Wednesday 22 June 2011

Morangos com Açucar

It's Portuguese for "Strawberries with Sugar" and is the name of a long running kids' soap opera on Portuguese TV - it's sort of half way between Grange Hill and Hollyoaks.


During the school summer holidays, it becomes Morangos com Açucar - Férias de Verão ("Summer Holidays") when the cast decants from their school in Lisbon to a resort on the Algarve and take their clothes off. Well not all of the cast: girls with fat thighs and hairy moles - only included in the fully clothed winter version of McA in a token nod in the direction of diversity - are left behind with the fat boys. If there were a summer holidays version of Eastenders, then Heather ('Ev) Trott would not be in it. Nor would Shirl or - and now I come to think of it, anybody. Not since Kara Tointon left, anyway ...

Thus, Anabela is guaranteed a suntan in Cascais this summer:-


... whereas Papoila can look forward to a summer of wiping tables at a motorway service station north of Santarem


Anyway, I've digressed - how did I get on to this? Oh yes, Morangos, naturally I have no interest whatever in watching skimpily clad teenage girls (especially once the fat and unattractive ones have been weeded out leaving only the svelte ones with tight sweaters and short skirts (Ooh! Suits you! Ooh!) for the middle aged viewer's delectation), no, it's because McA has CeeFax 888 subtitles and thus it's a good Portuguese lesson.

Seriously - tonight I learned that se não te importares means "if you don't mind" (said to someone you're on familiar terms with). And cheira tão bem means "smells really good" in the context of cooking. And if you think that's not very important to know, there are often lots of things cooking smelling really good (if you don't me mind saying) when you walk down the main street of Fajã Grande around lunchtime. In fairness, my Portuguese is not so bad that I didn't know that these expressions would be something like that but you always have to be careful that some idiom in English doesn't translate exactly into Portuguese. So it's great to be able to watch the subtitles on McA and get confirmation.

I wonder what's the Portuguese for "You're damn right it is" (Pois e?) in the context of the reply to "Do you think my arse is too fat to get a part in McA - Ferias de Verão?"