Avenida Marginal

The Avenida Marginal along the sea front at Faja Grande is now more or less finished and contrary to earlier misgivings that big concrete retaining wall along the seaward side has been very skillfully faced in freestone and is undoubtedly a work of art:-

I do have one small problem with the Avenida Marginal, however. Up at Faja Grande's village square, there are half a dozen little lights on bollards.

They used to light up the square causing a pleasant glow under the trees on a warm summer's evening with the cicadas chirping as the old gents of the village gather on that bench to pass the time (I was going to attempt the Portuguese velhote there but thought better of it as I'm not sure if that word connotes "nice, wise older person, salt of the earth" or "tiresome old fart who's a thoroughgoing pain in the arse")

But I digress, where was I? Oh yes, unfortunately the mood lighting in the square has been switched off for as long as I can remember now. A sticker on each of the lights explains why:-

For anyone who doesn't read Portuguese, that says "Lighting switched off under the energy saving programme".

But what have they just stuck up along the new Avenida Marginal?

Un-fucking-pardon-my french-believeable!

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not some kind of namby-pampy, wishy-washy, hoity-toity, lah-di-dah, middle class, tree-hugging, greeny-weeny, lefty, liberal tree hugger. Far from it - we run our washing machine and dryer during the day at premium electricity rates and pay the fellows and damn their impudence.

And I've always felt it's not my place as an incomer to this island to march in and start lecturing the locals how to run the place. But come on, Camara Municipal das Lajes das Flores - 45 new lamp-posts along a road that's a dead end and has only one house along it? You're having a laugh!

What kind of message does this send to the world about the Azores' commitment to the environment? The island of Flores is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, for Christ's sake.

Apart from general issues about the energy consumption of all these useless street lights, there's a purely local issue as well - cagarros. These are Cory's Shearwaters (Calonectris diomedea), a sea bird which breeds in burrows on the cliffs of Flores.

Photo credit - duffbirder

Every October, the young birds leap off the cliffs to fly out to sea for the first time. Except some get distracted by the street lights and land in the village. Unlike most birds, they can't take off again from a standing start so will die unless rescued and taken down to the shore where they can take a run at the sea to get airborne. We used to get a few in our garden every year until we learnt to put our outside lights off at this time of year. The picture below is of a juvenile cagarro, the first time we got one in our garden:-

We took that one down to the shore and it flew off out to sea just the thing - very satisfying.

Below is pic of a clutch of juvenile cagarros which ended up in an empty swimming pool as a result of the same syndrome of being distracted by lights from flying out to sea.

I don't know if the owner of that swimming pool was planning to release them or make a pot of soup but the point is, what have the Camara just constructed along the seafront of Faja Grande but a great big illuminated landing strip for cagarros? And the irony is that, every year, there's a "Save the Cagarros" campaign with flyers handed out telling you to switch off your outside lights etc. ...

Of course, I know the Avenida Marginal is being paid for by EU grant schemes. And I realise that this funding is helping keep people of Flores in work building it in troubled times for Portugal. But my point is, is this European assistance being targetted properly? Is it, dare I say "sustainable"?

If the EU wants to pay for a night-time landing strip, then could it not perhaps pay to upgrade the lights at Flores Airport? I understand that this is the issue which prevents SATA's planes from landing here after dark and thus permitting the chance of getting to or from Lisbon in a day.

It is not at all my style to whinge. Especially not in an adopted country. But I do pay taxes here in Portugal and I simply cannot bear to see money being wasted. If we're going to pay people to dig holes and fill them up again, could we not pay them to do it in the right places?

Ave Maria

Today was one of those Sundays when the statue of Our Lady (Nossa Senhora de Saude to be exact) is brought out of the church and paraded down the street with the brass band following Her.

I was just coming out the shop (the building on the right in the photo above; I'd gone down to get a Magnum (white chocolate) for Carol and a jumbo packet of Lay's ready salted crisps for me for full enjoyment of the final of Dois Mil e Doze) and found myself standing behind the last man in the band as OL emerged from the church. Peering over his shoulder at the card clipped to the top of his trumpet, I tried to read the name of the music they'd be playing. Ave Maria, it seemed to say. How fitting, I was thinking, so was a bit taken aback when, moments later, the procession moved off and the band struck up with - of all things - Fernando.

Turns out my eyesight was deceiving me. It didn't say Ave Maria, it said Abba Medley. 

Knowing me, knowing you.

 

Lookalike

Has anyone else noticed the uncanny resemblance between England and Man City goalkeeper Joe Hart and 80s comic [using the expression in its loosest possible sense] Russ "See you Jimmy" Abbott?

Hart                                               Jimmy

Perhaps they could change the rules in time for Dois Mil e Catorze so that Ant & Dec could be in goal.

Dois Mil e Doze

 Nick Hornby summed the syndrome up memorably in Fever Pitch:-

"I was going to say 1980 was a torpid, blank, directionless year for me but that would be wrong; it was 79/80 that was these things. Football fans talk like that: our years, our units of time, run from August to May (June and July don't really happen, especially in years which end with an odd number and therefore contain no World Cup or European Championship)."

I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a football fan but I do enjoy my summer international football competitions and I share Hornby's pain in odd years. Portuguese TV has a habit of emphasising the year when referring to international competitions, so this summer of EURO2012 is very much Dois Mil e Doze where last summer was plain old 2011.

Portugal has had the misfortune to end up in the Group not so much of Death as Total Annihilation With Your Remains Being Vapourised And Projected Into A Parallel Space Time Continuum. How unlucky is it to be ranked tenth in the world and still be the lowest in your Group (the others being Germany (3), Holland (4) and Denmark (9))?

In the opening Group B matches this evening, Denmark beat Holland 1-0 while Germany beat Portugal 1-0 but with Portugal having had some bad luck and not having been a pushover by any means.

Meanwhile, jammy Ingerland (6) have landed up with France (14), Sweden (17) and Ukraine (not even on the list I printed off) in the Group of "Ought To Be A Breeze To Qualify From But Good Chance They'll Screw It Up Royally Leading To Tabloids Screaming For Woy's Blood, Terry Never Playing For Ingerland Again, Should Have Taken Ferdinand, Told You So".

For the avoidance of doubt (as we lawyers say when in fact we're adding to it massively), I hope Ingerland do screw it up royally in the group phase (like France in Dois Mil e Dez) but if they do get through, then I will support them after Portugal have gone out. (Ideally, I'd like to see France fail to go through as well although that might be too much to hope for again.)

Scotland, I need hardly add, failed to qualify for EURO2012, having buggered up some challenging matches against Liechtenstein and the Faeroe Islands in the Group of Having a Tickly Throat in the qualifiers. It'll be different in the future, though - Uncle Alex says if we become independent, we'll qualify in Dois Mil e Catorze and triumph in Dois Mil e Seize.

        

The 4th Verse

With the British national anthem having been heard more often than usual in the last few days due to the Diamond Jubilee celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty's accession to the throne of the United Kingdom, it's timely to be reminded of the fourth verse of "God Save the Queen" as composed in the 1740s:-

Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,

May by thy mighty aid,

Victory bring.

May he sedition hush,

and like a torrent rush,

Rebellious Scots to crush,

God save the King.

Rebellious Scots being crushed

Marshall Wade was the Commander in Chief of the British Army during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46. He'd been relieved of his command by the time the rebellion was finally crushed at the Battle of Culloden (pictured above - last pitched battle to be fought on British soil in April 1746) and is better remembered (as General Wade) for the military roads he built in Scotland in the 1720s.

One of General Wade's military roads from the 1720s

Often misunderstood as rebellions by Scotland against England, the Jacobite Rebellions (there were five in all between 1689 and 1746) were simply armed attempts against the government of the day back in the days when it was still not uncommon to articulate political grievances by taking up arms rather than demanding judicial enquiries. The misunderstanding is due to the fact there were proportionately more "Jacobites" in Scotland than England (though a tiny minority in both) and the main theatres of war happened to take place in Scotland.

Whatever. The message of the forgotten fourth verse of the National Anthem is as relevant today as it was in the 1740s.

Rebellious Scot needing crushed

    

Lookalike

Surely I can't be the only one to have noticed the uncanny resemblance between Phil Mitchell in Eastenders' lawyer, Richmal "Ritchie" Scott, and International Monetary Fund chief, Christine Lagarde:-

Lagarde                                                   Scott

I'd forgotten she used to be in Howard's Way (Ritchie from Easties, not Christine Lagarde).

Keep calm and carry on

Probably wondering why I've opened this post with a picture of a pan of potatoes boiling.

It's because these were the last three potatoes in the house and there was no chance of securing any more in the near future. That's due to the fact the fortnightly container ship which brings 99% of Flores' supplies, and which was already several days late, was unable to berth at Lajes last week due to heavy weather. After having hung around off the coast at Fajãzinha for a bit, it gave up and returned to the mainland. It's not scheduled to make another attempt at berthing until sometime this week meaning that Flores won't have been resupplied for nearly a month.

M/S Ponto do Sul alongside at Lajes in happier circumstances

The consequence is that the shelves have become distinctly bare in the last week or so with such basics as potatoes and onions having become unobtainable - Germano's in Lajes resembles nothing so much as the Dnepropetrovsk branch of GUM in 1972.

So much so that the Azorean airline, SATA, has laid on extra flights to fly in fruit n' veg (seriously) although the story I heard was it all sold out within two hours of landing.

That was obviously a slight exaggeration as there was a small amount of potatoes to be had at Braga's in Sta Cruz this afternoon although their appearance in our basket did provoke Didia at the check out to exclaim "Ah! Consegiu apanhar batatas!" (Oh! You managed to get potatoes!)

So it's all been a bit Dunkirk spirit and make do and mend round here recently. But did I keep calm and carry on? Did I stuff as like. I went out and panic bought a bottle of gas (pictured above) even though we didn't immediately need it to keep the potatoes (if you can get them) boiling at 5RdA. Didia the check out reckoned gas would be the next thing to run short and she usually knows what's what. As it happened, José Antônio had a few bottles left but that could have changed by tomorrow in which case I shall be open to offers for my bottle shrewdly acquired today. You have to take your chances while you can.