Davina-Mike McCall

Thankfully, Mike in the BB house has taken on the extra role of being Davina McCall's counterpart (or Teresa Guilherme for Pt BB) so if you've given up visiting BB because you'd had to mortgage the kids to read it all.... you can go back now... Davina-Mike has summarized each week in separate posts.... so now you can be confused even quicker.

uh huh...

don't worry.... Portugal is inexhaustable.
I shall never stop taking the piss...
I shall never be beaten!



ahahahahahahahahahahah (evil, EVIL laugh)

thoughts

I dunno.

I am just very impressed by people who defy what is expected of them, who remain angry about wrongs, who are prepared to change their minds, who are willing to say they were wrong, publicly.

I'm thinking, of course, about Live8 and G8 and everything else8. I want to be impressed. I want to see politicians actualy pulling it out of the hat and doing something surprising, shocking, amazing and not just the usual flannel.

hmmmmmm.

blog tired... NEVER

You know how when you have kids, that after about a week, you can't imagine life without them, nor can you remember life before them?

That's how I feel about my blog.

I was asked in a questionnaire the other day how long I intended to keep my blog going.

What a strange question, I thought. And I actually felt sad at the thought that one day I may not have a blog.

I think I might need to see a shrink.

"thank god I've done my duty"

said Admiral Lord Nelson as he lay dying having defeated the French and Spanish at the Battle of Trafalgar.



It's 200 years since 1805. Can you imagine? I still remember when it was only 175 years ago. But things change.

Sky News made me laugh the other day... it went something like this: "And celebrations are hotting up as the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar draws closer. Descendants of some of the battle's participants will be joining together in Southampton for a party. Of course, that is not to denegrate the loss of French and Spanish lives."

Yeah, right.

Erm... This IS political correctness gone freakshow, isn't it?

They'll be embroidering disclaimers on the Bayeaux Tapestry next.

shhhh, don't anyone...

what am I saying? TELL EVERYONE... I've found a T-shirt place in UK! Looks like good stuff and I'm setting up my images over the next few days, so if you have any special requests for existing drawings, TELL ME NOW.

I'm also doing the same thing at Zazzle.com, for the U.S.

Woot woot! I want to see you all with a Madge drawing on your chest, (or your coffee, or your desk as they also do mugs and mousemats).

And I'll see if I can find one in Ozland too.

This is all part of my bid for world domination.

But you knew that already.

bodies exposed

Isn't it odd how most people, mostly women, go to great lengths everyday to dress up, make up, cover up... to hide the awful truth beneath (which probably isn't really that awful, but compared to the ghastly stick people we call models and actors, IS awful)... but come the summer, they feel quite comfortable letting it all hang out, indeed SWING out in some cases, in front of thousands of fellow beach-goers, in some hideous and inappropriately tiny bikini... standing arms and legs akimbo in the sun to get the most extensive tan?

I feel that naked bodies may well be my theme for the next few weeks of summer while I am cajoled and coerced by the three other members of this little family unit into taking them to the bloody beach.



Art

where one goes to see blubber

and over-compensatory bikinis...


and just to prove that I write twaddle on paper as well as in the blogosphere:

The interrupted thoughts of a mummy on the beach. But, really, a lot of prozac prescriptions could be avoided if one wasn't constantly looking to get unrealistically thinner. And it is ALL the fault of advertisers and model agencies. (nice one, Dove, for the recent fatty is beautiful ads). Look around on the beach. The only people with "perfect" bodies are either 13 years old or they're older and haven't got enough else to do in their life than think about their bloody figure. (Obviously, when I get my bloody figure back, through lots of trampoline bouncing and a distinct lack of pain au chocolat, I'll be saying otherwise).




Art

takkiieke ttaaakkkhooohh Hoooooooooo ayahaaah!

That's Japanese for "I haven't a bloody clue what manga cartoons are all about!"

So, I'm basing this on my un-extensive knowledge of Japanese cartoons for kids since they are the ones (actually there are only two I let them watch) that I'm forced to watch with my two pinky winky girls. And it seems that the premise is this: You get some fluffy wuffy little animal/dolly/monster/bot/ mons (presumably short for monster) that belong to a child each (who seems to have to have suffered a terrible trauma and wails a lot... and has a mysterious tear painted on to its face at intervals) The children must have enORMOUS eyes, tiny pointed nose and chin and an extremely elegant body with big shoes. To illustrate an example of "mons" I am presenting you this evening with my children in the starring roles as the "mons" (I should be in bed, but I can't sleep without doing this... it's bugging me and I have to get it out... I can't take any more kiddy manga which I've been subjected to because I've had them at home ALL WEEK mostly on my own while working, blogging, illustrating, translating scientific text and cooking them bloody food while being puked on at regular intervals, having to go to the doctor twice because the first time he prescribed a non existent drug etc etc etc). "Mons" have several states of being. First is the abovementioned CUTE stage:



Then, when the plot gets a bit heavy, and a fight scene is in order, and there's nowhere else to go, the "mons" get transformed into different states of being depending on how jolly angry they get with their owners or counterparts, the last stage being their ultimate "mon" stage... and enormous and highly talented monster with certain, only certain (hey, the x-men wouldn't have been interesting if they didn't just have one special power each... (that word "SPECIAL" goes out to an e-friend of mine)... and a whole new outfit that magics out of nowhere (remember mr benn? I used to have a huge crush on mr. Benn, when I was four) ... they have an enormous fight with lots of psychedelic (or just plain psycho) effects (I have to say, I watch a lot of Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls and they do SUCH good rip offs of manga fight scenes... very funny) thus:







Okay, so this was just a vehicle to express my frazzledness at having two little people who have driven me mad for having been stuck in at home most of the week cos one was horribly ill (all over me at regular intervals.. have I told you that already?) and to express my less than love for manga that I just don't GET along with the rest of Japanese culture that gets to over here. Just don't get it. Probably won't in the near future either. So don't expect a manga-esque banda/comic anytime soon, from me. Cos I don't get it.

And I HATE that big eyed thing... another reason I HATE Disney....bleurgh... taste.less.big.eyed.bull.shit ... gosh. this is turning into an I hate I hate I hate blog recently, isn't it?

Ah well, it'll pass. It's probably just hormones. Or maybe it's the effect of Tia Z who turned up today for her annual MONTH long visit (not at our house!).... We got through lunch and I thought that this year I had escaped at least the first day of her visit... but NO. ....

"Ai, Madgey! Haven't you got lovely and fat, querida!"

I adore Tia Z. But not when she mentions how fat I am.

"It's the big shirt she's wearing" says Sogra, seeing the rage in my eyes...

"no, no, it's in her face, look, all lovely and rounded all around her face and neck and everything...hehehehe!"

27 days to go.

two weeks in the big blogger house...

if you haven't given up your job/life to watch the goings on in the big blogger house... here's a little summary:



Well, that was my perspective anyway.

One day....

One day, I'm going to write/draw a horror banda... it's going to be the scariest horror story ever and it's going to scare the pants off everyone (though the critics will demote it to chick-horror and boys won't buy it because it would be too lame to buy chick-horror and it would only ever sell five copies... BUT).. that's what I'm going to do.

I'm also going to find my dream patch of land in the nearby hills (don't tell my lovely new inglis buddy that I'm HORRIBLY jealous of her dream patch of land in the nearby hills, will you?) and build my dream eco-house with the help of erm... Sven, the swedish eco-house builder.... while I (AND the prof... this isn't a pervy Sven thing, it's just that the Swedes are very clever at eco-houses) watch on... then paint beautiful trompe-l'oeuil (how the HELL do you write the plural of "trompe-l'oeuil"? french e-buddies, please help) all over the place and stunning murals from floor to ceiling... in the places that thre aren't huge windows with views overlooking Arrábida.

I'm going to set up a publishing house that publishes fabulous writers and illustrators and artists in a variety of languages all over the world, markets them properly and gives them most of the profits (hahahahahaha) (I'm going to set it up, I ain't going to RUN it... TOO boring).

I'm going to write/illustrate several dozen books on what it is to live a semi-expat life in Portugal (I say semi... half of my little adorable family is Portuguese, that part of me isn't expat)... and then someone else can bloody translate them.

I'm going to write a great philosophical tract that makes everyone go "oooooh, yeah!.. she's right, you know."

I'm going to paint some beautiful paintings that grace the walls of the great and the good (not the thick and the fashionable)

I'm going to fill my wardrobe with all my own creations so I don't have to go bloody clothes shopping ever again.

I'm going to solve all the problems of Portugal... then Britain... then THE WORLD.

I'm nothing if not realistic.


Art

blog... what? who? why?

What IS my blog? This is my blog.

Portugal - I have to desabafar (let off steam, but I prefer desabafar) about Portugal (for obvious reasons (if you don't know the obvious reasons, read my blog from the very first day)).

Art - I have to be creative/artistic/produce a reasonable amount of bullshit. What better place than a blog?

Inner Workings - or rather, a window to the soul... I mean, I don't write a diary any more, my little sister Letitia used to read it, then tell the boys I had crushes on them... so where else am I going to write my innermost thoughts (as if).

Er... - what else? er... it's part of my bid for world domination? er... to get attention? er... to get work? er... to be internationally famous without having to move my arse from this (highly uncomfortable) stool?

Just in case you were wondering.

Art

my neighbours and their comedy vehicular apparatus

Another comedy vehicle in the face of erm....adversity.

So, yesterday didn't go to plan and just after I posted the thing about going to the dreaded mall, the littlest madge-child puked on me. In my hair and down my cleavage if you must know... great aim that one. So we didn't go out, just stayed in and got puked on, until it became clear that seeing a doctor would be quite a good thing to do. So I shovelled the madge-children into the car to go to the hospital where we get seen. Had to stop for petrol.... and there he was.

Here was a Charles Bronson lookalike grandfather was filling in a tiny tiny motorbike, a size that my sick three-year-old could ride.

And when he'd finished, he just got on it and drove off.

It was the first thing all day that made my little sickie laugh, so I liked him even more (she's on the mend now... she's got tonsilitis).



tech tag:Art, Illustration, Portugal

afixe - 1,000,000 - parabéns!

afixe hit 1 million visitators
yesterday... go see my accurate
portrayal of every single visitor
since last April.

Well done, malta... Monty,
Emiele, M.Butterfly, Bernardo,
Gibel, João Pedro, Sharkinho,
Isabel, Susana, Jorge e
"João Garcez"!

snarf snarf

starey mary

I'm going to take the kids out for the afternoon. Somewhere air conditioned and cool. Somewhere to shop. Somewhere eat junk food. Somewhere to get stared at like aliens. A Shopping Centre! Hoorah! They are a quiet vile necessity ... and at least I can let the small maniacs run off without worrying about cars ... but they are full of PEOPLE ... STARING at us for being FOREIGN... I need to get an afternoon of air conditioning before I take them to the beach tomorrow (and we all know how I feel about the beach).

Oh, joy.

I'm sure I shall be further inspired for further posting.

*sigh*

two things.

I feel I must just share with you that:

a) my OED word for the day (get sent a word everyday) today is "vomit"....
1. The act of ejecting the contents of the stomach through the mouth. YUM.

and b) my teddy bear, who is named Pushkin (probably vit's idea in her young and pretentious years.... ), who I/we've had since we were born, so he's at least 35 years old, has recently been through the washing machine, I discovered yesterday. (that sounds like The Times, doesn't it?)

If you have a highly treasured teddy bear, impress upon any three year old children you might know that he is not under any circumstances to be taken out of the house and left ANYWHERE, esPECIALLY to Avó's (grandmother) house where he is likely to be scooped up and zealously put in the washing machine.

Thankfully Pushkin came out alive. A bit less hairy. A lot cleaner.



I have to say that I almost cried when I saw him on a shelf waiting for me. *gulp*

exploding myths

Ah... the summer in Portugal... I know you think this. Even if you live here, you probably think this. I do. I think a big aaaaaaahhhhh, summer..... I always look forward to summer in Portugal. Winters in our house are so extremely vile, that summer is really something to look forward to.

First you get springtime. And it is warm again, proper warm, with flowers and beautiful light and a bit of rain if you're lucky. And you think, ah, the summer'll be here soon (well, one does use a lot of apostrophes in one's mind, ... you don't say, "ah, summer shall be upon us in no time" in your head do you?.. no, you don't... ) I'm looking forward to the summer, (you are still thinking here)... I can handle a bit of full on heatwave, I can.

And then the full on heatwave comes and you think, christ almighty, it's hot, but I'm not going to complain because I'm British and all we ever talk about in Britainland is going to sunnier climes... so I ain't saying nothing about the heat... but bloody hell, there are days here when you can't breathe and others where you'd melt if you could and there are others.... okay, so I'm not complaining... and I bet you a gazilllion squillion quid that if you're living there in cold northern Europe where it snows all year round (according to my neighbours) you think "ah, summer in Portugal... how wonderful" and in your mind's eye you see a lovely villa bathed in Portugal's legendary light and all's right with the world and there's me in the corner sipping lime daiquiris (whatever one of them is) and looking just dreamy.

Well think again. This is how life is when the hot weather arrives where I live (i.e. in Portugal, in the middlish part, in Azeitão, in our cowboy built house that was specially constructed to channel the heat outwards in winter and inwards in summer):



Shutters shut, windows shut, wandering around in either the dark or with horrible artificial light... occasionally having to give in and turn on the air conditioning for half an hour to get the semblance of some oxygen back into the house.... *gasp*

Thankfully the last remaining place with anything like a cold tinge to it in the whole house is my office/corridor/dumping ground... sounds like such a welcoming place, doesn't it?... . so, more reason to be a big vegetable in front of the computer all day then... huh?

Ah, what's a blog for if not to explode a few myths... hmmn? Yes, I knew you'd agree....: Portugal is DARK in SUMMER!

well... that's pink

You know how I hate pixies and moorjjjte jackers (see below if you don't know what a moorjjjte jacker is)? Well I also hate pink. But I only hate pink when it is worn or used without a sense of humour.

Pink is only acceptable when worn/used in a post-modern-ironic-pre-avante-retro-garde manner, and only then if this is obvious to all viewers of the pinkness.

The kind of pink that my two little girls (at least one of whom I had hoped would be an extreme tomboy/maria-rapaz) insist upon wearing is of the repulsive candy-barbie-bubble-gum-un-ironic-tasteless kind.

What's a girls to do?

burn barbies, burn!





*this was a short pink-induced sunday morning post*

addendum - I finally got jonnyB's protest song to play on my crappy machine ... oh why can't I afford my 17" g4 powerbook?... anyway... if you're a british person from britland, you'll have already heard it, because jonnyB's such a fame-riddled blogging narfolk- buy type person, but if you haven't heard his Post Office Closure Protest Song.. go here and listen to it now. .. it is truly TRULY fabulous.

this continues to make me laugh...

...so, I'm putting it here.

It is "big blogger" related, but that has very little to do with anything since we are all making it up as we go along.

I spent a whole very hot day in Lisbon yesterday, like a day in sweat hell and astonishinly, nothing "blogged" to me. Except, maybe, the strange absence of stink. It has to be said that the people of Portugal are so scrupulously clean that you can walk the streets of Lisbon on a 35ºC day and you may encounter just one or two stale armpit (and they'll belong to a northern european.... brits most definitely included in that). Personally, I don't know how they do it... by the end of yesterday on my way home on the thankfully airconditioned train, I was like a wrung out rag... and everyone else seemed as fresh as a daisy... I wonder if they stop every two hours for a shower somewhere. Actually, this wouldn't surprise me.

On the way in I missed my stop at Entrecampos and ended up at the end of the line, Roma-Areeiro, which says "ooh, yes, we've got the metro here... mmm... yes" but when you get out of the train, no sign to the Metro, I searched and finally found there was a tiny vague sign on a tiny little stand that whispered "Metro this way, kind of, but don't count on it"... so I vaguely followed its directions; and discovered that the universal law of Portuguese signage applied: "Decreto 12. Directions may only be put up for people who already know the way".

The reason I missed my stop was that I was mesmerized by a woman sitting diagonally opposite me who was putting on mascara. She was perfectly pretty before and I held no antipathy towards her whatseover. But, how, HOW HOW can a person take five minutes putting mascara on TO ONE EYE? and then, five minutes putting it on the other. I'm not sure exactly of the time because I'm not so sick as to carry a stopwatch around with me to time how long irritating people do their irritating behaviour... but she started putting it on as we left the bridge and still hadn't finished by the time we reached Areeiro. (I was watching her through my delightfully extra black sunglasses..sideways)... and what do you know?... I DID have something to blog.

It is Saturday morning (which has nothing to do with it, except I'm blogging before the girls wake up) and I have discovered that my original blogging buddy has started up blogging again...when were you going to tell me? a whole TWO DAYS has gone by since you started it and not a word... it's not like you've got three kids (one barely three months old) and a mad husband to tend to at all hours of the day and night to not have time to let me know you have a new blog called Triciclo! .... oh, I mean, yes it is...snarf snarf... welcome back to the blogosphere marta ;)

You can take your unicorn and shove it

I hate unicorns. I hate pixies. I hate fairies (and bloody faeries too). I hate banshees and blondhighries and moojjjrte jackers....well, I would if they existed... I hate pointy eared people with wings.

It is not because they don't exist. I'm all for believing in things that don't exist. I don't have a problem with that at all.

My problem with these vile fantastical creatures is that they are so pathetic. And so many people buy into their patheticness.

I once told someone that I didn't want to link (it's more complicated than this but it's late and I can't be arsed) to them because I don't like pixie art. That's all I said. I don't like fantasy art. Full stop. I wasn't rude, or offensive about their work. I just don't like it. I find it trite and lame and sad and clichéd and hackneyed and dull. But I didn't say any of this, I just said it wasn't my bag, man. So, she posted something about this and I then got a mini tirade-fest in their comments from various bloody pixie fans saying stuff like "ooh, she just doesn't see the magic in your beautiful work" "her life must be totally devoid of magic" "boy, does she not get life's magic or what?"... What fucking magic? Where's the magic in a bloody rainbow... a painting of a rainbow. The magic is in the actual rainbow, isn't it? Not in the colouring pencilled version. I hate it because it's too easy, it's easy listening lift musak, it's a squishy banana instead of a tough (but interesting) steak .... it's magic..... for five year olds, not grown ups.

I look at those horrible airbrushy paintings you see in poster shops all over the place of unicorns and fairy maiden princess bints on horseback and my head hurts from the boredom of it. Really, I sigh a heavy sigh and wonder why people can't find some more interesting "magic".

Then bloody Harry Potter was born. Oh, woopdi.do.di.doo!

I apologize if I've offended any pixies, unicorns, fairies (or faeries) or people with pointy ears and wings that would look better on an enormous fly.

...

click on the picture for postsecret

the truth about dinosaurs

Well, they'd be rotting away on my hard-drive if I didn't put them here. No tar pits there. More like a good bog. Good for rotting things. And rotten morals.

drained

tonight, I'll leave you with a dinosaur thought.



There are more where that came from.

But I'm a bit drained.

Later.

stick your hand up there

I drew what I think is my favourite drawing ever ever ever this morning. it is still making me laugh...

If you want to know what the hell it's about, you'll jolly well have to go and suffer a bit of big blogger. HA! Click on the pic.

this is precisely why I SHOULD listen to andre

The other day, I was reading andre's beautiful revolution and not for a change he had some music "now playing" on his iPod contraption that was bleedin' miserable. I listened to it. I burst into tears. I remembered why I gave up sad music when I was a teenager because I felt then that I wouldn't last until my twenties if I carried on with it.... it's too much.

I suggested to andre that he play some happy music. Cheer him up a bit. He laughed. Some people laughed (those with sad music collections). Other people agreed with me (those with happier music colections).

But now, I'm beginning to think I should either buy some sad music or turn off my music again. It had been a while since I had music playing in the house while I worked. ... my small crap stereo with a dodgy volume knob has been commandeered by the small madge children... and for a long while my computer just didn't like playing music while I worked on heavy duty graphics and heavy duty blogging... but it seems to have got over that crisis... must have been taking special e-vitamins.

So I started listening to music again.

But most of my music is UP music, funny, happy, punky, quirky music.

And this is what happens.



I start arsing around the kitchen. And dancing. And it's tragic. And I've got work and blogging that needs doing.

Well, it's going to have to be music off and work in silence again. Sad music will just make me cry and I won't make it to my forties.

the end of june is on its way...

which can mean only one thing, especially if you live in the Algarve or Cascais:

The English are on their way!



Enjoy your lunch.

and now it's up online. and I feel faint....

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

me... inglish

I used to be a children's illustrator, a "tyring to be one" anyway, that's what I thought I wanted to be. But, I could never work out why I got bored and irritated after the first drawing. I did that for a few years and then decided that maybe I wasn't the illustrator that I thought I was and should just go and be a techie geek for a while (techie geek is an exageration, just for any techie geeks out there who wondered where I got my MS accreditation, or learnt SQL or all that jazz... cos I didn't, so don't ask) and see what happens.

Thank god I discovered in time that I didn't have to be a childrens illustrator, I can be an anything and anyone illustrator. (There are some areas of my life/brain which are super quick fire intelligent high IQ MENSA material, there are others which work like soggy weetabix...- don't you just love the IDEA of weetabix, only to be horribly repulsed by the time they've gone soggy in the milk, about thirteen seconds?)

erm.... so, I was at this children's party yesterday, trying to drag the girls out of there. It took an hour to do so, they were so wound up and enjoying themselves and saying they wanted to stay there forever and never wanted to come home.... I looked longingly into the distance... then said, no, they had to come home. And in the hour I was there I had to tell/shout/scream at the girls dozens of times, in front of a HUGE audience, to come home, put on your shoes, get out of the swimming pool, get out of the dog's kennel, in the various languages that we speak between us, 'English', 'Portuguese', a hybrid version of the two,'English with a Scottish accent because Ballamory is our favourite thing on the telly and the gerrulls love doing "a Miss Hoolie"' and 'utter crap'.

And how the little kids STARE. If I speak english, they stare. If I speak portuguese they stare because it's not brilliant. If I do "Miss Hoolie" then I'm just asking for trouble. One came up to me and said "you don't talk properly" and instead of getting into a full blown argument with it where I explained the difference between rudeness and civility, with the full use of violence, I said "aaah, aren't you sweet, as its mother looked on, embarrassed (which makes a change in these parts.. i find the people of Azeitão peculiarly UNembarrassable)... and every time I ran around the garden, again, to try and catch one of mine using expletives from a wide range of languages, I could hear kids saying to each other "ooh, what is SHE talking in?.... is she Russian? or CHinese?" like I couldn't hear them or understand them even though I may have just said "hello, little person, could you possibly catch my hyperactive three year old as she runs past? ta." in almost word perfect/accent perfect pt (short sentences I can do!)

And I suddenly feel like a big green sticky, stinky, monster hulking around the party with everyone watching my every move, the kids staring wildly, the growed-ups smiling on.

my quest for world domination is a-pace!

GUESS WHO'S IN THE TIMES THIS MORNING!

HA HAH! WHO SAID I WASN'T A MEDIA WHORE?

stunning originality

There is a distinct and constant lack of originality in Portuguese election posters.
In 1991 I was in Porto (see here for thrilling details) and there was a general election on... I nicked a huge poster for PSD's candidate, who won, Cavaco Silva. It was a photograph of an enormously toothy Cavaco Silva, standing in front of dozens of oddly grinning very portuguese looking people (thugh none as oddly grinning as old Aníbal himself). It was quite the most hideous piece of photoshop engineering... and LOADS of PSD orange... and I kept it for years... for it made me laugh my arse off (if only that actually worked) every time I looked at it. But one of several dozen house moves I made during the nineties it got lost and I was forlorn.

No matter. Because now I live here and whenever there's an election of any kind - general, mayoral, presidential - the exact same poster crops up again and again. Always, ALWAYS, the candidate, HUGE, standing in front of SOMETHING... SOCK-rutch had a Cavaco Silva type one just before he won the election, which was strangely orangey, when he's a pinky, though I doubt it's what won it for him... hideous. And now there's Manuel Carrilho who wants to be mayor of Lisbon or something, another toothy mug. I find him strangely and disturbingly ugly and when I get off the metro at Rato where he has a huge poster (right next to the party HQ) a shudder goes down my spine. And in it, his HUGE face is standing IN FRONT of Lisbon. But look around and everyone does the same thing.... We've got this bloke (above) on this side of the river, who wants to be something or other, don't actually know, because his poster is so unspeakably boring I haven't actually read it... not that it says anything that I can see. He's posed for the camera in that really wierd way you see american high school kids do/did in their yearbooks (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't watch enough TV or films).. that thing where the photographer realizes that if they look square into the lens they'll be hideous and therefore ruin the rest of their life becasue their yearbook photo looked hideous, so makes them look at something else to the side... a hamburger maybe.

"why are there two beachwear clad people running away from the beach I wonder?".. I can hear your brain whirring, I can, from hear... honestly.

Well, in a vain attempt to be extremely topical.... they are running away from the beach at Carcavelos (on the Lisbon side of the river) where there was a 500-strong invasion of gang kids/yobbos/little bastards yesterday afternoon (national holiday... Portugal Day),who swept the beach in a kind of riot and nicked loads of stuff and terrorized the beach dwellers... it was alleged. No doubt a lot of them got the shit kicked out of them later. If this happened in Brazil, I wouldn't be surprised.... because it does happen in Brazil, a lot, it seems. If this happened in Britain I'd be surprised only because there wouldn't be anything/anyone on the beach worth nicking/terrorizing. But I was very surprised by this... this is Portugal... laid back is an understatement; though you don't want to be on the metro late at night these days... the beach is the one place where all are equal... status symbols left in the car park and all are brothers an sisters in their bathing knickers.

be-HAVE!

"Biggest daughter of mine....behave!" "Oh, mummy! I AM being Have!"

So, when I've got a bit of time, after I've finished a translation (snore) and come up with some HILARIOUS but sick ideas for various things, and made breakfast, lunch, and supper several thousand times (for it is a holiday weekend...they're at home all day for three whole days, maybe four and I know the word "beach will come up somewhere, though I'll try to ignore it and the food thing? honestly, it's not just kids (and the other árf) that make it a nightmare... it's the repetitiveness (is that a word?) of it all)... where the bloody hell was I? .... oh, yeah, and keeping up with the goings on at bigblogger (I've done my first task, I'm good, I'm punctual...did you know that a British person who is running late for an appointment, on average, feels the need to ring said appointment to say they are running late after 10 minutes 17 seconds... now considering that's the average, guess how long I take) and playing with the kids and doing a special e-drawing for a special e-friend and everything else that I SHOULD do first this weekend.... I'm going to do draw/write this image above for a real t-shirt (and I'll do a portuguese version as well) and bung it straight up at cafépress (still haven't found a european equiv... but working on it) and I shall buy my own tshirt and I shall wear it wherever I go (and I'm going to leave the space blank, so that anyone can write their own URL in it).

Why should I feel so inspired to do this right now? (especially after the great t-shirt non event of earlier this year.... if any newbies know of a european equivalent of cafépress for tshirts and stuff....PLEASE let me know) ... Well, because it's hot and I'm more irritable than usual.

The other day I had to wait in the bank for an hour, a whole hour, alternating between standing and sitting on rock hard granite (I think the "rock hard" was probably superfluous there) to get to the caixa. There were various irritating people... but that's to be expected in an HOUR WAIT BECAUSE THERE'S ONLY EVER ONE CAIXA OPEN BETWEEN 12 and 3pm in CGD... but there was one girl, whose sour demeanour defies description, whose incessant foot jiggling (she was stretched right out, almost as if she was on a beach lounger... (that's another word I despise "lounger" ... and "lounge" bleurgh)...had her ankles crossed in front of her, and the bottom foot was shaking madly with its heel as the pivot) made the whole of her body jiggle double the amount, thereby (there's that awful word again) making the whole chair jiggle hugely, therebe making me feel seasick just with this incessant jiggling going on in the corner of my eye.... and it took all of my powers of concentration to NOT jump up and scream "WILL YOU STOP THAT GODDAM JIGGLING.... PLEASE!" (I came to understand a little of her sour demeanour later when I overheard her mother from the inside of the child's mobile phone.. christ, some people really shouldn't be allowed children)... and I even had my "vitriolica" hair do on that day, and it just didn't intimidate anyone (really, wouldn't YOU be intimidated by "mickey mouse hair?").... actually, it made my local postoffice man laugh ... but then he always laughs at me, in a nice way.... .... ...

Finally, the girl gave up waiting, as many had done before her. I sighed with relief... I won't have to explode today, thereby making a terribly embarrassing scene probably ending with me bursting into tears (I only do that when I'm pregnant, actually, so no worry there... NEVER a-BLOODY-gain) ... ... another girl sat down. with a less sour demeanour.






and started to jiggle her foot.

food fatigue

I should be happy. Well, I am more or less, really. Generally...well: it's finally summer, so we brits are the only happy people in the country, because everyone Portuguese is already complaining about it being too hot.... I'm working in/on/with/around five really nice/exciting/strange projects and getting paid for most of them.... my kids are gorgeous little sickos like their mother..... I've finally got a cleaner two mornings a week (which I have always hated the idea of doing, .... but, now she's here, oh boy, can she come every day please?)..... and my dungarees are all in good working order.

So, really... I've got it all sussed. Haven't I. What could I complain about, really. Well, I'll tell you... I have diagnosed myself with "food related depression anxiety bullshit syndrome".

It's food. I'm fed up with it.

I used to be a foodie. An out and out food nut. I loved it all. I loved junk food. I loved haute cuisine. I loved everything in between.... and now, I just can't be arsed with it.

I loved making it, I loved eating it, I loved talking about it and I even loved writing about it, I even used to blog about it in my foodiblog. Bar some few exceptions, I loved ALL food.

But, now, every day of my life, I have to feed three people. Three fussy bastard people.

It is a chore which has become so unspeakably tedious that I have to drag myself to my once beloved kitchen that I designed myself to make the dreaded stuff.

I stand in supermarkets, bewildered about what to cook for supper, what will we have for lunch. I stand in the middle of the aisles and feel like sobbing at the sheer weight of decisions to be made and questions to be answered.

Who will eat what? (as I refuse to go down the road my sogra has all her life and just pander to everyone... she makes FOUR different meals if there are FOUR different people..... *u.g.h.*)...
Who will eat voraciously, while the others look sadly at their plates?
How long will it take for the 3.year.old to throw her supper at my head?
How much meat can a skinny 5.year.old pack into that tiny body?
How many more times can I insist to the girls that a chicken has only two legs and they can't have three legs each from one chicken?
How many more times can I face the great "lasagne debacle" (which goes like this...

"SUPPER!"
"what is it, mama?"
"it's lasagne, darling" (at this point, I would like to point out that I make the best damn lasagne in Europe, outside of Italy)
"oh YUCK," says 3.year.old..."I hate lasagne! make me spaghetti, NOW!"
"no, you ingrate, just try the lasagne, I know that you love it"
"I hate lasagne, mummy, and I hate you."
"fine, sweet pumpkin of mine, then let the rest of us eat for now"...
"I WANT SPAGHETTI! you harridan of a mother, you!".. . and it goes on for a few minutes while we eat and then, there's a spoonful of lasagne left, as the 5.year.old skinny pin has eaten more than her parents put together.....
"MUMMY!" says 3.year.old... "I want to try lasagne pllleeeeeeaaaaaase"
"Fine, here"
"MMMMMMMM, YUMMY MUMMY, I love it... but there isn't any left! "WAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!" followed by an hour of screaming....
...
...
the next time I make lasagne:
"SUPPER!"
"what is is mama?"
"Lasagne, darling"
"oh, yummy," says 3.year.old "I LOVE LASAGNE"... **thank GOD** think I, stupidly. 3.year.old eats a mouthful of lasagne. spits it out.
"MUMMY, I HATE LASAGNE! I HATE YOU! and I HATE DADDY!" and thus the great "lasagne debacle" continues.)

So many questions, so many mealtimes, so much washing up, so much, so much, I feel like I never want to eat again, all the joy of eating has just gone out the window... even fwango (pt bbq chicken) has lost its appeal... though last night, I thought it might help if I gave in and got a chicken.... "I'm just nipping out to get a chicken!" I called through to the orifice/office do grumpy prof..... "WHY?" he said.

WHY? ..... men. *u.g.h.*

And if you think that that plate of food my head has fallen in resembles tapeworm... well, that's about as appetising any food is to me these days. ... oooh, tapeworm in tomato sauce .... guys?

a linky post.

You've had your picture for today... now I want to tell you about some new bloggie things. To be read in the style of a really bad parish magazine:

first, my dear e-friend, michael nobbs, has started giving drawing classes on-line in The Drawing Club. It is a fabiola idea, especially if you need confidence to start drawing... Michael's kindness and fellow users' encouragement will help you in bucketloads.

now... how many bloggers do YOU know that are expats (wherever they're from and wherever they are now) Gazillions, I wager, including, obviously, ME. So, here's a new blog directory that is geared towards expats (wherever they're from and wherever they are now)... Expat Blog. But, it's not just a directory of blogs... its creators have made a space in the web for expats to go and meet other expats, there's a forum, there's a resources page, there will even soon be blogging resources too.

I've was introduced the other day to 49media - (What's on the web tonight, Honey?)... by Uta (and her blog Fancy World) It's best if you go and see what it is, because I'll describe it so badly... but it's kind of a huge up to minute rss fed (i think) media guide to what's going on in the web, looking at all the media that are used in blogs and sites... bloggers' music, videos and of course, their art (which is why they interviewed this grinning eejit last night... media whore? moi?... hey it's like TV Guia, and I'm Catarina Furtado!)

and then, you have to visit ALL the sites of the contestant of Big Blogger 2005 to see what the competition is like (and send me messages with tactics on how I can beat everyone and WIN the £1.50 prize at the end...) JUST KIDDING, DEAR FELLOW CONTESTANTS....

and then visit my new e-friend, Clare, because she is FAR more "gone" than I am, at Boob Pencil (the reason for being named Boob Pencil is apparent as soon as you get there....)

and last but not least, look here...custard tart-ville blues, another bife? in pastel de nata land? Actually, Bife found me, first. We haven't met in an e-sense yet, but we will.

Here we are again.

It's the start of forest fire season. And this year seems set to be worse. Because it hasn't rained for months. So, everything is already August dry, instead of beginning of June plush.

So, there go all the tv stations with their cameras getting in the way again... but, has anyone noticed that so far, they seem to have only sent men?

After last year's famous, well, HERE it was famous, "Porra, queimei-me!" live on national tv... ("Bugger, I got burned!")... might it be that they've at least got the girlies out of the way?

I hate the tv news in Portugal. It's so intrusive... "Your house just burnt down.... how do you feel?" or "look over there, some people sobbing in the street because they're having to run away from their home!". Well, I'll say it again... put down your bloody microphone and get a bloody bucket of water.

Please note that this reporter is wearing summer uniform for the Portuguese male... white shirt with bi-coloured pin check pattern thing, the kind that vets wear. Everywhere else.

:)

And if you want to be horribly disillusioned, stick around till Sunday-ish, when a podcast interview with your very own Vit 'n' Madge will go online. I just heard it, and now can gulp and tell you of its existence (actually, I only did it just last night over the phone to californ-I-A.. whatever next) and I'm telling you about it now so that I don't chicken out and NOT tell you when it's put up. Isn't it weird? hearing your own voice? *shudder* I'll tell you more at the time.

and if you're wondering why on earth I'm up at 6.35 am posting, well, it's way to hot in my bedroom to sleep... the only cool place left is behind my trusty pc. But hey, we knew that already!

and the Big Blogger 2005 contestants are...

The Big Blogger 2005 contestants have been chosen
and they are:

Grocerjack - Grocerjack's World
JonnyB - JonnyB's Secret Diary
Mr Hair - Mr Hair of London's exemplary gentleman's periodical.
Miss Mish - Drama Queen, Fag-Hag, JAP
Mike - Trouble Diva
Girl - Girl with a one-track mind
Vitriolica - well, duh!
Alan - Random Burblings
Zoe - My Boyfriend is a Twat
Dr Rob - Dr Rob's Day
Peter - Naked Blog
NML - Tired of Men
Clair - Merialc.com
Vicus Scurra - Kaliyuga Kronicles
Gordon Gordon McLean - I am me. Who are you?

I cannot tell you how tense that was. I'm just TOO excited. Gordon wet himself and Zoe fainted. It was all too much.

So, here we go then...... I have NO idea what we'll be doing or what I've let myself in for.
FAN - bleedin' - TASTIC. AND IN THE SAME DAY, I'M AWARDED MY VERY FIRST SWAMPY! THANK YOU SWAMPY SELECTION COMMITTEE and TIM!

It's the summer, it's time for dewobbling and a bit of adrenaline

If, like me, you have have a blogging induced fat arse, get yourself trampolining. I have discovered that it gives the most wonderful workout for NO PAIN the next day... now that's amazing... for I despise exercise and I despise the achey crap you get the next day if you are an infrequent exerciser.

I have to wait until the girls go out otherwise they insist on dragging me off it so they can have a go. And then I go and jump for five or so minutes which is enough to shred my I-smoked-for-almost-twenty-years-lungs in this heat.. but it works... the bum is not-so-slowly going.

but, I must tell you the best, absolutely best, bit about trampolining. (This is for normal people.... if you do bungeejumping and madcrazysuicidal stuff like that, this is going to sound REALLY pathetic).... Do you remember when you were a kid and NOTHING mattered? and you weren't afraid of stuff and you ran around climbing trees and falling off things and it just didn't faze you? Well jumping on the trampoline and then suddenly jumping down onto abovementioned fat arse is pure joy, with a HUGE adrenaline rush (accompanied by the word F*********K! inside my head, which I though twice about using for the second time in one week in my blog as papavit reads this and he has only been known to say the F word twice in my thirty five years of knowing him... and some of his colleagues read this and I wouldn't want them to think that papavit has a foul-mouthed harridan for a daughter, would I?) because it's just like chucking yourself out of a tree, or rolling down a grassy knoll (it wasn't me, I swear) or riding your bike down a steep hill knowing your brakes were a bit shot.... for where else as a growed-up, with a growed-up skeleton, growed-up wobbly bits and a growed-up brain could you just jump up and jump down onto your fat arse? You couldn't even do that on a big double bed or a sofa for fear of breaking it (and being the growed up that you are, you'd have to pay for a new one... and the thought of that stops you)... so for the love of being a little kid again, go find yourself a trampoline and jump your fat arse off!

And I forgot to say, I've started a sideblog in the sidebar called sidebanda. It's an experiment. I might tell true stories or I might make it up as I go along. I dunno yet. I'll decide each day.

DID WE GET TRANSPORTED TO FRANCE OVERNIGHT?

What's this? Middle Aged Tits on the beaches? Have the French arrived yet? No, it's not August. I did have to walk up close to these women to make sure they were Portuguese, and they were, most well and truly Portuguese... They were EVERYWHERE on the Alfarim beach we were on on Saturday morning... late middle aged women with their boobs a-dangling pootling around the beach... going for their walks (look, no-one ever goes for a walk on the beach, why would they go for a walk on the beach when they can't even walk to the grocery store at home ? ... no, they're just walking so they can pee in the sea somewhere away from their beach-neighbours, that's all), standing facing the sun so their boobs could get the best exposure... am I being naïve? who really NEEDS brown tits? or is there a new fashion among middle aged middle class pt women that demands brown tits to wear with extremely low cut clothes (probably) or is there a fad of Swinging at the moment that I don't know about?

I half think "yeah, sisters, power to you and your boobs, stick up for your nakedness and stick a finger in the eye of the prudes, man, I mean, sisters"

I half think "oh, put. them . away . and . spare . me!"

Oh, life is such a dichotomy.

(just think of the extra hits I'll get this week from google et al porn searches, what with: tits, boobs, dangling, swinging, middle aged, sisters, nakedness, stick a finger in, french, low cut, pee. If I just put in "incest", "teen" and "gayasianbabes" I'll get about a gazillion new visitators. do I want them though? do I want dirty people with sticky little mits fingering through my blog? eugh... no thanks!)


*huge snort* (that's probably another one)


HA!

even though I'm fundamentally NOT a banda/comix artist...

My week of guest blogging at zoe's has inpsired me to maybe MAYBE try a little bit of banda... drawing in little boxes (let's face it, there are a lot of little boxes in banda/comix) the same characters over and over again has always struck me as a bit dull to do (not to read.... necessarily) especially for me, a person who gets bored just repeating a drawing once.... but this time, it was quite fun to try to tell stories with tiny little pictures. It is no great wonder to me that the vast majority of banda/comix/graphic novel artists are men, for men have that streak in them that makes them far more fanatical, obsessively and compusively and meticulously, about things (I have read somewhere that men naturally and normally have a streak that is akin to autism... it's true, I'm not being funny... look it up... it would explain a LOT, though, wouldn't it?) that makes them more likely than women to obsess over cars, football, model trains.... drawing of banda/comix. But, hey, I'm going to give it a go sometime, properly. See how quickly I get bored.

Oh, god, here I am, getting into how and why I do stuff again, when I don't really know anyway. So, instead I'm going to shut up and put up the three extremely silly posts I did for zoe last week, as I guess a lot of you were too scared to go over to Belgium to see... am I right?


1
I am in possession of two sweet little girls, an almost six-year-old and a three-and-half-and-a-bit-year-old. I didn't plan on having them, but the stork brought them and I can't give them back. They are pretty little things, one of them could even be described as dainty... the other couldn't...and they both love pink fairy wings and tutus and bloody barbie and all the crap and paraphernalia that go with them. They flutter round the house, the less elegant one is convinced she is already a prima ballerina and pirouettes a lot.

Thankfully, there is a darker side to my daughters. A side that their portuguese grandmother doesn't see and wouldn't like or understand. A side that gives me hope. They are foul minded, dirty mouthed little horrors and one day they are sure to be top bad girl bloggers (or whatever has taken over from blogging by then, since blogging will have become the standard tool for running countries and telling the fridge what to order for itself) like our Zed.



For they laugh their little heads off when they see an enormous bottom on a bicycle. Nasty, dirty guffaws of delight, especially if there is a bum crack poking out of the top of tight trousers on that bicycle.



Thankfully fannies and willies are just as funny as ever and we're not so damned pc in this house as to try to make fannies and willies or any other appendages unfunny. Farting and burping are, of course, better than any comedy anywhere.



Their greatest joy comes in the form of vomit and snot and lick. These substances are the best entertainment in the world; when one of them is sick, the other watches enthralled and then they have a post vomit debriefing.



The little one is inexplicably phobic about bogies, so she is easily wound up with a grolley on the end of a finger, running round the garden behind her. The other is extremely touchy about other people's spit, so the little one just has to lick her big sister's face (or I approach spitting on a tissue to clean a smut on her face) to get a great reaction. It is such fun to watch.



But now, the TRULY disgusting is happening ... the first teeth falling out. (Zed has threatened to send me three children's worth of baby teeth if I don't behave, because she knows how teeth make me feel)... and all I get all day long is "ooh, ooh, mummy, look, another one is wiggly! LOOK how it wiggles, isn't it great?" while I'm holding back the vom and gettng all shuddery. But they are hanging on with grim determination in that little mouth of hers.



And then....the other day, they crash into each other on the trampoline and the little one has bashed her teeth on her sister's head and her mouth fills with blood and SHE has a wiggly tooth, liable to fall out prematurely. So in between her screams I'm getting "hey, now I'VE got a wiggly tooth mummy, hooray!" and calculated little grins over my shoulder at her sister (it is right at this point that I get stung in the eyelid by a bastard wasp...what the hell have I done to him? I'm standing in the garden in my dressing gown having just got out of the bath and I'm hoping the prissy bastard neighbours aren't watching as I flail about with a child in one arm and everything probably hanging out).



And the big one, the nearly six-year-old, has a prolonged tantrum because her baby sister is now going to be "big" before her because she is bloodily losing a tooth FIRST.

Just thought I'd share that with you. Enjoy your breakfast.



2
Thank 'eavens for blogging... and apostrophes, where would I be without my apostrophes?

For without blogging, I couldn't be funny or try to be funny, or hone my funny skills.... for I live in Portugal.

YOU try being funny in a language other than your own.



And in a place where there are some people who will just never "get it".



And where men are rife. Men, in my experience, don't want the funny limelight stolen from them. So they don't laugh. That, or they are just humourless gits.



In a society that's still a bit squeamish, where ladies are supposed to be ladies and not foul mouthed crack whores be able to make quite fearfully ugly faces (look, I'm gorgeous from one side, with makeup, zits squeezed... but from the wrong angle on the wrong day with the wrong expression on my face I could put jabber the hut off his tea).



So, what the HELL am I trying to say?

That blogging has made it possible *sniff* for me and *aaich* millions of women like *sniccchhhffff* me to be *sob sob - gimme a tissue godammit, I'm doing my halle berry impression* funny again.



I thank you.



3
People fall into different camps.

This isn't a man/woman thing, honest... this is just a different people thing.



People just do stuff differently, treat life differently.



It's something I took a long time and an awful lot of housemates to come to terms with.



The way people do their day to day things, for me, defines them rather more that what they do for show to the outside world.



Which is one reason I always hated having to share my house with other people who didn't love me unconditionally.



I don't really want people who I don't love unconditionally to necessarily see the real filthy me.



But, back to my point. People. They do things. Differently. From each other.



They see things differently. And they regard others differently.



It's a kind of glass half-empty/half-full thing.



Imagine, the Venn diagram you could draw for all the different camps you fall into.



So, as I get older, I ask myself questions. Pertinent questions. Probing questions. Like...



Why the fuck can't everyone be like me?



(messy, and willing to go looking for soap in the middle of a bath, that is)

The End.