At Flores in the Azores

Sailing to the Azores

2012-02-15T22:23:00.000-01:00

Nowadays, if you want to get to the Azores, you have to go in a boring old Airbus A320 like every other European destination.

Between them, the Portuguese national airline TAP Portugal and the Azores airline SATA have about four or five flights a day from Lisbon to three of the larger islands (Sao Miguel, Terceira and Faial). From these three, you can then fly on to any of the other six islands the same day on a SATA Bombardier Dash 8-Q400, the regional propliner of choice:-

Thus, you can get to Flores from Lisbon in less than 6 hours. But it was different 50 years ago (which, I would remind people of my age, is as recently as the 1960s) when you had to go to the Azores on a ship - slower but a lot more fun.

The shipping company was called Empresa Insulana de Navegção ("Island Shipping Company") and it served the Azores and Madeira from Lisbon in the days before mass air travel. In 1961, EIN made its last big investment in passenger ships by commissioning two new vessels.

MS Funchal - photo credit Luis Miguel Correia

The first - pictured above - was called Funchal (after the capital of Madeira). Built at the Elsinore Shipyard in Denmark and carrying 400 passengers at 20 knots (23mph/37kmh), she sailed from Lisbon to Madeira and the larger islands of the Azores. She was the equivalent of today's TAP and SATA Airbuses except the journey by sea took two days instead two hours by air nowadays.

The other new ship of 1961 was a mini version of the Funchal called Ponta Delgada (named after the capital of the Azores). Her role was to take passengers out to the smaller islands of the Azores and thus she was the equivalent of today's SATA Q400s.

That's a classic picture of the Ponta Delgada lying off Fajã Grande in the 1960s. There was no pier a ship could lie alongside at Flores before the 1990s so passengers had to be ferried out in a small launch as you can see here. (I assumed the ships lay off Santa Cruz on the east coast of Flores but perhaps they made additional calls round the island or maybe there was some reason why the PD could not call at SC that day.) The picture above is one of a very interesting series of old photos of Fajã Grande you can see on Facebook (I hope that link works but as I'm not much of Facebooker, I'm not sure.)

The Ponta Delgada alongside at Sao Jorge in the 70s - phot credit Luis Miguel Correia

Air travel gradually replaced these ships in the 70s and 80s. First to go were the Funchal's services from Lisbon which ceased in 1973. She was converted that year to a cruise liner and, in fact, is still sailing in that role, still under the Portuguese flag - a remarkable achievement for a 50 year old ship.

That picture of the view from the Funchal's bridge is from Bruce Peter's blog where you can find lots of other pictures of her. And if you fancy a cruise amongst 60s Scandinavian decor, here's the link to her owners - Classic International Cruises. It looks all very spit and polish and you get the distinct impression the captain of a CIC ship wouldn't be careless enough to bang his vessel into a bit of the scenery. And if he did, that he'd have the decency to hang around and face the music rather scarper on the first available lifeboat. (I'm at risk of digressing into stereotypical Italian cowardice but they really do ask for it, don't they? As if Berlusconi wasn't enough of a role model, they had to invent Francesco Schettino just to ram the point home.)

Which lifeboat is the captain on?

Anyway, wrenching myself back on topic (somewhat reluctantly), the Ponta Delgada's career amongst the Azores lasted longer as not all the smaller islands had airports until the 1980s.

Regular "commenter" on this blog, Marisa Perreira, is from Graciosa but as a child in the 1970s she travelled to Flores most years to spend the summer with her grandmother in Fajã Grande. As there was no airport on Graciosa until 1981, that involved a sail on the Ponta Delgada which began with being taken out to the ship in a launch as Graciosa didn't boast a pier in the 70s either.

The Ponta Delgada at Ponta Delgada - photo credit Luis Miguel Correia

In the course of a 24 hour voyage calling at São Jorge, Pico and Faial, Marisa's main memory of the Ponta Delgada is that it smelt of diesel and rocked "like a cot" - an idiom which doesn't exist in English although we know what's meant!

But at least she didn't suffer from sea-sickness like her sister who didn't emerge from the cabin for the whole voyage. Marisa used to wander off round the ship and one particular memory is of leaning in through a hatch cover on the foredeck chatting to crewmen below when the tannoy announced "If anyone has seen a curly haired little girl ..." On being reunited, her mother informed her that the crew were apt to throw naughty children overboard!

Photo credit - Luis Miguel Correia

Landing at the Porto das Poças in Santa Cruz das Flores by launch from the Ponta Delgada lying off (as the pier at Lajes hadn't yet been built), Marisa recalls that what the sea journey didn't do to her, the journey in the back of Albino's truck weaving its way across the island to Fajã Grande did! The only cure was Grandma's canjinha which in Marisa's words is "home made chicken soup with the little eggs that were still inside the chicken". (Apparently there isn't a Portuguese word for these "little eggs" and there isn't an English one either, as far as I'm aware. If anyone knows different, leave a comment.)


The bar on the Ponta Delgada - photo credit Luis Miguel Correia

The Ponta Delgada made her last leisurely sail round the Azores in October 1984. Finally rendered redundant by the relentless march of the aeroplane, she also took up a career as a cruise ship but by the late 90s her owners had gone bankrupt and she was lying abandoned at a remote quay in Lisbon, in an increasing state of decay and literally sinking fast:-


Photo credit Luis Miguel Correia

In 2008, the Lisbon Port Authority ordered the removal of the wreckage. There are lots more fascinating photographs of the Ponta Delgada - in life and death - on Luis Miguel Correia's blog .

So, today, people come to Flores on the plane and "stuff" comes on the container ship once a fortnight. In the summer, there's a rather infrequent (once a week at most) ferry service subsidised by the Azorean Government. If it were up to me, I'd sooner they spent the money on lights at the airport that would allow SATA's planes to land after dark in winter.

Cansei de Ser Sexy

2012-01-14T23:04:00.000-01:00

This was going to be a post about a Brazilian band called Cansei de Ser Sexy but already it's digressed into a rave about the crapness of our internet connection on this island.

Above is a YouTube of CSS's irritatingly catchy track "Move". You'll be able to stream that seamlessly but we here on Flores are denied that privilege. It takes about an hour to download it without it stopping to buffer every 0.5 of a second (he says not really knowing what "stream" or "buffer" actually means in any context other than tides or railways).

Apparently, it's due to our internet being beamed down from a satellite instead of through a fibre optic cable (thinner than a human hair, I gather) laid across the ocean floor. They've been talking about laying a FO cable to Flores for as long as we've lived here (nearly 6 years now) but nothing's happened. I expect laying something thinner than a human hair across hundreds of miles of ocean without breaking it is quite tricky. Although it must be possible because I watched a TV programme recently with Richard "Top Gear" Hammond on a ship which can pick up both ends of a broken FO cable and splice them back together again. Anyway, as Germany is being a bit beady about Portugal's expenditure just now (and who can blame them - I must say I have every sympathy with the Boche having to pick up the tab for southern Europe), I expect laying a FO cable to Flores has slipped down the list of priorities. Meanwhile, our satellite connection doesn't even register on the BBC's "Check Your Speed" test thingy.

So CSS vids on YouTube are an impossible dream but when you remember that people were starving to death on this island in winter within living memory (in the 1930s), it kind of puts the importance of broadband into perspective. Although I'm not sure I'd want to live without Brain of Britain and Eddie Mair on Radio 4 (said in a "I'd simply die without Mahler" tone of voice.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Cansei de Ser Sexy. We're not great music buffs but one of the Portuguese TV channels we watch heavily advertises upcoming gigs in Lisbon including Britney and Rihanna. CSS seemed very much the poor relations to these megastars but the trailed track "Move" really stuck in our heads and we were gutted when the date for the gig arrived and there were no more ads for it in the commercial breaks.

And then I got to thinking what Cansei de Ser Sexy means. Superficially, it's "Tired of being sexy" except should that not be Cansado de ser sexy? Past participle. Cansei is the simple past tense of cansar (to tire) so it seems to read "I tired (myself) of being sexy". Which surely ought to be reflexive - Cansei-me de ser sexy. Perhaps it's some Brazilian idiom which doesn't work in continental Portuguese. Perhaps I need to get a life and not dwell on it too much.

Going to the dogs ...

2011-12-02T20:19:00.001-01:00

Going? Passed through customs at Terminal 3 The Dogs International an hour ago and now checking in at The Dogs Holiday Inn.

I'm referring to Portugal. It's not normally my style to have a go at my host country which I'm very privileged to live in - thanks for that Portugal. But I got something through the post the other day which made me think no wonder this country is broke!

It's a fixed penalty notice for the princely sum of €15 (£13) because I paid my 2008 Road Tax late. (Called Imposto Unico de Circulação (IUC) in Portugal - it's the annual tax you pay for owning a car.)

Now I don't object to paying Road Tax, especially as it's very cheap in Portugal - €52.84 (£45) for a year - compared with the UK (about £150). Nor do I even object to paying the penalty for late payment. But what I DO object to ...

... is the reason WHY I didn't pay the tax on time, namely, because nobody reminded me to pay it. In Britain, you get a letter a couple of weeks before which you take to the Post Office and you buy your Tax Disc - couldn't be simpler.

And the other thing about this which makes me even crosser is the fact it's taken them three and a half years to get round to sending out the penalty notice. It's not because I object to the €15, it's just the sheer and utter hopelessness of the incompetence of having left it so long!

Can you believe that it's not possible to pay monthly National Insurance Contributions by direct debit in Portugal? You have to pay at an ATM between the 1st and the 20th of the month following. How easy is that to forget to do? I'm quite an organised person where that sort of thing's concerned but when I signed up to the Segurança Social online portal thingummy recently, I consulted my conta corrente and was surprised to discover I was €1.36 in arrears. Turned out this is interest because I was a few days late paying the May 2010 instalment! Well sod them, I'm not going to pay it until someone asks me for it.

Note to Portugal - the way to get people to pay taxes (or anything else) is to make it easy for them to pay. A system like direct debit whereby they don't even have to think about it is optimal. And once you've made it easy to pay but they still don't do it, you hit them hard and fast with the penalty. It's a simple little thing called cash flow.

And you wonder why the Germans are getting a bit fed up with bankrolling Greece?

Water, water everywhere ...

2011-11-03T00:09:00.001-01:00

... but not a drop to flush the lav with.

Today's the first day since March in 2011 I've had socks and shoes on and anything more than a T-shirt.

October is one of the nicest months on Flores with calm, clear days. It's a real Indian summer and all the plants and shrubs start to flower again until a big storm comes along in November to mark the onset of winter and trashes them (there's no other word for it) - the vines, the hibiscus, the bougainvillea - with the salmoura (salt spray). It comes as a shock every year but if anyone's "data-mining" this for climate change research purposes, it happened on the 1st November in 2011.

Jings, I've just read that previous paragraph back and it makes me sound like some kind of hippy-dippy, tree-hugging eco-warrior. Far from it - I've got a carbon footprint the size of Greece's sovereign debt and I'm quite comfortable with it. (Unlike Greece. Or Italy. Don't let me digress onto that.)

Where was I? Oh yes - yesterday's perfect storm. First one of 2011 which photo above doesn't really capture at all. Not only was the electricity off and on all day - we're used to that - BUT THE WATER WENT OFF as well.

I put that in CAPITALS because the initial reaction was any excuse not to have to do the dishes by candle light was a good thing. But that was before the dire implications became clear - when the electricity goes off you can light a candle but there's no quick fix to not being able to flush the lav.

We had a team talk "You need a pee and we've got two flushes left - is this a good use of resources?" It reminded me of "Did he fire six shots or only five? You gotta' ask yourself a question, do I feel lucky?"

"Well, do you punk?"

I'll spare you the full details of how this resource allocation scenario panned out [yes I did type that with no irony intended] and suffice to say, we found ourselves this morning around 8am gathering every receptacle in the house together. That included emptying a half drunk bottle of wine (the fact it was merely half drunk in our household is a rare enough event.) Then we drove to Ponta da Faja to fill them all from a public tap - I'd remembered from translating Pierluigi's definitive history of Flores that PdF has a different water source from Faja Grande. Before I remembered that, I'd been thinking about the mill lade to the water mill at Fajazinha. But just as I was about to strip atavistically to the waist and stride out in search of man's most basic need, I turned on the tap and it was flowing again. Phew!

Great, now I can have a nice hot shower and stick the electric kettle on for a cup of instant coffee and generally increase my carbon footprint to the size of Novaya Zemlya (and if you don't know where that is, it's easier to spot on Google Earth now the ice has melted round about it).

But it did get me thinking about composting toilets. Well not for too long as I'm not sure they'd work work very well en suite. Apparently the flies are the problem. Anyway (back in the real world), we've not yet poured away all the bottles and pans of water we assembled today. Once bitten twice shy and all that.

Makes you think.

Distinguished visitor #2

2011-09-23T22:41:00.000Z

This was as close as I got, unfortunately - the Presidential Merc swishing past our front door just before seven this evening:-

About ten minutes earlier, I'd been summoned by the "Whoop" of a police siren (American style - not a British "Nee-Naw") to be told by a Fed that I'd need to get my car off the street. This was presumably in order that the Presidential motorcade could indeed swish down the narrow streets of Fajã Grande rather than have to carefully negotiate the usual obstacles lesser mortals have to contend with on a daily basis. (As today was dia do lixo, we were having a titter earlier about the prospect of the limo crawling down the road after the Lajes falling apart bin wagon (garbage truck) and its attendant pong.)

I was down at the Balneareio earlier in the day. José Diamantino had shaved but was chain smoking with a nervous demeanour and admitted "tudo pronto - mais ou menos" (everything ready - more or less). It appeared the jantar was taking place in a marquee on the lawn (which, with the box hedges, was noticeably recently cut).

Looked like everybody was going to be seated on forms, though - no sign of any spaces for thrones. Nice weather for it as well.

Lookalike

2011-09-23T12:14:00.002Z

Surely I can't be the only one to have noticed the uncanny resemblance between aging rocker Brian May and pioneering English scientist Sir Isaac Newton. I wonder if by any chance they're related - I think we should be told.

Newton May

What's that barnet all about Brian? Isaac had an excuse. You don't.

Distinguished visitor

2011-09-22T22:03:00.001Z

Tomorrow, Friday 23 September 2011, Fajã Grande plays host to no less a personage than His Excellency Prof. Aníbal Cavaco Silva, the President of Portugal.

There's going to be a grande jantar (piss-up) at the balneareio hosted jointly by the presidentes of the câmaras municipais of Lajes das Flores and Santa Cruz das Flores. That requires some explanation.

First, the venue. Balneareio translates literally as "bathing facility". It can apply to the showers in a sports stadium but in FG means the bit where you swim in the sea (there being no beach as such) and more particularly the bar-restaurant there where you get your beers, ice creams and burgers on a hot summer's afternoon.

Often booked for island weddings, the Balneareio is run by a jolly chap called José Diamantino and his wife with the assistance of a team of local teenage girls. I can picture Senhora JD lining them up (inc. JD ele mesmo who will be ordered to shave for the occasion) to give them a sharp lecture on minding their Ps & Qs and telling the local lags usually to be found lined up at the bar shouting at each other that they'll need to make themselves scarce (rather like Fawlty telling the ladies they wouldn't be welcome at the Gourmet Night.)

Second, the hosts. There are, incredibly for an island of fewer than 4,000 people, two separate câmaras municipais (local authorities) on Flores - Santa Cruz (the north half of the island) and Lajes (the south half). Beaten only to the bottom spot by Corvo (pop. 400), they are respectively the third and second smallest CMs in Portugal and they don't get on with each other.

"The White House" - HQ of C.M.L (Camara Municipal das Lajes)

For a start, there's a territorial dispute. As long ago as the 18th century, worthies were sent to adjudicate but unfortunately they only fixed the boundary as being an imaginary line between the mouths of two rivers on the west and east coasts of Flores. In a pre-GPS era, that left not so much wriggle as thrashing about epileptically room as to where that line actually ran through the island's unhelpfully irregular interior.

More recently, border tensions erupted into open warfare a year or two ago when a Santa Cruz JCB was found digging sand alleged to be a few metres on the Lajes side of the DMZ. The matter was pursued to court (I'm not kidding!) and SC were mulcted in damages amounting to tens of thousands of Euros which, last I heard, had not yet been paid.

The presidente of the CM of Lajes is João Lourenço, the owner of the Flores equivalent of B&Q

That picture of JL sitting magisterially on his throne on the pier at Lajes glaring King Canute style at the waves is scanned from an edition of the Lajes Boletim Municipal which caused gales of mirth locally - had His Highness been borne aloft in his chair on the shoulders of the vereadores (councillors) from the White House down the hill to the sea, asked one wag? Presumably, the presidente of SC will be bringing his chair to the presidential jantar tomorrow - I can just picture them jostling their chairs against each other to get closer to His Excellency.

I must say, I'd been expecting the village to be swarming with Feds today, sweeping the place for security and making sure Frank's cows were safely penned in so they couldn't shite on the street and risk splattering the presidential limo. But no sign - the skies are darkening and the wind's getting up. Perhaps SATA have cancelled and the whole thing's off. I'll let you know what happens.

Incidentally - in case anyone's in any doubt about my British sense of humour - I consider it to be a GOOD THING that Frank's cows are allowed to shite on the street here. There's probably some humourless nanny state somewhere (Scotland, probably) where that sort of thing is banned. Don't get me started.

Tax demand

2011-08-26T00:07:00.000Z

I received a tax demand today from Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (the UK tax authority) for the princely sum of £12.30 (14€, $18) for fiscal year 2010-11.

Money very well spent, IMO, as the "subscription fee", as it were, to be able periodically to write to UK (and Scottish soi disant) Government Departments who annoy me saying "Though resident in Portugal, I remain a UK tax payer ...". (In fact, when I first did the calculation myself, it appeared I would not be paying any UK income tax at all for 2010-11 which was a matter of some chagrin to me. I was having to console myself with the fact I pay UK VAT and excise duties on booze and petrol when I'm there in December/January each year. But in the end, I just slipped under the bar of being an income tax payer.)

Anyway, I shall be writing to HMRC tomorrow with my cheque telling they can have it with my pleasure provided they spend it on something deserving like a by-pass or an aircraft carrier but under no circumstances are they to give it to anyone to buy a community woodland with. And especially not the crowd who said on their website:

"A necessary element of land acquisition funding is the raising of a proportion of the price paid by the community itself ... It is proposed that the community contribute approximately [5%] of the acquisition cost from sources such as:
* Charitable trusts - there are a number of grant giving charitable trusts that have supported community land initiatives in the past.
* Local fundraising - this can include fundraising events (sponsored activities such as walks, swims etc.), ceilidhs, raffles, bring and buy etc.
* Private donors - many of the large community land buyouts have been assisted by sizeable donations from private individuals ..."

So, apart from the fun-run and the raft race ("Right, so we've got sixpence!"), your idea of contributing to the price yourself is not putting your hands in your own pockets but scrounging it from charities and donors?

"So all we have to do is buy a raffle ticket, yeah?"

National language?

2011-08-12T22:35:00.002Z

Under the headline "Gaelic Jargon Lessons for Civil Servants" I read in the media of an "online toolkit" being "rolled out" to employees of Forestry Commission Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Crofters Commission in order to provide them with useful phrases in Gaelic relevant to their spheres of operation.

(For non-Scottish readers, FCS, SNH and the CC are the Scottish government agenices responsible respectively for forestry, nature conservation and small farms. Gaelic is a language spoken by a small minority of Scots: all Gaelic speakers also speak English.)

I was amusing myself at the thought of some earnest young FCS apparatchik (with a name like Alpin Leadbetter, a degree in Geology and Arc-welding and a fleece bearing his employer's logo) frantically booting up the toolkit in order to be able to drop the Gaelic for "sitka spruce" into conversation with some bulbous nosed crofter from Wester Ross on the scrounge for tax-payers' money to plant a community woodland with. And that, being from Manitoba, Alpin fails to spot that the crofter's lilting accent is that of Wiltshire rather than Wester Ross and consquently doesn't have a single word of "garlic" in his body. Not to mention the fact that, as there isn't an English for "sitka spruce", there's highly unlikely to be a Gaelic for it.

Roughcastle Community Wood - what's the Gaelic for "inspirational"?

So far so titter-value until I got to a quote in the story from John Angus Mackay, chief executive of Bord na Gaidhlig (Gaelic language agency) who praised the Gaelic jargon toolkit for "raising the profile of our own national language".

What? Gaelic, Scotland's national language?

What RUBBISH!

Quite apart from the absurdity of describing as a "national language" a tongue spoken by fewer than 2% of the nation's population, what the Gaelic cultural imperialism zealots persistently overlook is that there are vast areas of Scotland where Gaelic has NEVER been spoken, namely the green and yellow bits on the map below:-

The green bits just happen to include the country's capital (Edinburgh), biggest city (Glasgow) and the bits where two thirds of its population lives so it seems John Angus MacKay of Bord na Gaidhlig needs a basic lesson in the linguistic history of Scotland. Here it is - this is not very difficult.

The aboriginal language of Scotland was what linguists call a "P-Celtic" language, the closest surviving example of which is modern Welsh. In the first millenium AD, Scotland was invaded by Gaels from Ireland speaking Gaelic (a "Q-Celtic" language) and Angles from England speaking - wait for it - English (a teutonic language). Gaelic spread east and south while English spread north and west. The aboriginal P-Celtic language was snuffed out between this linguitic pincer movement. The high water mark of Gaelic's spread was as coloured pink on the map. That was in the 11th century AD. Since then, it has been retreating back north and west in the face of English (green on the map) to the point where Gaelic is now spoken by only about 60,000 people - 1.2% of the population - in the very far north west and the Western Isles.

The following picture illustrates what a polyglot culture Scotland in fact has, historically speaking. It's of a road-sign near Inverness:-

Picture credit The Poss

Looking at all these names, Muir of Ord is English (Muir = Moor); Thurso is Norwegian reflecting the Viking heritage of north east Scotland (yellow on the map). I don't know what it means but compare with names of places in Norway like Oslo and Bodo etc. And Beauly is even French - Beau Lieu. Yet some apparatchik with a greater sense of political correctness than of Scotland's diverse cultural make up has seen fit to translate it all into Gaelic!

Why? Judged by the numbers of speakers in Scotland, it would make as much sense to translate all these names into Punjabi or Polish!

I agree with David and I'm going to hit "Publish" now before I get any more ventilated about this.

Loja Macau

2011-07-22T23:54:00.000Z

In Britain, they're usually owned by Indians or Pakistanis and have names like "Ali's Cave" - shops that sell everything from screwdrivers to binoculars through flip-flops to handbags via artists' canvasses, plumb-bobs and washing baskets - all piled high and sold low at prices in direct proportion to the per capita GDP of the countries the stuff is manufactured in.

In Portugal, such shops are owned by Chinese people. In Ponta Delgada on São Miguel, every second building is a chinese shop (where it's noticeable they all have exactly the same stock) and there are now even two in Santa Cruz das Flores.

We went in to the chinese shop in SC yesterday to buy a cheese grater and were somewhat flabbergasted to find out they didn't stock them - pencils with flashlights in the bit which is normally the rubber on the end and all sorts of other goodies I'd have been thrilled to find in my Xmas stocking as a 7 year old (indeed, as a 48yo) yes, but cheese graters, no.

There were, however, some consolation prizes to be had in the chinese shop. I got a very nice wee set of spanners for 3,50€

If you zoom in on that a bit, it'd be a great entry on the "familiar household article viewed from an odd angle" round on "Ask the Family". As it happened, I wanted them in order to tackle the nut faintly visible at the top of this picture ("Mother and younger child only") underneath a sink and only accessible with the degree of wrist and finger co-ordination normally reserved to gynecologists:-

Anyway, I've digressed, where was I? Oh yes - things bought at the chinese shop apart from the cheese grater we went in for. Exhibit 2 - a pair of lightweight cotton summer shorts, a snip at €7.95, and possibly the best aspect of which, worth twice that easily, was the washing instructions:-

I was also interested to discover yesterday that what we call just "the chinese shop" has a name. Shops on Flores are very difficult to find because they don't have signs outside. I suspect it's because the owners take the view that everyone knows where the shops are so why waste money putting up useless signs advertising what everybody already knows. The same syndrome probably explains why, when a new shop opened up recently, they put flyers in everyone's letterboxes which informed you it was a butcher's but not where it was. ("Everybody knows where José João's cousin's going to be opening his shop ... Tsk! Tchoh!")

Anyway, despite the fact it's in a building which used to be a residencial, the only outward marking on which is the crossed knife and fork restaurant symbol usually seen at motorway service stations in the 70s, the chinese shop in SC is, in fact, called Loja Macau:-

What is the article depicted bottom right next to the dismembered body parts - a pair of sunglasses or a bra? Whatever, loja is the Portuguese word for a shop and (for anyone who doesn't know) Macau is the Portuguese equivalent of Hong Kong - a small Portuguese territory in China handed back to the PRC at the same time as the UK surrendered HK. Gambling is Macau's thing - it is to China what Vegas is to the States.

There's another shop in Santa Cruz which, in fairness, does have a sign with a name although it's so small that it doesn't register and we call it something else. Can you guess what that is?

That article

2011-07-17T22:41:00.000Z

Well done to David for spotting this on the Express' website (I didn't know you were an Express reader.)

Not only is the population of Flores actually just below 4,000 as Marisa correctly points out but I am now 48, not 46. This is due to the fact that journalist Richard Webber hacked my phone for this scoop two years ago and I gather it's been languishing in the property editor's basket awaiting a day of nothing better to report ever since.

I expect property prices in the Azores have moved a bit since he wrote the article as well. But I don't care - we didn't buy this house as an investment and I ascribe a value to it of £0.01 (= €0.01 and $0.01.)

There's the inevitable story about the photo of us in the article. The journo asked for a picture of us by the house back in December. Of course, he never visited the Azores in the course of researching the piece and I think he had visions of deck chairs by the pool on Christmas Day. In fact it was feckin parky (British English for "a touch on the cool side") on the day we grabbed a neighbour to take a couple of snaps.

The results produced the usual female response to photos. Here are the ones the readership of the Express didn't get to see:-

1. "You can't send that, my hair looks mental"

2. "Nope. You look a fat bastard"

3. "Delete that, I look a right spaz."

So it ended up being "I suppose it will have to be that one although I'm not happy about it".

Of course, the star of the show is the house. The picture printed in the Express was one I took about 3 days after we arrived here in May 2006. It seems so long ago now ...

"My back door looks too fat ..."

Morangos com Açucar

2011-06-22T22:30:00.000Z

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?"

Ruling Britannia - just say no

2011-05-07T21:09:00.000Z

There was an election to Scotland's devolved (autonomous) parliament on Thursday and, though it pains me greatly to even think about it, it was won handsomely by the Scottish National Party - that's the lot that want Scotland to become fully independent of the United Kingdom which I don't approve of.

The new political map of Scotland - SNP is yellow.

The SNP's win can legitimately be called a landslide in that they've even managed to win a majority of the seats in the Scottish Parliament (since 2007 they've been governing as a minority administration) in an electoral system designed to make it very hard for any party to gain an outright majority. They got 45% of the popular vote and 69 out of the 129 seats in Parliament, up 23 from last time.

Of course, there will now be no living with their leader, the unbearably smug Alex Salmon pictured above boarding his campaign helicopter (dubbed "Saltire One" by the media) to fly off to a presidential style victory accolade on the lawn of a hotel in Edinburgh yesterday afternoon.

There is inevitably renewed talk of a referendum on Scottish independence in the course of this parliament. (There was talk of it in the last parliament too but it was shelved due to recession etc. - very much a case of every cloud, say I.) But console yourself by recalling the SNP only won 45% of the vote on Thursday and not everyone who votes SNP believes in independence. So we're a bit away from Scotland seceding from the United Kingdom yet. I hope.

On the subject of referendums, there was one on Thursday, throughout the UK, on changing the UK electoral system. At present, it's very simple - the candidate with the most votes in a constituency (area of the country which sends a member to parliament) wins: he/she doesn't need a majority and could be elected with just, say, 20% of the vote if the next man got 19%. And what's more nobody else gets into parliament to make up for this lack of majority.. (I'm talking here about our "lower house", the House of Commons. Our other house, the House of Lords - our Senate - is not elected.)

This system tends to favour the two biggest political parties, Labour (centre left) and Conservative (centre right) who win disproportionately large numbers of seats in parliament compared to their percentage of the national vote. This is at the expense of smaller parties like the Liberal Democrats (centre centre) and Greens. And because it's effectively a two horse race, British elections usually produce a majority in parliament for one of the big two. Hence the Lib Dems, as Britain's perpetual third party, are always banging on about changing the electoral system.

So, when the 2010 election, unusually, produced no majority for Labour or Conservative, the Lib Dems made it a condition of entering the coalition with the Cons that there be a referendum on changing the voting system to something called "Alternative Vote" - God knows what it is or how it works but it's something a bit more like proportional representation and designed to match the seats won in parliament a bit more closely to the parties' shares of the national vote.

And I'm very pleased to say the result was that the British public (God bless 'em!) rejected any change by a margin of 2 to 1. This is a very satisfactory consolation prize for the SNP having won in Scotland.

Politics is a frightful enough business as it is and any move towards more coalitions, involving even more compromising and cutting deals instead of just saying "We've got a majority and this is what we're going to do and if you don't like it you can vote us out in 5 years time", is a bad thing as far as I'm concerned.

The loss of the AV referendum has left the Lib Dems and it's strangely eye-browed leader, the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg looking a right pillock to put it mildly.

There's a paradox about Lib Dem voters. A lot of them have slagged off hapless little Clegg for the compromises he made on LD policies to join the coalition with the Conservatives. This is reckoned to have cost them a lot of votes in the Scottish election with a lot of their voters having defected to the SNP. But making compromises is part and parcel of being in a coalition. It's routine in many European countries e.g. Germany which has an endless succession of coalitions and political parties' manifestoes are more in the nature of wish lists rather than pledges. We Brits are just not used to that which is the norm elsewhere. Electoral reform (= greater likelihood of coalitions and all that that implies) is a central plank of LD policy so why do their supporters have a go at Cleggy when he does what has to be done to enter into one? WTF?

Anyway, it's all academic now considering we've voted a resounding "No" to changing the system. And we know what we'll be voting in the next referendum (Scottish independence), don't we?

If the prospect of never having to see that fat smirking face again isn't enough to make you vote "No" then I don't know what is.

Wedding Fever

2011-04-28T00:02:00.003Z

I must say that the question which is exercising me the most in the run up to the wedding is not what her dress is going to be like (couldn't give a toss) but which royal dukedom will be conferred on Prince William.

The odds being offered on the various options by one firm of bookmakers are as follows:-

4/7 - Duke of Cambridge
7/2 - Duke of Monmouth
4/1 - Duke of Clarence
9/2 - Duke of Sussex

8/1 - Duke of Connaught
12/1 - Duke of Kendal
14/1 - Duke of Windsor

Let's analyse these in turn:-

Cambridge - Several short lived infant sons of James Stuart, Duke of York (as in "Grand Old ...") who later became King James II (1685-88) were styled Duke of Cambridge but the last adult dukes were Prince Adolphus, the 7th son of King George III (as in "The Madness of ..."), and his (Adolphus') son, Prince George (pictured below) who died without male heirs in 1904.

Monmouth - Do me a favour! The last (and so far only) Duke of Monmouth was executed for high treason in 1685! He was the illegitimate son of King Charles II (1649-85). After his father's death without legitimate children, Monmouth, a Protestant, led a rebellion to prevent the accession of the late king's brother, the Catholic Duke of York as James II. He figured a Protestant bastard would be more acceptable to the populace than the legitimate Catholic heir but figured wrong and got his head chopped off for his pains. Not a very auspicious precedent for Prince William.

Clarence - This has some potential in precedent (important to the royal family) because the last Duke of Clarence was the last royal duke to be in the same position as Prince William - i.e. the grandson who is the eldest son of the eldest son of the current monarch.

He was Prince Albert, the eldest son of Edward, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Queen Victoria who became King Edward VII (1901-1910). The problem is Prince Albert died in 1892, aged 28, while his grandmother was still on the throne. So this may not be considered a good omen for Prince William (aged 29). The Duke of Clarence was also the one thought to be Jack the Ripper so perhaps best avoided.

Sussex - the last (and only) Duke of Sussex was Prince Augustus, the 6th son of King George III. He died in 1843 without heirs but a nice portrait:-

Connaught - Having a laugh? This title was conferred on Queen Victoria's third son, Prince Arthur, in 1874 but Connaught is in the part of Ireland which seceeded from the United Kingdom in 1922. Although we now recognise that as the Republic of Ireland, it's about as likely as creating Prince William the Duke of Zimbabwe. Tchoh!

Kendal - Not sure where this has come from. Never heard of a Duke of Kendal before. According to Wikipedia: "The titles of Earl of Kendal and Duke of Kendal have been created several times, usually for people with some connection to the royal family." It's a small town in the Lake District best known for Mint Cake, isn't it? No, No, Kendal won't do at all.

Windsor - This was the title created for King Edward VIII after he abdicated in 1936 to marry a divorcee. An American divorcee to boot. A most inauspicious precedent so a complete no-hoper for William.

What we're looking for is the dukedom borne by the last eldest son of an eldest son of a reigning monarch who went on to become monarch himself. And I just don't think it's ever happened before. King Edward VIII (vide supra) was the eldest son of the eldest son of King Edward VII but he was only 16 and unmarried and still styled Prince Edward of Wales when his father became King George V and he was catapulted straight to being Prince of Wales.

So what they need is a new title of appropriate woody-ness, grandeur and seniority. I would suggest Duke of London. If his father is Prince of Wales and his grandfather (the sovereign's husband) the Duke of Edinburgh, then why can't the next most senior member of the royal family be the duke of the capital? Or if you don't like that, what about Duke of Belfast? (As he's going to be King Billy one day, they might as well start getting the Irish used to it now.)

Of course, we could think the unthinkable and not give William any title at all. Indeed, there are rumours he's asked not to be created a duke and remain as plain Prince William of Wales. But there's a problem with that in that Waity-Katie would not become Princess Catherine but Princess William.

This is because one can only be born a princess, not become one by marriage. The wife of a prince is Princess Husband's Name (as in Princess Michael of Kent). That is unless the sovereign creates you Princess Your Own Name as the queen did for Princess Alice, wife of the Duke of Gloucester (third son of King George V) in recognition of her lifetime of public service. But if W-K were to be created Princess Catherine, then Princess Michael of Kent would want to be called Princess whatever her actual name is and who knows where all that would end ... (And before anyone mentions it, she wasn't Princess Diana, she was Diana, Princess of Wales which is totally different.)

Oh well, we'll find out on Friday morning. See you on the balcony at Buck House afterwards.

When holidays collide

2011-04-25T23:36:00.000Z

Today, the 25th April 2011, is not just Easter Monday in Portugal but also the country's national day, Dia da Liberdade.

This celebrates the date in 1974 when the Salazar-Caetano right wing dictatorship (the Portuguese equivalent of General Franco in Spain) which had ruled since 1926 was overthrown in the so called Carnation Revolution.

The background to the revolution (as if having a right wing dictatorship were not reason enough) was the fact that, whilst Britain and France had done the decent thing and let their colonial empires go in the 1950s and 60s, Portugal was still grimly clinging on to its - principally Mozambique and Angola but one or two other godforsaken spots in darkest Africa as well - in the 1970s and fighting a bitter colonial war. In 1974, a group of lefty military officers wondered why on earth they were bothering and decided to stage a coup de etat.

According to Wikipedia, the signal to the armed forces to revolt was the broadcasting on the radio of two particular songs: that year's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest (Portugal nul points) and a track by one Zeca Afonso, described by WP as "a progressive folk singer forbidden on Portuguese radio at the time". And I should think so too. Can you imagine anything more worthy of repression than a "progressive folk singer"? And anything the unleashing of which would be more likely to bring the citizenry out in protest?

That's not Zeca Afonso but somebody who came up when I googled "progressive folk singer" and it sort of proves my point. It also reminds me that, during the Waco siege in 1993, the Feds played "Achy Breaky Heart" 24/7 in an attempt to sap the morale of Koresh and co.

Well the combination of Eurovision and prog-folk on the radio did the trick in Lisbon in 1974 and brought an enraged populace on to the streets begging for mercy and sticking carnations up the nostrils of anyone looking even remotely like a folk singer (progressive or otherwise). Uma Canção para Europa contestants were maltreated with the sharp ends of gladiolus stems and in the confusion the dictator, Marcelo Caetano, fled to Brazil without a shot being fired.

Meanwhile, back in 2011, I experienced at first hand how the Portuguese reconcile the conflict between Easter Monday and Dia da Liberdade. I wonder, en passant (he says slipping seamlessly from Portuguese into French, and drawing on that small stock of mots justes with which it's so de rigueur to be au fait) if Dia da Liberdade has ever fallen on Easter Monday before? Is it one of these coincidences that will never again happen in my lifetime and next occur in the year 3492 along with Halley's Comet ...

But I digress, where was I? Oh yes, in the shop this morning and I asked why no bolos levedos (buns similar to soda scones which are awfully good with butter and jam for afternoon tea) for sale. Linda said it was because of the holiday and I said "Oh of course, it's Easter Monday". And she replied "No it's Dia da Liberdade."

Take from that what you will. But before I even went into to the shop I'd noticed it was a day of the year more momentous than either - the day when the annual Olá flag goes up outside the shop. Each year it gets knocked off by a big lorry going down the road and each year, round about now, it is faithfully replaced. Summer may now officially commence.

Lookalike

2011-04-06T00:32:00.000Z

Surely I'm not the only one to have noticed the extraordinary resemblance between Libyan rebel leader Gen. Abdul Fattah Younis and English cricketing legend Ian Botham.

Botham Younis

I wonder if by any chance they're related. I think we should be told.

Gotcha

2011-04-01T12:00:00.000Z

Although this was the Portuguese media reporting a story which appeared in the British newspaper The Independent, I was taken in for a bit.

Wikipedia's spoof was a bit easier to spot though ...

A bit risqué, I thought, considering fanny means something a lot ruder in British English than it does in American.

Lookalike

2011-03-30T22:51:00.000Z

Has anyone else noticed the extraordinary resemblance between Karima el Mahroug, the 17 year old Moroccan night club dancer (yeah, right!) at the centre of the Berlusconi charges, and Eastenders' Janine Malloy (née Butcher)?

Janine Karima

Wonder if they'll get Karima for doing in Archie while they're at it?

Portugal: Crise Política

2011-03-30T22:06:00.000Z

Last Wedenesday, 23 March, after Parliament refused to pass his austerity budget, the Prime Minister of Portugal, José Sócrates (pron. SOCKRA-tish), pictured above, offered his resignation to the President of Portugal, Aníbal Cavaco Silva (pron. Ah-NEEBLE Cuh-VACK SEAL-vuh), pictured below:-

The president has retained the services of Sócrates as caretaker prime minister pending deciding whether to dissolve parliament and call a general election. That decision will be taken after the president has consulted the Council of State tomorrow, Thursday 31 May, and the strong likelihood is that a general election will be announced for the last week of May or first week of June.

Sócrates is the leader of the centre left Partido Socialista (PS), the Portuguese equivalent of Britain's Labour Party. Since the last general election in 2009, he has led a minority government (97 seats out of 230 in Portugal's unicameral legislature); prior to 2009, he led a majority government (121 seats).

Whether the austerity budget didn't pass because it was ill-thought out as the opposition claim, or whether the opposition was just acting out of political opportunism, I just don't know. Socrates will be fighting the forthcoming election again as leader of the PS but the first opinion polls are already suggesting it will be won by the opposition Partido Social Democratica (PSD - centre right - equivalent of British Conservative Party) and its leader Pedro Passos Coelho (pron. PASS-ish KWELL-yoo) albeit not with an absolute majority.

So who will you be voting for - the man with the fake tan or the man with the dodgy barnet (almost certainly dyed)?

Incidentally, the fact that I'm wearing a PSD t-shirt as I type this is no guide to my voting intentions. It's just that the PSD are the orange t-shirt lot from the municipal elections in 2009. And their t-shirt has just proved jolly helpful in a practical sense for typing this blog entry because I was able to unbutton my shirt and look at it to remind myself how you spell Democratica in the context of Partido Social. I've just done it again, in fact, and discovered that it's actually Democrata. And there was me agonising about whether it had an "o" on the end, as you'd expect for an adjective agreeing with a noun ending in an "o" (partido), or an "a"...

So why the hell does it end with an "a", as a matter of interest? But I digress. If the PS (fake tan lot but there it is again, look - Partido Socialista - we seem to have been spirited off into a parallel universe of adjectival disagreement) could see their way to handing out a nice red fleece, say, with a handy pull out list of prepositions buttoned into the pocket, then my vote would be secured. And to hell with the government bond yield.

Ships

2011-03-24T22:13:00.001-01:00

Given that we've got a smashing view of the Atlantic Ocean from our windows ...

... we're quite often asked "Do you ever see any ships going past?"

The answer to that is "occasionally, but not that often." About once a month, maybe, on average. And they're invariably so far away that they're just specks on the horizon - you can see them with the naked eye but for any kind of detail, I need to get out the "oculor" (= binoculors with one side broken. I refuse to buy another set as long as the remaining "oculor" continues to function perfectly well even if I do look like someone not quite right who's been let out for the afternoon when I'm using them (it)).

The ships we see are also invariably container ships. Shipping these days is terribly dull compared with previous decades. When I was a boy, the cargo ships that plied the oceans looked like this:-


Picture credit David Christie

They were generally built at Glasgow, registered at London and emptied their bilge oil into the pristine waters of some foreign port and if the natives dared to complain, they got a stiffly worded rebuke from the British Consul for their trouble (Col. Gaddafi please take note.)

But nowadays, the ships we see from our windows look like this:-


Picture credit Dominic Winsor

Built in Korea and registered in Panama, they're doubtless very efficient and economical in terms of stuff shifted per unit load but they need a risk assessment before they flush the lav and are generally lacking in eight bells and top masts.

Actually it's a coincidence the googled picture above is a CMA-CGM ship because we saw one of theirs going past here once, the letters on the hull being big enough to make out with the oculor. It's a big French shipping company and I went to their website and was able to work out from their schedules where it was going from and to. (It was news to me that container ships operate to schedules like car ferries.) I can't remember now exactly where but the screen grab below from Google Earth suggesting Le Havre from somewhere in South America rings a bell:-

From somewhere in the southern states of the USA ( I believe Savannah, Georgia is quite a big port) to the Straits of Gibraltar is also a candidate for passing our front door:-

I'm quite glad the passing ships don't get too close, though. A container ship called the CP Valour suffered engine failure off the Azores in 2005 and ran aground on the north coast of Faial. It couldn't be towed off and there was the inevitable release of fuel oil and many of the containers were knocked off and washed ashore (although no BMW motorbikes to be looted off the beach by the natives as with that ship - MSC Napoli, I think - that went aground on Cornwall (England) a couple of years ago and caused a lot of extra work for Her Majesty's Receiver of Wrecks in the public education arena).

The official salvors of the CP Valour didn't have much luck either. They spent months removing the remaining containers and the superstructure of the ship with a view to lightening the load to be able to refloat the hull and tow it away for salvage but, as I recall, they got the hull off but it sank into deep water barely a kilometre or so off the coast!

Of course, the CP Valour wasn't the first ship to be wrecked on the Azores. In 1909, the Cunard liner Slavonia was steaming east across the Atlantic from New York bound for Trieste when it is said that some of the passengers, keen to sight the Azores, asked the captain to alter course. The request was acceeded to but they ended up getting a closer view than they bargained for:-

This was at Lajedo on the south west coast of Flores. There was no loss of life but it's said that all the houses on Flores dating from this era - and No 5 Rua da Assomada must fall into this category - have floors made from wood salvaged from the Slavonia. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but here's a sample of our floors in case there are any shipping woodwork afficionados out there who can spot a decent bit of fin de siecle Cunard when they see it:-

More recently, in 1965, a ship called the Papadiamandis was wrecked right here at Faja Grande while en route between New Orleans and Hamburg:-

Recognise anyone? More pictures of that event at Memorias d'um Povo which is a great source of old pictures of Flores.

STOP PRESS - I started writing this last night and what happens this evening but a ship went by, passing from west to east. First time this year, I think - maybe the second. Photo below - even zoomed to the 12x limit of my camera, you'll have to take my word for it that that's a fully laden container ship:-

Cheese

2011-03-19T20:52:00.000-01:00

What's your favourite cheese?

Perhaps it's brie - with a soft oozing texture and a slight yellowish tint (from the carotene absorbed by the cow from the meadow grass and hay in its diet) served with sliced apple, fig jam and a glass of Pinot Grigio.


Beloved of surrender monkeys everywhere

Or perhaps you can't resist stilton, in great buttery rounds, blue-veined, crumbly and sharp tasting inside a pitted crust? [I got that Hugh Fearnley Filling Station buttery blue veined guff by googling "pretentious description of stilton" and needless to say the Guardian (British newspaper for middle class lefties) came top but I enjoyed the fact that the stilton article went to say "The French may think they are on to something with Roquefort, but that is mere salty slime when set against a good stilton."]

Personally, my favourite cheese is Kraft Singles - there is nothing quite so gratifying as peeling back that gossamer thin cellophane and popping a flacid orange slice into your mouth in a oner. ("Pop", whether transitive or intransitive, is a verb I normally tend to eschew but there is just no other word to describe the act of ingesting a Kraft Single.)

Hence it was a matter of no little regret when we discovered that they don't sell Kraft Singles on this island. Lately, however, there has been a slight improvement in the situation in that a company called LactAçores from São Miguel has begun making "singles" out of local Azorean cheese.

Now you may say why don't we just buy a piece of local cheese and cut it into slices? But that's missing the point completely: you can't manually slice cheese to the required thin-ness and, anyway, being wrapped in cellophane and chilled for lengthy periods imparts a delicate fragrance rather in the way that Scotch Whisky acquires its distinctive character from being matured in old sherry casks.

Sorry but we'd troughed all the slices before I remembered to take the photo!

Anyway, we road-tested the local product at lunch today and rated it against various indicators including:-

# - gossamer thin-ness of cellophane wrapping - verdict: not gossamer enough, rather more the consistency of the impossible to get off wrapper of a DVD. And a real KS comes in a cellophane envelope whereas these were just sandwiched between sheets. Tacky. 4 out of 10.

# - adhesion of Single to wrapping - verdict: a real KS is difficult to detach from its wrapper in one piece. These almost literally fell away from the cellophane. Room for improvement. 5/10.

Carol's approach was somewhat less scientific and she summed them up thus: "Not very good, really - they taste like actual cheese."

Quite.

Japan: Scotland stands ready

2011-03-14T22:20:00.001-01:00

The legendary late Scottish rugby commentator, Bill MacLaren, often used to allude to a scorer's club - either its town or the name of its home ground - in terms such as "They'll be cheering in the streets of Galashiels tonight!" or "They'll be pulling a few pints at Netherdale tonight!".

Well, in the true BMacL fashion, I can tell you there must have been a few sighs of relief being breathed in Fukushima this morning when they woke up to the news on the Scottish soi disant Government's website:-

Hyslop comments on earthquake in Japan - External Affairs Minister confirms Scotland stands ready to assist

You can picture the scene in the corridors of power in Tokyo, can't you: "Get on the phone to the Central Bank and get them to cancel that injection of 15 trillion yen to stabilise the markets, Scotland is standing ready to assist!! Aieeee!!!"

But the sighs and aieeees emanating from the Land of the Rising Sun were as naught compared with the expostulations and splutterings emanating from 5 Rua da Assomada this morning when I discovered that Scotland has an External Affairs Minister. And who is this Hyslop person in charge of this non-existent portfolio - is he or she perhaps also in charge of Scottish diamond production and the gorilla population of the Cairngorms ...?

Alex told me to give you this

Turns out it's none other than fat Fiona who, if memory serves, used to be the Minister for something slightly more relevant to Scotland (but I'm not interested enough to look up what it was) who was sacked for incompetences too numerous to mention. So presumably getting External Affairs is the Scottish equivalent of the Chiltern Hundreds.

It's worth having a look at the website to see what exactly it is the Scottish soi disant Government is pledging to Japan:-

* The Scottish Government is working closely with the UK Government to monitor the situation in Japan and the surrounding region (The government will be reassured by this.)

* The Scottish Government is sharing information with the FCO regarding individuals who may be missing or unaccounted for ("Aberdeen man drowned at sea")

* The Scottish Government is in contact with the Japanese Consul General's office in Scotland and have confirmed an offer to assist where we the Scottish Government can ("Get off the f*cking line, we've got more important things to deal with than you saddoes grandstanding on the world stage ...")

* Scottish Development International is in touch with Scottish businesses in Japan (Ditto)

* The Scottish Government stands ready to consider any requests for support

That last one could be interesting - "Ah, Salmon San (said in a Burt ("Tenko") Kwouk everyhere east of Mandalay accent.) you have 1.3 trillion Yen to stabilise Japan stock market?"

Salmon San : "Well (said in a fat Scottish git with delusions of grandeur accent) we do have an underspend of £4.63 on the Cumnock wheelie-bin initiative, if that would be of any use..."

To be a bit serious for a minute (must we? yes), I'd like to know how much a British local authority (which is what the Scottish soi disant Government is) has spent on maintaining a "Minister for External Affairs" and presumably a huge secretariat to support her in a role the authority has no legal jurisdiction over whatsoever.

It makes me cross. I feel another Freedom of Information enquiry coming on (said in "take one of your pills, dear" tone of voice). I've a notion it was Fiona Hyslop I had to write to find out how much they'd spent sending people to London to have meetings about repatriating the William Wallce archives.

"For as long as but 100 of us remain alive, we shall engage with key stakeholders ...

And don't get me started on Libya ....

Spelling Shane Ritchie

2011-02-16T23:52:00.000-01:00

It's been drawn to my attention that Shane actually spells his surname Richie. Without a "t". So does Lionel.

But that's just plain silly because, in both Shane and Lionel's cases, it's pronounced "Ritchie" like the word "rich" with "ie" on the end. Whereas if you leave out the "t" it becomes "Richie" with the "ch" pronounced like the Scottish word "loch" (as in Loch Ness). And Lionel/Shane Ri-ch[Loch]y sounds daft.

People who can't spell their own names really annoy me. Particularly people with too many letters in their name. Conspicuous offenders are Myleene Klass (which looks like it ought to be pronounced Myl-EEEEEEEEEEE-ne) and Jamie Foxx (Focks-sicks).

And what is this art dealer in Dundas Street, Edinburgh all about?

Eating Shane Ritchie

2011-01-27T22:53:00.003-01:00

We had Shane Ritchie for tea tonight.

Not the ipsa corpora of Shane, obviously, but Shane's Penne Pollo Arrabiata. It's a recipe he's fond of rustling up, according to Hello! mag (although I suspect Shane had about as much input into it as he has into Egyptian foreign policy).

Whatever (as I expect Shane said to the girl from Hello! when he realised they were phoning about putting his name on a pasta recipe rather than a cover spread about his lovely home), Penny-Whatsname-Arabia-Whatsname is a bit of a mouthful to say (never mind swallow - ho ho!) so when I ask what we're having for tea and that's what it is, Carol says "We're having Shane Ritchie".

The other night we had Kenny Logan. That's lasagne and we've even been known to have Sir Steven Redgrave's Baked Penne with Dolcelatte and Radicchio - which is too much of mouthful in every department, it would appear, because when I asked why we haven't had Steve for a bit, Carol replied with characteristic succinctness: "It gives me the skitters."

Celebrity recipes would be good material for a round on "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue". Do you have a favourite one? Do leave a comment if you do. Bit of breast, Kat?

(Sorry - this will be meaningless to non-UK readers)

Atrasado por causa de mau tempo

2011-01-19T23:46:00.001-01:00

Distracted by mouthing off about security at Heathrow, I said we travelled back to Flores by four simple steps but actually it was more complicated than that.

On arrival at Terceira, we were informed that flights to Flores had already been cancelled that day due to the weather there. We could fly on to Horta on Faial in hope of a plane to Flores the following day or stay on Terceira for a flight two days hence. Well I had to admire SATA-Air Acores for offering the choice but the Horta option was a no-brainer.

Picture credit Joao Toste

On arrival at Horta, there seemed to be a brief chance that they'd be flying on to Flores after all - we were directed through the transit channel and given the prized green card which entitles you to board ahead of people joining the flight at Horta. But this proved illusory and when the flight was officially cancelled 30 minutes later, the green card merely meant that we were at the end of the queue for hotel vouchers.

SATA-Air Acores put us up at the Hotel do Faial but first there was a nonsense getting away from the airport. A bus into town with 30 seats had been laid on to convey 50 Flores passengers. Naturally, this is a situation which has never been encountered before so that "can-do" attitude the Portuguese are so noted for was very much in evidence. (I'm being ironic here if the ghost of Henry the Navigator or any Americans are reading this.)

Anyway, we arrived at the hotel in time for lunch and jolly tasty it was too. Actually the enforced stop in Horta was a bit of a coup as it gave us the opportunity to schlep up to Modelo which is the Portuguese equivalent of Asda. There was no celery on the shelves but I got a very nice shirt for €9.95. That's my kind of shirt and so good that I went back to Modelo later to get another one in blue. I'm wearing it as I type this. Normally, cheap shirts I buy (i.e. all shirts I buy) have to be washed about 155 times before they're comfy enough to wear but this one's fine straight off.

Hotel do Faial

Dinner at the Hotel do Faial was very acceptable too - buffet with big meaty hot bits and nice salady cold bits. You can't get nasty. Next morning, we made a point of being early to board the 30 seater bus to the airport but it was of little avail as today's flight to Flores was eventually cancelled as well. So back to the Hotel do Faial again - this time in the cab of the lorry laid on to carry the luggage!

By dinner time on the second day, the Hotel do Faial was occupied by a further planeful of passengers trying to get to Flores. There was the post-mistress at Lajes and the pharmacist at Sta Cruz and if this carried on, then eventually all key personnel would be holed up in the HdF and normal services on Flores breaking down alarmingly. But all we could do was look mournfully at each other with a sort Dunkirk "what can you do?" spirit and nip up for another helping of pudding when you thought no-one was looking.

On Day 3, having had the foresight to bag a seat to the airport in the cab of the luggage lorry again, the flight got away to Flores. SATA-Air Acores had to lay on not one but TWO of their Bombardier Dash 8 Q-400s to transport eveybody. All in all, despite some minor irritations, I would say SATA-AA dealt with the situation pretty well. I think Henry the Navigator would give them 6 and a half out of 10.

Airport security

2011-01-16T21:13:00.001-01:00

We travelled home from our annual Christmas and New Year visit to Scotland last week by the usual stages: Day 1 - A Scottish airport (Glasgow as it happened) to London Heathrow and then LHR to Lisbon; overnight in Lisbon then, Day 2 - LIS to an Azorean island served by direct flights from LIS (Terceira as it happened) and then TER to Flores via a stop at Horta on Faial.

Flores Airport

Now everyone's favourite travel bugbear is, of course, airport security. Let's look first at how they did it in Portugal. We went through the usual security checkpoint at Lisbon Airport. Then, when we arrived at Terceira Airport (which does not belong to the same company as LIS), because we were transit passengers for an onward flight, we went through a different door from the people ending their journey at TER. This kept us "airside" so that we didn't need to pass through security again before boarding our next flight to Flores. (If we'd accidentally gone through the wrong door, then of course we'd have needed to pass through security again.)

Terceira Airport - photo credit alfonsotrinidad

This all seems a perfectly sensible way of doing things so let's contrast it with how it's done in the UK. We pass through security at Glasgow Airport and then, despite following the transit passengers channel at Heathrow - an airport which also belongs to BAA plc, the same company as owns GLA - you have to go through security again!

This leads me ineluctably (as we lawyers are fond of saying even though we don't know what it means) to one of two conclusions - either the LHR security staff don't trust the GLA security staff to do their job properly or else BAA plc can't trust themselves to design an airport whereby transit passengers are kept isolated on the airside. Which is it? I think we should be told.

The last queen of England

2010-11-23T00:43:00.000-01:00

If I had a pound for every time I've heard Kate Middleton referred to as "the future queen of England", I'd have about 8 or 9 pounds by now which is 8 or 9 too many as it's a ghastly solecism - it's about as absurd as referring to Barack Obama as the President of Florida.

The last queen (in the K Middleton sense of being queen-consort, i.e. wife of the king as opposed to sovereign in her own right) of England - a role which can never now be reprised since the kingdom of England ceased to exist in 1707 - was this lady:-

Mary of Modena. She was the second wife of King James II who was the king of England (and of Scotland - of which he was James VII - and Ireland) from 1685 to 1688.

Her main claim to fame is having been the mother of the king's eldest son. That's normally a good thing where queens are concerned except this king and queen were Roman Catholic in Protestant countries and the birth of a son - and the threat of a Catholic dynasty - led to James II (VII) being deposed in favour of his Protestant daughter and son-in-law. They ruled as the only example in British history of joint monarchs, William and Mary. (This was William III, better known as William of Orange. He was Dutch and it's not a coincidence the Dutch national football team plays in orange to this day.) Being childless, W&M were succeeded in 1701 by Mary's sister, Queen Anne, and she was still the queen in 1707 when England and Scotland merged to form the United Kingdom. Thus, there would never again be a "Queen of England". (Ireland joined the UK in 1801 but a chunk of it seceeded again in 1922 and became a republic in 1949 - traitors: they needn't think we'll be bailing them out.)

For non-native English speakers, that cartoon involves jokes about how the Queen speaks - she pronounces proud as "pride", horse as "hawce", girl as "gel" and how as "high". Kate is, in fact, so common, her mother was an airline stewardess: the Royal Family's upper crust friends snigger and whisper "Doors to Automatic" behind her back.

There's been some speculation as to which dukedom William will be given when he marries. They'll have to sift the traditional royal dukedoms which are not already taken (i.e. Edinburgh, York, Kent, Gloucester) carefully to make sure there's no chance of an embarrassment due to the last incumbent having been one of Queen Victoria's numerous offspring who became a serial killer or worse.

Pictured sitting next to the Fuhrer is the last Duke of Albany, grandson of Queen Victoria. It's a pity because the dukedom of Albany was the Scottish equivalent of the dukedom of York, i.e. the second son of the sovereign. The awkwardness over the last incumbent (above) was likely why the present Queen's second son, Prince Andrew, wasn't created Duke of Albany simultaneously with being created Duke of York when he got married in 1986. Just goes to show sensitive these things are. Perhaps they'd be safest making Prince William Duke of Heathrow, Earl of Gatwick and Viscount Stansted - Kate's lot would appreciate that.

Unsustainable sustainability #1

2010-11-06T20:51:00.003-01:00

If there's one thing that gets on my wick ... I'll rephrase that ... Of the numerous things that get on my wick, one is government documents which could be a page and a half of foolscap but are actually 50+ pages of forewords, executive summaries, vision statements, overarching strategies underpinned by horizontal themes (can something which overarches be underpinned - abutted, perhaps, but not underpinned, I think?) outcomes, aspirations and general meaningless SHITE piled on in shovelfuls to disguise mother and apple pie platitudes as actual content.

Like police marksmen laying bets on how many song titles you can get into evidence to an inquest, I'm convinced civil servants these days have lines on how many times they can get the s-word (sustainable) into a consultation. Therefore, from time to time in these columns, I intend to expose some more egregious examples which come to my attention of what I call "unsustainable sustainability" - i.e. general government and public sector wank-speak.

The first offering is the following extract from Western Isles Council's "Main Issues Report". This is a document to "encourage early engagement in" the process of preparing its Local Development Plan (the document against which applications for planning permission (building licence) are judged). The culprit is the reminder on page 4 that:-

Scottish planning policy indicates Plans should:

facilitate sustainable development of area, supporting increasing sustainable economic growth;
contribute to high quality sustainable places; and
protect and enhance environmental quality as an asset for that growth.

A couple of observations about that matchless prose: leaving aside the issue of whether there's an article, definite or indefinite, missing before the word "area" in the first bullet, I can understand the concept of sustainable economic growth but is increasing economic growth not, by its very nature, unsustainable? But that's a mere quibble in face of the question: what in the name of friggery is a "sustainable place"?

"Places" are fixed, marshy, have nice views, expensive, far away, enclosed, dangerous, dark or they're parking or birth places or even (and this was Carol's contribution when really pressed for things places could be) where otters breed. That came out of left field, right enough, but it only serves to underline that the one thing places are not is sustainable. Later in the WIC document there's reference to "a 'place-making' vision". These people are speaking a different dialect of English from the one I speak.

A place-making vision of a sustainable place near Stornoway

Actually, it's not all Western Isles Council's fault and a lot of the blame for this nonsense lies at the door of their political masters in Edinburgh, the Scottish soi disant Government. Remember what I was saying in Vende Se about planning being a bureaucratic nightmare in Scotland? Below are the hoops the SsdG makes WIC jump through to prepare its Local Development Plan - click to see it large:-

I like the injunction in the second column of the last row "Engage as necessary". Is that not the order between "Fix bayonets" and "Fire at will"?

And note how the whole process takes 3+ years and no sooner has it been completed than they've got to start monitoring and reviewing it again. Talk about the Forth Bridge. In the good old days, the Council left a deposit draft in the local library for 6 weeks, which nobody looked at, then it was sent down to London to be rubber stamped by the Secretary of State. An old man in a red cardy could do it in his lunch hour whereas, nowadays, the holders are likely to have impaled themselves on their own stakes before the end of Year 2.

"Is that Western Isles Council? I'm phoning to engage with your Local Development Plan ..."

Entente Incordial

2010-11-04T01:18:00.000-01:00

I hear we've concluded a Defence Treaty with France.

Why?

Everyone knows that Italian tanks have four reverse gears and one forward (in case the enemy attacks from behind) but we also know that France's sole contribution to the defeat of the Third Reich was to scuttle their own fleet.

So while our chaps on HMS Hood were getting strafed from arsehole to breakfast table in the Denmark Strait by the Prinz Eugen and the Scharnhorst, the cheese-eating surrender monkeys were wading ashore at Algiers for a pastis before dinner and legging it to Vichy.

Apparently a key element of the new deal is that Royal Air Force planes will be operating off the aircraft carrier Charle de Gaulle. I trust there's a clause in the treaty whereby, in the event of the ballon going up again, we're given notice to get our planes off before they sink it themselves.

A quote from the communique on the 10 Downing Street (British equivalent of the White House) website is:-

"We will establish a bilateral Joint User Group to facilitate co-operation on the development of A400M training to inform operating techniques and procedures as well as exploring opportunities for synthetic and live training."

Which roughly translates as "Keep your eye on the bastards or they'll be down opening the sea-cocks before you can say Aboukir Bay."

As a friend of mine says "Arc de Triomphe? - which triumph would that be, exactly?"

Indeed.

Vende Se

2010-11-03T23:51:00.003-01:00

I'm obliged to regular reader Marisa for drawing my attention to an advertisement for apartments for sale on the sea-front at Faja Grande.

As Marisa is natural das Flores but presently resident elsewhere (too bad!), she'll be interested to know there's also a big banner on the wall of the developers', Castanheira & Soares, building in the Boqueirao industrial estate in Santa Cruz which I noticed for the first time the other day when we were shopping at Braga's.

Looks pretty cool doesn't it? This little slice of paradise is being offered for €245,000 (£215k/$345k). As someone said in a comment on the Forum Ilha das Flores blog, quite pithily (Cicely), I thought: "Is that €245k for all of them or each apartment?"

Whatever the value for money, the fact these apartments are now being marketed is good news because it means - doesn't it? - that C&S will come under some pressure to finish them. (For the avoidance of doubt - as we lawyers are wont to say when actually we're causing lots of it - these apartments aren't finished yet.) They were started more than two years ago and progress on the construction has been leisurely to put it mildly and caused a right eye-sore along the sea-front of Europe's west-most village.

They'll have nice views when finished, though:-

And perhaps completion may also encourage the Camara Municipal of Lajes das Flores to tarmac the Avenida Marginal (which sounds like one of those great sea-fronts of the world like Nice's Promenade des Anglais or Havana's Malecon) to access these new apartments. The Camara was at pains to advertise before the election last year that it was going to be doing the Avenida muito em breve but then seemed to lose interest shortly after they won the election.

O progresso acabou ...

And on the subject of holiday apartments with nice views, no sooner have they not finished one lot than they've started on another:-

That would just be so not allowed where I come from!

In Scotland, that site would be in a National Scenic Area, Conservation Area, Croftland (protected agricultural smallholdings), Site of Special Scientific Interest, Ramsar Site (did you know that Ramsar, as in "site", is not an acronym but the name of a place in Iran?), Natura 2000 Site, Special Area of Conservation, Special Protection Area, Limestone Pavement, Smokeless Zone, Inside Leg, you name it - it would be easier to get planning permission to stick up a chalet on the lawn of Buckingham Palace. The site in the picture above is probably within all these designations on Flores (it's definitely within a UN Biosphere Reserve), it's just that the authorities here have a more flexible interpretation of "local subsidiarity" and "regional adaptability" than we do in Britain.

Both of these developments are being built by the same contractor who also happens to be doing our neighbours' extension:-

Now I don't want to sound like some awful NIMBY ("Not In My Back Yard") incomer telling people round here how they should run their island. (That's what all awful incoming NIMBY's say, isn't it?) In fact I remember, a while back, getting quite ventilated with a local telling her I thought it was great that round here you could build with little obstruction from the powers-that-be compared with how it works in Scotland where it's practically impossible to get permission to build outside the zones decreed by the powers-that-be (and not that easy even within them). A couple of years on, I've moderated my views somewhat and would say that there's a balance that's not being struck either on Flores or in Scotland.

So there. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Whitehall 1212

2010-10-18T23:55:00.000Z

I thought it was the phone number of the Foreign Office but I find from googling it's actually (or was) the phone number of Scotland Yard.

For non-British readers, SY is the headquarters of the Metropolitan (i.e. London) Police. For all readers, British included, the name Scotland Yard comes from the fact that the building is on the site of the London residence of King Henry VIII's sister Margaret who was married to the king of Scots, James IV. That's a good factoid, isn't it!

Now I've digressed already - how did I get on to King James IV? Oh yes! The phone number of the Foreign Office - reason being I was on the point of having to ring it this afternoon. Let me explain.

Residents of the Azores qualify for discounts of about 10-15% on the fares of SATA, the airline which flies between the islands and to Lisbon. The horrors of dealing with Portuguese bureaucracy are such that I could never hitherto be bothered with obtaining the necessary proof of residence but the introduction of a new fare offering a 50% discount to residents (that's €150 off the return fare to Lisbon) meant this was something that could be put off no longer.

So it was with a rather "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" attitude that we went into the Camara Municipal at Lajes this afternoon in search of the required paper work. As it happened, the lady was friendly - spoke immaculate English and it appeared that we were by no means the first expats lured in as a result of SATA's new promotional fare. But as usual we were destined to succumb to "Computer says no" syndrome.

In particular, the computer said I didn't have a UK passport! Yes, that's right - I don't have a UK passport! This is despite the fact that the document in question is sitting 6 inches away from the computer in question and, if I folded it in half , I could stick the passport in the computer's disc drive. As I was feeling very tempted to do. Or in any other orifice that had presented itself ...

At this point you have to imagine Basil Fawlty telling the un-married couple they couldn't have a double room ("it's the law of England!") when I spluttered "I think you'll find I DO have a British passport, right here, and that it says Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State requests and requires you to afford such assistance as may be necessary! Let's give him a ring, shall we - what's that number again? Whitehall 1212?"

Of course I neglected to mention to the lady or her computer that Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is a nasty little Yorkshireman recently embroiled in allegations of homosexuality and I was so busy thinking about how there would probably be a British Consul in Ponta Delgada from whom if necessary we could appeal to the ambassador in Lisbon, Britain Portugal's oldest ally etc., when the computer decided to play ball and accept I had a UK passport after all. Right, well, that's OK then, I'll stand down the gunboats ...

So as well as being in the phone book, we're now officially resident on Flores and have a Certificado de Registo to prove it

Twitter

2010-10-13T01:22:00.000Z

If I did tweetering or twittering or whatever it's called (and thank heavens I don't, said in the same tone of voice as "and thank heavens my house isn't built on contaminated land"), today's twit would be:-

took tumble dryer to shop in SC might be ready by weekend not holding breath

Experienced twats will doubtless be rolling on the floor laughing (ROFL-ing, I expect) at the unhipness of that putative (dare one say purported) twitter due to its residual nods in the direction of English grammar as taught 40 years ago (such as "to" instead of "2") but this is simply by way of introduction to the fact that autumn has hit Flores with a bang this year as witness picture below.

Consequently not a good time to be without a maquina a secar as I learnt today tumble dryers are called. In fact, describing the symptoms of the maquina's malaise was another example of extreme sports in Portuguese for which there is no guidance in any of my phrase books. These are replete with such unhelpful banalities as "Senhor Tavares goes into a cafe and orders a coffee" and "Joao stays off school because he has a sore tummy" but annoyingly thin on things that do actually happen to me in real life. In the end I had to cannibalise "Ana-Lurdes pulls over into a gas station because her windscreen wipers aren't working" (as limpa para-brisas nao funcionam) in order to attempt to convey "Neil's tumble dryer is fucked."

I'm just grateful I wasn't called upon to express to a non-English speaker what we found ourselves privately remarking upon entre nous the other day, namely: "My dentist's waiting room smells of shit" (nothing even in the sore tummy conversation to assist with that.)

Anyway, I've digressed, where was I? Oh yes - the very sudden onset of autumn, this year. Not with a whimper but with a bang in the first fortnight of October.

That perfect storm last Thursday raised a salmoura (salt spray) which has trashed the vegetation more effectively than a squadron of B-52s over Dien Bien Phu and also brought in its wake the full gamut of the Azores winter experience such as SATA flight numbers beginning with 3 (these are extra flights sent out to clear up after weather related cancellations) and prolonged (2+ hours) power cuts. I've a notion it was one of these outages that did for the dryer but even more seriously one of them interrupted the episode of Eastenders in which the Queen Vic is torched and Peggy Windsor gets written out.

The more I watch Easties, the more I become convinced that the only characters with a shred of credibility are Charlie and Patrick for just every now and again saying "Actually it's my house ..." (although I do emphasise the word "shred" meaning a very very small amount of something because usually in the next breath they say bizarre things like "Of course I don't want you to go, Stacey/Denise [complete as applicable]"

Him off "Love Thy Neighbour"

In days of old ...

2010-09-29T23:20:00.000Z

... when knights were bold
and women hadn't been invented
knights drilled holes
in telegraph poles
and had to be contented.

I was reminded of that ditty when I had to make a hole in a telegraph pole today. Not for any improper purpose, I hasten to add - that would have been impractical anyway given the hole was about 4 metres above ground. No, it was to install something I learnt the Portuguese word for today as well: roldanha - one of these:-

This reminds me of the round on Ask the Family where they had to identify a familiar household object photographed from an unusual angle. For non-British readers, AtF was a long running 70s BBC quiz, each show being a contest between two families of mum, dad and two teenage children who were usually spotty, precocious and highly unattractive - a bit like a Labour leadership election really.

AtF was hosted by Robert "Wrapover" Robinson who holds a record for having hosted three game shows all of which lasted for longer than 15 years. The other two were Call My Bluff and Brain of Britain. The latter, a radio show known as "the perennial general knowledge quiz", is still running and I was very sorry to hear in August that RR had announced he will not be returning to host it. At least the new host, Russell Davies, maintains the RR tradition, unlike Peter Snow, of addressing the contestants by their surnames ("Mr King"). We need more of that sort of thing nowadays, not less, especially since Wimbledon gave it up ("Game, set and match Miss King").

I can vividly recall listening to BoB while beating up Loch Dunvegan (Skye) in a yacht after a testing passage across the Minch from Harris (as in tweed) in inclement weather in the early 80s when RR introduced it by saying "Hello! Hello! And welcome to the sunnied uplands of the cerebellum ..." Timing of going about (you have to be a nautical cove to know what that means) was dictated by the gaps between rounds rather than the usual meteorological or navigational considerations.

I went off on one there - where was I?

Oh yes, roldanhas, and what are they? Well the difference from Ask the Family is at least they knew the word for the familiar household object photographed from an unusual angle once they'd identified it, e.g. potato peeler or tin opener or mum's vibr ... but with my thing in the photo I didn't even know the English word for it, never mind the Portuguese.

What it is, is a pulley at one end of our clothes line. All clothes lines on Flores are on pulleys so that, once you've hung the clothes up, you can haul them out to an appropriately sunny and draughty elevated spot of the garden to dry. It's remarkable how many British people have remarked to us what a good idea this is and how they're going to install one when they get home. And all such pulleys make a croaking sound such that, when I first lived here, I thought it was the call of some exotic wildfowl - a cross between a corncrake and a barnacle goose, perhaps.

Anyway, the far end of our clothes line is a pulley screwed in to a telegraph pole high up and it was obviously broken because it was making a sound more like an extra in Jurassic Park and Carol was getting a sore shoulder pulling it. The problem was how do I describe the object in question - which I don't even know the English word for - to senhor in Movipesca, the best hardware store in the WORLD which just happens to be in Santa Cruz das Flores?

I hit on the idea of taking a photo of it so I could show it to Sr. MP on the back of my camera: the conversation went like this:-

NK (brandishing camera) - Queria um - oh shit, I've accidentally cleared the camera
Sr. MP - ?
NK - OK, Ta bem, queria uma coisa, cuja nao sei a palavra portuguesa certa - nao sei a palavra inglesa, ha hah! - mas e uma roda com um parafuso para colocar num ... arvore telefonica (???) ... para pendar uma corda de roupa

Well the penny must have dropped with Sr. MP (Marisa knows who I mean - he always means business when he's got his shorts on) because he said Nao diga mais (say no more) and within seconds he was back with a roldanha

And to add to my delight, the item in question was a mere 2,06€ - that's my kind of roldanha. Here it is installed (top) next to its predecessor in office just below and an even earlier one about a foot (30cm) further below:-

I wonder what, millenia from now, archaeologists will make of this hierarchy? That roldanhas had to be mounted progressively higher up arvores telefonicas as the waters rose due to climate change? I wonder if they'll guess the simple truth: "Nelly, go and put it a bit higher up so it's in the sun for longer ..."

Fan mail

2010-09-28T22:14:00.000Z

Thank you. You know who you are.

Arrived!

2010-09-13T20:06:00.000Z

I remember thinking we'd arrived here when, about two years ago, my name appeared in the Azores phone book.

The event was tempered slightly by the fact that the address was wrong - they'd put me in a place called Morres-Cima which I still don't know where it is and even José Antonio at the shop was a bit hesitant in pronouncing it to be "near Lajes". However, they got the phone number right which is the important thing for a phone book, I suppose.

Anyway, I cut out the correction slip and posted it off, never imagining it would actually be actioned, but a new phone book came in the other day lo and behold with the correct address! So, being "second generation phone book", as it were, I feel that not only have we arrived but can probably afford to take our jackets off now as well.

Yes First Minister

2010-09-10T23:40:00.000Z

The Scottish soi disant Government has just published its legislative programme for 2010-11.

One of the statements below is a quote from "Yes Minister" and the other is an extract from a summary of one of the bills to be put before the Scottish Parliament. Can you tell which is which?:-

"a series of proposals which on examination proved to indicate certain promising lines of enquiry, which when pursuit led to the realization that the alternative courses of action might in fact, in certain circumstances, be susceptible of discreet modification, leading to a reappraisal of the original areas of difference and pointing a way to encouraging possibilities of compromise and cooperation which if bilaterally implemented with appropriate give and take on both sides might, if the climate were right, have a reasonable possibility at the end of the day of leading rightly or wrongly to a mutually satisfactory resolution they'll give it the most serious and earnest consideration and insist on a thorough and rigorous examination of all the proposals, allied with detailed feasibility study and budget analysis, before producing a consultative document for consideration by all interested bodies and seeking comments and recommendations to be included in a brief, for a series of working parties who will produce individual studies which will provide the background for a more wide ranging document, considering whether or not the proposal should be taken forward to the next stage"

"improve record keeping across the public sector, strengthening governance, transparency and accountability supports a key recommendation on records and record keeping of the historical abuse systemic review will provide a framework for improvements in record keeping across the public sector, encompassing existing guidance and best practice will provide a framework for improvements in record keeping across the public sector, most stakeholders are a positive step towards lasting improvements in the management of records by public authorities will be required to produce and implement a records management plan to be approved by the authorities engage private or voluntary organisations to deliver public services on their behalf to form a foundation on which to build improvements with guidance and good practice while minimising additional burdens on authorities will improve record keeping across the public sector, strengthening governance, transparency and accountability, and fulfilling a key recommendation ..."

For non-British readers, "Yes Minister" was a classic 80s BBC sitcom about the relationship between a government minister (in the last two series, the prime minister), Jim Hacker, and two of his civil servants, Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley, pictured above and played by, respectively, Paul Eddington (The Good Life), Nigel Hawthorne (The Madness of King George) and Derek Fowlds (The Basil Brush Show).

What's that jacket all about Mr Derek?

Margaret Thatcher was a fan (of "Yes Minister", not Basil Brush although having said that I've no reason to believe she disliked BB, who could?) and even penned a brief sketch in which she appeared playing herself as the prime minister along with Eddington and Hawthorne in their YM roles. (Hawthorne, being an uber-lovey, I imagine was appalled by this stunt but refusing the Iron Lady in the 1980s was as unthinkable as refusing the Empress of Russia in the 1760s.) A recurring theme of YM was Sir Humphrey's pompous circumlocutions and in British English government gobbledegook is still referred to as a "Sir Humphrey-ism".

Anyway, the Scottish soi disant Government's proposed Public Records Bill could almost be a product of Jim Hacker's fictional Department of Administrative Affairs. As could such racy legislative offerings as the Local Electoral Administration Bill and the Health (Certification of Death) Bill - someone must have been having a laugh with that last one, combining the words "health" and "death" in the name of a bill.

Absent from the list is the much touted bill to authorise the holding of a referendum on Scottish independence from the United Kingdom. So the point of the SNP is what exactly ...?

Football again ...

2010-09-04T00:05:00.001Z

No sooner have the vuvuzelas fallen silent than we're off and running with the qualifiers for the next international footballing extravaganza, Euro 2012.

An executive summary of all you need to know from the opening night is that the team not so long ago branded "Drab Fab's Flops" beat Bulgaria 4-0 sending the short memoried English media off in an orgy of prediction of Ingerlish glory to come.

Scotland struggled to a draw against Lithuania - but it might have been Estonia or the other one - Vilnius? Anyway, that prompted Presbyterian hand wringing, cautious optimism for more than a point from the next fixture (Liechtenstein - could be vital for goal difference in a three way play off with the Faeroe Islands) and facial expressions regularly seen on Scottish players' faces:-

Both of the Irelands won and I don't know what happened to Wales (does anyone care? I don't.)

Portugal drew 4-4 with Cyprus - Goodness knows what was going on there: I'll need to read up about it but Portugal are one of these countries (like Scotland) who ought to beat countries like Cyprus comfortably but don't and give you palpitations and then (totally unlike Scotland) pull it out the bag at the last minute.

Am I the only one who thinks Ronaldo is almost certainly gay?

But the best news of the evening was undoubtedly France getting gubbed 1-0 by Belarus (might have been Moldovia or Tatarstan but the effect is much the same).

Merde alors!

Anything to report?

2010-09-02T01:19:00.000Z

Every day around noon I walk down to Joe and Linda's shop for the bread and every day when I get back Carol asks "Anything to report from downtown?" And every day I answer "No."

But today I answered "No. ... Er, well, actually, YES."

The reason was today, 1st September 2010, was the first day of the new bus service on Flores and I walked past the new bus in the village square - at the bus-stop, in fact - on the way down to get the bread.

It was very big and new and shiny and had a driver with a uniform (well a shirt, tie and name badge anyway, if not a cap) and an illuminated digital sign thing in the window saying "04 FAJÃZINHA".

I shouldn't be at all surprised if, inside, there weren't a synthetic voice saying "The next stop is [then different voice said in tone like recording your name for a voice mail message] Fajãzinha [back to original voice] please remember to collect your personal belongings ...". (In Portuguese, of course.)

Unfortunately, there were no passengers on the bus but to make up for that there was a laminated timetable pinned up in the bus shelter. That would have ensured that, had there been any passengers, at least there wouldn't have been a disappointment if anyone was wanting the "05 LAJES".

Of course I didn't have my camera with me so the following is a pic from the Governo dos Açores website of the new fleet of buses at Sta Cruz:-

I went down later to at least get a pic of the timetable pinned up in the bus shelter but on the way down I was halloo-ed by Marianna down the road to tell me our bucket (balde) had been blown down the street the other night in the storm and was outside Pierluigi's house. So I picked that up and when I got to the bus shelter José Agusto's father was sitting there, as is his wont (and his right), and I would have felt a right plank photographing a timetable holding a balde. So I didn't.

To explain, there have been buses on Flores before today but they're geared round the school run and have generally been a bit, well, crap. There was a story recently that all the drivers were off sick and the kids couldn't get get to school. I'm sure something got lost in translation on that one but if you couple it with the fact that the nearest they got to publishing a timetable was a handwritten scrawl in the shop window "because some German tourist asked" then you can see how name badges and laminated timetables is a great leap forward.

We don't yet run to the timetable on a website or a reply to an e-mail requesting a copy but it's early doors yet. Carol said "Let's go to Lajes on the bus because we can". Sounds like a plan except I hope it doesn't turn out to be like the disappointment when we decided to go to Corvo because we - supposedly - could.

Weather!

2010-08-28T00:54:00.000Z

The view from our sitting room window is not supposed to look like this in August:-

As I type this, it's now dark and the rain is lashing down and the wind howling round the house. The culprit is the very deep depression right-most on the satellite picture below from the excellent Portuguese Meteorological Institute website (choose "Oceano Atlantico" from the drop-down where it says "Seleccione Área" on the right) which is sitting right on top of the Grupo Occidental (i.e. Flores and Corvo)

Note the three (as yet) smaller depressions out to the west following in its wake.

For those of you who prefer pictorial smiley sun type weather depictions, I can tell you Carol's website of choice is long on big frowning black clouds, zig-zaggy lightening bolts and umbrellas blown inside-out and short on smiley suns for the next few days.

Is that the sound of hatches being battened down I hear? No - it's a hatch blowing down the street.

FG on the TV #2

2010-08-24T19:14:00.000Z

Well we weren't betrayed by EDA this time but by RTP Açores themselves because one page on their website said it was on at 20.45 while another said it was 20.40. I therefore took the precaution of turning on at 20.37 and the programme was already on - Gah!

I think it may be possible to watch it online at some point in the near future via this link which seems to carry the first 19 of the 35 villages in the Azores with less than 500 people. Hopefully, they'll update that soon to carry the remaining 16 including all those on Flores (and Corvo).

It's Fajãzinha tonight. The RTP-A website is being pretty consistent across all pages in saying it's 20.45 but after last night's performance, I shall be taking the precaution of setting the vid to run from 20.25. And if the power doesn't go off at 20.26, then there will probably be another cloudburst which will make the satellite dish go all wonky - there was one of these earlier: they frequently happen in the middle of Holby City which is the BBC's answer to Dr Kildare. Carol watches it, I don't.

Anyway, for those who won't be seeing Fajãzinha on the tellybox later (myself included possibly), here's a library picture of it as they say:-

FG on the TV

2010-08-23T00:34:00.000Z

Oh dear, an awful long time since I wrote anything on here, in fact since the power cut in the middle of the World Cup Final.

Well my psychic vibes tell me the next power cut (for there hasn't been one since) will be at 20.45 on Monday 23 August because that's when there's a 25 minute programme about Faja Grande on RTP Açores (so don't get too excited as anyone who doesn't live in the Azores won't get to see it.)

Anyway, as part of the celebrations for RTP Açores (which is to the Azores what BBC Scotland is to Scotland) being 35 years old, they're doing a series about the 35 villages in the Azores with fewer than 500 inhabitants.

I wonder which 40 villages they'll celebrate for the 40th anniversary? Or the 45 for the 45th? You probably have to be less than 10 years old and have a gift for geometric progressions verging on the autistic to work that out. Indeed you probably haven't born yet and RTP Açores' plans are on hold pro tem.

But I digress. The TV cameras were here on Wednesday. José Teodosio and his team from the junta laid on a nice display in the village square and the tuna played. Tuna is Portuguese for a string band (which doesn't translate at all well into English)

There was only one slight unpleasantness to mar the general bonhomie - a group of film-makers were innocently going about their business when a traditional basket weaver invaded their space with a traditional basket in the making in a quite unnecessarily intrusive fashion ...

Quite deplorable sort of behaviour and a symptom of the times we live in I'm afraid to say. It didn't spoil the kids' fun though ...

RTP Açores, Monday, 8.45pm, - you'll know when it's on because the lights will go off.

Electricidade dos Açores

2010-07-12T20:22:00.002Z

The image above is plucked from the website of EDA, Electricidade dos Açores, our electricity supplier. It depicts a contented young couple about to switch on a TV set powered by electricity delivered to the socket by EDA. He is saying "Oh, Maria do Carmo, aren't we lucky to have our electricity supplied by EDA! It means we can watch the final of the World Cup!" And she is saying "Yes, José Manuel, it's a bit of a stroke that they deliver electricity so beautifully because we've no choice but to get it from EDA!"

Yes, well such scenes of blissful contentment might have been typical on other Azorean islands yesterday evening but not on Flores where there was a POWER CUT in the 115th minute of the final. Yes, that's right, the winning goal was scored in the 116th minute. But those heroes at EDA redeemed themselves by restoring the juice in the 123rd minute - right again: the game lasted 122 minutes.

I blame the ref.

Power cuts are quite frequent here (about once a month) but they seldom last long (about 10-15 minutes although what they make up for in brevity is often lost in terms of unfortunate timing as witness last night). For those interested (did I just say that?), Flores' electricity is generated by a hydro-electric power station ...

(With apologies to Paul Camilli)

... and when the water runs low, an oil fired generator comes on line ...

(With apologies to Isabel & Colin Sharp)

And to back all that up, there are two windmills ...

A new thermic (whatever that means) power station is in the course of being built near Lajes. Can't come soon enough. Let's hope it's fully in commission by the time Euro 2012 kicks off.

Cremoso & Suave

2010-07-11T02:22:00.001Z

There are two things we do here which we didn't do when we lived in Edinburgh which are (a) eat puddings; and (b) watch Eastenders.

Puddings first: it started with the World Cup. For important games (which we deemed to be England and Portugal games then, once they'd been put out, well, every game), Carol has a Magnum ice lolly and I have a packet of football crisps - that's a big packet of Lays' Ready Salted. (Don't concern yourself because on the back of every packet of Lays' crisps there's a guide to healthy eating which explains how big packets of Lays' crisps can be a vital part of that. So my - and Lays' - conscience is quite clear.)

But that's the wafer thin mint end of the pudding wedge from which it's a short step to Creme Caramel which in Portuguese is called Pudim Flan

Pudim is simply the Portuguese for pudding and it's pronounced "pudeem". The plural is pudins which is pronounced "pudeengsh" and which I just like saying. (I also just like saying "Bastian Schweinsteiger", "Duke of Medina-Sidonio" (admiral of the Spanish Armada) and "flash grill").

So having developed a nasty little recreational pudim flan habit, I realised I must be pretty far down the road to perdition when I 'fessed up to Carol that I'd been glancing in the freezer at Arlindo's supermercado in Fazenda to see if he stocked Carte d'Or vanilla flavour. He didn't. He had every other flavour of Carte d'Or ice cream (including pecan pie whatever that is - sounds quite revolting) but not vanilla which is the only acceptable flavour of ice cream. So there was nothing for it but to slum it with plain Ola Original vanilla.

It's also a jolly sight cheaper than Carte d'Or and Carol worked out that you can get about a cubic metre of it for the price of a Magnum which, all in all, makes Ola Original my kind of pudim.

There's a minor logistic issue about how you transport a small iceshelf of ice cream from Fazenda to Faja Grande in a vehicle which this time last year was acting as a mobile tomato sun drier (drive quickly) but what I find most risible about Ola Original is the slogan on the tub Cremoso & Suave. It's simply the Portuguese for "creamy and smoothe", of course, but to (British) English speakers, cremoso connotes shaving foam and Peter Wyngarde was "suave"

Nice with caramel sauce, though (Ola Original vanilla ice cream, not Peter Wyngarde)

We ate this while watching Eastenders tonight. We get Eastenders about 4-5 weeks late (i.e. the Christmas cliffhanger is always in early February). Where we're at is that Samantha and Ronnie's mother (Makepeace out of Dempsey & Makepeace) has wangled her way in and I think they're bringing her in to replace Peggy Windsor who's getting written out. Lucas seems to be murdering prostitutes but my attention may have wandered by then ...

Cremoso out of Cremoso & Suave

Meldrew Moment

2010-06-25T00:46:00.000Z

In the 1990s the BBC ran a very successful sitcom called "One Foot in the Grave" about the trials and tribulations of a grumpy pensioner called Victor Meldrew (who was Scottish for some reason although it was set in the middlest of middle England). Victor's catchphrase when something disastrous - like having a Citroen 2CV dumped in the skip he'd hired - happened was "I don't BELIEVE it!"

Well I had a "Meldrew Moment" today. Let me explain.

When we came to live in Portugal four years ago, the rate of exchange between the Pound Sterling and the Euro was about 1.45 Euros per Pound. This is important as a large percentage of our income continues to be in sterling and has to be periodically converted into Euros for frittering away on Flores on such extravagances as bread, electricity etc.

Come the recession in 2008, the pound slumped and for the best part of the last two years has been bobbing around the 1.05-1.10€/£ mark. Now I never try and "play the market" and I only move £ into € when we need to on the basis that you will inevitably win some and lose some. Except inevitably, I always seem to lose more than I win and if you want to know the dates on which I have moved £ over to € recently, then all you need to do is look at a graph of £/€ performance and pick the low points.

Last time was on 20 May - see what I mean?

Anyway, recently, the pound has been rising a bit towards the giddy heights of 1.20€ and yesterday even got to 1.21€. So I decided to break my normal rule and move some £ over into € even though we didn't need to, this on the basis that I just couldn't imagine the pound getting any higher given its recent performance.

And what happened today? That's right - it moved higher to €1.22!

"I don't BELIEVE it!"

Still, Italy getting slung out the World Cup was a consolation. (Mustn't be too hubristic (Ooh! "hubristic"! Suits you, sir! Ooh!) as Portugal need to be careful not to be gubbed by too many goals by Brazil tomorrow to be sure of going through.)

Azulejos

2010-06-13T19:41:00.001Z

In haste at half time between Germany and Australia, one of the biggest talking points of Dois Mil e Dez so far has been the vuluv ..., vezuluj ..., veluve ..., vevulejas ...?

I'm not joking, I just cannot my tongue round the word for these horns Africans blow at football matches which, when you're watching the games on the tellybox, sound like you've got a bluebottle buzzing in the window and everyone (except Africans and the manufacturers of vuzulu-whatsnames, presumably) is complaining about.

The only word anywhere near it I can bring to mind is azulejo which is the Portuguese word for a ceramic wall tile.

It's vevuzulu ... no, veluzeja. Definitely vulu-something ...

World Cup

2010-06-12T01:41:00.005Z

This has got to be a first - to have digressed before I've even started to type a post!

I was going to have written something about the World Cup and in particular what seems to me the very low key build up to Dois Mil e Dez compared with 2006.

Is it just me, but the only sign I've seen anywhere that the WC was even taking place was a very understated ad for a promo being run by Galp (Portuguese petrol company) when I was filling up in Lajes the other day. The chap accepted my 60 Euros for filling the tank but didn't seem to be at all inclined to press a scratch card into my hand with the promise of an all expenses paid trip to South Africa.

Anyway, Day 1 of WC10 was pretty good with plucky little South Africa holding Mexico to a 1-1 draw and even pluckier little Uruguay holding the wretched Frogs to a 0-0 draw.

We don't like France do we? No we don't. I don't know where all this guff about Entente Cordiale and enmity against Germany comes from. Apart from relatively recent unpleasantnesses in 1914 and 1939, the hereditary enemy has for centuries, of course, been France. Crecy, Agincourt. Camembert. Back in 2003, when Bush and Blair were standing shoulder to shoulder against a country which could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 20 mins and was a threat to international security, it was a total revelation to me they were talking about Iraq when the country they should have been invading was France. And you simply cannot trust a country whose leader wears ad-height shoes, I'm sorry ...

Anyway, how did I get on to this? Oh yes, the World Cup. And the fact, that, as a total coincidence on day one of WC 2010, I was downloading the Scotsman crossword for Carol on a date in May 2006 when I chanced on something which really got my blood boiling.

Regular readers will be aware that I'm a fan of neither the SNP nor that tawdry rag "the Scotsman". So imagine my blood pressure raising disgust (though I shouldn't have been surprised) to find an article in May 2006 headlined:-

Why Scotland can't Handel (sic) the BBC's new World Cup anthem

If you want a laugh, this is the text of the article [my comments interlined]:

THE BBC was accused [let me guess by whom?] of "insensitivity and tactlessness" last night after choosing to mark the World Cup this summer with a piece of music that celebrates the man responsible for perhaps the most infamous military massacre in Scottish history - the battle of Culloden. [Sure that wasn't the battle of Flodden Field in 1513? Or Bannockburn 1314? Does it depend on the nationality of the people "massacred"?]

See the Conquering Hero Comes, by Handel, will accompany the national broadcaster's coverage of the football tournament from Germany. While the music frequently and innocently accompanied victorious football teams across the UK in the first half of the 20th century, for some Scots [if you're wondering who they are, we get to this below] it has much darker connotations.

Handel composed the score as a tribute to the Duke of Cumberland, more vividly remembered as Butcher Cumberland, who led government forces to victory over the heavily outnumbered Jacobites at Culloden.

Last night, politicians [guess who!] and historians criticised the choice of a song which celebrated the massacre. Rob Gibson, the SNP's Highland and Islands MSP [why does that not surprise me! the gesture politics maestro!], said: "How can they possibly encourage people to support the England team when we are exposed to symbols of oppression like this?

"As far as I'm concerned the BBC often causes offence with its insensitivity to Scottish history At a time when multiculturalism is being celebrated, I can't understand how they can be so insensitive. It's an anglocentric view they have of the world and of music." [Thanks for standing up for me, Rob. I don't know what I'd do without the likes of you to protect me from the BBC].

The MSP, who has written a number of books on Scottish history [not very good ones, obviously], including a recent one on the clearances, said the BBC should be making more programmes on history and how these events shaped the world.

Ted Cowan, Professor of Scottish history at Glasgow University, described the choice of song as tactless, but said it was typical of the outdated sentiments that often surface in football. "I think it's pretty tactless to revive something like that," he said.

Prof Cowan said Culloden had been misrepresented in history as a battle of nations. He added: "Culloden was not actually a battle between Scotland and England, there were Scots and English on both sides. [This is the important point the SNP chooses to overlook.] But the authorities in London hijacked the victory and portrayed it as beating the rebellious Scots."

About 1,000 of the 5,000 troops loyal to Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, were slaughtered by the 9,000-strong troops of William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden, in just 40 minutes, on 16 April, 1746. The battle, which took place on moorland near Inverness, forever shattered the Jacobite dream of installing a Stuart on the British throne. A further 1,000 Highlanders who fled the battlefield died in the subsequent weeks. [What's wrong with that? They were in armed rebellion against the Crown.]

Angus MacNeil, the SNP's culture spokesman at Westminster and Western Isles MP, said he regretted the fact that the BBC's move could give "posthumous publicity" to Cumberland, "a man who should be forgotten in a way Bonnie Prince Charlie will never be". [So the SNP supports foreign (French!) inspired attempts to invade this country and overthrow its government, does it?]

While Culloden is still regarded as an infamous event by many in Scotland, it was celebrated extensively at the time, by both the English and some lowland, Protestant Scots happy at the defeat of the Jacobites, who were mainly Catholics and Episcopalians.

The London government encouraged those celebrations, and Handel, a German who lived most of his life in England, composed See the Conquering Hero Comes as his contribution. His classical anthem has now been adapted by Andrew Davis, and the modern rendition, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Singers, has been entitled Sports Prepare"

And this is me - the serious point here is that this is the level of political debate the SNP and the Scotsman operates on. Frightening. Not funny.

The mystery of Flight 522

2010-05-28T22:17:00.002Z

In August 2005, Helios Airways Flight 522 took off from Larnaca, Cyprus, to fly to Athens. Although radio contact was lost minutes after departure, the Boeing 737 nevertheless flew along its flight plan route for 2 hours to Athens where it began to circle at 34,000 feet. Alarmed at the prospect of a 9/11 scenario, the Greek Air Force launched a fighter jet to intercept the airliner.

The fighter pilot came alongside and saw that the captain's seat was empty and that the co-pilot appeared slumped over the controls. Soon after, the 737 began to descend and a few minutes later crashed with the loss of all 121 on board.

It didn't take the investigators long to work out that the aircraft's pressurisation system had failed and that, as it had climbed out of Larnaca, the pilots had succumbed to oxygen starvation. The autopilot had nevertheless guided the aircraft along its programmed route to Athens. But lacking a human instruction to descend to the airport, the autopilot put the plane into the holding pattern where it circled until it ran out of fuel.

As the investigation developed two further key facts emerged: (1) the plane's pressurisation system had been tested immediately prior to the fatal flight but the engineer had failed to reset the system to "Auto" meaning that it did not automatically activate on the fatal flight; (2) a low pressure warning horn sounded in the cockpit of Flight 522 as it climbed out of Larnaca but the pilots didn't recognise the warning for what it was because it was the same sound as an alert to a situation much more familiar but which can only happen on the ground: the pilots believed they were dealing with a rogue warning but their attempts to troubleshoot were barking up the wrong tree and they succumbed to hypoxia before they realised their error.

So who was to blame? The engineer for failing to reset the pressurization switch to "Auto"? Boeing for designing the 737 with a pressurisation warning which could be mistaken for something else? Or the pilots for misdiagnosing the problem?

I was fairly certain the blame lay with the pilots until I fell into a similar trap last night involving a piece of equipment almost as complex to operate as a Boeing 737-300, namely a Hoover HNF6127-37S front loading washine machine.

Carol comes through yesterday evening and reports that the washing machine wasn't going on to its spin cycle. The last time the w/m didn't do what it was supposed to, I pulled out the filter and found a coin in it, the removal of which caused the machine to start working perfectly again. This time, I opened the filter and pulled out two coins and found a third jammed in the hose. I spent about 15 minutes before I managed to dislodge it with a pair of pliers as ingeniously suggested by Carol. But although that rendered us a total of €1.25 better off, it did not place us back in possession of a working washing machine.

Around about the elapsed time that would have seen us passing out from hypoxia had we been the crew of an unpressurised 737 climbing to cruising altitude on autopilot, the kitchen voice recorder at 5 Rua da Assomada picks up First Officer Duncan saying "Do you think the coins might be a red herring?". Captain King replies "Dunno, possibly, I can't think what else to try ..." And a few minutes later the voice of the F/O is heard saying "Oh look - the spin speed dial is at zero! I must have accidentally nudged it out of place when I was cleaning it yesterday ..." Problem solved.

As can be seen, the Hoover HNF6127's control panel (with spin speed dial outlined) makes a 737's pressurisation control panel look the very model of simplicity by comparison (all you have to do is set it to "AUTO")

So whose fault was the machine machine incident, albeit happily resolved without so much as a lost sock? Carol's for accidentally setting the spin speed to zero? Hoover's for designing something as daft as a spin speed of zero (WTF?) Or mine for barking up the wrong tree of the coins in the filter and not scanning the instrument panel to look for another more obvious solution? Not so simple to answer, is it?

Pilots, operators and manufacturers of commercial airliners and lawyers representing the aforementioned please take note.

Texting

2010-05-19T23:41:00.001Z

Personally, I find texting (sending an SMS for any non-Anglo Saxon readers) about one of the daftest and most inconvenient methods of communication ever invented. God knows why it caught on but my thumb just can't work a phone key-pad - it would be easier etching hieroglyphs in a tablet of wet clay with a stylus of goose feather. And predictive texting doesn't really work for me either although it has given rise to one of the funniest comedy sketches ever:-

STOP PRESS - last time I tried to predictively text the word "shit" (on the rare occasions I do text, it tends to come up), I was indeed offered "shiv" (an improvised knife like object as in "I despatched the blackguard with my shiv") or "pigt" (the acronym for the phosphate thingy enzyme). But tonight, I tried it and it does offer "shit" first with "shiv" and "pigt" as second and third choices - annoying if you're wanting to text someone about a blackguard despatching or microbiology breakthrough, though ...

How did I get on to this? Oh yes! Text messages! We've suddenly become great fans of them. Well receiving them anyway. One of the websites our holiday apartment is advertised with sends you a text if anyone makes an enquiry. So as we're rather sad old people that no-one else texts, whenever the phone chirps we know it's an enquiry. Which is nice.

Unless, of course, it's bastard PT Communicações (the Portuguese equivalent of BT) with an unsolicited text (or worse, phone call) trying to sign me up to one of their deals which actually ends up costing you more. V tempted to pay a call to PTC armed with a shiv and drop a bag of pigt down their chimney.

WTF?

2010-05-11T21:35:00.001Z

The Queen received the Right Honourable David Cameron this evening and requested him to form a new administration. The Right Honourable David Cameron accepted Her Majesty’s offer and Kissed Hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.

Am I the only person to have noticed that it's alleged she asked him to form an "administration"?

Where did that creeping Americanism come from? Whether a sweeping Labour or Conservative majority or a rainbow alliance with the Raving Monster Loony Party (or even - perish the thought - a "Progressive Alliance" with the SNP), the United Kingdom doesn't have "administrations" - it has governments. The announcement must have been drafted by a trainee at Buck House and released before HM got to see it as she would never have sanctioned that. She'll be fit to be tied. You might as well talk about meetings of the Privy Council in the Oval Office.

On the subject of which, the phones have been ringing at Number 10 with congratulations from foreign leaders coming in thick and fast as disclosed by the BBC's election live coverage web-page (click below to see it properly)

You can picture that as well, can't you? A civil servant holding his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone whispering "Mr Salmon on Line 2 to talk about the Progressive Alliance, Prime Minister ..."

DC says "Look Barack, it's been great but I'm going to have to leave it ... yah ... Israel ... yah, yah, ... Middle East, yah ... Barack, sorry, ... yah ... Road Map ... I know, yah ... Barack, I'm going to have to go, OK? ... Ciao, Bye, Bye, Bye ... Alex!!!! New tram to Glasgow Airport - shoot ..."

Viagens Extraordinárias

2010-05-11T11:41:00.003Z

The ash cloud has arrived overhead the Azores. No flights to or between the islands (or Madeira) yesterday (Monday) and none predicted until late afternoon today (Tuesday).

By the way - and those of you living in the UK and other parts of Northern Europe will already know this - there's absolutely nothing to see when an ash cloud is overhead buggering up air transport: the sky was as blue yesterday as it ever is (which is quite a lot bluer than it has been of late, the weather here having pretty dire so far this spring - there have not yet been two consecutive nice days. Today the sky has reverted to traditional rain cloud grey.)

Of course, on Flores we're used to flights being cancelled by the weather. There's an expression out here - and I've probably got this all wrong, Marisa can correct me - o avião cancelou meaning "the plane cancelled" implying it was the plane itself which took the decision to cancel the flight, the correct expression being o avião foi cancelado meaning it was cancelled. I suspect it's a joke you have to be a native Portuguese speaker to appreciate fully. And I've probably cocked it up anyway - o avião cancelou is probably the perfectly acceptable Porto equivalent of saying things like "the kettle boiled" (I can never remember - is that a homonym or an oxymoron?) Let's move on, shall we?

Anyway, the situation has become so dire that SATA-Air Açores have chartered the inter-island summer car ferry, the inappropriately named (for reasons too lengthy to mention here) MV Express Santorini, to do some extra sailings to pick up the slack and apparently it spent last night shuttling back and forth between Horta, Terceira and São Miguel on what Atlânticoline described as a viagem extraordinária. Not as much fun as being rescued off the beaches of Santander by a Royal Navy frigate crewed entirely by tabloid journalists but more fun than going on the plane, for sure.

The BBC did a thing about how you pronounce Eyjafjallajökull and they got along an Icelander to say it - it sounds like Bjork doing a cover of "Hey Jude" to the accompanyment of the Brighouse & Rastrick brass band except it lasts a bit longer than "Hey Jude". There's also some smashing pics of Eyja-whatsname at this link to the Boston Globe. In particular, this picture caught my eye:-

The lava flow reminded me a lot of the coast line of Flores ...

Which is no coincidence, of course, because Iceland and Flores are both volcanic islands and this explains why the surface of Flores is pockmarked with these:-

I believe the last eruption here was about 20,000 years ago. Which means the next one's due ... any day now. What's that rumbling sound? And that sulphrous smell ...? Flores is pronounced "FLOW-rish" (with a real roll to the "r" and you hardly pronounce the "i" at all.)

Game on

2010-05-09T21:03:00.002Z

Today we read the funniest comment on the whole election saga. It's a "tweet" (whatever that means) by Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator (a right-ish wing British weekly news mag that mayor of London, Boris Johnson used to be the editor of). This is it:-

"SNP negotiating team heading to London. Hope they have got some theatre tickets and dinner plans: Tories are not that desperate."

Seems I was wrong about the Gnats not wanting to join any coalitions. Turns out they're hot for it and have cooked up a deal with their partners in crime Plaid Cymru (the Welsh Gnats: it's pronounced "Plied" as in past tense of "ply" and "Cumrie" as in, er, "cumrie"), done some sums and worked out that, with some of the less obstreperous Irish bits and pieces on side, they could achieve a majority with Labour and the Liberal Democrats. SNP leader Alex "Fat Eck" Salmon has gone so far as to "call on" the Lib Dems to join his soi disant "Progressive Alliance". I'm not making this up (you couldn't) - check it here if you don't believe me.

But the notion that they've gone down to London to gate crash the negotiations between the main players has had us in stitches all afternoon. Picture it - the elastic band of Adhar Feachd Aon is wound up outside its garage on the edge of Robert the Bruce International (until recently known as Edinburgh Airport) and Eck and his deputy, Nicola "Nasty Nick" Sturgeon, clamber aboard. Eck performs the miracle of the banishment of the volcanic ash cloud (yes, it's back again) and AF1 struggles aloft, it's rate of climb retarded by the weight of the bag of pies Eck's brought along to sustain him on his epic voyage.

But that's not a pie, Eck! That's the third member of your team, Stewart Stevenson! You can't eat him because his megalomaniac ambitions of getting the world to follow Scotland's climate change lead mean he's just the man to bang the heads of Messrs Brown, Cameron & Clegg (not to mention the crowned head of HM the Q) together and make them see sense.

There's just been another sensational "tweet" from Fraser Nelson:-

"Just bumped into leader of SNP coalition negotiating team: they have just "met the civil service". Full of optimism. Bless."

You can picture that too, can't you? Some harassed official is called down to the front door by security and says "I'm sorry but we're rather busy today - who are you exactly and who is it you think is expecting you?"

Gorgeous pouting Nick in a previous life

So having left their mobile numbers, our heroes repair to meet up with their Welsh chums in a grubby Bayswater B&B where they spend the afternoon carving up the great offices of state while waiting for the phone to ring. On Monday morning, an official at Number 10 finds the following message on the answering machine.

"Eh, this is a message for Gordon. This is Nicola from the SNP. Me an' Eck and Stewart have came tae engage wi yiz as a key stakeholder in forming a new government. Anyway, we've got tae go oot noo because Mamma Mia's starting soon. So we'll maybe hear fae yiz the morn. OK? Oh and if Eck kids oan he's gonnae be the Foreign Secretary, then that's pure rubbish because I bagged that first. Ages ago. Awright? OK. Bye."

I think another Nick is being referred to here but you can see how confusion can arise ...

Election Result

2010-05-07T23:59:00.003Z

Here it is:-

Labour, the centre left party of incumbent prime minister Gordon Brown, has lost its overall majority. The centre right Conservative ("Tory") Party of David Cameron (small mouth man) has the most seats but not an overall majority. The centre-centre Liberal Democrats, who are always third, had a disappointing night losing 5 seats despite the "Clegg Effect" of their short-eyebrowed leader's stellar performance in the opening leaders' debate.

Although common and/or the norm in many European countries (notably Germany) a "hung parliament" with no party having an overall majority is rare in Britain, the last one having been in 1974.

As well as the Big 3, there are what I call "the Bits and Pieces" - a rag bag of 28 Irish, Scottish and Welsh nationalists, Irish Unionists, an Irish neither Unionist nor Nationalist, an Irish Independent (Ireland never votes for the Big 3) and one Green (a novelty in the British parliament).

Now do the arithmetic. A majority is 326 seats. Tory + Lib Dem = 361. Labour + LD = 315. To build a majority, Labour needs to get not only the LD's on side but 11 of the Bits and Pieces as well.

Clegg is the King Maker but you have to understand that a central plank of Lib Dem policy is electoral reform to remove the situation whereby, under the British voting system, the LDs score 23% of the vote but only 9% of the seats in Parliament. Labour and Conservative, of course, are reluctant to give up their in-built advantage but Labour have recently had a bit of deathbed conversion to electoral reform - cynics believe this is because they predicted losing their majority and wanted to have something to be able to attract the LDs on board. The Tories remain wedded to the present system.

Clegg said he would speak first to the party with the most seats. The Tories and the Lib Dems are unlikely bedfellows but is an alliance between the second and third placed parties (plus some of the Bits and Pieces) to shut the first placed party out of power credible? The political pundits are saying the most likely outcome will be a Conservative minority government (as there is in Canada, Portugal and Scotland to name but three: it means the government has to try and rule by consensus).

Where we are just now (Friday night, day after the election) is that the Tories and LDs are closeted in talks. Brown, meanwhile, remains the Prime Minister. Only if/when the Tories and LDs succeed in forging an alliance will Brown have ceased to "command the confidence of a majority in Parliament", as the sonorous phrase has it, and have to go Buckingham Palace and tender his resignation to the Queen.

And if (when?) the Tories and LD's don't form an alliance? Well Brown announced outside No. 10 Downing Street (office and official residence of the PM in London) this afternoon that he is open to talks with Clegg and promising an early referendum on electoral reform. This would be a huge prize for the LDs but dare they be associated in a "grubby backroom deal" with a party which has lost its mandate?

And what of the Bits and Pieces? If you can't scrape enough of them together, it'd be a minority government of the 2nd and 3rd placed parties instead of a minority government of the winning party - is that credible? Horrid little Salmon of the Scot Nats (6 seats) has said no to any deals with Tory or Labour but you're probably better off without his sort anyway. You'd be permanently looking over your shoulder, getting in to bed with that sort of crowd of gnats, taffs and bogtrotters. At least you know where you stand with Sinn Feinn (ultra Irish Nationalist) - they never take their 5 seats in Parliament because it involves swearing an oath of allegiance to the Crown which is anathema to Fenians.

And on the subject of the Crown, she was at Windsor Castle today but apparently her private secretary has taken up almost permanent residence at No 10 so as to be aware of what's going on and report back. If none of the Big 3 parties can do a deal with each other, then it will be her decision who is asked to form the next government: the job is more than just hosting garden parties and trooping the colour.

She would almost certainly appoint Cameron as leader of the biggest party. That's what she did at the last hung parliament in 1974 when the Tories under Edward Heath lost their majority and couldn't form an alliance with the Liberal Party (as they were called then). She appointed the leader of the largest party, Harold Wilson of Labour, as Prime Minister of a minority government. There was another election 8 months later (when Labour won a majority albeit a slim one) so don't assume the next British general election will be 5 years hence.

Fascinating stuff.

Is it just me, or does Clegg's hair look the brush on one of these shoe cleaning machines you see at airports?

I'm voting for Brown

2010-04-28T23:45:00.006Z

For non British readers, the UK election campaign was today overtaken by incumbent Prime Minister, Gordon Brown (Labour Party - centre left) being caught out making unguarded remarks when he didn't realise the mike was still on. You can see it all here:-

Long short is the woman who buttonholed him said "You can't say anything about the immigrants ..." in the sense of "I resent immigrants but political correctness is such that one daren't mention the issue." Once in his car, Brown refers to her as a "bigoted woman".

The PM is now being slagged off for being dismissive of ordinary people's views by EVERYBODY including, I regret to say, the BBC. You can read a particularly humbuggy piece from the BBC here.

But what if what he'd been caught saying in the car "I liked her, she obviously hates immigrants - let's get her on board ..."? It would have been "Racist Brown" in the headlines.

Let's be clear. The woman the media are portraying as helpless widowed old grandmother who works with children clearly evinced an aversion to immigrants - watch the tape again. Then, when Brown in an unguarded moment which he thinks is in private criticises her for evincing a view which is contrary to his party's view, he gets slagged off! Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

But enough of the issues, what about the more important issue of the personalities?

I think the man must be a saint.Watch the YouTube vid above again. Right at the beginning where the old trout buttons him, he goes "Yes?" in exactly the same tone as the bit in the Irish Builders episode of Fawlty where the ladies button Basil and he goes "Oh God ..." but recovers his aplomb in the blink of an eye and then engages her for several minutes.

If I'd been Brown, I couldn't have stood there that long while the old rat bag harangued me. After about 20 seconds, I'd have said "Ah, go boil your head and vote for the Tories if you feel that strongly about it you old cow ..."

But he didn't and then when he got into what he thought was the privacy of the car, what was the reaction of the allegedly volcanic tempered Prime Minister who bullies his staff? He says "It's ridiculous". I think it shows him in a very good light for being remarkably mild mannered after what had undoubtedly been a "disaster".

Needless to say a carefully choreographed apology had to be orchestrated later in the day at the old witch's house out of which the Prime Minister afterwards emerged with more of a spring in his step.

I suspect tomorrow's papers will be crowded with pictures of the BNP (far right anti-immigrant party) candidate on that same doorstep. Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame Gillian ...

Malta Moment

2010-04-24T00:36:00.001Z

About 10 years ago, we were on holiday in Malta. One day, we booked and paid for a boat trip the following day to Malta's satellite island of Gozo. The next day, however, it was blowing a hooligan and, quite reasonably, the trip was cancelled. Could we have our money back then, please, we asked the chap at the harbour-side booth we'd paid the previous day. No, he replied. Why not? I'm just the agent, he says, you have to go and ask the shipping company ...

Hah! I was about to launch into a discourse about the legal niceties of the personal liability of agents for undisclosed principals and expound the latin maxim swarthicus como argentum nono decimis possessorum ergo devolvendo prontissimo obligatum est but decided this was a conversation to be had with the organ grinder rather than the monkey. So we stamped off to the office of the shipping company a few blocks away in high dudgeon rehearsing a speech involving such unanswerable logic as "How DARE you refuse to repay us! This country depends on tourism yet you treat your customers with UTTER contempt! I demand to see the Managing Director NOW or my next stop will be the British High Commission! We gave you the George Cross and look how you reward us!" The blackguards! The scoundrels! The, the, the - FOREIGNERS! No respect! No decency!

Instead, we get to the office and what happens? The chap behind the counter goes "You must be Mr King - thank God you're here ..." At this point, he's opening his wallet and pulling out notes "... I've kept the office open over lunch so as to be here to repay everybody. Here's you're money and I'm SO sorry we couldn't sail today - I do hope it hasn't spoiled your holiday ..."

We were like that - "Oh right. Thanks. No problem." And we got outside on to the pavement and looked at each and thought "Hang on! Let's wind that back. That wasn't supposed to happen. We were supposed to have an argument ..."

Hence why the syndrome whereby, when you're geared up for an argument with someone over a relatively trivial matter and that person caves in without a fight and you feel quite disappointed at having been denied the fight is known in the Duncan-King household as a "Malta Moment".

All of which is by way of a very long introduction to the fact that we had a Malta Moment today, the current adversary being British Airways.

Regular readers will recall from posts passim the disappointments we suffered at the hands of the World's Favourite Airline on the way back from London to Lisbon in January. First they cancelled our flight meaning we had to stay in a hotel in London overnight and then lost our luggage on the flight the next day meaning our kecks were getting a bit crispy during a subsequent layover in a range of Portuguese destinations none of which included Flores due to the weather disrupting flights to and and among the islands for a number of days thereafter.

Whilst not exactly in the same league as having to be rescued from Santander by a Royal Navy frigate (I would have paid extra for that) due to the volcanic ash cloud, it did leave us out of pocket to the tune of £60 for travel between Heathrow and the hotel and €23.71 for what BA called "first needs" (i.e. kecks) purchased in Modelo in Ponta Delgada.

On the 14th of January, I duly intimated the claim enclosing the receipts as above. Now, you'll be relieved to know I'm going to spare you the details of the tortuous correspondence with BA. Suffice to say that nearly 3 months later we still hadn't been paid and the reply to a registered post letter to BA HQ was to ask us to submit the receipts to an office in Bremen, Germany. But I sent you the receipts 3 months ago!!!, I retorted, and if I do not receive an undertaking to reimburse me within 7 days, I shall have no option but ...

As Neville Chamberlain, famously put it on 3rd September 1939: "I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and consequently this country is at war ..."

For a week or so, it was a phoney war with BA because the volcano had erupted and I thought I would be statesmanlike and let that disperse before I took the fight to the office of embattled BA Chief Executive, Willie Walsh.

But I used the time well, honing the text of my letter to perfection in my head. I also amused myself with mental pictures of WW emerging ashen-faced from yet another gruelling session with the striking cabin staff unions and his PA standing with her notepad saying "The CEO of Iberia's been on the phone several times - he's not happy about the pension fund deficit. We've had another e-mail from Eurocontrol - they're not opening the airspace yet. And you've got a recorded delivery letter from a Mr King ..."

But as the fog of volcanic ash cleared, I could put it off no longer. Having wound myself up to a peak of pompous self-righteousness, I had resolved upon the phrasing "I realise you are a busy man, Mr Walsh, and you must excuse me for trespassing upon your time but British Airways does not have its troubles to seek ..." I also wanted to get in "I seek not a free voucher, merely an apology and the knowledge that you have copied my letter to the Head of Customer Relations with an instruction that lessons be learned ..."

So as I sat down this afternoon to deliver myself of this matchless prose, Carol said "You better check the online banking first in case they've actually paid ..." Which I did.

Oh ...

Bugger.

Our politicians

2010-04-22T23:47:00.001Z

I've now worked out how you tell Cameron and Clegg apart.

Cameron's mouth is too small:-

and Clegg's eyebrows are too short

That's not a trick of the light. His right eyebrow does actually stop about half an inch short of where it should stop. And the left eyebrow's the same. It's not natural and probably masks a character defect.

Anyway, we got the second Prime Ministerial debate out here in the Azores because it was on Sky News which we do get here. And I certainly couldn't be bothered watching all of it. 90 minutes - oh hell, no.

See what I mean about the eyebrows?

A couple of quick off the cuff observations from what I did watch, though - first, excessive use of the first person plural demonstrative pronoun as in "our schools", "our hospitals" etc. Of course they're trying to sound inclusive but it begins to sound a bit squeamish when they get to "our prisons". How far does this go? "Our corrupt MPs"? "Our paedophile priests"?

Secondly, I actually briefly heard a concrete policy statement uttered by one of them (as opposed to a platitude like "We need to build a fairer society in which our demoralised doctors ..."). It was uttered by Cameron (small mouth one) and I disagreed with it. It was:-

"It's not right that we should have to sell our houses to pay for our care when we're old instead of being able to leave it to our children."

I think we jolly well should have to sell our houses to pay for our care when we're old. That's called self reliance and I thought the Tories believed in that. I'm sure Mrs Thatcher (of blessed memory) did. So what you're saying is that I as Joe Taxpayer have to pay for old Mr X's terminal care so that Mr X's children (our voters?) can score a six figure inheritance? F**k off! Sorry, David but you just lost my vote tonight.

See what I mean about the mouth?

Boots and nail varnish

2010-04-20T23:37:00.001Z

Having retired at the age of 43, I'm regularly asked what do I do all day?

The answer to that today was easy - nothing. This is because today was the first "really nice day" of 2010 (it's been a shocking winter and spring, weather-wise on Flores) and it seemed rude after lunch not just to sit out all afternoon and enjoy it, reading books.

That was our garden at the back of lunchtime today and I hope you'd agree that the prospect of sitting in it reading was a very enticing propsect. However, there was a slight disappointment around 2.30pm when it came on rain. It was not heavy enough to force us inside but it was enough to make me change reading material. That's because I didn't want the pages of my book (about the British Fisheries Society 1786-1893, since you ask) to get crinkled in the rain so I swapped it for the Economist magazine.

We subscribe to the Economist, a British weekly news magazine which believes that democracy and an unrestrained free market will sort all the world's woes from mobile phone coverage in the Horn of Africa through climate change to volcanic ash clouds. But the book reviews are good - so good that they save you the trouble and expense of actually buying the book.

Anyway, I've digressed - where was I? Oh yes, reading about Yemeni politics rather than British fisheries in the rain to save pages being crinkled.

It later brightened up again but - after a wander with my camera during which our neighbour invited me into her back garden for the best view on Flores (above) - I decided to attempt to make a bit of a dent in the backlog of Economists with the result I'm at the end of January (2010) and am fully up to speed with the Haitian earthquake. (This reminds me of the moment in Blackadder when he's got to re-write Dr Johnson's dictionary in 24 hours and, having done "a", the indefinite article, says "Good. So we're well on the way.")

Anyway, after the sun goes down behind the hill behind our house, about 5pm in April (the current month, not the issue of the Economist I'm reading), it got a bit chilly so I repaired indoors for a spot of my other favourite leisure activity which crowds the hours of the day - making model aircraft.

I'm currently embarked on a 1950's Air France Super Constellation but have become bogged down in its "boots". To explain, the "boots" on 1950's airliners were devices along the leading edges of the wings and tail etc. to prevent ice build-up. They were rubber hoses which could be inflated periodically to cause the accreted ice to crack off. Anyway, Minicraft, the makers of the kit, have chosen to represent the boots by supplying black transfers you stick on and wrap round the leading edges. I could have told them this was impractical ... I'm losing you aren't I?

Long short, I felt a bit like the proverbial one-armed paper hanger asking Carol to bring me nail varnish as a last ditch attempt to apply something that might make these boots stick. But to no avail and I'm now embarked on a complicated masking job to apply the boots by paint - almost as egregious as sticking the broken propellor blades back on: how I suffer for my art to get an authentic 1950s airliner ...

Anyway, that's what I did today and it's 23.35. I'm off for a delayed chapter of British fisheries by way of relaxation before bed.

Flight into danger

2010-04-19T21:43:00.000Z

Remember the Scotsman's headline "Scots keep world flying in fallout from volcano"? And the First Minister of the Scottish soi disant Government, Alex Salmon's announcement that Scotland "offered a window of opportunity for flights to be diverted from elsewhere, easing congestion across the Western world."?

Well I offer you a graphic from the BBC's website showing a snapshot of the flight situation at 1.00pm today:-

There doesn't seem to have been much effect on congestion in the USA yet, Alex. Perhaps you need to launch a consultation on engaging with key-stakeholders in the North American transport market (after you've consulted them of course).

Elsewhere, I was thrilled to hear about British Airways sending up a 747 to deliberately fly through the ash cloud to see what happened. I have a lot of questions about this. For example did the pilot look like a cross between Charlton Heston and Chuck Yeager? Was he wearing a parachute in case all four engines stopped and they couldn't get them going again? Did BA's insurers agree to cover them for the loss of the plane? (As I assume not, why not a smaller and more expendable 737?) Was the flight into the ash cloud conducted over water so at least it wouldn't plough into a residential area if the test had gone tits up? Was Charlton Yeager wearing a life jacket?

Cornish woman inconvenienced at airport ...

2010-04-18T00:34:00.003Z

As you know, I'm a London Gazette man myself but the Scotsman really is an appalling rag.

For my non-Scottish readers, there used to be two Scottish quality broadsheet newspapers, the Scotsman, printed in and preferred by Edinburgh readers, and the Glasgow Herald published in and preferred by, guess where.

You could arguably add the Aberdeen based Press and Journal to the list, the paper which famously, though probably apocryphally, headlined the loss of the Titanic as "Aberdeen Man Drowns at Sea". But if the Titanic were to sink again tomorrow, the Scotsman would report it as "Scots Reported Missing ..."

That's why I can't be doing with the Scotsman - it's so parochial and pathetically, cringingly Scotto-centric like the rest of the world cares in a way only surpassed by my other pet hates, the Scottish National Party.

The Scotsman's 1st April spoof was SNP proposals to build a new airport in Scotland to be called William Wallace International. Well its coverage today of the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud's effects on air travel in northern Europe is scarcely more credible. Here it is and if you think this is me taking the mick again, you call me Susan if it isn't so and check for yourself here.

Scots keep world flying in fallout from volcano

Airline chaos is set to continue but international services are switched to Glasgow as cloud of ash moves south

By ALASTAIR DALTON, TRANSPORT CORRESPONDENT

SCOTLAND was last night handling some of the only flights in northern Europe as the Icelandic volcano ash cloud forced a continued unprecedented shutdown of the Continent's largest airports.

An Icelandair plane from Reykjavik lands at Glasgow airport yesterday.

There were no signs of a let-up to the chaos, with Transport Secretary Lord Adonis warning that significant air disruption would continue until at least tomorrow.

Seven British Airways flights from the United States and Canada are due to land in Scotland today, with others likely to follow if English airports stay closed.

First Minister Alex Salmond said Scotland offered a "window of opportunity" for flights to be diverted from elsewhere, easing congestion across the Western world.

However, the first European flights into the UK since the most far-reaching restrictions in aviation history were imposed on Thursday were three planes from Iceland's main airport, which has remained open despite the eruption.

Some 600 [sic] passengers aboard the Icelandair aircraft, which touched down last night in Glasgow from Reykjavik, included schoolchildren on trips who had been stranded.

National Air Traffic Control Services (Nats) reopened Scottish airspace under its control yesterday, as the huge ash cloud was estimated to be costing airlines across the world £129 million a day.

However, Nats last night further extended the ban on passenger flights over England and Wales until 1pm today, and this may be extended again at 9am ..."

Here I have to explain for the benefit of non-Scottish readers that the SNP's nickname is "the Nats". I'm going to spare you the rest of full verbatim drivel but I couldn't resist the following further snippets from the same article:-

"Europe's main hubs, where passengers change planes, remained closed, including Heathrow – the world's largest – and Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Copenhagen. Airspace was also restricted in Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic and most of Scandinavia. By contrast, some 1,500 transatlantic passengers are due to flood through Scotland's airports today, including three British Airways Boeing 747 jumbo jets landing at Glasgow from New York and San Francisco."

This reminds me of the Billy Connolly skit about teuchters coming to Glasgow and seeing a bus and saying "Look! A hoose wi wheels!".

Look! A coonsil estate wi wings!

"BA normally only flies between Scotland and London, having axed its transatlantic services from Glasgow more than a decade ago."

Eh? Run that past me again.

"Those caught in the disruption included the Duchess of Cornwall, who was unable to travel from Scotland to sign a book of condolence for the late Polish president Lech Kaczynski at a Polish cultural centre in London."

Just think, Camilla, it could have been a lot worse, hen ...

Election Update

2010-04-16T00:18:00.008Z

Britain broke with tradition today by having its first ever party leaders' live election debate.

For non-British readers, we've never had these before because the party leaders have a live debate every week while parliament is sitting at Prime Minister's Questions. So we weren't really very sure what was going to be new and different about these election debates (except they last for 90 mins whereas PMQs in parliament only last 15 minutes).

Anyway, we couldn't watch live out here in the Azores but I've had a quick scan of the BBC website (the veritable oracle of good political reportage) and my reaction is this:-

Gordon Brown - craggy and Scottish - incumbent Prime Minister. Leader of the Labour Party (centre left), the party of Tony Blair which has been in power with a majority since 1997. Apparently the PM's got a shocking temper and claims of bullying his staff hit the headlines a few weeks ago. I'm not generally in favour of ethnic minorities in high offices of state but I quite like Brown - the bullying claims sent him soaring in my estimation.

David Cameron - youthful and fresh-faced. Leader of the opposition Conservative ("Tory") party (centre right). The party of Mrs Thatcher, in power from 1979 to 1997. Cameron went to Eton (same public school Princes William and Harry went to) and is therefore a "toff" - English for upper class but pretends to be a man of the people. His wife is called Samantha and is commonly known as "Sam Cam". She is pregnant which will be a great electoral asset.

Mick Huhne (pronounced "Hughn") - youthful and fresh faced. Leader of the Liberal Democrat party (centre-centre). Never been in power since Nineteen-Umpteen. (I think I'm right in saying David Lloyd George was the last Lib PM and that was the 1st World War). I know even less about Huhne than I do about Cameron.

Sorry, I cocked up the pictures above - this (below) is Cameron (I think):-

And if you think I'm taking the mick, then the BBC made the same mistake on their website earlier, I kid you not. These fresh-faced and youthful politicians, younger than oneself, are easily mixed up. This is Cameron (leader of the Mrs Thatcher party) honest:-

Who will you be voting for? This should help:-

(Apparently Cameron's actually called Clegg or am I mixing him up with someone else?)

By the Queen, a proclamation ...

2010-04-10T22:09:00.008Z

Last Tuesday, she ...

... was paid a visit by him ...

If you don't know him well enough to call him Gordon, you call him "Prime Minister" or "Mr Brown". Under no circumstances do you call him "Prime Minister Brown". And you most certainly never, ever call him "Premier Brown" (whether pronounced - in escalating order of teeth gritting aversion - "Premmy-er", "Preemy-er" or - and I can hardly bear to even type this - "Prim-eer".)

The headlines are "Gordon Brown Calls General Election" but in reality a process much more woody than the holding of a press conference has been taking place.

The reason why the Prime Minister called on the Queen at Buckingham Palace was to recommend to her that she dissolve the present parliament and call a new one. The latter act implies the holding of a general election to the lower house of the new parliament, the House of Commons. (The upper house, the House of Lords, is not elected - it's composed of what in other countries would be called "life senators" appointed by the government with a vestigial representation by hereditary aristocrats - dukes, earls, barons etc.)

Her Majesty, being a good constitutional monarch assented to the advice of her Prime Minister and agreed that, on Monday, she will meet with her Privy Council in order to approve a Royal Proclamation dissolving parliament and calling a new one. The text of the proclamation on the occasion of the last British general election in 2005, as promulgated in that raciest of tabloid rags, the London Gazette, was as follows. Before you start reading, observe how the language is replete with ordering Lord High Chancellors and requiring writs forthwith to be issued - there is not a single mention of developing visions, partnership approaches, next steps or engaging with key stakeholders

BY THE QUEEN

A PROCLAMATION

FOR DISSOLVING THE PRESENT PARLIAMENT AND DECLARING THE CALLING OF ANOTHER

ELIZABETH R.

Whereas We have thought fit, by and with the advice of Our Privy Council, to dissolve this present Parliament, which stands prorogued to Thursday, the fourteenth day of April: We do, for that End, publish this Our Royal Proclamation, and do hereby dissolve the said Parliament accordingly: And the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Members of the House of Commons, are discharged from further Attendance thereat: And We being desirous and resolved, as soon as may be, to meet Our People, and to have their Advice in Parliament, do hereby make known to all Our loving Subjects Our Royal Will and Pleasure to call a new Parliament: and do hereby further declare, that, by and with the advice of Our Privy Council, We have given Order that Our Chancellor of Great Britain and Our Secretary of State for Northern Ireland do respectively, upon Notice thereof, forthwith issue out Writs, in due Form and according to Law, for calling a new Parliament: And We do hereby also, by this Our Royal Proclamation under Our Great Seal of Our Realm, require Writs forthwith to be issued accordingly by Our said Chancellor and Secretary of State respectively, for causing the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons who are to serve in the said Parliament to be duly returned to, and give their attendance in, Our said Parliament on Wednesday, the eleventh day of May next, which Writs are to returnable in due course of Law.

Given at Our Court at Windsor Castle. this eleventh day of April in the Year of our Lord two thousand and five in the fifty-fourth year of Our Reign.

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

At the Court at

Windsor Castle the 11th day of April 2005

Present.

The Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty in Council

Her Majesty, having been this day pleased by Her Royal Proclamation to dissolve the present Parliament and to declare the calling of another, is hereby further pleased, by and with the advice of Her Privy Council, to order that the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland do respectively, upon notice of this Her Majesty’s Order, forthwith cause Writs to be issued in due form and accordingly to Law for the calling of a new Parliament, to meet at the City of Westminster on Wednesday, the eleventh day of May 2005; which Writs are to be returnable in due course of Law.

Just be grateful I'm sparing you the constitutional niceties as to whether it was necessary for the Queen to dissolve parliament at all given that, under the Septennial Act 1715, it would expire at midnight on 10 May 2010 in any event (it seems that, by convention, parliament is always actively dissolved even if just a short period before its natural expiry). And/or whether it's necessary for the Queen to prorogue parliament before it's dissolved (no, but it seems to be commonly, though not invariably, done).

What's the Latin for "put that in your pipe and smoke it"?

They think it's all over

2010-03-16T00:46:00.003-01:00

On Saturday I listened to the annual "Calcutta Cup" match between England and Scotland on the BBC - not because I'm interested in rugby (I'm not) but just because I could.

I pause to observe en passant that rubgy players appear to wear gay swimming caps and golfing gloves nowadays. They didn't when I was wee. Nor did cricketers wear helmets. Firemen wear helmets. Golfers wear golfing gloves. Swimmers can even be forgiven for wearing swimming caps. But not rugby players. Nor should they wear shirts emblazoned with bits of the periodic table, IMO.

I've digressed - where was I? Oh yes, the BBC. The British Broadcasting Corporation is one of these great British institutions, I would defend to my last breath. Like the monarchy. And Caledonian MacBrayne. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Despite what Brussels thinks. We'll fight them on the beaches (although I'm actually quite pro-EU).

The BBC is funded by what's known as "the Licence Fee". It's a tax on television sets. In the UK, if you have a TV in your house, then you have to have a TV Licence costing £142.50 a year. Money well spent in my book because, in return, you get the BBC free with no adverts. This includes all the top class sport like the rugby (yawn) but also Wimbledon, World Cup, Olympics etc. Most importantly of all, the World Darts from the Lakeside Country Club, Frimley Green, Surrey - a British institution and if that's not public service broadcasting, then I don't know what is.

Above is what I got when did a Google Image search for World Darts. Nobody chucking an arrow at a board, but they know how to have a good time, do darts followers. And while we're on the subject of darts (which we're not really), I must mention my all time favourite live TV cock-up when the host of a quiz show accidentally read out the answer but the contestant still got the question wrong. It was on a show called "Bullseye" loosely based around darts. Contestants appeared in teams of two, one of whom threw the darts and the other of whom answered general knowledge questions. To the latter, the host, Jim Bowen, always said "So you're the brains of the outfit, then?"

Despite my better judgement, I've tried to "embed" a Youtube vid of Jim Bowen on Bullseye - did it work? Anyway, one night, Jim solemnly reads off the card "In which state was President Kennedy assassinated? Texas." and the brains of the outfit replied "Was it California, Jim?"

Anyway, where was I? The Licence Fee causes periodic political hooh-hahs in Britain with some people saying "Why should I pay a tax for two channels of the BBC when all I want to watch on my TV is 321 satellite channels of wall to wall CSI Miami, CSI New York etc., ad nauseam. To which I respond that people who want to watch 321 channels (or even 6 or 7) should have their knees stapled together. Too much choice is a bad thing. The BBC is a good thing - darts and all. (Although Bullseye wasn't on the BBC.)

The Licence Fee is how it works in the UK but abroad, the BBC becomes complicated. The technology does, of course, exist to beam all its content, from the darts to Mr Darcy, worldwide via the Interweb if you've got a broad enough broadband. But, in a sinister "we know where you live" sort of way, a lot of the good stuff is blocked if you try to log on furth of England's green and pleasant land.

(Pic above is what I got from a Google image search of "England's green and pleasant land". From the Daily Mail. Bless.)

I think the argument runs "it's free to the British Licence Fee payer but not to Johnnie foreigner". Which is an argument I'd normally line up behind if it weren't for the fact that I live amongst the JF. But is the BBC not missing a bit of a trick by not making the JF wedge up for the privilege? I'd cheerfully pay £142.50 for a country member's subscription. And that's considering our bandwidth out here is thin enough that all we can realistically expect is radio and even that has to "buffer" (it means it pauses) quite a lot.

The fact that the BBC appears to have missed this marketing trick means I don't feel so bad about having subscribed to Tellyport for €2.99 a month. Basically (but don't ask me how) they disguise my foreign location and allow me to listen online to the stuff normally reserved to onshore Brits. Like the rugby. Top tip to BBC bosses: I'm paying someone else £36 a year to do this "underhand" but would prefer to pay you £150 (or more) to do this legit. Capice?

The score of the Calcutta Cup match, incidentally, was a draw, 15-15. I can't remember why the trophy is called the Calcutta Cup and I'm not interested enough to Google it. I am however very interested in football and come this June shall be watching every single match of the World Cup by turning the Portuguese commentary on the TV down and turning up the BBC commentary through the computer via Tellyport.

Although, if the computer has to pause to "buffer" too often, the game will be over before the commentary is. Could lend a whole new meaning to "They think it's all over ..."

Oops, we did it again

2010-03-08T23:53:00.003-01:00

The Scottish soi disant Government has really done it this time.

I had been planning to write about the dark day for the constitution of the United Kingdom represented by the SsdG's launch of a consultation on a bill to hold a referendum on independence - yes, you did hear right - a consultation on a consultation - but this has been overtaken by a further outrage.

This time, the culprit is one of the few SsdG ministers not to be named after a fish, Stewart Stevenson.

Stewart is what we call in Scotland a pie-face. By which we mean that his mouth bears the same proportion to his face as the orifice in the lid of a Scotch Pie.

Actually, it's priceless on the SsdG's website: on the "images" page of the Ministers, they've obviously placed two photos of each, one looking serious and sepulchral and the other looking cheery and jaunty. Go and have a snigger for yourself here but the picture above was of Stewart with his face crinkled into his infectious smile. This is the one of him looking magisterial:-

Note in either case the continuing resemblance to a ...

Anyway, Stewart is the minister for - well, we're not entirely sure what for because, in his own words, he is:-

As you can tell from the comma after "Infrastructure", there's been a misprint and something amongst his responsibilities has been left out. Well I'm in a position to tell you what it is.

Global Domination.

Imagine how I spluttered my morning cuppa over my desk this morning when I logged on to the news section of the SsdG's website to read in an innocuous enough sounding piece about planting trees the following quote from Stewart:-

"Tackling climate change will require a huge international effort and this tree planting initiative will make an important contribution to reducing global emissions. ... Scotland is leading international action on climate change and ...

Now wait for this and make sure your mouth isn't full of tea ... ready? Here it is ...

... the rest of the world must follow our lead."

I'm not kidding! He did actually say that. You can read it here if you don't believe me.

Talk about the mouse that roared. They'll be quaking in their boots in the BRICs

You can picture Mr Singh, prime Minister of India, on a conference call to his cohorts: "Now look here chaps, we managed to pull the wool over little Obama's eyes and bugger up the Copenhagen Conference but the game's a bogey because the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure, Something Else and Climate Change of Scotland is on our case ..."

Meanwhile, Stewart has clambered aboard Adhar Feachd Aon:-

... and with a vomit stained Calmac ferry seconded to the People's Navy in close attendance, has puttered off to engage with a key stakeholder in the shape of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil. Our pastry faced hero is confident that a little speech he has penned en route comparing the Amazon basin to the bonny (and shortly to be tree-clad) banks of Loch Lomond and extolling the virtues of the re-cyclable wheelie bins the roll-out of which in Cumnock is currently being consulted upon will be enough to halt the felling every milisecond of an area of tropical rain forest the size of North Uist.

Alas, Sr. Lula da Silva, having been informed by the British Embassy that nobody of the name of Stevenson is accredited to the Court of Saint James, declines to engage with Stewart who in consequence is left looking a bit of a - well, Scotch Pie - in the arrivals lounge at Galeão Airport.

Instead, Stewart writes His Excellency a letter:-

"Dear Luis

You don't mind if ah call ye Luis? We've came tae Brazil tae engage wi' yiz as a key stakeholder and ah'm sorry ye werenae available tae engage wi us because the de-foresting of the Amazon Basin is just pure raj and at odds with our developing vision of a socially inclusive fairer society I just cut and pasted that bit and we need tae have a consultative consultation to develop a shared vision in consultation with other key stakeholders including the North Bute Transport Users' Consultative Committee. And China. Only after we've engaged wi' them, mind. Anyways, ah wiz wantin' tae say yiz must follow our lead but Nicola thought that wiz too prescriptive and a partnership approach would be better. OK? Ah've enclosed some pictures of recyclable boxes you can put your newspapers out in - might come in useful in some of they favelas around Porto Alegre.

Yours aye

Stewart Stevenson

Minister for Transport, Infrastructure, Consultative Stakeholding and Climate Change."

A party turns up to impale a key holder on his own stake.

Personally, I'd rather Stewart Stevenson was locked in a room to suffocate on his own carbon emissions.

Inspecção

2010-02-28T01:43:00.004-01:00

I hold cars in even lower esteem than computers in the "if they're working they're great but if they're not I don't want to know" stakes.

This is because I'm a wee bit interested in computers but not even the most vanishingly small bit interested in cars. I'm as interested in cars as I am in electric sockets. By which I mean "I'm happy my TV works because it's plugged into an electric socket but beyond that, I just so don't want to know". Translate that to cars and it's "I'm happy we can go to Sta Cruz every second Friday after the boat's in ..." You get the picture.

This is the car ...

... and this is an electric socket

In fact, I love electric sockets 145 times more than I love my car (make that 697 times) because I don't have to take my electric sockets to be periodically inspected.

We're talking about what we Brits call the MOT Test. It stands for Ministry of Transport (although probably now rebranded "Directorate of Life Long Motive Solutions"). In Portuguese, it's the infamous inspecção.

The good thing about inspecções in Portugal is they're only every 2 years (every year in the UK) but the bad news on Flores is there isn't a full time garage that does them. Instead, the inspectores visit the island three times a year for three intensive bouts of inspecções of the vehicles due to be inspecçionados.

Imagine my lack of enthusiasm, therefore, to discover from the delphic (to put it at its highest, as we lawyers are fond of saying) notice put through the letter box a while back that our car was due to be inspecçionado in the current bout.

Having somewhat buried my head in the sand about this, I steeled myself to pull out the last test certificate the car received two years ago. Three of the faults which would involve failure at subsequent inspection if not remedied had been dealt with. But one remained for the simple reason I hadn't an effing clue what it was. Medios baixados or something.

Quick visit to a neighbour revealed it was that the headlights were aligned too high. As I've no idea how headlights are correctly aligned, I approached this by adjusting them to the lowest possible alignment on the basis that, if that would give rise to a fault to be remedied, then at least it would be a different fault.

Feeling reasonably confident, I set off for the inspecção. I had an appointment for 5.30pm but "do the math" as one of my Canadian born neighbours put it - a third of the island's vehicles had to be inspected in the course of 5 days so you're talking about roughly 100 vehicles a day. Little wonder the marcações (appointments) were running a tad em atras (f***ing late).

At around 8.45pm, I was at last waved into the inspection hall. It couldn't have been any more threatening if it had had Arbeit Macht Frei written above the door. The young man wore a white coat and his "kerb-side manner" left a little to be desired: I felt about as invaded as if it was my rectum that was about to be examined, rather than my car.

Having noted the hunted look on earlier clients' faces exiting clutching red "FAIL" notices (a number of them with much newer and posher motors than mine), my bowels lurched when the inspector wheeled up the headlight alignment testing machine. A piece of kit, all mirrors and reflectors looking like the bastard offspring of a solar power station and a microscope, I felt sure it would unmask my crude attempt at inspecção result rigging. As with all white coated torturers, however, the young man gave nothing away as he noted the result on his clip-board (actually, it was a sort of palm pilot thing beaming the results directly to the computer).

When he was all done, the chap said "You may place your car outside and then enter my office" in a "Ve have vays of making you talk" sort of accent. I was half expectng a bunch of goons in leather jackets to exact dire revenge for the headlight malarky so imagine my relief when I see Mr White Coat pulling a green "PASS" notice from the computer!

Three minor blemishes to be sorted prior to next inspecção - No mention of headlights (!) but a reversing light and a registration plate light bulb is out. That's no problem but the third one defies my limited powers of Portuguese comprehension:-

860 - Livrete - Divergencia de dimensões dos pneumaticos, sendo equivalentes

Something about a little book and a discrepancy in the dimensions of my tires being equivalent????

If there are any Portuguese speakers out there who can tell me what this is, then I'd be very grateful. I don't want to have to be thinking about it on 21 March 2012. In exchange, if anyone needs their headlights realigned, then I'm your man.

History of Scotland Part XII

2010-02-22T00:40:00.002-01:00

In the last episode of "History of Scotland", I whizzed through 400 years from the mid 9th century to the mid 13th covering the period one noted historian called "the making of the Kingdom". In this episode (and maybe the next couple as well), I want to go back and look at a couple of episodes within that timescale.

First, Macbeth. We're all familiar with the Shakespeare play but how much of it is true - if anything?

Well, the first thing is that Macbeth did actually exist. He was the king of Alba (Scotland) from 1040 to 1057. Macbeth was his first name (quite a common name in 11th century Scotland) so the notion of his wife being called "Lady Macbeth" is a nonsense. Her name was Gruoch, as it happens.

He did come to the throne following the death of a King Duncan (1034-1040) but not as a result of the murder of an octogenarian dinner party guest as the Bard of Avon would have us believe. Duncan - who was in his 30s at the time - was killed in battle with Macbeth's forces but that was par for the course in 11th century Scotland, in fact de rigueur: a coronation just wasn't a coronation in these days unless accompanied by the severed heads of the outgoing administration.

Shakespeare was right about Macbeth being the Thane of Cawdor in as much that Cawdor is a place near Inverness in Moray and Macbeth was indeed from Moray. Below is Cawdor Castle but, of course, none of these buildings date as far back as the 11th century when Macbeth was around.

Picture credit - youngrobv (Rob & Ale)'s

In previous episodes of History of Scotland, I've alluded to the fact that, in the Dark Ages (pre-1000AD), Moray had a very ambivalent relationship with Alba (Scotland) so Macbeth, as a Moravian who ruled Alba, has some claim to be the first king of all Scotland.

A reign of 17 years was long by the standards of the 11th century and Macbeth went on a pilgrimage to Rome during his reign. Going to Rome would have taken months if not years in these days (especially if you go on British Airways) so Macbeth was obviously sure enough of the stability of his regime to be able to turn his back for that long. So clearly, he had a tip-top human resources department and had carried out all the necessary risk assessments and stress tests - "Oi! MacDuff! You might be the Thane of Fife but I say NO!" (That's a Harry Enfield gag.)

And what about Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane? Well, once again, these two do actually exist. They're both in Perthshire, about 15 miles from each other in the heart of what would have been 11th century Alba. Dunsinane - which is locally pronounced "Dun-SIN-an" rather than "Dun-sin-ANE" as the play would have you believe - even has the remains of a Dark Ages fort on it suggesting a fitting location for Macbeth's last stand.

I remember my English teacher at school saying "Now boys and girls, I want you to imagine how frightened Macbeth is to see a wood moving towards his castle, not realising that Malcolm has told his troops to disguise themselves with branches." and I was like "Yeah, right! I can see how that would put the wind up anybody."

That's what's so interesting about history - it keeps repeating itself. I can just see the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, saying "Scratch the expensive Darth Vader kit, chaps. Just bung a stick in your helmet and the choggies won't know what's hit 'em and we'll all be in Lashgar-Gah before you can you can say "Wootton Bassett"".

(BTW - am I the only one who bursts out laughing EVERY TIME I hear the name Jock Stirrup? Especially considering his name is not actually Jock (or John) but - wait for it - Graham.)

Green

2010-02-13T22:57:00.001-01:00

One of the most memorable scenes in the Elizabethan series of Blackadder is when Percy thinks he's produced gold by alchemy but when he shows the substance he's discovered to Edmund, the response is:-

Blackadder - "Percy, it's green"

Percy - "I know, my lord ..."

Blackadder - "Yes Percy, I don't want to be pedantic or anything, but the colour of gold is gold. That's why it's called gold. What you have discovered - if it has a name - is green."

Well "green" occurs naturally on Flores in the winter. So much so that green is the colour I associate with winter here even if that does sound like an odd thing to say from the perspective of more northerly climes where the colours associated with winter are white or brown.

I'm not sure what the scientific name for green is - it's vegetable (as opposed to animal or mineral) but it's too small to be moss and algae floats in stagnant ponds doesn't it? Hence why I just call it green. It's a product of our year round mild and humid climate but it doesn't like the sun, hence why it flourishes in winter. Green seems to have been particularly invasive this winter - I don't remember it so bad in previous winters. You would never know that these walls and surfaces had all been freshly painted last summer:-

As spring arrives and the days lengthen and sunlight gets back in to corners it hasn't penetrated since November, green withers and retreats but the walls will nevertheless need a good scrub and possibly re-painted as a result.

If you look cloesly at the last photograph, you'll see a different coloured stain on the wall as well. I'm convinced this is run off from the telhas (roof tiles) but I have heard it said that this is a different kind of moss/algae or whatever. So I call it green as well - even if that does invite the rejoinder:-

Yes Neil, I don't want to be pedantic or anything but the colour of green is green. That's why it's called green. What you have observed - if it has a name - is pink.

(BTW - as I don't know how you em-bed (if that's the right the word) YouTube videos in blog posts - and am not sure I would want to even if I did - here is a link to the full Blackadder "It's green" sequence for those not familiar or wanting to be reminded.)

Tea

2010-02-12T21:34:00.008-01:00

I bet you didn't know that tea is grown in the Azores.

Not on Flores, right enough, but on São Miguel where it grows in sort of tightly packed hedges which remind me a bit of massive green fish fingers:-

Picture Credit - Leslie Vella

The tea plants take advantage of the pristine environment of the Azores and the mild frost-free temperate climate. Which is obviously the problem because Azorean tea is rubbish.

We Brits are fussy about our tea. I'm not talking about the ceremony of "afternoon tea" accompanied by cucumber sandwiches and cakes which other nations imagine we all sit down to at the stroke of 4.00pm. This is now only found in Anglophiliac places abroad like British Columbia, Hong Kong and Madeira and even there it's more of a tourist attraction than anything else:-

That's a photo of the one and only time I've ever had afternoon tea - it was at Reid's in Madeira (one of the woodiest hotels in the world, founded by William Reid, a Scotsman, in 1891, now owned by the Orient Express Group and worth every single penny of its exorbitant prices).

No, I'm talking about a "cuppa" (the etymology is "cup of tea") consisting simply of a tea bag dropped into a mug of boiling water, left there for at least 10 minutes then with milk and sugar added to taste. This results in a brew you can stand a teaspoon upright in called "builders' tea" because it's the refreshment of preference on British construction sites.

Let's face it, Euros just can't do cuppas properly, can they, what with their noncey-poncey little tea bags with bits of string attached to them (what's that all about?) producing a weak and insipid gruel? Though it grieves me to say so, Azorean tea is just the same - risk assessment analysts' tea.

No, you can't send boys out to do a man's job which is why industrial quantities of Tetley Teabags are high on our list of things to bring back from our annual visits to Britain.

Made out of old coal sacks, Tetley teabags do not have strings. They are packed with the finest sweepings off a Chinese factory floor processing tea grown on closed landfill sites downwind of 1960s nuclear power stations handpicked by children with congenital birth defects paid 5p a day (if they pick 200kg). They used to be advertised on British TV with the slogan "Tetley make teabags, make tea" (which bit of that don't you understand?) voiced by a professional wrestler. And, bah goom, do they make a good cup of tea.

Spot the difference:-

The Joy of Ironing

2010-02-10T23:06:00.006-01:00

The English translation (using the expression in its loosest possible sense) of the instructions for an appliance recently bought at Freitas Braga & Braga gave rise to some fnarks in the Duncan/King household:-

Having identified the knob, cap, head, bottom and protecting sheath and decided on the degree of steam to be employed, one is then advised to:-

Not convinced vinegar is absolutely necessry but very important is:-

And as if all that wasn't enough, one is presented with the delphic enjoinder:-

Is it just me?

Serving suggestion

2010-02-07T15:47:00.006-01:00

My friend Sarah over at A Taste of Savoie is by way of being very foody (how do you spell "foody" by the way? should it be "foodie"?) and takes some jolly good photos of her creations so I thought two could play at that game and I could showcase some of the culinary delights of the Azores. Specifically lulas recheadas:-

Looking a bit like a Faroese fjord on whale hunt day, that's actually a tin of squid stuffed with a subtle blend (devised by Pitéu's award winning team of chefs) of onion, rice, tomato, spices and salt. It's floating in a liquid which looks as if it would be more at home in an automatic gearbox but which is described on the box as "American Sauce". And actually it's one of the tastiest things I've ever eaten - really. And I don't normally like squid (calamares) considering as I do stripped out silicone bathroom sealant to be more palatable.

Eat yer heart out Taste of Savoie!

Another fave lunch is sardines but not just any old sardines, they must be petingas. These are much smaller than common or garden sardines (you get about 7 or 8 to a tin instead of the usual 2-3) and have a much more subtle flavour - or they probably would if they didn't come drizzled in a medley of anti-fouling and WD-40 called tomate picante

Whether it's lulas or petingas, though, they should be accompanied by crusty fresh bread to mop up the ~~sump oil~~ delicate sauce. (Do you remember when cans of soup used to carry the warning "Do not boil to avoid impairing the delicate flavour"?) My bread of choice is the humble papo seco which means dry - er, I don't actually know what papo means (in my dictionary it says it means "chat" but that can't be right - Marisa?)

Anyway, such are their delicate sauce absorption properties, I suggest that, next time there's an oil spill, they simply scatter the area with papos secos - about half a dozen ought to cope with a spill of Exxon Valdez proportions.

Environmental disaster threatens as an offshore American Sauce well suffers a catastrophic blow-out

And then, if you've got any bread left over, you could always have a spread of Pé de Torresmo. This surprisingly more-ish blend of polyfilla and red diesel is manufactured by an outfit called Sociedade Industriale de Carnes Lda. which translates as "Industrial Meat Company" - I wonder which marketing genius came up with that. It probably doesn't do to dwell too much on the factory conditions.

Shortbread to go with our afternoon tea today, though!

Percy Update

2010-01-27T21:23:00.001-01:00

Bad news about Percy the Palmeira I'm afraid.

He has succumbed and his mortal remains been removed. I don't know where they have been disposed of.

R.I.P.