamer (aren't we all?), this song got me thinking - was it the blue skies that drew us to La Gomera and caused us to tumble so hopelessly in love with it?
In part, I suppose. There's more to it of course - you don't just fall in love with someone's hair, or even their hat - but blue skies are certainly important. A blue sky is an enabler, it lifts the spirits, inspires people to get out there and do things. It helps shape the character of the people who live beneath it. I remember a fellow villager, a Gomeran, once commenting that he too hated the days when clouds covered the sky. They depressed him. It doesn't happen often, though, and as a visitor you'd be very unlucky to spend a whole day without even a glimpse of sunshine.
So, yes: we came to La Gomera, we saw the blue sky, and we wanted to keep on seeing it... Along with everything else we enjoy here of course, but let's keep it simple, a song is a song.
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The song works a little better in Spanish than in English:
A Canarias vino un día
Una inglesa soñadora
Que ver el cielo quería
Siempre azul y a todas horas.
Siempre azul y a todas horas
Que ver el cielo quería.
As for the blue skies: a song can never hope to capture the magic, and even in a painting it's remarkably difficult to reproduce the joyous, uplifting quality of a blue sky. Artists frequently have a go at it here in La Gomera, with varying degrees of success.
It's much easier to capture the dismal grey skies of northern Europe. For example, during a brief flirtation with oil painting many years ago I learned that the first essential for painting a Lake District landscape is a plentiful supply of Payne's grey, which is a colour created by William Payne in the eighteenth century and now universally available in oils, acrylics and watercolours.
All you need to do is slap it generously across the upper half of your canvas then stand back and admire the authenticity of the effect, perhaps wearing a damp Barbour raincoat for the full experience. I never learned to like Payne's grey.
