Election fever look-alike

It's election time in the Azores again.

Already? I hear you ask. Yes, and not a moment too soon because the pen I got from the orange T-shirt lot the last time round has just run out so the pen deposited in our mail box this afternoon by the turquoise pen lot (above) could not have been more timely.

I don't normally like fat chunky type pens like that with the rubbery bit to get hold of [as the actress so memorably observed to the bishop]. I can't see past a plain Bic myself, the transparent ones, not the yellow ones. But what the turquoise pen lot's pen lacks on the tactile front, it gains on the quality of writing front:-

Not at all bad. But the key test will be whether the nib will be able to sustain that quality in the longer term - that's to say until the ink is about 75% used up (which is when Bics begin to go off the boil)?  Cheap pens have a habit of going a splotchy after a disappointingly short period and showing one up for being a jotter-blotter - a most unwelcome state of affairs.

But let us not prejudge and, anyway, that's not what I was going to write about. Which was that surely I can't be the first person to have been struck by the uncanny resemblance between the turquoise pen lot's Flores candidates Paulo Rosa and some other bloke - let's zoom in below:-

other bloke                                       Rosa

 and TV gangster Tony Soprano's nephew Christopher Moltisanti and veteran British left wing politician, Tam Dalyell:-

Dalyell                                                      Moltisanti

But when I looked inside the brochure of which the scan at the top is the front cover, I was equally taken aback to find a row of pictures of people many of whom I know:-

I suppose this goes with the territory of living on an island of fewer than 4,000 people but Anselmo's the boy with the high-viz "knock me doon jacket" who wheels the steps out to the plane at the airport; Catarina works at Bragas' supermarket (gets my vote because she cuts the leaves off the cauliflower before weighing it); Tiago is our computer whiz-kid (came to the house for negligible call out charge when our modem decided not to play ball); and Stella's mother in law lives across the road from us. I think the way it works is that, if the turquoise pen lot get voted in, then only the first two or three of them get to go to the Azorean parliament but if one of them demits, then you don't have to have a by-election because you've got all the rest of them pre-elected and ready to step up, as it were.

Under the row of photos, it says "O Que Queremos Para As Flores" which is "What we want for Flores". I won't bother to translate all of these but among them is the airport lights issue I alluded to in my previous post  -  I'm not sure if the fact it's third from the bottom on the right hand side is indicative of the priority the turquoise pen lot give to this issue.

I went down to the turquoise pen lot's sessão de esclarcimento (public meeting) this evening. When I got into the hall, Chris Moltisanti was speaking to an audience of about 20 people in that Fidel Castro way latin politicians have of not pausing for breath and with no notes: they don't do soundbites in this country. When at last he wound up and asked for questions, there was a cringingly awkward silence - a cough, a child cries. I was just drawing breath to say "I'm sorry, you'll have to excuse my very bad Portuguese but could you explain why there's enough money to put street lights up along the Avenida Marginal but not enough for the airport lights? Oh and - sorry to interrupt you - there's not much point in having airport lights unless SATA establish a schedule whereby, at least once a week, the plane arrives late at night, stays over and departs early the next morning and comes back again late the same day so as to permit the possibility of a day trip to Lisbon for a medical appointment etc. I've heard it's because the SATA crews refuse to spend the night away from home on Flores, is that true ...?"

Fortunately for Chris, he was spared that (unintelligible) rant as someone else broke the silence with another question although I didn't catch what it was. And by the time he'd answered it, I had to get back up for tea anyway.