The beginning of the silly season

fogo2

I love TV. TV is my only remaining vice since the fags went. A lifelong addiction that I am thoroughly ashamed of. I can do ANYTHING while the telly is on, unlike a lot of people who are reduced to vegetables as soon as they walk in front of one.

But I hate Portuguese TV. It sucks, it really sucks, for many reasons that are mostly ratings-driven, turning it into 24 hour drivel. More on that, regularly...

But this is the time of year when I get really MAD at Portuguese TV. It is Forest Fire Season. (I'll be amazed if we get through today without several fires starting, there's this hot dry wind and baking heat... ) Whenever there is a fire that a camera crew can get to, that crew go and cover that fire.

Then that crew try to get in as close as they can to the fire to take pretty pictures of the lovely yellows and reds and blacks of the scrub going up in flames. Very impressive pictures sometimes, very mundane sometimes.

But almost all of the time they are there at the same time as the locals and the bombeiros (fire crews) are trying to put out or subdue the fire. And almost all of the time they are getting in the way.

I am only amazed that while people are trying to put the fires out, watching their farm, their woodland, even their HOMES going up in smoke, they don't go down and punch those bloody cameramen on the nose. Nice pictures, but why don't you just put down your cameras and help.

Thank god that's over with...

Yeah yeah, well done. Actually, I am rather relieved that Portugal won. I didn't want to be among the very few English people who live in my village, surrounded by a grumpier than usual grumpy mob.

Yesterday, an hour before the match, Madge had to go the supermarket with smaller daughter. Walking around the store she was talking as normal with said sweet-little-poppet-most-of-the-time, in English. By the time she reached the checkout/caixa, she was aware of something strange...

eyes

This morning, Madge had to visit the supermarket again...

the only time I will ever blog with more than a couple of gins inside me...

ingerlund

oh gawd, what am I going to do on thursday.......?

English Pride

englishpride

This is for Edith of Retalhos da Vovó Edith.

No words to add to this picture.

(except maybe that the GNR has a nice bum!)

No longer a peasant nation...

I went shopping yesterday. desperate for a bit of air-conditioning and some
sleeveless t-shirts, I took Madge´s neice to Montijo Forum, the gloriously,
ridiculously ice-cream coloured roman forum at the end of PVdeG. We like it
there. It never manages to get chock full like all the others and it's
relatively safe for small kids unlike all the others that we have visited
and it has the nearest H&M to us, meaning that Madge can be the cheap broad
that she is with a little bit of style... (DISCLAIMER... what Madge terms as
style, I class as entirely ODD, so please do not confuse the two of us in
any respect as far as fashion, style or clothing are concerned... your
Vitriolica is just a Prada/Donna Karan kinda chic.....erm...good job I'm
fictitious then, huh? I don't have that kind of money)
These two delightful visions are just two of the many such inappropriately
dressed people there yesterday and indeed all over the country and this
glorious continent we call Europa. Now, I, and more especially Madge, are
never ones to disparage 'different' dressing, but we are always awfully
surprised to see such sights in this nation of, let's say, 'careful'
dressers! Madge bemoans constantly that she gets terribly bored of seeing
everybody everywhere, except for a few exceptions in the biggy cities,
dressed all the same. (She is going to prove this with some drawings, just
wait a bit, cos she's a bit busy at the mo cos she's just had a super idea
for something in the real world). I find particularly distasteful the
exposed rolls of flab hanging out from between tshirt and shorts at this
time of year. eugh.

I desperately wanted to translate "Mutton dressed as lamb" to Madge´s neice,
but it just came out as "Old sheep dressed as a young sheep" in my limited
animal vocabulary which just sounded pathetic. And then neice "X" pointed
out a tshirt with "a wolf in sheep's clothing" depicted on it. That really
put the mutton amongst the wolverines in my woolly un-air-conditioned brain.

Amends

list

My mumsy and papaaaah came to stay last week, a lovely week full of weather and food and hanging out.

My dearest papa is worried though. He feels that with all my bitching about things Portuguese that I am going to get our-vit'n'madge-selves kicked out of the country for sure. He felt therefore that I must post something nice about this dear dear place on his behalf to somehow make up for me us.

So, this is his list of the things he loves about Portugal...

Vit 'n' Madge's Guide to British Tourist - Euro 2004

brit13

Part 13.

Bernard and Brenda. They have driven their caravan down to the Algarve all the way from Birmingham. They have been married for forty years, since Brenda was 16 and Bernard was 23. He is a lorry-driving excessive smoker, drinker and eater, a great big coronary on eight wheels waiting to happen. In the late 1950s he became a "teddy boy" and spent the next thirty years with a quiff, a d.a. (a duck's arse) and sideburns. Only the sideburns remain since baldness took over, but he is still a teddy boy at heart, Elvis is still 'the King' (probably still alive too, uh-huh) and as far as Bernard is concerned it all went wrong when the Sixties happened... bloody hippies. He brings his own beer and beer mug with him on holiday, as he knows them Portugueses down south only drink out of women's glasses.
Brenda is a supervisor in a firm of contract cleaners. She is very good at her job, knows all the ins and outs of her cleaning products and most of the contents of her clients' desk drawers too. She likes to think of herself as a fun person to have around. In fact, she is quite the opposite, as most of her acquaintances, colleaugues, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, MOTHER-in-law and bosses... (and, of course, Bernard)... will testify; she is not a person to cross or even vaguely irritate. She NEVER forgives, forgets or lets anything lie unless she has created a HUGE argument out of not very much, causing people to move house, never speak with someone ever again, resign from their job... and then expects people to come and apologise to HER.

Bernard and Brenda will be retiring to a small village just outside Faro when Bernard retires in a couple of years' time.