Julia | On May 11, 2012

Today’s feature: £1.99 (humour) “More Ketchup than Salsa: Confessions of a Tenerife Barman” by Joe Cawley

“It was while holding aloft a not altogether pleasant-smelling mackerel that the decision was made. The March rain hammered on the rotting tin roof high above the market stall, where I had spent the last six months pushing out dubious trays of marine life at three for a fiver. After a two-week holiday in Tenerife Joy and I vowed that a life in fish giblets was not going to be our destiny and a life in the sun, was.
A complete lack of catering experience, zero business acumen and the sum of our vastly wealth barely reaching waist level of a ceramic pig did little to deter our enthusiasm for buying a bar. “Where do we sign?” we replied. And then the whole silly, sunny saga began…” Joe Cawley

When Joe and his girlfriend Joy decide to trade in their life on a cold Lancashire fish market to run a bar in the Tenerife sunshine, they anticipate a paradise of sea, sand and siestas. Little did they expect their foreign fantasy to turn out to be about as exotic as Grimsby on a wet Monday morning.

Amidst a host of eccentric locals, homesickness and the occasional cockroach infestation, pint-pulling novices Joe and Joy struggle with ‘Brits abroad’ culture and learn that, although the skies might be bluer, the grass is definitely not always greener.

A hilarious insight into the wild and wacky characters of an expat community in a familiar holiday destination, More Ketchup than Salsa is a must-read for anybody who has ever dreamed about jetting off to sunnier climes, finding a job abroad… or anybody who has even momentarily flirted with the idea of ‘doing a Shirley Valentine’ in these trying economic times.