Those ads for the Canary Islands

[Moos]

Has anyone seen the poster ad for the Canary Islands, the kicker being 'you'll wish time stood still' or something? There's one at Denmark Hill station for example.

They really make me laugh, the picture they've chosen looks pretty much like Mordor. Bleak brown crags surround unpleasant lunar landscape. On closer inspection, the lunar landscape turns out to be a beach. No sea can be detected, certainly no vegetation. They might as well have gone for "Be the only living thing for miles - other than the orcs and goblins!"

Anyway. Thought I'd share.

[Ted Max]

"Be the only living thing for miles - other than the orcs and goblins!"

But I already live in Peckham.

[Moos]

(6) Watch it, or I'll send the boys round.

Sauronmoos

[mockney piers]

I have seen them, and they are a bit odd now that I think about it.

I spent some time in Gran Canaria with a mate a few years back after our respective bosses coincidentally forced us to take time off at the same time due to burnout (I was commuting to Amsterdam at the time!).

We got the first cheap package out of the country and ended up there. Playa Ingl?s was basically scum hell on earth, caught as you are between last night's revellers, pickpockets and naked fat germans, so we ran quickly away, looking up at the big volcano and deciding to walk there in the midday 40 degree heat.

Pretty soon we left the town and entered, as Moos says, Mordor. No vegetation, no life and these weird broken sunbleached edifices. We had our floppy hats on and my mate (ex army) started getting flashbacks to foot patrols in war-torn Croatia and by the time we got to the top he was suffering severe heebie-jeebies (probably brought on by dehydration frankly).

We made it back to the apartment (25 mile round trip) turning down offers of lifts from clearly drunk English people driving jeeps erratically, and only left said apartment and poolside for supplies over the next 5 days.

I have never, and will never return!!

Had a great tan mind!

[Michael Palaeologus]

Lanzarote is nice.

[citizenED]

Yes, Moos, I saw them and, like you, was rather non-plussed. It was in a magazine, in the middle of an article about social deprivation in Troy, New York. Considering some of the amazing photographs of craggy landscapes they could have used it was such an uninspired choice of image. On the next page was a lovely tempting ad for sunny Turkey. I might well like the landscape in the Canary Islands if I ever get there but for now, on the strength of those ads, I know which one I'd choose.

[Brendan]

I kinda like stark desolation. Not sure about orcs and goblins though. Do you really get these on the Canary islands?

Come to think of it I don't recall there being any goblins on middle earth.

[Michael Palaeologus]

The Goblins were in The Hobbit - they had morphed into Orcs by LOTR.

[mockney piers]

aern't orcs just bigger goblins, I thought they were all goblins, that were elves who were....a.arargh...not...having....this ....effing....conversation.....

Plenty of goblins in Playa del Ingles I can tell ya!

[Brendan]

Ah a continuity error. A literary technique employed to great effect in such books as The Bible.

[Moos]

There were goblins in the movies, so I thought I must have just missed them in the books.

Nice flushing-out of Mockers there though! Heh heh heh.

Back to the ads. I think most people know the Canaries are not very vegetative and so on, but I just don't understand why they couldn't have found a shot with a bit of sea in it, or something. The photo doesn't even look sunny! There's a TV ad as well, which looks slightly more appealing.

It's like taking a photo of yourself at 5 in the morning with no makeup on and horribly hungover in your oldest pyjamas, and posting it on your SoulMates profile. Ain't going to help pull in the punters.

[mockney piers]

Blimey they should have just checked flickr out

[????]

oooohhh I dunno moos, some people like that sort of look...;-)

*rubs knees in Vic Reeves type way

[bignumber5]

Brendan Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Come to think of it I don't recall there being any

> goblins on middle earth.

Uruk Hai (sauruman's army) are Orcs crossed with Goblin men...

Haven't seen the poster in question, but the bits of the Canaries that are nice white sand are beaches built using sand from the Sahara - the canaries are naturally black volcanic sand. So showing the "real" canaries, by the sounds of it, even if not the prettiest

[HonaloochieB]

Goblins, OK I think I understand now.

So what's a pixie?

[Moos]

I dunno, but I've got 10 million of the buggers in my camera apparently.

[RosieH]

I was a pixie in the brownies - not sure whether my pixie dust has now expired

Ternerife is gorgeous (outside the goblinny playa de las americas), but never been anywhere else - watching the sun rise on new year's day over mount teide, drinking honey rum on the veranda of an old ramshackle wooden house with the birds and insect (crickets? cicadas?) singing - that's what they should have shown on the adverts