ART, my bum!

shite

As a protest about the graffiti in our cities, I went and painted a message on the side of Palácio das Necessidades yesterday...

But really: I went into Lisbon on the train yesterday and all along the train tracks, predictably, there was graffiti graffiti graffiti.

Predictably, it was rubbish, mundane, and, worse than all of that, it looked the same as graffiti has looked for the past twenty five odd years.

All of this wouldn't irritate me so much if it weren't for two things. First, that the little boys who paint their great big names on the concrete/cement/600 year old monasteries/200 year old buildings call themselves graffiti ARTISTS. Well, they ain't no artists, for these reasons: they are not good draughtsmen, nor good colourists, they don't understand form, space, light and dark; where is the beauty or ugliness; what are they expressing? their "street" names! or drawings of "decks"! what expression! what sentiment! what a message! and they do nothing new. The graffiti on the streets of Lisbon is the same as the graffiti in London, New York, Paris, Madrid. Its worst crime of all is that it is BORING. There's no political graffiti here, no ideas, no pleas, no demands.

Secondly, maybe it is acceptable to paint on cement railways sidings which are inexorably ugly anyway (or on sink estates in britain as my friend dem mentions in comments previously), but when they carry out their ART on the walls of other people's WORK, i.e the architects, the builders etc. it just goes to show that these little boys are just little boys with big paint cans and no respect for anyone except their silly "street" names. Innit.

100% of what?

aphrodite

Right, that's it. I am forming the GNBG - The Guarda Nacional de Bom Gosto, (National Guard of Good Taste), I'm going to put on some lovely riding boots just like my GNR counterparts (who don't have HORSES!) and I am going to STOMP all over this country in search of UTTER TASTELESSNESS like this and I am going to first rip it down, then punish the offenders with something tasteFUL, like some great jazz, or a trip round the Gulbenkian, or a walk in the Jardim Tropical... or ...oh lots of things.

If there was ever a drawing of mine that was accurate, it is this one. I have spotted two of this HUGE billboard poster in the last two days and it is pretty much as you see it.
It's not the sex shop that I object to, it's the fluorescent pinks greens and yellows, disgraceful design and HUGENESS that repulse me. Graffiti artists too will meet the strong arm of the taste law... punishment for them...hhmmm, oh I'll have to think of something vile for them. I suspect I might get some offers from volunteer guards for this....

Arrábida Brulée

arrabida2

It never really hits you how devastating forest fires can be until you see the smouldering aftermath. Serra de Arrábida, which is alight again on the side facing the sea, has been burnt in a great swathe of land, crossing the EN10 and edging right up to two villages. It is only from the middle of the blackened earth that you can even begin to imagine how terrifying fire can be. This morning I was glad that I live in my boring suburban village, rather than the far more beautiful mountain side village that I want to live in.

There must be ways of at least helping to avoid the mass destruction of the fires every year. What about community service? for everyone? not just for offenders? If everyone capable did just a day a year of undergrowth clearance, fire avoidance and prevention work, wouldn't that help? I'd do it. Wouldn't you?

Flour, water and yeast

Bread, the staple of life, and, in Portugal, the wrecker of teeth.

Regulations state that bread may come in many forms, under many names, but
it must closely follow the “schneider-brot scale” which measures bread
texture from “a big dry puff of air” grade right up to the “tough as old
boots” grade. Actually most types of bread can be seen at the far ends of
the scale, almost none are found in the middle.

It is believed that açorda was accidentally invented one night when an
couple were desperately trying to break up their extremely hard bread, since
not even a knife could get through it’s tough outer hide, when the bread
flew out of their hands and into the soup pot. The bread got soft, they
could eat it. At last.

footnote: if you are not Portuguese or don't live here: açorda is a soupy
concoction made with bread, basically it's wet bread. If you like soggy
bread, it's great. If you don't, it's purgatory if you're forced to eat it.

Portuguese Law - statute II

pesto

Another one from the statute book:
Any Portuguese national must, repeat, MUST, be at the very least an hour and a half late for any appointment, dinner, lunch, meeting, party, picnic, well...anything.
If at all possible, this should be extended to two and a half hours, taking as much time as possible leaving the house so that one has to drive EVEN faster than normal so as not to be THREE and a half hours late.

Duties that can be performed in this extended period at home should include at least one of the following activities: taking a shower; dressing in something clean, even when the thing one was wearing before was perfectly sweet smelling and clean already; checking one's email, and responding at length to it all; looking for the car keys; wrapping the present for the party; looking for one's shoes.
These activities must NOT be performed until one hour has elapsed from the "intended" leaving time.

There are a couple of situations exempt from this law:
a. The night before national holidays and the last Friday in July, when 98.7% of the Portuguese population has to drive down to the Algarve as quickly as possible, getting there as early as possible, so they can then call everyone on their mobile phones to tell them that it only took them 1 hour 55 minutes from Lisbon to Lagos.

b. Lunchtime. At 12.55pm a supermarket, for example, will be heavingly busy. On the DOT of 1.00pm it is a desert, except the two or three staff obliged to stay working and a sparse population of English and Ukrainian customers taking advantage of the peace and quiet. 3.00pm there is a slow, and I do mean slow, drift back to work, sometimes not taking effect until about 3.30pm

There are those that flout the law, but they are very very few in number... erm... there's Madge's sogro (father-in-law) who is almost English in his punctuality and someone else who lives somewhere in Trás-os-Montes who was on time for something once, and since they are too few in number to really rock the system they are not prosecuted (and because there are too many other things in the system not being prosecuted, who needs to add more?)

footnote: please do not connect my sister's dress sense in any way with me. I have nothing to do with it. It is an embarrassment and she may soon be locked up by the PFP (Portuguese Fashion Police) for crimes against colour co-ordination.

and ALL..... THAT....JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZ

ute

Anyone else see Ute Lemper last night at CCB (segunda-feira)? She was fantástica, doing a new mix of songs, in Arabic, Hungarian, Hebrew, English, French and German, glammed up in a Fátima Lopes number, finishing with a teaser set of all the songs she is most famous for; "Mack the knife", "All That Jazz", "Caberet", "a french one I don't know the name of but you'd recognise it if you heard it"... wonderful. She and her great band got a standing ovation and then gave an encore of "Je ne regrette rien" and a song "for the ladies".

Half way through a poignant number about the Jewish-Muslim divide in Jerusalem, (at least I expect it was poignant, but she sang it in Hebrew and Arabic, well, I ain't that clever, I didn't understand what the hell she was singing) a MOBILE PHONE RANG. It rang and rang and rang...and rang and rang.....somewhere in the front few rows....

Finally Ute stopped singing...looked to guitarrist to stop him, and said in the direction of the phone's owner "it's the wrong key"...started the song again from the middle.

She punctuated the last few songs with some very soft but bittersweet asides mostly in french to the idiota of the telephone. She is a lovely, clever and funny women.

Idiota, throw your mobile phone in the Tejo.

Portugal's roads of death part 197

roadmovie

Last night, driving home along the EN10 (I told you this should be "EN10 blog") this is all I could see.

I always thought you were supposed to be able to see the road AS WELL AS the maniacal murderous bastards who are trying to overtake you on a bend.

I only knew which way the road goes because I knew which the road goes. Is that a paradox? (I only know my way around the Setúbal peninsula/Lisbon because I know my way around them. It has very little to do with the signposts)

Why aren't there any cat's eyes? I don't know. You tell me. WHY!

...or maybe because it's TOO easy...

corner

...that I don't "do" men more often in this little blogola.

This is a real street corner. These are real people. They really stand there ALL day, watching cars.

?

(maybe I should rename this the "EN10 blog")

I'm just popping out dear...

men

Madge's family and I live just off a main road called the EN10, estrada nacional ten. It is an ugly ugly road. Thirty years ago it was probably beautiful beautiful, winding through pine forest from Almada to Setúbal, with the occasional pretty little village on the way, full of picturesque little old ladies taking their goats to market and picturesque young men working the vineyards and cork and olive orchards, in their shirt sleeves or better still, with no shirt on at all, sweat glistening in the hot sun, all muscly and .... ooh, sorry. ...

ANYWAY... these days there are just a few patches of woodland left, the rest having been either built on or prepared for building on, i.e. all foliage wrenched out of the ground and left for several years leaving the remaining very sandy topsoil open to erosion and blowing all over the Setúbal peninsula; you just have to look at my car (yes, I KNOW I could wash it, but really, I have to do far more fun things with my time). Most days, if it is not raining, wherever there is a small pine wood along the EN10, there is usually a car parked in the ditch with no one inside. But sometimes, it may be possible to spot the car's owner returning:
a man.

Generally, he is pulling up his trousers.
What has he been doing in the woods? Who is the young lady who has just walked a hundred metres in the opposite direction dressed for the evening? Is he going back to work? What did he say as he left his office/house twenty minutes ago?

nota de rodapé: these men always looks like the man in Madge's drawing, ALWAYS. I think it may have something to do with another Portuguese law.

nota de rodapé 2: by huge coincidence, at the exact part of the EN10 that I was describing above in my drawing there was a great big forest fire this afternoon, bombeiros and helicopters and everything...... he must have spat his cigarette out at a climactic moment.

nota de rodapé 3: Drove past the spot last evening and it is absolutely destroyed. So, there won't be much whorin' going on for a good few years, not before the trees grow back. Coitadinhos (poor things)

ooh auntie... a lesson by Dr Seuss

careertia

This is a Tia. She is a "Career Tia". She may be a journalist, editor or politician. She wears exorbitantly expensive clothes since she works with other career tias (her "peer career tias") who need to know without a shadow of a doubt that she bought her clothes in exactly the same exclusive and extremely expensive Lisbon/London/Paris boutique. If she were seen to be dressing not quite correctly she would be a "merely near career tia". Her jewellery is simple but heavy gold. Her hair is sculpted two or three times a week by a hairdresser using the age old "turning one's customer upsidedown and backcombing her hair within an inch of its life" technique.

There is another kind of Tia, the "Tea Tia", who does not have a career, but lives the life of a gentlewoman, drinking tea, meeting her peer tea tias and telling the "lady what does" as we call them in England (well, some of us do!) what to do. She is easily discernible from the career tia as her wardrobe, though no cheaper, is just marginally less fashionable and more conservative, strongly involving the colour navy blue and the biggest fashion mistake ever unleashed on the world: the short sleeve jacket.

The two types of tia will mix on occasion, but only for a few minutes at a time, retreating straight away to their own peer tia groups to growl about the others in low whispers.

She is Portuguese respectability personified.

Significant changes in the Portuguese gene pool

genes

Does anyone else wonder how this has happened?

plastic bags

plasticbags

I love living NOW and thank my stars that I and my (I mean Madge's) kids live in an age where technology DOES for us. I don't mean just computers and mobile phones, but medicine and health care and knowledge and convenience and entertainment and colour. Living in Portugal in modern times is fantastic since much new technology has arrived without having to fit into an ageing infrastructure as it did in other countries, so the new systems work better; a prime example is the MultiBanco network.

Of course there are downsides to everything, technology has its problems and causes others. We still don't use all our tools and gifts to make this a better place for everyone (hey, take ME, prime example, flippantly blogging away taking the piss out of Portugal when I could be digging ditches somewhere. hmm. must figure out a way of figuratively digging ditches with this blogging buisness... hmmm *thinks*), but in modern times we, the lucky ones, can have whatever we want whenever we want it. And there is something that I want...

Didn't the world used to be a prettier place? Before the ubiquitous PLASTIC BAG? I don't mean to use the Plastic Bag as a metaphor for all tasteless consumerism, easy dismissal of objects, non biodegradeable identifiable flying objects fluttering down the road and through the fields. This is Vitriolica Webb's Ite, I don't do no metaphors. Right?

I just mean plastic carrier bags themselves. They are just so ugly. What was wrong with carrying a basket to the shops? or a canvas bag?

There is a LOT wrong with how we live our lives these days, and our world is rapidly looking less "worldy". Plastic bags are doing their part. So, the next time you go to a shop and they automatically put the two or three tiny things in a bag, say: "no thank you. I don't need a bag, I don't do bags, shove your bags!" tell them I said so.
Put a folded up tote bag in your pocket or your handbag instead.