portuguese politics

oooh, the president of the republic has dissolved the Portuguese parliament, don't ask me why, I don't do politics... much.

That's for any of you who don't live here.

ANARCHY! YEAH!

estereotipos

estereos

If you read Portuguese, go and read M. Butterfly's post and see why I drew this picture. If you don't understand Portuguese, just take this as another stereotype.

!

Feliz Novembro

Feliz Novembro

still getting things done before going away.... and obviously, while I'm away, I'll still be posting as much as I do here.... papavit will be standing by his computer insisting that I work on my blog as it has become vitsma's only remaining vice since she gave up the fags (cigarettes, you americans) and without daily blog there could be trouble!

So, today, I'm posting last Friday's Retrato/Portrait da/of the Semana/Week from O Acidental. It was only the third week in November and I already felt "christmassed out"... I have already been in afixe saying that when I'm pres. of the universe, I shall ban christmas before the 20th and after the 27th. Monty wanted it banned except for the 24 hours of 25th. And since today is the last day of November, it is a better day than tomorrow to post a a drawing that says "happy november".

Let me just add here that I'm going to post all about my english christmas because I have never got to grips with portuguese christmas... the days all wrong, the weather, the bacalhau.... I'll explain later.

don't know why I'm posting this...

sheila

but I'm frantically trying to get stuff done this week before going to Inglaterra, so this'll have to do.

and by the way everybod, I'm still getting round to finishing off my blogroll, so if you're not in it still, it's nothing personal, I'm just lazy.

And will someone tell me what that infernal smell is today... it must come from a factory in Setúbal or Barreiro... anyone know what the smell of rotting dog actually comes from? It lasts all day and pervades the whole house. And while we're on the subject of smells WHAT is that stink as one drives past the petrol station near Corroios on the A2 at night. It smells of burning rubbish, but it's been there for the last couple of months. really putrid. ANYONE?

Last week's Retrato de Semana

well, it made me laugh and I forgot to post it here, so here is last week's portrait of the week in O Acidental... if you want to see this week's you have to go see there or wait till I put it here. hmmmn.

but then I had to to an update of it cos I saw the tweny one leaders at the Chilean summit last weekend looking like a right bunch of tosspots in their super ponchos...

well... they ARE clever

by my three-year-old (I think they are me!)

by my five-year-old (it is a crocodile chasing a frog and a mouse, the frog apparently "gets it" but she says that the mouse escapes up/down the stairs! How cool is she?)

so being a mummy, I felt guilty about saying that I'd like four days off,(although I still would like four days off... three... two? nice hotel, an interesting dinner, preferably thai, visit a couple of museums and galleries without having to take two small people to the loo every twenty minutes, nor carry eighteen coats, cardigans, hats, teddy bears, barbies, barbie's handbag, juice, tissues just in case, go shopping, looking in shops with breakable things in that I ain't going to knock off the shelves because of the enormous bags containing said child ephemera.... you get the picture)....

So, I was feeling so guilty, and in my quest to tidy my house up a little bit I found some of my little ones' pictures (something that's not very hard to do since they spend every waking minute drawing, whether that's on the walls or on paper and then scatter them all over the floor under the kitchen cabinet under the sofa etc etc etc), and because I got extremely bored tidying my house up a little bit I thought I'd scan in a little something by each of my extremely clever little children's drawings and tell you how adorable and clever they both are to try to alleviate a bit of the guilt that I feel for having said that I'd REALLY like a few days of being a grown up in a civilized place with thai food on tap.

O_O

ps... I haven't switched comments off... they just seem to not be working... hmph.

mucking out

but this is a graphical representation of the state of my house... I feel I really am buried beneath a mountain of little girls' socks and newpapers and books and dust and fluff. So, I'm going to spend the rest of the morning/year clearing out my house and my head and to think up my portrait of the week for O Acidental and something beautiful for Afixe.

strange symmetry

I adore Lisbon... and one of my favourite bits is Martim Moniz. It is a square where all the different immigrant and itinerant cultures of Lisbon come together and it kind of reminds me of another of my old haunts in London, Tooting. In Martim Moniz there are two shopping centres full of Chinese, Indian and African shops and I go there sometimes to buy the ingredients that I can't buy south of the river... (I haven't found an Indian or Chinese foodstore in Setúbal yet... anyone?... I am a fiend for Indian and Chinese food and have to have my cupboards stocked at all times).

Yesterday, I was driving through Martim Moniz having dropped the household clever clogs off at the airport, off to a conference in Spain (lucky sod, lovely lingering late night dinners, breaks in the programme every half an hour, lovely Madrid, and most especially four days without children! I love 'em I really do... but oooh, four days ALONE! cor!) on my way to the other side of the city, when I thought I'd stop off and buy some stuff in my favourite Chinese grocery that is stuffed to the gunwales with chinese and thai and japanese ingredients...

I was wearing a huge black dress that almost trails on the floor that is fantastic for cold weather (I have always felt sorry for men, they may never know how warm great long skirts can be, especially when you've put a blow heater under it!)... and several layers of black tshirts and jumpers and had my hair scraped back in a tight pony tail. I was walking along and got mightily stared at by a group of middle aged gypsy women who were unloading their huge white vans of merchandise. I think they thought I was taking the piss. I wasn't. Honest!

more portuguese sport

It took me a while to work what goes on with this sport. It is a strange, clandestine sport that no-one will admit to participating in but an awful lot of people do, and I've had to work the rules out for myself.

It is played like this: you drive along a road, usually an EN or IP road ('A' roads, main highways, that kind of thing), and watch out for nice policemen belonging to either the GNR (national guard) or BT (transport police). You can spot their lovely shiny riding boots a mile off while they chat with each other in the sun. When you've seen them you flash your headlights wildly at oncoming traffic to let them know that YOU saw them FIRST! What a fun game it is. And once you've flashed, the cars coming towards you slow down really quickly out of excitement at seeing a GNR or BT roadside checkpoint, so they can drive past them really slowly, PRETENDING all the while NOT to notice them.

For fun sometimes I flash my lights at oncoming traffic when there isn't a GNR or BT patrol anywhere in sight. It's SUPER. Why don't YOU try it!?

rules of engagement

There is a paragraph in the "Portuguese Handbook".... (erm... I may have to write that handbook) that says "since you call your customers/clients/acquaintances você or o senhor/a senhora out of respect, you needn't bother pretending that you give a hoot and only smile when you can be bloody well arsed!". At least, I think that's what my copy says...

Every morning I go to our local minimercado to pick up our bread order.Every morning I walk into the shop with a bright and breezy "Good Morning!"(in pt, obviously) as if I'm a middle aged member of the Womens' Institute and I'm out walking the labradors (an old unshakeable English habit). I have been doing this for five years, same me, same minimercado, same bread, same shop assistant, Sandra (I have changed her name, in case she should ever hear of this website from her boss, comes to read it, does a google page translate on it, and gets horribly offended). And every morning she does this: I say "good morning, Sandra!" and she stops.... looks at me... looks slowly towards my shoes... looks AT my shoes... looks slowly upwards toward my head...all the while taking in what I'm wearing... finally looks at my hairdo... (I assure you that I don't normally go around with this mickey mouse hairdo... it's just that madge has this strange idea that it's funny for her drawings)... then finally, after a good ten seconds smiles and says "good morning, vit". She doesn't feel in the slightest bit uncomfortable gauging me, sussing me out, quite blatently before she gets round to the niceties. Where am I supposed to look for those ten seconds?

pas de café

another reason I don't go to our local café very often... apart from the
lack of atmosphere... there's this atmosphere.

some of my lovelier neighbours

These children have learnt to scowl at a young age.
Really. They scare me.

Conclusive proof that reading a newspaper dedicated to football addles your brain:

So, I was taking my beloved train (beloved because it's finally reached us, and it means I don't need to drive into Lisbon and try to find somewhere to park the bloody car anymore) and sitting opposite me was this bloke. He looked disturbingly English, but this couldn't have been because he was avidly reading BOLA...and anyone English who is clever enough to read/speak Portuguese is way beyond BOLA...how anyone can write THAT much about football is way beyond me, but hey, I'm a girl...

So, we come out of the tunnel and on to the bridge (vintsinkdabreel) and this bloke looks out of the window to his left.... looked to his right... looked very confused... looked to his left... his right.. his left, his right, his left, right, left right left right suddenly realized he was looking less than cool and resumed BOLA but this time with a distinctly
disturbed expression on his face.

What he was confused about was the river. I shall explain for anyone who isn't portuguese and who has never been to Lisbon... the river Tejo (Tagus) is a great basin type thingy and is wider further inland for a good stretch (the other bridge, for example, that spans it further inland, is 12km/7miles long) than at its mouth... so if you don't know where you are geographically when going over the bridge, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the mouth is inland and the river going inland is the sea....ANYWAY... seeing that he HAD to be Portuguese as he was reading BOLA (he was, I saw his lips moving) one would assume that he'd have known this... so this can be seen as conclusive proof that reading BOLA does indeed addle one's brain or at least removes one's sense of direction.

Actually, I was REALLY going to do a post about the snotty cow who was sitting next to this bloke, that Burberry looks really stupid on almost anyone who wears it, fake or not... but that was about the length of it... not enough to sustain anyone through their coffee break (hahhah, as if you're reading this in your coffee break! that's when you work isn't it? work is for reading/writing blogs)

And I was going to post about the strange déja vuish sensation that smells sometimes give us because when I first sat down on the train I was transported back to my old commuter trains from Putney into Central London because of the distintive smell of "commuting". I never managed to discern what that smell was a mixture of until the other day on the Coina train... don't ask me why I managed it then, but I think it something to do with an occasional burst of very un-portuguesish cold air... but if you're reading this in London, have a good sniff tomorrow morning on your train or tube to work...and you'll smell it... it's just toothpaste and/or chewing gum, all the aftershaves and perfumes mixed together and the smell of the newsprint the papers are printed on. Aaaaaagh, nostalgia. I actually miss standing on the platform at Putney freezing my arse off waiting for the already packed train. So you see, I WAS going to write about this déja vuish sensation but then I tought you might think I was a nut.

My very first bata drawing

I did this print in 1991 and it suddenly struck me the other day that it was
the first bata drawing I ever did... It is of some ladies in the big
undercover market in Porto (someone remind of its name pleeeease) so here is
it... my blog-warming present to you!

Hello!

Portuguese Law - statute MMXIV

If you've just come in from the old site, welcome to my new home... come in and let Avó serve you with a lovely hot bowl of carrot and cabbage and pasta soup, and while you're here, don't forget to change your links to this page.

I shall be doing a rigourous search later in the week to make sure everyone has the new address (actually this IS the old address, but you know what I mean) and shall be sending Avó to your houses/blogs/e-zines/websites to help with the housekeeping and make sure you've done it!


;) Abraços e Beijinhos ;)

by the way, I'll be bringing over my old blog roll as soon as I can, I'm just pooped... where'd I pack the kettle?.........................

I may be the only one...

... but I miss a good proper Northern European winter.

Quem perceber, percebeu

If we're not careful with our blogosphere, we risk losing it.

A futile exercise in optimism

I've been battling all week against some nasty bug that's trying to get
me.... I WON'T LET IT... but I thought I'd draw something really silly to
try and enhance my mood/health.

It didn't work. I'm going to bed.

an UNtimely post

well, you can't ever say that I'm up with the news, can you.

I drew this because it occurred to me that we sit waiting for things to happen to see what the outcome will be... and really that's quite sick. Hmmm.

this really IS unkempt

If you get to this blog through blogger, it will be confusing for a couple of days, while I transfer seven months worth of blog from another site back to here... long story.... blah blah...bloghosts gone phut... can't be arsed with finding another ...blah blah blah... ANYWAY, if you want to see the blog in its correct order while I transfer 7 months - 160 posts - 180 drawings please go and see it at its soon to be defunct home: http://www.unkemptwomen.com/b2evolution/index.php

my work is done...

mazinsky
Originally uploaded by Madge Webb.

Driving along just now with my three year..oh er madge's three year old... oh YOU know!... I was just looking at a most incredibly beautiful sunset thinking quietly to myself about how I was going to draw it, how beautiful skies are the most difficult thing to draw or paint without being really tacky and how amazing sunsets are the more fleeting the closer one gets to the equator (a good Scottish sunset is a long drawn out wonder...a good Goan sunset takes a few moments)... when my amazing three year old daughter said "Mummy, look at that bootiful sky!"

WOW!

Prehistoric publicity

australopiiifislieiflicus

Up all night again with vomiting daughter (she's fine now thanks for asking) so I'm a zombie and I can't be arsed to draw anything AND move brick by brick to blogger (it's taking a while - does ANYONE know if you can block delete old posts in blogger? am i missing something patently obvious? one by one...124 old posts...about 20 seconds each...ugh! I do HAVE a life too! I gotta EAT!)...so here's a caveperson in a tshirt that I drew sometime. don't ask.

sod this!

serious

so I've just discovered my hosts in the states have/are in the process of going belly up because of nasty little boys hacking into their machines and ballsing it all up...they say it will stay running till January, but I'm afraid I don't have that much confidence... I will never understand the psyche of these dickheads who just want to screw it all up for everyone... so at some point I'm going to be going back to blogger...(it's going to take a good few days to transfer all the seven months of archives... jeez what a pain in the arse)...blogger, I do love you... whatever... just be aware, that one of these days if this site disappears, it'll should be all back up at unkemptwomen.blogspot.com (I hope) bugger bugger bugger.

www.unkemptwomen.com WILL carry on, but it may take a while before I find its perfect solution...

(and from now on, I'm going to start switching ALL of the unkemptwomen.com email addresses to vitriolica@gmail.com just in case it goes bang in the night, so if you want to write to me, madge, bi, etc etc etc. just send it to the gmail address. ta)

post script...actually since I wrote this this morning I have decided that I'm not so pissed off about this... it will be much less faff... the days I have spent on mucking about here... la la la la

blogging about bloggers

bloggers

Retrato da Semana I

sides

yesterday's retrato da semana in O Acidental...by me!

to explain vit 'n' madge a bit better...

I did this for my friend Dem's blog as a guest post, in Guild of Ghostwriters. I fancied posting it here tonight. yeah. innit.

It's late ... and I'm sick of politics

so, something other than politics and blood. sort of. anyway...

groan

(in case you can't read my handwriting it says:

"erm, er, hi, erm...

hmmm, you know, erm...

well, gosh, I'd just...

erm, like to ask you...

if you like football, what computer have you got, don't you think someone's music collection is the greatest teller of character, if you don't mind a mess, but your politics are the same as mine?")

g'night america...oh shit... I mean Portugal, sorry.

Come on world, let's be realistic...

merciful

An excerpt I found in the "New Testament Book of Elections in Wartime"

"...And the brouhaha shall climax when the result for the election to find the man to preside over the united states of whatever-it-is is finally announced from a piece of paper with no hanging chads, whenever in time that shall be... until that moment, pundit shall draw sword against pundit... journo shall drink coffee against journo... ex-presider shall try to out-charm ex-presider... blogger shall fume madly in his darkened bedroom against blogger... and commenters (in blog-land) shall make up the new rule that what democracy ACTUALLY means is that if someone has a different opinion from you, especially if that opinion might not be the politically correct version of ideas, feel free to throw death threats, libellous insults and shit at that person in public instead of simply putting your own case quietly and calmly without your head exploding."