We leave tomorrow, in winds that have blown a heavy cupboard across our terrace overnight and made the sea boil. It feels like a rehearsal for home.

We leave with several unsolved mysteries.

First: The Man With the King of Hearts.

We saw him first at the dog show. Immaculate raincoat, proper suit, brimmed hat, briefcase balanced on his knees. He wasn’t busking. He wasn’t selling anything. He just sat in the stalls, in the burning sun, staring ahead.

   Then another, dressed exactly the same, in our local Spar. And then again, a different man, same outfit, at a show, where I managed to get a photograph. He showed me the king of hearts playing card. They do seem to be quite obsessed with Alice In Wonderland here, lots of people dressed as playing cards, Alice, the white rabbit, teapots. I wondered whether there was a password I was supposed to know. Something I could say that would trigger him to open his bag and shower me with euros. But no. We have no idea what this is about. 

The Drag Queen Gala.

    The drag-queen competition sells out in minutes every January. We assumed the streets would be heaving with drag queens, teetering past in lashes and sequins. There are families in matching themes, whole clans dressed as pirates, astronauts, flamingos. Grandparents in wigs. Toddlers in capes. Chickens, cowboys, wolves. But no drag queens. As Angie and I strain to catch site of the show through a wire fence while perching on the bins, we can start to see why. These are not the cleverly made-up tongue-in-cheek performers I am used to watching on tv at home. 

   They are other-wordly, intergalactic, aliens. 

     In Roger’s classic words:

“In my day it was different. You knew where you were with Danny La Rue.”

But here you often don’t know where you are — and that seems to be the point.

Into the mountains.

We had booked a night in Artenara, the highest village in GC at 1270 metres. We walked up from Tejeda, my poorly gripping Skechers making the trip feel unnecessarily hazardous. On the way we ate a huge baccadillo we’d bought at the bus station, and then discovered that everything and everywhere in Artenara shuts at 4.30pm. So we ate a plate piled with pork and chips to stave off later starvation. 

The village is spotless. A three-man team carefully watering a handful of municipal plants. A brand-new playground, but not a child in sight. I assumed the reason we’d struggled to find a hotel room had been everywhere was full, but in fact most tourists return to Las Palmas on the 6 o’clock bus. I’m glad we stayed, as the night sky was phenomenal. 

But the mystery remains – where is everyone?

Perhaps that’s the thread running through it all.

Gran Canaria never quite performs on cue. The drag is on stage, the pirates are in the street, the magician shows you one card and no more, the mountain village closes just as you arrive.

And yet everywhere, absolutely everywhere, there is playfulness. Drums thrumming in the distance, families committing wholeheartedly to silliness, fireworks going off in the square at midnight. On a Wednesday. 

We didn’t solve the mysteries.

But we did get the joke.