all the world's a stage... or at least it should be!

musical

I wonder a lot. and then I wonder some more. And while I'm making dinner I wonder some more, usually with a large G&T in my hand. And sometimes I wonder about big things and sometimes little things and sometimes I think I lose the plot.

This weekend I had a think while I was doing dinner or the dishes or something, and the think that I thunk was about singing and musicals. I love LOVE musicals... and had been watching "Mary Poppins" with the kids and listening later to some old jazz standards which always produces in me a strong desire to be a great jazz diva (not that I can get past the the first verse of most songs cos I can't remember them and can't read a note of music and probably frighten the neighbours when I do sing.. though ONCE in my lifetime I'm going to do a Michelle Pfeiffer on a grand piano) and I was thinking that if we were all silly enough to burst into song at least once a day and belt out a jazz standard or an operatic aria or a DECENT pop tune (not that bloody awful estonian or whatever thing from last year that went "noomai noomai ay, noomai noomai noomai ay" that both my children AND my sogros/inlaws thought to be FANTASTIC) for no reason, in the middle of the supermarket or the hairdressers or a political conference, and/or jump up and do a few dance steps, twirl round a lamp post, tap dance down the steps of a big building, get a troupe of local tradespeople who miraculously KNOW the words and steps to the song you are singing and dancing to to follow you down the street in glorious technicolour then maybe people would be little more chilled out... maybe we wouldn't have the idiotic business of celebrity worship because we would all have a stage of our own for a few minutes of every day... maybe there would be fewer wars because men could act like wankers SAFELY rather than penting it all up and getting angry.. and then I thought wouldn't it be funny to BE a musical, all the time, LIVING a musical...imagine the classics: Wizard of Oz, Singin' in the Rain, American in Paris, The Sound of Music, Moulin Rouge, Dancer in the Dark... AND THEN I THOUGHT... Vit, you are a straightjacket/lunatic asylum waiting to happen... just get Madge to draw a drawing of what Azeitão might look like if it was a musical, take a gulp of gin and go and lie down.

so I did. ;)

rewarded bravery

bravery

Put YOURSELF in this situation: You are required to stand in a queue, hours long, in the open air, waiting to vote and waiting to be attacked by a suicide bomber.

Would YOU do it? Could you do it?

I hope the extraordinarily brave voters in Iraq are rewarded with a decent democracy.

Argentina 1964

oops, no, sorry... Portugal 2005

Who needs caricatures when you've got this guy? Just look at that moustache! A moustache so astoundingly bushy that my rendition of this guy's uniform is fairly crap and inaccurate, cos all I could see was his face.

This is how it went:

Agente de GNR (Guarda Nacional da República for you non-portuguese - the agency that acts as police force outside of the metropolitan areas and actually I've probably got that wrong, I'm sure someone will put me right in the comment box... the professor's out and I can't check with him!) struts as slow as it possible to strut, along the pavement in his cavalier boots (WHY DO THEY STILL WEAR RIDING BOOTS?), checking the cars that are parked in a paid parking stretch of road, with a clipboard to note down registration numbers/matrículas.

I get out of my car in this stretch of road to buy a parking ticket, so I can go to the post office. Rummaging in my purse and handbag to find something smaller than a euro, since the fee for an hour or less is a very reasonable 30 cêntimos. I can't find anything smaller.

The Guard is still strutting extremely slowly, closer and closer, I know he's watching me, though his head isn't turned my way and his ray-bans aren't see-through.

I give in and decide to overpay the 70 cêntimos to the machine, as I'm really in a hurry to get to the post office just after it has opened after lunch so I don't have to queue for an hour behind some rather mad people. I put the euro coin in the machine.

The machine spits my coin out. Repeatedly.

I try another one euro coin, but the same thing happens.

By this time Sr. Guard has reached my side and stops there, though says nothing.

"Good Afternoon" I say. "Hmmmm." I continue, cheerfully and pleasantly, "I can't seem to get this machine to take this coin..."

"Just two hours" he mumbles, gruffly.

"Excuse me?"

"two hours" his moustache barely moves.

I take a second to work out what the moustache is saying to me. After a few seconds.... neither he nor the moustache have moved.... I work out that because the parking limit is two hours, the machine won't accept more than the 70 cêntimos that those two hours would cost, which, in turn, means that it most certainly won't take my one euro coin.

"Oh, I see, Sr Guard means that because the parking limit is two hours, the machine won't accept more than the 70 cêntimos that those two hours would cost, which, in turn, means that it most certainly won't take my one euro coin... even if I don't mind wasting the extra cêntimos. What a pity."

Sr. Guard tuts through his moustache. He TUTS at me!


"Oh, well...." I say, still pleasantly, for one doesn't ever want to get grumpy with a policeman/guard/garda/whoever "then I'll go and get some change for this one euro coin. Okay?" Meaning "is that okay? you won't book me while I nip into this café here because I have dared to park without having the requisite small denomination currency on me, will you?" but while I am pleasantly saying this to him, Sr Guard turns on his heel, as slow as it is possible to turn on one's heel without falling over and struts slowly and self-importantly off, with a just visible "tut".

What the BLOODY HELL WAS THAT?

I could get a British policeman into serious trouble for doing that! But, when a policeman indeed looks like a sinister argentinian you just don't want to mess about, do you?

I have two GNR in my acquired extended family and they're both really nice blokes (and no, I'm not just saying that, they are!) and I'm sure they don't go round doing this ridiculous strutting business. But, the only other face to face dealing I had with a GNR was also far more unpleasant than it needed to be... I was parked in the wrong place and he barked questions at me, but didn't let me answer them, and then when he saw I was riled said "nervous?".

Come off it, fellahs, it's a bit old hat isn't it?

What I did this week for O Acidental

I WAS going to do a lovely drawing for here of the DELIGHTFUL GNR bloke I encountered yesterday, but my head is aching, and I REALLY want to do him justice... so he can wait. So instead here is this week's retrato da semana (portrait of the week).



democracia 600 px

hmmmmm.

illustration

grow old gracefully?

No.

Now, listen. I'm going to be thirty five this year. THIRTY BLOOMIN' FIVE! (22nd May, put it in your electronic diary and send me an enormous present). I used to think that when I got to thirty five I'd finally feel like a grown-up. But, I'm four months off it and I'm not even geting close to feeling like a grown-up. But, what I am beginning to feel as I edge towards being middle aged is a great deal less tolerant of stupidity, ridiculousness, time-wasting, futility and things that are just plain wrong.

Contrary to what many people think, I've always been a bit reticent about standing up to be counted, shouting about what I believe to be right/wrong (delete as necessary), telling people to their faces that they are doing something dangerous/illegal/stupid; happier to use pseudonyms on the internet just in case old colleagues/boyfriends/enemies were to see my site here and go "I always knew she wasn't cool/hip/fixe/post-retro-modernist-ironic".

But, times, they are a-changing. (don't you just HATE it, when people use song lyrics like that?) and so am I.... and I realize only now, REALLY only now, that life is too short for being terribly nice and and not saying what you think... and not SEEING things for what they are.

so these days, for example, when I see people driving like arseholes, I get mad... in my little way. If you see a grey-eyed brunette with long hair tied up in some contraption at the back of her head in a car with a professor in the passenger seat reading a book and two beautiful but constantly fighting little girls in the back seat, and she is gesticulating wildly at you with extremely rude gestures and pointing to your car and your head and the empty space within, you are obviously driving like a true wanker and I don't want to be on the other end of your car when you inevitably crash it into some unsuspecting person/car/bus because you are going too fast or overtaking everywhere you shouldn't or driving so close up behind me that I can see your nostril hair.

and if I see a prime examplar of the modern fashion for self-absorption to whom TV, Hollywood and the stupid rich are gods, I squirm and jiggle and my nerves jangle and I wonder if they notice that every year there exist more and more THINGS in this world to be frustrated/horrified/shocked/moved/terrified by (delete as necessary) ... whether we are talking humanity or ecology or biology... when I see such an exemplar who seems so obsessed with FASHION, the most flippant of all the human arts, that you can tell there is no space in their life for much other than themselves and that when you see them driving merrily along with a mobile phone clamped to their ear, yacking and yacking, obviously NOT talking about the road deaths caused in the Western World by people driving merrily along with a mobile phone clamped to their ear, yacking and yacking, I get plain and simple angry.

Unfortunately I'm no good with confrontation. So, at the petrol station where I might stop at the same time as such a person, I clam up and say nothing. But I'm lucky. I can go home and draw a perfect repro of such a person and shame them by thier ridiculousness. And remind the world that flat caps are for farmers and that even Farah Fawcett doesn't wear those glasses anymore.



Don't grow-up...... just get ANGRY with the stupid!

(and I am formulating plans for mass civil disobedience of various kinds against stupidity: see the comments on this post for Mat's fantastic anti-Tia measure. Bloody brilliant. I suspect Miguel could come up with a few ideas too.... in IKEA especially!)

the power of the watercooler

watercooler

Another trip to the hospital clinic this weekend in order to get the equivalent of a GP consultation (LONG story of impossibly LONG waiting lists and the inadequate health provision in our ever expanding village)... meaning a LONG wait in an entirely underdecorated (actually, it IS decorated with get-yourself-closer-to-god-pronto-cos-you're-REALLY-sick! slogans on corporate headed paper, framed and placed intermittently on the walls) waiting-room/corridor with a thankfully tolerant five year old.

And thank god for the watercooler. This watercooler proves every time to be the greatest entertainment for all the bored children in this marble clad tube/waiting-room. They congregate round it, looking at each other with that same beatific look that old and stoned hippies give each other when they get to Stonehenge at Solstice, contemplating its simplicity and beauty.

They wonder why it has two buttons (the watercooler, not Stonehenge) and how, with just one bottle, two temperatures of water are possible.

They watch people come to fill up a cup of water, scrunch up the cup, bin it and five minutes later come back for more.

They watch the mother who almost explodes internally trying to decide whether the water is too cold or too warm for her child's throat.... for we must remember that Portugal is the only country in the world where it is possible to drink water that is too cold; it has even been known to kill! (we have the government issuing civil protection cold weather warnings for this week, cos it's going to be a bit cold... wear gloves and don't exert yourself in the cold.... hmmmm... hear that, northern europe?).

They only move away back to their mothers when an extremely ill and phlegm-ridden old person comes and sits inconveniently close to the magic watercooler, and their gaze moves magnetically to the old person as he or she hawks up and spits the product into a hankie.

Ah, childhood.

And thanks to three fellow bloggers, all portuguese and dotted around the world, who bought my drawings in the auction. I am thrilled that I was able to raise some money.

Don't forget the Tsunami Quilt! (that's a reminder to myself as well as to you).

THANK YOU!

Well, thanks everyone... that auction business was fun and I think I may have to do more eBaying soon (to make some money for Madge Relief).

I have sold the four lots to three people ALL over the world (California, Edinburgh and Covilhã!) for the total sum of £161.00 or approx. €231.45.... thank you all for bidding.

I will pay that amount to Oxfam and will post the receipt somewhere visible.

meu bear

meu bear

A big scary bear here to remind you that there are just over two hours left (i.e. 1340 hours GMT) on Vit 'n' Madge's Tsunami Auction Spectacular.

There's about 145 quid raised so far.... come one you lot.... bid bid bid bid!

good things

two things:

a) to cheer myself up after my last dismally depressing downer of a post I went to finish one of my squares (this one and a painted one) for the Tsunami Quilt Project. Well, I couldn't find any chocolate. Go here to see the everyone's squares so far



and

b) have you seen the pounds my auction is raising? Well done everyone....£117.50 £135.99 and counting (at today's exchange rate: €195.80)

but, come on people...................MORE! MORE! MORE!

village life II

I was watching a programme on BBC Prime the other evening about a British couple who relocated to a Spanish village.

They moved there to open a guest house and do guided walking holidays in the nearby mountains. They did this to downsize their life... to get away from the rat race... to find their semi-rural idyll and make a new and more interesting life for themselves and their small children. The Spanish village was just as you might imagine it, cobbled streets, very few cars, clean as a pin, a square full of cheerful Spaniards smoking fags and looking chilled out and Spanish.

I was looking at this and something occurred to me. I turned to the house professor (who was already looking longingly at the screen) and said "This is what people imagine when I tell them that we live in a village in Portugal...isn't it?". Dolefully the professor nodded his head.

Bloody hell.

And then I remembered my first visit to this village several years ago... and I remembered how my heart sank as the bus drove along the main street of Brejos, the suburbyish part of Azeitão that we live in.

It wasn't the little idyll that I had been expecting, presuming, it would be, subconciously.

There were cars everywhere, abandoned in yards or parked badly.

Dust and sand made the pavements, with potholes for old ladies to trip on. Many of the houses on this main road were built in terribly bad taste in the 60s or seventies and painted dark green or furnished with marquises (balconies glassed in) ... many of the older houses were abandoned. There were a few shops straddling this main road, so that to do any shopping in the papelaria (see below) or butcher or hardware store or retrosaria (haberdashery) one has to risk life and limb crossing the pelican crossing to get between them... for though there are lights and a beeper plenty of people don't bother to stop. It depressed me. But then I moved here and living took over and I had other things to think about, although the feeling that this place is really rather hideous never left me.

And now, seven years on, it is even worse. Now it looks like one of the roads that lead into american towns and cities with full size swimming pools, up-ended, lining the street, neon signs and tasteless gaudy advertising for car washes, brazilian restaurants, "banqueting" halls for weddings and such. The village is rapidly becoming a town of the most characterless kind, with great swathes of bland development going on behind the signage and smoke.
Existing blocks of flats are crumbling although they were only built ten to fifteen years ago... Many house owners are trying to sell their houses... but who would buy one when they could buy a new one on the other side of the village for a bit more money that would get them heating and central vacuum cleaning (which in this dust-obsessed place is a boon). Even the main and supposedly classy village of Vila Nogueira de Azeitão is being devastated from the outside in... with equally nasty and tasteless development going on all around its outskirts and encroaching rapidly into the village itself. It is quite devastatingly depressing. Especially when you can see beautiful Arrábida in the distance.

Now I've depressed myself. I'm going to go and eat a bar of chocolate.

village life... dontcha just love it?

papeleria

I LOVE Supermarkets that have a newsagent bit at the side. It means that I can avoid the village papershop, the hub of "vilageness" around here.

It is the place you don't want to go if you're a stranger in town, or not such a stranger but a foreigner, or not even a foreigner but someone who doesn't know any gossip.

It's where you can be ignored for a whole five minutes while the lady who owns the place hears about Mr Jones's goiter or Mrs Arthurson's daughter's divorce. It's where you can hear all about grinding poverty in a supposedly developed country. It's where you can hear about all the failings of the health service, about people getting nasty diseases, about traffic accidents and all manners of awful and unexpected deaths.

It's where to go if you want to get a stunned look when you ask for a copy of Público or an incredulous hurrumph when you ask if they are any Diário de Notí­cias left... when you can see a huge pile of each of these newspapers on the shelves by the counter.

This is village life.... and village life is a pretty universal phenomenon... but here it goes the extra kilometre in "villageness".

Appeal to Humanity

At some point today, Flickr will be doing maintenance. hmmmph. That means no piccies for some time this afternoon/evening.

So, let us use this enforced picturelessness to reflect on greater matters. An inicative by "Fraternidade"
Read in Portuguese
Read in English

You know it makes sense. Heads out of the sand time.

This isn't normally a campaigning nor political (even with a small p) blog.
But sometimes, someone has something important to say. So cliquety clickety clique!

strange portuguese men things

strange portuguese men things

Look, I have to say it...an awful lot of Portuguese men just wear too much HAIR. and it's over coiffed at that. I'm sorry. I've said it. You just have to accept that it's true, fellahs.

And, it is such a shame that blazers have to be the uniform of choice. They are just so Middle England Golf Club. And loafers? Will you please all burn your loafers! They are hideous!

There are other things. But we have forever to cover them.

Just evening out the balance a bit. I do go on about women an awful lot.

do madgey wadgy a favour, sff....

and put this badge on your site: (http://photos2.flickr.com/3382360_fc97c12e5b_o.jpg)

linking to this post: http://unkemptwomen.blogspot.com/2005/01/dito-e-feito-leilo-auction.html or straight to the four lots at: http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQgotopageZ1QQsassZvioletigginsQQsorecordsperpageZ50QQsosortpropertyZ1

Just for the next nine days..... pwetty pwease?

thank you. The bids are going up. It's awful exciting! I think I may become an eBay addict. Groovy.

Another creative Tsunami fund raiser is this: The Tsunami Quilt Project which I found via Rosa's blog, which will include squares such as this one amongst many others.

dito e feito: leilão = auction

Right, you lot! Roll up, roll up!

Vit, Madge and our previously unknown and also entirely fictitious sister, Violet 'Iggins have put four lots up for auction at eBay. All proceeds will go to Oxfam and we will pay the postage to send them to the sucessful bidder anywhere in the world.

1
2

3

4

Go on! It's a ten day auction. That gives you plenty of time to ask any rich relatives to buy one for you. Or are you a wealthy lawyer/doctor/journo (yeah right, hahahaha)? I am asking nicely!


;)

Up for sale...

By the end of tomorrow, Friday, Madge and I will have decided on three watercolours that we are going to auction off via eBay so that we can in turn give something to Oxfam. We may not be able to get one of these, but maybe we could give them some cash.

Anyway, I'll let you know, post the pictures and let's see what we can do from our comfortable half of the world.

role models

fag toting ambulance man

This irritates me. More than I can express to you, this irritates me.

Assiduous readers will know that I gave up smoking last year. After nineteen years with a fag not too far from my mouth, I stopped, on the 1st January 2004. It was a most liberating experience which I shall not bore you with here. But, since that day, I've notice cigarettes far more: I've noticed the smell everywhere, how horrible I must have smelled all those years, I've noticed young girls smoking, I've noticed men in wheelchairs in hospitals who've just had a leg chopped off, smoking in the corridors (I am NOT kidding), I've noticed grey-skinned middle-aged people wheezing along the streets of my village.

So when I see an ambulance driver, as I did this morning, who as well as being really rather overweight was heavily smoking a fag whilst on duty with his ambulance, I really NOTICE it.

I'm still a little uncertain how the ambulance services work in Portugal, but I think that some belong to the national health service, some belong to the voluntary fire and emergency services and some are run by private health companies. But whoever they are owned or run by, isn't it extraordinary that these people who are rushing around the country, whether picking up emergency cardiac patients cut down by 40 fags a day, or delivering home not very old people with emphysema, bronchitis or lung cancer, are allowed or allow themselves to smoke in public?

To show to the world that it's ok to smoke really, because they work in health care and subliminally are sending you the message that it can't be all that dangerous. It doesn't do that much harm.

I'm not preaching. I just remember the lies I told myself everytime I lit a fag that it wasn't THAT bad, it wasn't hurting me THAT much. Well, an ambulance driver, inside or out of his/her ambulance (and I've seen them driving along fagging away) with a fag on is doing the same thing but to a greater audience.


(if you want to give up, here's a great and spiffingly easy way to do it. I'm not on commission!)

Snarky post, not snarky post, snarky post, not snarky post...

arrabida skyline grey

Madge and I, the two small people, the household professor and all the professor's friends and relations (if you don't read A.A. Milne, do!) live in a rather beautiful part of Portugal. Well, I think that about 90% of Portugal is rather beautiful when NOT tampered with by Human Beans (if you don't read Roald Dahl to your children, do!)... once the human beans have been at work, the place generally gets downgraded in my humble (ha!) opinion.

This morning I went to buy some lovely paint in Setúbal, the kind of paint that is such a beautiful colour that you want to dip in your finger and taste it. To get to Setúbal from Azeitão one drives over a big hill, I don't know whether it counts as part of the Serra da Arrábida, but whatever... as you drive up it you can look backwards and see the whole peninsula stretching out in front of you; to the other side of the Tejo, and beyond, to the mountains behind Lisbon. It is fascinating, not necessarily pretty, but fascinating. But, as you come over the top of the hill, Serra da Arrábida appears and like all mountain and large hill ranges, the weather and time of day DO things to their appearance. If I had a great photographic talent and a great camera, I would probably have a photoblog and take beautiful pictures of Portugal as well as me little ol' Webb's Ite here. But, as it is, I have neither of those things, so you'll have to believe me that this is what I see on winter mornings, coming over the hill from Azeitão.

Shopping anyone?

lisbon stereo ladies

Well, it's SALES/SALDOS time, isn't it. Time to brave Lisbon to find things to buy that you wouldn't dream of buying normally, but since it's got 30% off it's worth spending sixty euros on. Bleedin' rip off.... BUT I digress....

It was time for another Pt Stereotype and of course when shopping is on the agenda these two won't be far away. Big, thick yellow hair, coiffed for several hundred euros a month; the most expensive clothes; the Burberry or Luis Vuitton Handbag or more expensive/more exlusive for those in the know; the desperate look in the eye, masked by the perfectly applied but excessive foundation and mascara and flesh coloured lipstick;

They are to be seen everywhere, anywhere there is a shop, especially the shops that might be deemed exclusive.

They face a huge dilemma now, though: IKEA has come to town. They used to pick up a few things when the nearest IKEA was in Madrid, bring them back to Lisbon and their friends and cleaners could go "ooooh, that's nice". But now IKEA has arrived in, of all places, Alfragide, just a few kilometres from their usual stamping ground.
They know that they love the little thingymabobs that IKEA supply. They love the cute little gadgets, the stylish kitchen utensils. But they also know that IKEA is for the masses. WHAT TO DO? Can they buy the same balloon whisk as an art student? Or what about the pretty embroidered cushion that their cleaner will buy for her daughter-in-law? Quite. You can imagine the problem! To counter this problem, they have devised a strategy of walking round IKEA in pairs or small groups, volubly disdainful of the things on the shelves, saying they are tacky or look cheap (all the while coveting that very thing). They sneer their way around the place... to raise a smile would crack the foundation and lead the masses to believe these ladies are less than Greatness personified.

If in the next few weeks you feel that Vit is becoming a little obsessed with IKEA, well... we're having a HUGE overhaul of our house and Madge and Vit are followers of the great church of IKEA and are currently trying to indoctrinate the house professor too. (It is working too!)

dispelling myths - Portugal is a hot country.

ice cube

HA! Portugal is in fact the coldest country in the world... and I used to live in Scotland... so I KNOW what cold is! This is REAL cold, this is PENGUIN cold... (obviously I'm not going to draw a penguin in the picture as well as the blood stained polar bear who has just eaten an innocent baby seal for breakfast... that would be silly).

If anyone ever tells you "I'm moving to Portugal for the warmth", TELL THEM THE TRUTH! I can barely feel my fingers and have to wear a scarf indoors.

So, if you've been wondering why I've been so quiet these last couple of days in the commentary box (and for this I apologize... I don't like to appear like one of those bloggers who only converse in the commentary box once a decade on the highest matters... ) but I have been trying to keep two small chesty-coughed people warm in one half of the house, while the other half, the computer half, suffers a mini ice-age (imagine NY in "The Day After Tomorrow" the cackest film this century) so it's a case of "blog and run" or "read lovely comments left by kind and sane people and run".

I'll light a fire with the professor's books tomorrow (which rather over-populate MY office/corridor) for tomorrow: I've got some serious blogging, emailing, blogging, drawing, painting, blogging, christmas thank you letters to write on behalf of my illiterate children, etc etc etc to do. And these things are near impossible with numb feet, a cold arse and a red dripping nose.

Portugal - it's cold!

A good way to give

This is a good way to auction stuff for disaster relief... especially if you're not rich.

girls, this is for you!

Especially dedicated to my fellow eurogirlieblogaddictbuddies and two of the best blogs in the world too (alongside MINE, OBVIOUSLY!), Petite Anglaise and Zed Myboyfriendisatwat whose arses are getting bigger everyday... like mine, victims of BLOGGING!

The International Ladies' Fat Grading System

As always, I have conducted extensive and exhaustive research to bring you the facts. After international recognition of the Tummy Hierarchy Scale (a bloke in the Faroe Islands thought it quite amusing) I thought it high time to follow up with "The International Ladies' Fat Grading System":

which CONCLUSIVELY proves several facts:
a. Portuguese cakes are principally made from substances that gravitate toward the upper half of the body; see the diagram on the right and note the shapely thin ankle PROVING that Portuguese cakes, pig fat and vast quantities of rice and potatoes eaten TOGETHER (it is a habit that should be made illegal) gives you thin ankles and enormous shoulders.

b. English lard (banha) is a heavier free radical and more balanced as it distributes itself more freely and widely over the body; see the lady on the left and note that I haven´t shown you her ankles as her legs are clad in unsightly leggings, a fashion statement that really ought to stay in Primark, that show off the less than shapely ankles.

OBVIOUSLY there are other factors to consider in this shape differential, namely lifstyles; The Portuguese fat lady spends precisely 94% of her waking hours standing up, feeding her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and their assorted wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends and pets, doing everyone's ironing and standing at her front gate watching the cars go by...so the fat stays up top. The British fat lady spends precisely (I HAVE measured this scientifically, I promise!) 87% of her day on the sofa in front of "Trisha" (SIC 10 Horas), "This Morning" (Praça de Alegria) and "Corrie" (Coronation Street: The oldest TV soap in the world, and getting older every minute) and does the ironing on special days only...so the fat goes... everywhere.

Vitriolica Webb... Sociologist, Anthropologist and big fat (though not as fat as those above) Liar.

and she's BACK!

My machine works!

The home for sick and infirm pcs worked their miracles and it was scraped back from the dead, with vast helpings of new and un-shortcircuited RAM and an eye on a dodgy hard drive that may give up the ghost at any time (but this time I will be prepared!.. dunno how, but I WILL!) and now after a week of pc-less-ness (I do speak the english language properly sometimes) I am horribly behind on some REAL work. So, I'd better do it. and stop blogging. and blogging some more. and checking my email. and writing emails. and checking for more emails. and rearranging my filing system. and reading my favourite blogs. and .....

GET BACK TO WORK WOMAN!

This is what I look like today..

iocotd1sm

since I am computerless, painting-softwareless, tabletless, even scannerless... and I realise only now that it is an addiction that I am suffering from. Took my computer to the home for sick and infirm computers and it's not looking good. They say it's probably consumption. Ah, well... we shall just have to find a new one... a whizz bang super fabbo one that doesn't go fut... I'll only be on the doorstep of the sogros (inlaws) for another few days until I have irritated the house professor and buyer of expensive things that my suffereing cold turkey from my lack of computer and WORK is worse than forking out a few euros. !

And what with all the LOVELY things I want to say about Portugal today....


ahahahahhahah

fut! ... oh and a happy new year!

that's seemed to be what my machine has done... fut! gawd knows. great timing huh? New Year.... fresh energy for drawing mean and nasty pictures of the Portuguese and British alike and my machine flatlines.... so, I'll be asking sogríssimos EVER so nicely for the next few days if I can borrow their pc from time to time (this one... nice innit?) until I get mine back up and running.

Anyway, we are back in Azeitão (with keyboards with accents thank god) and while I'm forced away from constant blogging and farting around on the pc I shall be painting and beavering away at something productive to put up in blogolândia.

Don't forget South East Asia.... I'm rather proud of the British today, since in less than a week, they raised £60 million and that's just the people, not the British government. Long may it continue.

Beijinhos, abraços and HELP!!!!!!!!!!!