One good reason for the beach

fishing

I'm not going to pretend anymore. I don't like going to the beach! There I said it. I might like it if I didn't have to take Madge's kids who cover me in sand and make it so that I can't relax, always waiting for them to either run away or fall under the water or wanting to be carried across the sand (a sport more tiring than beach football, I can assure you). I love sea air, I love relaxing by the sea, I would love to spend a whole day by the sea, reading a good book, eating nice things, sleeping. But these days it is a sandfilled, poopy nightmare (auntie Vit, auntie VIT, I have to POOOOOO!). No chance for a decent swim (daddy, daaddy, DADDY! auntie Vit is escaping/drowning!!!!).

BUT, one thing makes it worth going in the evening... sunset fishing. A horde of men and a scattering of women come down to the water's edge dragging the fishing boat by tractor, they put out to sea, struggling to get the boat off the sand and then over the small but difficult waves. They almost disappear in the glare of the setting sun, going out to sea by, I don't know, 500 metres, a kilometre, then return having rowed in a semicircle. Then every one left on the beach watches as, with tractors and muscle, they haul in the huge net that they had left catching fish in the sea. It's all very exciting, especially if you are me, or you are five years old. The whole process takes a good hour, with a gang per fishing boat of about twelve people, going out to sea, hauling in, winding ropes and nets, when finally the catch comes in. About six boxes of fish, what look like carapau to me. The fish thrash about in the edge of the sea, making it boil and the children shriek with glee (ooh, glee). It is a great spectacle. But I am left wondering that this is a costly enterprise, so many men, so few fish. Where 's the profit? I know fishing isn't a great earner, and these guys seem to put in good two hours of work, for not much fish; I can't believe each of them earns much more than €10 from that catch. Can anyone enlighten me?

I'm obsessed with APES

piaggio3

I think we should all give up our cars and get Piaggio APEs. I really really do.

Who needs a bloody 4x4 anyway?

Never mind the Olympic Games.

nobus

Who needs the Athens Olympics when we've got the "Lisbon Bus Challenge Cup".
It is only open to the over sixties, otherwise, where's the fun? The Challenge is to stay on one's feet and not break any brittle bones in the kamekaze bus routes in Lisbon.
It takes a lifetime of training in preparation for this tournament. Many a weakling foreigner in their mere twenties has fallen from grace in this sport and been knocked from their feet by the canny bus driver.
The sport is unique in that its spectators and participants ride on the same bus. Entrance fee for spectators - €1,10. Entry fee for sportspeople - retirement age bus pass.

body language is NOT a universal tongue

This is a common sight outside my local supermarket. I like a good fight, so I watch avidly...











Confused? You can't be Portuguese then. Cos they're just having a simple conversation. Animatedly. And really, they aren't even angry with each other. Just telling a story. Pretty cool really.

I feel a new series coming on... "Portuguese Body Language And Its Ensuing Complications".

footnote: if you notice that I have amended this text, you would be correct. It is something I usually refuse to do, but it wasn't entirely clear in the beginning. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

See? FIVE minutes out of the house...

taxiiiback

and I've got material for blogging...

This is Madge and me in the back of one of these...

this afternoon. What a relaxing journey we had while the lovely taxista tried to do a hybrid London cabby/Lisboa taxista. Doing the "going anywhere interestin' luv?" routine for the London half and the driving LIKE A COMPLETE BLOODY MADMAN ON A TRANS SERRA RALLY for the Portuguese half.

Delightful. Remind me to take the bus next time.

MOVE!

space

Any North European or North American who lives, works and shops in my supermarket (and take "my supermarket" as a STRONG metaphor for PORTUGAL) will look at this drawing and feel like saying, "oh my God, I know, oh, the claustrophobia, the rising panic in the throught, the tremors of rage creeping up the spine, the desperate urge to scream "GET OUT OF MY FACE".

Anyone else may not have a clue what I am talking about. As much as it belongs to the arcana of American psycho-babble, "personal space" is extremely important to me.

Let's just say, that every culture must have its own offical measurements of "personal space".

I am learning to adjust. Nearly five years and I'm losing the rage.

errrrrrmmm........

window

La la la la, The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray! The Sun has got his hat on and he's coming out to play! I hope.
After being stuck inside for a few days I'm going out later to absorb Portuguese blogging material.
So here's the view from my "office" window. Notice the tininess of it.

I wish I could write music. I don't mean actually putting notes on music manuscript, I mean, when I'm typing "the sun has got his hat on" I wish I could somehow SHOW the tune.... someone in geekland... sort it out for me, pllllleeeasse? Okay, I'm asking a lot. But, one day? Will it be possible?

Do SOMETHING!

weather

Bloody weather. I hate it. Well, actually I LOVE it, but only when it's really doing stuff.

This morning this is the colour of the sky and the English part of my psyche will never believe that that doesn't mean that summer is over, even on August 16th. When the sky clouds over like this in an English summer, one knows that there won't be any more warm weather ever again, so one may as well just give up hoping. It's not that I only like hot weather, I like it damned freezing too, and dripping wet and screamingly thundery. But when it'snot doing anything in particular, it bores me.

Yesterday Madge's Sogrissima was describing to our MAD ALENTEJANAN RELATIVES (I promised them I'd put that in and it IS true) how people describe Me'n'Madge in the village. It apparently goes something like this: "Oh your English Nora, she's very nice and NOT at ALL Vain!" (Nora, English people, is Daughter in Law)

In this looks-obsessed country are we to take that as a compliment or as a HUGE insult?

We are going off now to commune with our wardrobe.

And if anyone is still in ANY doubt, I wasn't arrested at all, just seeing if you were paying attention. hahahahhahha.

Oh, the SHAME of it!

handcuffs

Madge here. Vit can't come to the machine right now. You may have read in Inimigo Público this morning that she was arrested for "disrespecting Portuguese Culture". I ask you. Anyway, this is a picture I drew of her last night as she was driven away, amidst the flash and glare of the media spotlight. She even had TVI and SIC cameramen follow the car she was in all the way to Lisbon in helicopters and on motorbikes, even though the car had blacked out windows. It was terrible. She should be back later after she's been offically charged, but they tell me they are going to try a more clandestine method to avoid the TV cameras. Maybe in the back of a Piaggio with a blanket over her head.

footnotinho: If you do not live in Portugal, you won't know what Inimigo Publico is...well, it is a highly regarded weekly journal that is read by the greatest intellects of this great nation


footnotazana: Vit's back. The TVI helicopters followed the Piaggio all the way to our gate, but we rushed her indoors. She's been let off all the charges, AS LONG AS she doesn't say any more nasty things in IP about the poor little rich trollops that look like hookers and only spend their lives getting photographed by Olá and Caras, even though they are supposed to be the classiest people in the country.

A proud member of the human race

wildlife

(we were wildlife in the eyes of this fat pudding boy: I spoke a few words in English within his hearing. He was tempted to take a photograph)

Took Madge's kids to Lisbon zoo yesterday. I pinned them down while Madge managed her only scribble of the day, otherwise she was engaged in stopping one child from throwing herself into the lion pit and the other from going to buy a bottle of cif spray because it ponged 'orrible.

There was some poetry in the McDonalds eating area overlooking the crocodile pool, but I'm not sure quite WHAT poetry. At one point I had a croc's head less than a metre from my shapely ankle.
I wish they would hide McDs a bit better, once a two year old has seen the big yellow intra-uterine device that is the "golden arches" of McDietarydisasters, there's no turning back.

Pond life.

Congratulations Portugal

Stop

"Congratulations?" you say. Yes, congratulations on having at least THIRTEEN ROAD DEATHS in this weekend alone.

Now, what do we think of the new "PARE" campaign? (a campaign of posters and tv and radio ads, aimed at pedestrians, to encourage them to use road crossings (which most drivers ignore anyway)).
I'm not sure they are hard-hitting enough. The TV ads are a bit better, real people, real deaths, they'll help, much like our "cancer ads" in the UK, (anyone who ever watched SKY news until they stopped showing ads this year will know what I mean, the greatest incentive to either give up the fags or turn off the telly). But let's see how they work out. I will be the first to applaud if they have any effect.

So, for the next campaign, one targetting the DRIVERS, there should be lots and lots of BLOOD and/or HUMILIATION (please see illustration above).

Let's face it, the vast majority of road deaths in this country (as everywhere I expect) are caused by young men. The only thing that gets through young mens' testosterone thickened skulls is HUMILIATION (the BLOOD is for the silly people who don't realise that accidents DESTROY the human body).

I hope you saw an item on a telejornal on Sunday night, (sorry, can't remember which station) where several young men were interviewed about their driving habits, inspired by the latest figures on death on the road...what was it? six thousand young people (17-29 I believe) dead on the roads in the last 10 years. SIX THOUSAND. These young men were just plain unmoved by it all.

Find a way of humiliating them. I'm not Portuguese, I don't understand their psyche well enough, but I suggest SOMEONE, I dunno, ACA-M/Paz na Estrada or the "Ministry for Death and Mutiliation on the Roads" find someone these little bastards respect, (a cool young comedian would be a good starting point, they have to humiliate their hecklers on stage) and pay him/her to come up with some good put downs, add some blood and gore, see what happens.

footnote: If you think I am being sick, well, I probably am, but I think it is the only way to get through sometimes. I apologise if I have offended you.

Fags on the sand

fags

I'm in a gross mood today, and I am particularly taken by fag ends at the mo. Don't ask me why, I d'know!

No longer an ashtray either

fig2

A quickiola today, just to say that I was impressed this morning to find on Praia Moinho do Baixo, Meco, a young man handing out reusable ashtrays to use on the beach and it actually seems to be working, the beach was pretty clean and free of fag ends.

Oh how I miss the days of having to fish out ciggie butts from the mouths of Madge's tiny kids, what fun it was.

Oh my god, it has just occurred to me that things might be rapidly changing here in Portugal, for the better. Soon it will be a Portuguese Utopia and I'll have nothing to gripe about....

NAH!

The Incredible Shrinking Head (and wet knickers)

incshrink

A new extension to the human species, the incredible shrinking headed boy. It can be seen more readily at the moment because it is the summer, therefore more people are out and about and it thrives on being seen.

Its head is plugged in at all times, one side to the mobile phone with ear piece and mic. The other side to its iPod.

It is unaccountably bandy legged and walks like a duck with wet knickers, but I think it thinks it's "strutting".

Your challenge for today: go and find someone wearing those jeans with the purpose bleached "worn out bits", try to see them as if the darker patches on the trousers are wet. Once you have succeeded in seeing this, every single person you ever see again wearing them will look like they have wet their knickers.

It works for me... he he he.

I'm meia-feriada

splash

So, this week will be a slow week, since we are in holiday mode for the week here in Vitriolica World. So there will only be pictures of Madge crashing into the sea, being dragged under by great big waves (yeah, that was MADGE, if you saw someone on a Meco beach the other day, making an arse of herself and getting herself half drowned. I'm so embarrassed, for her) and perhaps some french and german tourists, maybe even some english ones, but they're a rare species on the beach round here (good, innit?).

I'm saving up my portuguese holiday makers for a special something. he heheheheheh

I will have something to impart to you, my dear readers, later in the week...