in the real world

As wonderful as software is, there's nothing like using the real thing.


Real ink and real paint and real pencils.


*sigh*


I'm feeling a little calmer now.

sete galinha mulheres de algum sítio chamada "treta" ;)

What I SHOULD be drawing is a pair of HIDEOUS "my little" ponies that was our only way of getting out of Toys "R bloody well" Us last night, but I couldn't bring myself to join in on the pink fest (along with a whole new wardrobe of Bloody Barbie clothes) that is taking place this morning in our house.... late birthday treats and everything. And while I put out the washing and make the THIRD birthday cake in three days, I shall leave you to read the two other posts I wrote this morning... one at big blogger where you will find an explanation for the picture above...it's one of my seven posts in seven days about seven... then to troubled-diva for the most recent posts in Blogging Consequences.

Ah... the vice that is blogging. for saddos like me.

I'm just nipping into the new sex shop!

note the standard issue summer wardrobe of the middle class portuguese man. S.N.O.R.E.

Half way into the village on the main road is a shop that keeps changing hands. It is in a really crappy place to be a shop, so it mystifies me that people keep taking it on...no-one in the last six years has managed to keep it for more than a year before they go bankrupt or get out while the going's good.

And as you will have guessed it has become the latest in the "Afrodite" sex shop chain. The one that sells 100% of something. (now that's a strange thing, it's exactly a year and a day since I did that post).

Every time I drive past it I look to see if anyone is going in.

And, of course, they aren't.

Unless they have magneto-electronic cloaking devices and they're having sex parties in the car park of the next door car showroom. (I bet car salesmen are reaping the benefit... or at least having a good laugh through the office window at all the souls brave enough to go in in broad daylight)

It's good to see that bad taste knows no boundaries though. Well, I mean, really, that logo of two feet up and two feet down? Is it REALLY necessary?

______________________________


This is the FINAL WEEK OF BIG BLOGGER, starting today.

And I'm in the last FOUR. Yahoooooodimenuen! My fellow "remainees" are Alan, NML and Mike. Let's see if we can last out the week without killing each other or sleeping with each other (there really has been a lack of sex in this big blogger thing, hasn't there?)

(This week the vote is for who WINS and not for who gets kicked OUT as it was before, so for gawd's sake be careful)

The final task is a doozy. Seven posts in Seven days about Seven or Seven things.

*GULP*

geckoballoonophobe

It's my baby's sixth birthday today. so, I'm double posting my task 12 from big blogger so I can go and finish making pizza (have I ever told you I make a damn good pizza?) and decorating what has become a rather surreal (for "surreal", read "crap") birthday cake.

Task 12.


Here's the thing. My biggest fears are flying and heights. But, if you ask me they're rational. IT'S NOT NATURAL FOR A CREATURE TO BE UP HIGH IN THE AIR IF IT HASN'T GOT WINGS... I'm not going to tell you all the things that go through my mind as I step onto an aeroplane. It's not pretty. And the extreme and strange urge to fling myself over the sides of high towers as the paradoxical side effect of my vertigo is, I believe, fairly common, so I don't need to explain that one either.

So, my two greatest irrational fears are balloons... and geckos.

I used to be quite calm about all things creepy crawlie. Still am most of the time. Until I met WILD GECKOS! In my gas cupboard in the garden (where we store our gas bottles). Where they live. And shit. And use their creepy suckery feet to stick to the ceiling. And they don't let you know they're there. Until you feel their staring little eyes burning into the back of your head. And they think evil gecko thoughts about you. And they look like miniature prehistoric crocodiles. And have I told you about their suckery feet? And that one fell on my mother in law's shoulder once? And because it had those suckers on its feet, IT STUCK TO HER? I feel I need say no more.

And the other, (which I am suffering from badly today, because it is my daughter's sixth birthday and she is insisting on filling the house with the damn things even though we're not really having a party) is balloons.
You blow them up, you shred your lungs doing it, then they pop!
It is quite uncalled for. Bloody things.

And the anticipation of the pop is worse than the pop... in fact it's anticipation of the pop that I'm phobic about. So the anticipation of the anticipation is what brings me out in a sweat.

So, I have an idea. To rid myself of BOTH problems. At the same time.

I may need a little help on this though. It may take a while:

I know some clever dick is going to say... "aaaahhhh! but what about when the balloon bursts in the upper atmosphere due to low pressure and the geckos come crashing back to earth on your head"

Well, I'll face that when it comes.


p.s. you know how I got beebed (BBC-ed) the other day? Well today I've been Grauniaded! (Guardian-ed)! .... for the "fame-whore" part of me, this is a good day. thanks beeb, thanks grauniad.

Life as a foreigner

The English have a bad enough reputation for being snotty already.

So do you want to hear about how my day of regaining my sanity has just been chucked out of the window?

How my eldest daughter who is going to be six tomorrow told her friends at nursery school today (where i took them for the first day in ages to achieve my day of regaining my sanity) that she's having a party and none of them are invited because they are portuguese!

What the bloody hell did she do that for?

What the bloody hell are they going to think I am?

We're not having a party because it's impossible right now for about fourteen hundred reasons. The fact that her friends are PORTUGUESE is NOT one of them!

Bloody Hell!

a sight to warm the english cockles of my heart

Look! It rained. Only enough rain for a really tiny ant to wash his face in, but it rained.

And my beautiful spontaneous clever little girls (proud? moi?) ran out into the darkness, barefoot (because they're english at heart and don't believe in shoes in warm places) and danced in the rain, with their mouths open and their tongues sticking out to catch the rain drops, running around the lawn singing "it's raining, it's raining!"

How bloody adorable is that?

I'm switching off my pc now. and I'm going out for a while. A-L-O-N-E for the first time in a what feels like weeks.

I hope to be back with you later in a slightly (only slightly) saner state.

you must all think I'm mad.

mob_050726_160440.jpg

well, Okay, that's not new (the mad bit)... but down the blogpage there's me talking about moblogdrawing drawmoblogging and you couldn't even see the picture!

Like I say, oh, BUGGER!

being a woman

(click to see a bigger version)

I can't imagine sitting on a street corner just watching.

I can't imagine doing nothing, not even for five minutes.

I haven't sat down to watch a TV programme or a film (without doing four different other things at the same time) for so long I can't remember what it feels like.

I can't even get in my hammock for more than 2.36 minutes without someone screaming "MUMMMMMMYYYYYYYYY! she called me STOOOOPID!!!!!!!!".

I think I might leave home... just for a day. on my own. before my head explodes.

hotting up in the house

It's all getting very strange in the Big Blogger house. Very quiet. Rather surreal.
Everyone giving each other shifty looks. Mistrust hangs in the air.

And there we all sit, telling children's stories in a desperate bid for people to like us!

Oh, god, THE PRESSURE!


:)

Another one of my theories... this one will hold water.

I have always lived in the west. I don't mean "the west" as opposed to "the east" as in what we generally refer to as "the western world". I mean that I seem to have lived mostly in the west of wherever it is. I grew up in the South West of England. When I lived in London it was always live in the South West of London. And now I live on the western coast of the westernmost (i love that word, can we say "prettimost", "stupidmost", "uglimost" too?) country of continental Europe. And do you know what that means?

It means I don't have the foggiest idea of what the weather is going to be.

Because the weathergirl/person/FrancisWilson/ditz ALWAYS stands wherever it is I live.

Why does the weathergirl/person/FrancisWilson/ditz ALWAYS have to stand in the westernmost ("clevermost", groovimost") part of the land mass... can't they stand in the sea?

I could obviously use other methods for determining the weather forecast that don't involve a human presenting it, but as I'm not THAT interested, I just want the weathergirl/person/FrancisWilson/ditz to briefly tell me as I flick through the news channels on crappy cable.

Maybe this is why so many people still couldn't tell you WHERE Portugal is.

When I was leaving London to come here seven years ago (blimey, already?), I told people I was working with that I was going to live in Portugal. Some of the responses I got were telling....

"Oh, that's in the Algarve isn't it?"
"Oh, do you speak Spanish then?"
"Uh?"
"I went to the Algarve once, but I never went to Portugal"
"Lisbon? Nah. What's that?"

among others.

Maybe I should write to the TV channels and ask if they could alternate, standing in the easternmost parts of Europe one week and the westernmost the next ("idiotmost" "insanemost").

it's taunting me!

Okay, so it's not such a pretty cloud that's hovering over Portugal this afternoon... but hey, what's artistic license for if not for abusing?

It's sticky and hot and we need rain (a good forty days and forty nights of rain would replenish the place)... we may even have power outages because of the lack of turbine power coming from Spain... and this cloud is just sitting there... doing absolutely nothing... what kind of cloud does that? It's cruel and unnecessary... and I'll tell you what is crueller and unnecessar...ier.... and that would be me being forced to draw vit doing another fat arse raindance. (oh... er, another thing... we/I/me/her... we're all rather the same person... oh, GOD, someone help me out here)

If you didn't notice, I got "beebed" yesterday, which was rather nice... (thanks auntie and zed)... 2500 people (I know!) came here for the first time, only to be greeted by an old lady almost flashing her bits at them....poor things... (I hope you realize this is a good-grammar-free zone... dot dot, semi-colon, EXCLAMATION MARK) Anyway, you're all very welcome here. Learn what it is to be a Brit stuck in Portugaland, obsessed with batas, dungarees and offal... never far from some stripey socks and keen on turning the whole world into a set from a musical (really, I'm SUCH a stereotype)...do the archives.



(What the hell am I going to do with power outages? I need my POWERBOOK.... NOW!)

mobile blogging drawing blogily mobilely

Keith, what this means is that I can blog from the beach.

or from bed.

or from the train.

or from mars.

That this is exciting to me is probably a bit sad.

ah, fragrant summer

I'm doing an A to Z of Portugal. Guess what B stands for.

BATA!

This is the summer sundress version of a Bata.

(if you have just arrived here and have read through the last few posts, you are going to be mightily confused about batas, betos and betas.... really... well, I'm not saying a word ... aren't I cruel?.. well you'll just have to read the whole blog.. treat it as your introduction to Portugal).

I've always wondered if one recognizes the day in which one decides to give up trying to sit in a "ladylike fashion" and gives up the struggle to keep one's knees together (I gave up years ago, when I was about six... before my mother writes in protesting) or does it just happen?

well, SORT of betinhas

Well, they're kind of betas... two kinds of... the pretty kind who wouldn't smile if you poked a stick at her and said "smile you horror who must spend half your life in the bathroom getting dressed" (then again who would?) and the slightly butcher dykier kind who wears those strange miniature rugger shirts in pastel stripes... who also wouldn't smile at you if you so much as deigned to walk in her space.

It's the huge hoop earrings that I don't understand. When I went through my enormous hoop earring phase in the mid eighties, even I looked like a hooker (vitsma will probably be saying "hah, that wouldn't have taken much" as she reads this... HAH, mother, beat you to it)... for some reason, huge hoop earring don't seem to denote "HOOKER HERE! come and get it!" here. Or do they?

still playing with my new e-paintbrushes...

...but, there'll be something of more substance later on. It always slows me down a bit,when I change software... finding new tools, finding where the buggers have moved my favourite tools. A betinha (girlie version of the beto below... after all the BEGGING letters and comments!) may well be on its way later this morning.

Oh, god, it's Friday already. Where the hell is my life going? It was Christmas a week ago. Mustn't waste time, mustn't waste time. Gotta get some work finished. I have a pile of projects started. None of them finished. Gonna finish one today... or at least finish the end of the beginning of the plans for the layout of the idea of it. Then I'm gonna stop using stupid words like gotta and gonna.

back ... later ... more ... thinks .... (yoda) ... I ... honest ... *grins*

just to make all you lisboetas out there feel better

Look what I can see hanging over your heads.

Another good reason for living on this side of the river and out of the city.

(other good reasons: my hammock, my trampoline, my patch of drying out stubby grass, I can park my car)

not the nicest sight to come home to in an evening.

I was going to do a post about the smog layer over Lisbon that you can see as you drive over Ponte Vasco da Gama in the morning. But then I got a different eyeful on the way back across the bridge this evening.

Arrábida is burning again. Predictably.

These pictures were taken from the EN10 from Quinta do Conde and Brejos de Azeitão.

i love technology

Got my new painter software yesterday, which is so many versions ahead of the one I've been using (FOR THE LAST SEVEN YEARS... must be the oldest piece of software still in daily use) that I've had very little time to get used to all its glittering newness and groovilicious functions. but just look at that up there. real oil. on a computer. incredible.

I's a happy bunny.

I's also a happy bunny cos I'm taking the kids to see Madagascar today.... it's not really for them.... it's for ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME... who says bloggers are over self involved? I've been reading people's comments on blogging in the BBC News Website "Have your Say" section of their online magazine. I'm really surprised to see what some people think of us bloggers. They think we're sad, need to get a life, are self-obsessed and are faddish idiots who go for gimmickry and nonsense just to be fashionable.

Christ. How'd they get to know me so well? Bastards.

look, it's getting serious

I just washed my car. With one and a half buckets of water... feeling guilty for using that just to wash a stupid car.

But you should see the LOOKS I'm getting wherever I go.

So, I felt self concious and washed it.

It's very streaky but at least it's not brown any more.

It's stripey blue.

Residents of the Algarve have been asked to reduce their water consumption by 30% because of the drought we're in the middle of. I wonder why the rest of us haven't been asked to do the same yet?

Ah, well, when it comes, this is how you'll recognise me, by the green toothed grin since I'll be one of the last people in Portugal smiling... (amongst the other 80,000 other Brits who have homes here... did you know that? Eighty Thousand British People! EUGH!)... cos I love dirt... isn't that what we are renowned for throughout Europe? Those stinky English? or something?

Blogging consequences at Mike's Place

For today's post, because I'm frantically busy with about eighteen urgent tasks of varying interest and haven't got round to drawing a thing today, you'd better go to Troubled Diva, where I'm joining in on game of consequences.... last line of the previous post is the first line of the next.

It's lovely seeing how much drivel we bloggers can generate.

Troubled Diva

beto slapping

I mean, really.

How much time do these peripubescent boys spend doing THAT hairdo every day. They do spend an awful lot of their day flicking their heads sideways to get that awful flick look in their hair. I wonder if constant head flicking causes brain damage?

They are a strange kind of teenager that I have described before HERE (teenager ii.)... strange because they rebel against nothing, seeming far more keen to dress and act in the most conventional and humourless (I am yet to bump into a smiling version) manner.

And now it's the summer and they come out in force, on the way to the beach to pose, in front of other betos... who can has the better flick? or to the girls? I dunno.

Now, I am a pacifist for the most part (mostly because I'm an extreme coward)
But, I do get a strong urge to go up to these little betos (as I was informed after the last time I posted about them, a year ago, they are named) and slap them around a bit.

don't you?

a desperate bid for help!

if you love your Vit, and want me to stay in the Big Blogger HOuse, would you please please please do me a teensy weensy favour?

Go to Big Blogger and find the post titled "Fine"... leave a comment on that post saying anything as long as it's about me and positive in some way (hey, I'm desperate)... something like "Vit's Fabulous" or "Vitriolica doesn't stink, she just looks funny" or some old bollocks.

I LOVE YOU.

now that's lateral thinking

very very clever. A bunch of grandmothers in Margate in the UK have thought of a great way to undermine the hoody gangstas in their midst. They have started wearing hoodies and baseball caps as a way to make them hugely unCOOL. [link]

I think this is a splendidly clever laterally thunk solution... I hope it spreads virally through the western world, like one of those nasty viral ads, like that one with the repulsive (and peculiarly ugly) Paris Hilton "washing a car" that you find in the interwebnetthingo.

more good ideas for subtle subterfuge to solve the following serious ills of modern society required in the comment box please:

the Tia problem (What to do with these waste of spacers who do nothing but smoke fags, go to the gym and whine loudly in public)

the overblown cult of celebrity (does zé castelo branco REALLY need to have his own TV show? (our very own creepy crawlie never quite got tobe a full on transexual, married to a NY Old Woman Type Thing... it's not quite clear WHAT Betty is))

the Pull your bloody trousers up problem.. (I do NOT want to see either your calvins or your thong sticking in up and through your bum crack and OVER the top of your trousers, thank you)

the lycra and fat in the same sentence problem (that one's obvious)

gated communities (that resemble the desperate housewives set and encourage a new and extreme form of nouveau richeness never before seen, EVEN IN PORTUGAL)


*snigger* *snigger* *snigger*


cooo. I've just noticed that this was my 401st (or 401º, if you speak portuguese... hey, I have to make the most of this pt keyboard, you know) post. coooo.

well, i DID warn you...

...that a lot of this summer would be spent blogging strangely dressed fatties.. (marta, you're right, trinnie and susannah would have a field day... they might even be overwhelmed by it all).

You see, it is SO much more fun drawing large (euphemism alert) people, than boring skinny people. Just look at how Beryl Cook has spent her painting life.

And look painting through the last thousand years ... big bums were deffo the order of the day.

None of this seeing-their-kidneys-through-their-skin skinniness nonsense.

No... big arses, fat bellies and lots of wobbly bits were all good stuff, seen as being connected to affluence (as was pastey skin... i.e. being a lazy slob, lounging around on a chaise longue all day, instead of being one of those nasty people that worked for a living, lithe and suntanned) and therefore desirable.

Or, maybe there were plenty of thin rich people to paint in those days. But the LARGER (euphemism's great, isn't it?) were more enjoyable to paint and were therefore painted more often.

hmmmm.

Of all the important things to think about, that probably ain't one of them...

On another note... it's good to see that mediocrity still outsells greatness.
"Harry friggin' Potter and his Latest Dull and Hackneyed Adventures" goes on sale tonight, at a minute past midnight, although 12 million copies have already been pre-ordered. It's good to see that dear old (ex-brit-expat in Portugal) JK and fellow writer of utter mediocre twaddle, Dan Brown have become multi-millionnaires on the backs of not particularly good literature. Warms the cockles of your heart, dunnit?

Obviously, when I write my masterpiece and it sells in the millions, I shall also be called mediocre... but hey, I'll be enormously rich, so who the crap cares?

some things still aren't illegal

and they should be.

I mean, I have a headache... it hurts to snigger... even if it's only on the inside.

crisis? you ain't seen nothing yet.

There is a definite frisson to living in a country like Portugal. I have the feeling sometimes that we are teetering on the edge of utter chaos... maybe not this week... but what about next? or next year? or next decade?

Politics, AS EVERYONE KNOWS, ain't my bag. But, I still see the political nonsensensical (there are some VERY strange "democratic" mechanisms in the pt system... I won't go into it here... I'll get myself in a muddle and I cannot be bothered to get into some semantic discussion with anyone about what democracy is or isn't (a lot of people around where I live seem to think that democracy equals absolute freedom... well... er... moron... it don't!)) goings on every day...living with a person whose life's work is mostly dedicated to politics in one form or another helps... I couldn't avoid politics if I tried....so I just let it wash over me.

But, even a jellified eyeball (don't ask) couldn't miss that there is a financial crisis being discussed and disputed in Parliament and in the papers and in the blogosphere if that jellified eyeball has turned on the tv, picked up a newspaper or turn on its computer. The financial crisis is what every financial crisis is about (boring huh?... really.. you'd think it could be a bit more interesting...what about a financial crisis caused by everyone having too MUCH money?... no?... poop.) not enough money to go round to feed the social services and all the other mullarkey that governments need to spend money on (although, of course, there is plenty of money swilling around to spend on cars, plasma tvs, dvds, ipods (no, I still don't have one) new houses, leaving old (and beautiful) houses to rot until they fall down, mobile phones (at least seventeen per person.... I suspect Portugal has done more for the Finnish economy than anyone else), dining out, (dining in can be quite bad too though), enough money to waste VAST sums of money in the health service on ridiculous systems of equipment and drug buying, to waste VAST sums of money paid to people who don't want to work very much but who can't be sacked because they are protected by the overly powerful labour laws, thereby preventing employers from employing anyone on contract for more than three months otherwise they would be obliged to employ them FOREVER, enough money to build ENORMOUS shopping centres every three kilometres, because how could we possibly live without shopping centres, shopping centres that need to be heavily air conditioned for the 14 hours a day that they are open... NEED I go on?)

So you see... one never really knows how the crisis is going to pan out... the rate of IVA (v.a.t or sales tax) has already gone up, taxes of all sorts will be going up (which will, of course mean that MORE people will just stuff their mattresses with undeclared earnings, meaning that probably the tax income will go down.... leading the country into further crisis... OBVIOUS REALLY... if you've been here for more than a week).

But, I'm wondering (as you are probably, by now, looking as you are at a drawing of a load of ladies in batas (newbies: batas are housecoats, mainly polyester, for not getting one's clothes dirty.... there is no greater sin in Portugalland than being SEEN to be DIRTY! god forbid anyone thought that one didn't actually have time in the day to be fully made up, hair washed and styled, house immaculate, four different meals made for all members of spoilt family) while I'm going on about the economy) about another imminent crisis... one that will start taking effect in the next few years that will bring Portugal to its knees unless people really start thinking about it NOW.... the crisis will be when there is no longer a BATA generation... the tireless (and I mean tireless) generation of women who at the moment range from being in their fifties to their nineties who look after EVERYTHING... they look after the grandchildren, feed the whole family, clean until their fingers bleed and do the laundry (and for clothes to be dirty enough to be clean here it is enough that they have been breathed over, so you can imagine, that's a non-stop job (think of the water consumption during this extreme DROUGHT that might mean power outages for lack of turbine power... I can bet you a gazillion euros, the laundry will still be done ceaselessly and ironed). The daughters of these women won't be interested in slaving for their children and grandchildren plus they'll be much older (I was reminded yesterday!;) ) .

Think about it.

It's serious.

Maybe it's time to go out and buy yourself a BATA.

in a blue funk

I'm in a blue funk and I don't care who knows it.

I won't bore you with the details, they're of no interest to anyone but mad little me, just a whole bunch of stuff that has happened or is happening or isn't happening or should happen that is helping me to be shrouded in a big blue cloud of funk.

But, I have to go to the supermarket most days to pick up bread and newspapers and erm ... pain au chocolat... and luckily, even when I'm in the depths of a deep blue funked downturn of mood, I find big bottoms and grumpy old women very funny (on other people at least) and very drawable.



Thank god for pain au chocolat.

Talk

World War 2 ended 60 years ago.... VJ day.

I saw a disturbing statistic recently, I can't remember the numbers, but a significant amount of British school children don't know who Hitler was. Can you imagine that?

I wonder how many school children know about VJ day, or VE day or the beach landings or the nazis or the jews or the concentration camps or the genocide or the ghettoes or the resistance or the rationing or the evacuations or the bombings or the pilotless bombs or the blackout or the collaborators or the spies or the bomb shelters or the kamikaze pilots or the U-boats or the occupation or the land girls or the WAF or the Wrens or the enigma decoders or the digging for victory or the propaganda or the gas masks or the prisoner of war camps or the conscientious objectors or the telegrams or the six years of waiting for husbands and sons to come home.

As a kid, I used to irritated by old men who I'd hear say "I fought the war for you" aimed at some yobbo in the street... I'd think "oh, get over it!" I'm ashamed of myself for that.

The war ended twenty five years before I was born. I used to think that was an eternity.... a lifetime. Now I can rember twenty five years ago like it was yesterday. I imagine that's how sixty years feels too.

Surviving participants in the war must all be at the very least in their late seventies... but mostly in their eighties and nineties. Once they're gone, that's it. No more eye witness accounts. No more vivid memories. Gone.

I'm struggling to find a sense of humour this week, for all the obvious reasons and others... so forgive me for using it as a time to say that we can never forget what our grandparents and parents did for us, we must keep memories alive by talking and telling stories... and not wait for someone else to do it for us.... and just because it's not "cool" to do such things, to remember, to care, to show feelings.... who gives a damn about "cool"?

big blogger is STILL watching me

They haven't kicked me out yet.

And so the wibble continues.

not just psychic.... E-PSYCHIC!

I dreamt last night that blogger had brought back the stats related to each blog (number of posts etc... remember those? ... disappeared months ago when they had the reshuffle.... )

I went to blogger this morning, to check... and of course, they weren't there.

I went to blogger just now.... do di do di do (twilight zone music, how else d'you write it?)... and there they are.

In the same dream was something else very reassuring, that I can pass on to someone. The blogger thing just confirmed that it must have been true.

WEIRD!

real genuine innocent lives

mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, bread-winners, charity cases, kind people, anti-war protestors, charity workers, normal people, abnormal people, tourists, locals, workers, employers..... real people.

I may talk a load of bullshit about the people of Portugal, to take the mickey, to help myself to understand the place better, to come to terms with living here.

But I see the people of London, and I KNOW them... I KNOW their lives, I KNOW how they live, what they do with their days, how they work hard to support their families, how life in London is extremely hard for many many people.

And they are rewarded by some infantile fundamentalist moronic islamist who thinks that he knows better than anyone else and that those people deserve to die.

.... I... no.... I can't say anything else.

Just back to normal.
Back to life.
Real life.
Full of love and caring and fun and cynicism and friendship and tolerance and understanding and art and poetry (and even bloody opera, if you must!)

pure, bloody, stupid, ugly hatred

This person, whoever he or she is, hates you.

He hates you and your family, your parents, your children, your siblings, your friends.

He hates the way you live your life.
He has no idea how you live your life, but he still hates it.

He hates you and your family and your life and your country enough to get on a bus, full of people like you with a rucksack or bomb-belt full of explosives.

He hates you enough to sit on that bus for an amount of time, watching you, seeing you, breathing the same air as you and still be able to kill you and himself.







I am intensely angry. As I am everytime this happens... New York, Madrid, Beslan... but this time it's London, it's my people, it's my country, it's the districts in which I used to work, it's personal.

I'm intensely angry because I feel completely powerless and frustrated.

There is no reasoning with terrorists.
There is no understanding them.
If you are a human being who suffers any heart or compassion or love or kindness towards anyone other than yourself, then you could not be a terrorist of any kind.

Last night, I read through just one discussion amongst the millions that must have been running in the internet, in bars, in people's homes, all over the world.
It was in Flickr, in a group set up yesterday morning to gather photographs to send sympathy to the people of London. Alongside groups, people have discussions about the groups and of course this one became a place for the polemic that comes with terrorism: (a précis of several hundred messages)

HUNT THEM DOWN AND KILL THEM BRUTALLY and MERCILESSLY

NO! You are just sinking to their level, that's what they want you to do!

SO, you want me to go and cuddle them? they deserve to die!

But, you have to understand where their hatred comes from, from poverty and oppression and pain!

I have suffered poverty, oppression and pain.... I don't kill innocent people! Kill them!

But think of the innocents you would kill while blasting them off the face of the earth.

LOOK at the innocents they have just murdered. They don't understand understanding and kindness and reasoning!

You are just a radical right winger!

I am NOT right wing or radical! You are so ignorant!


etc etc etc etc etc etc.

And this is why I don't do politics or polemic or philosophy in my blog or my life. I agree with all of them.
I agree with all of them passionately... the pacifists and the murderous.

In fact, I couldn't write down what I really really feel and think this morning, because you think of me (despite myself) as a nice person.

This morning I am not a nice person.





I hope you are all watching the people of London going back to work. The morning after, they are going back to work. We stood up to the IRA for all those years. We can stand up to anyone.

This morning I am very proud to be British and an ex-Londoner.

Art

bloody terrorism

It looks like they've finally got to London. Turn on the TV. Or go to BBC News

Bombs on the Underground, and on buses.

Monsters.

But, let me tell any of you that don't know the British under pressure, under seige, under attack.. they will not be beaten nor subdued and terrorism will not change anything except to strengthen their resolve.

If you know the British already... you'll already know that.

t-shirts

I said...

T-SHIRTS
http://www.printshop.co.uk/unkemptwoman

point that finger at me again and I'll break it off

Just now... doing the usual "go and get the bread and the papers and hope that something drops in my lap (metaphorically... for we don't really want things dropping in our laps, do we?) about which (and heretofore) I could blog" trip out, something indeed did drop in my lap... and, thankfully, it was only metaphorically....like my daily manna, it came.

I was waiting to turn out into the main road on my way back home, when this car turned into the junction with a snot nosed twelvish year old leaning out the back window, trying desperately to look cool, who tried, TRIED, to give me "the evil eye" and POINTED at me, as if her finger were a harbinger of doom.... or a water pistol.

It was so pathetic, it was risible.

If we were living in Medieval times, when all was the grim reaper and curses and superstition (of which, more another time, hereaftertofore) I might have wet my knickers (of which, more another time.... oh hang on ... no) at the sight of this little sod trying to either curse me or frighten me or just trying to be cool.

Thankfully this is the twenty first century and everything has been cheapened to the point of banality. This child obviously fed on hideous cheap anime (see? got it right) and bad kiddy-lit and nonsense on the telly thinks that if she does this, people will be frightened or impressed or something.... when in fact, she may well just get MY finger... poked liberally in HER evil little eye.

That, or she was a renowned gypsy child prodigy seer... who can see terrible things in people's futures... in which case, I'm in trouble.

pink balloon

another frame from another story. bit busy. back tomorrow.

... ... ...

sunday morning

BOO!

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Art

don't forget...talk about it!

today Live8 happens.

Next week G8 happens.

Talk about them, blog about them, write about them.

Just because people-power didn't work last time, doesn't mean it can't work this time.

(aaaah, ever the optimist)

Unthinkable things in Portugal.

I am emptying our house of crap this week. I've had enough of accumulated crap that hasn't been looked at in five years, let alone used. So, I'm crapping out the crap from this house.

Now, what to do with the crap? If you're British or North American or Ozzie what would you do (or at least consider doing and maybe getting round to finally, when the crap is too much)? you'd think "aaaaaah... car boot sale" (UK) or "aaaaaah... yard sale" (US/CA/AUS though I may need some correction... correct me correct me), wouldn't you. Because that's a good way to offload crap onto other people and get paid a few pennies for it. And as horrible as they are, they can be quite funny. And hey, where'd you buy all the crap in the first place? EXACTLY!

(just for clarification, a car boot sale is where people drive to a field or a car park at some ungodly hour in the morning, pay an entrance fee, which sometimes goes to charity, park up, and sell crap from the back of their car, sometimes from a trestle table. Some people do it once in a lifetime. Some people are absolutely crazy about them. Some people do it for a living. The ones who do it for a living are quite scarily good at buying stuff for 50p and selling it for £5. They're the ones who arrive at your car before you've even got out of it, looking in the back windows to see what you've got... shaking their heads, muttering loudly, nah, there's nothing worth buying here... here, I'll give you 10p for that ceramic dog there... YES, the tasteless one!)

But, sadly, car boots and yard sales just wouldn't, COULDN'T happen here in Portugalland....



Unthinkable is what it is. It's the sort of thing you wouldn't even be able to talk about. The sort of thing that would go down in folk legend.... "and once a strange foreigner did something extraordinary and cigano... she SOLD things from the back of her car!..." (You see, it is still socially acceptable to use cigano/gypsy as a term of abuse in these parts which I have to say I find distasteful for the obvious reasons.)

Portuguese snobbery is a thing to behold in its glory... an example: the lovely expression "a moda de Portugal é comer e dizer mal"... trans. "the THING to do in Portugal is to eat their food, then slag 'em off" - well, that would be the essex translation (it's the effect of the BB house, I swear). But it's true and everywhere... be seen talking to the right people, wearing the right clothes, eating the fashionable food etc etc etc and you'll be fine.

But, deviate from the acceptable and you's in trouble.

I think I may organise a BIG CAR BOOT SALE in the centre of Azeitão... see how many people never speak to me again.