Lord John Marbury

This is another thing which gets on my wick - Hollywood getting the British peerage all wrong.

Take, for example, the character in "The West Wing" who is the British ambassador. He's called "Lord John Marbury" and in one episode explains that his full handle is "John Marbury, Earl of Croy, Earl of Sherborne, Marquess of Needham and Dalby, Baronet of Brycey". It's hard to know where to begin with the list of errors and solecisms that contains but I'll try:-

1. Anyone called "Lord Christian name - surname" (as in "Lord John Marbury") is not a "lord" at all. This is the form of address of the younger son of a duke or a marquess. The most famous example is Oscar Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, a younger son of the Duke of Queensberry.

2. If Lord JM really were the Earl of Croy etc., then he would have listed his titles in order of rank - i.e. Marquess of Needham and Dalby, Earl of Croy, Earl of Sherborne. (The titles in the British peerage are, in descending order of rank, duke, marquess (in some cases spelt marquis), earl, viscount and baron.)

3. There is no such thing as being "Baronet of Brycey" (or anywhere else). A baronetcy is, in effect, a hereditary knighthood with no territorial connection. It would have been entirely possible for John Marbury to have been a baronet in which case he would have been Sir John Marbury, Marquess of Needham and Dalby etc. etc. But a baronetcy is not a peerage.

4. If you don't know the geezer well enough to call him plain John, you would call him "Lord Needham" after his highest ranking title. (Even the British aristocracy accepts that it's not necessary to call him "Lord Needham and Dalby"). Thus, if you're Mrs Landingham, you would say "Good morning Lord Needham, the President will be with you shortly ..." (I feel Mrs L would have known that or at least taken the trouble to find out.)

5. Calling a peer Lord X for short doesn't work if he's a duke. If you don't know a duke well enough to call him by his first name, there's no alternative but to call him "Your Grace". (Some say it's OK to call them plain "Duke" (as in "Good morning Duke") but I'm not sure. The only duke I ever dealt with, I studiously avoided trying to call him anything.)

6. As well as referring to peers other than dukes as Lord X, you can refer to them as "christian name-title" - e.g. John Needham. In practice, this is how an aristocratic ambassador to the USA would have styled himself: being a gentleman, he would understand that our colonial cousins would get confused over the niceties so would make it easy for them. Back in the real world, the British politician Michael Ancram was actually Michael Kerr, Earl of Ancram.

7. The eldest son and heir of a peer bears the second most senior title of his father while the latter is still alive. This was the case with Michael Ancram whose father was the Marquess of Lothian. However, having made his political reputation as "Michael Ancram" he continues to call himself that even after his father died and he became the Marquess of Lothian and thereby "Michael Lothian".

The main privilege of being a peer of any rank was the right to sit in the House of Lords, the upper chamber (the Senate, if you will) of the British parliament. But that right was removed in 1999 and now only 92 representatives elected from amongst the hereditary peers have the right to sit in the HoL. The remaining members are all "life peers" (senators, in effect), worthies appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Life peers have the rank of baron. If Her Majesty were gracious enough to condescend to appoint me a life peer, I would be Baron King of Flores. You can call me Lord King.

I trust that's all quite clear now. It's perfectly simple really.

EDIT - I should make it clear that there are lots more serious things that get on my wick aside from the esoterica of the peerage - the abominable acting of Phil Mitchell in Eastenders when he's supposed to be drunk is one of them.

Did you know?

I'm currently involved in a very small way in a translation project in which the Portuguese word pisão came up.

I was told it meant a fulling mill. A what-ing mill? I asked. A mill where cloth is fulled came back the delphic reply. What the full is fuc... I was on the point of retorting when a penny began to drop. Fuller is a surname isn't it (not that I can think of anyone who's called it right now) so it wasn't totally alien to me.

Dived in to Wikipedia to discover that fulling is the process of finishing raw woollen cloth by - well - kind of yanking and flapping it around a bit. Apparently this has been done since the Assyrian Empire in water powered fulling mills - pisãos as I now know them to be called in Portugal - but it can also be done by hand. This must be the thing you see sturdy looking lasses in the Outer Hebrides doing to bolts of Harris Tweed round a table while singing dirgy Gaelic chants which sound like "Hoo-ruh Huh-rah Hoo-huh" in these grainy old black and white archive films. For reasons I didn't quite grasp from the Wikipedia article, urine is important to the process of fulling to the point where the Romans imposed a tax on it (and if anyone comments with any smart remarks about the origins of spending a penny, then I'm taking the opportunity to knock that on the head right now).

Anyway, I digress, because the interesting fact which I didn't know before and wanted to share with you is this:- Fulling is also known as walking (waulking in Scotland) or tucking and - here it comes - this is the origin of the surnames Walker and Tucker.

Isn't that interesting? So the chap on the bottles of Scotch setting a brisk pace can slow down a bit: he no longer has a reputation to live up to.

Missing numbers

I undertook to get back to you on the mystery of how we ended up being No. 5 Rua da Assomada when the house immediately across from us was No. 28 rather than in the 4 to 8 range as you'd expect (particularly piquant considering we'd been expecting to be in the high twenties as noted in posts passim.)

I must say I had suspected that the numbering fairies had been hanging out round the wrong magic toadstools but the answer's really blindingly obvious. There are more houses stretching further out the village on the other side of the road than on our side. And as the numbering started from the outside working in, we're the third house on the left but Tiago and Liliana across the road from us are the fourteenth on the right ...

Except they're not. They're the twelfth. Further investigation (you can see I've got too much time on my hands) revealed that there's a gap between Nos. 22 and 28. This suggests to me that the numbering fairies believe that there are two houses - Nos. 24 &26 - still to be built. On this field:-

Now, not that I would wish to be accused of NIMBY-ism because this is not my island, on which I am only a privileged guest, but I'd be sorry to see this field built over because of the back breaking (as the picture demonstrates) labour put in to it by the gentleman who cultivates it: he's in his 60s and I can tell you that I - at 20 years his junior - would have to retire to bed for the afternoon if I had to maintain that position for longer than about 5 seconds trying to retrieve a CD from our ergonomic ankle level CD rack never mind hand cultivating a field in the heat of the midday sun.

This field almost deserves a blog of its own because it never looks the same two weeks in a row and it's certainly radically different each year. It's seldom a monoculture either - note how our farmer (I do know his name but somehow think I ought not to mention it without his permission) is planting the second quarter of the field from the top. Until the other week the bottom half was planted with a very lush grass which our man progressively cut by hand with a sickle and carried away in bundles to (I assume) feed to his cows:-

The upper quarter is often planted with sweet potato and here I sort of run out of steam due to my profound ignorance of matters agricultural but it would be interesting to see a speeded up time lapse sequence showing the changes round the season. Roughly twice a week, you'd see our man dart in and out in "fast motion" as it were. Even when there's nothing to be planted or cut, there are stones to be picked up as I expect his ancestors have been doing for generations. Humbling. Better than Nos. 24 & 26 Rua da Assomada IMO.

Obrasprazotory

As far as I know, there isn't yet an -ory for this so I'm going to coin it now: obrasprazotory.

It means ongoing works which take a period of time to complete. The etymology is Portuguese: obras = works and prazo = a period of time.

There is a related noun - obrasprazoteurism - which is the pleasure derived from periodically inspecting progress with an obrasprazotory (OP for short) and reporting back to one's other half. Partakers of this delight are referred to as obrasprazoteurs and the sensation becomes the more delicious the longer the gap between inspections (obrasprazotations): 24 hours is optimal, 48 hours is daring and 72 hours is not medically recommended due to the complications which can ensue from such breathless disclosures as "You'll never guess! They've started on the other side of the road below the church ...!" It's also possible to become addicted with OP-holics sneaking off for furtive OP-tations when they should be getting on with other things (and in common with all such matters, the more often the hit, the less potent it becomes).

There have been a number of OPs ongoing in Fajã Grande recently resulting in something of an over indulgence in OP-teurism, e.g. the street naming, house numbering, new pavements etc. as referred to in posts passim. But as these begin to wind down another one begins: the repainting of José António and Linda's village shop and bar (aka since recently No. 7 Rua Senador André de Freitas):

This is great news since it's one of the nicest buildings in the village (note the architectural details like the lozenges on the frieze above the windows), right at the centre next to church and I don't think JA and Linda would mind me mentioning that it was looking a bit, ahem, "tired" externally. The picture above shows some of the old paint having been taken off on Day 1. A very thorough job is being done here (on a back wall not visible in this pic, the entire plaster is being taken off, never mind just the old paint). It's going to look sensational when it's finished.

It's some days off yet, but I shall have to ensure I've taken my medication in the days leading up to the obrasprazotation which results in the report "The new paint's beginning to go on!"

I'll keep you posted.

Now we are 5

The great "what street number are we going to be" mystery was solved the other day:-

Those who've been paying attention will recall that we were anticipating being in the high twenties Rua da Assomada so what gives with the 5, I hear you ask? Quite simple: they started numbering from the top down - contrary to the "from the centre outwards" numbering convention we're used to in Britain. If it's any consolation (and let me assure you it is to me), RdA ends downtown at No. 27 so, as we're last but one from the top of the road, I was right all along. As I usually am. Most of the time.

In my next post, I'm going to tell you all about how the house directly opposite us at No. 5 came to be numbered No. 28. Pending that, and to keep your attention, could I point out our nice new pavement visible in the photo above. May not look much to you townies but let me tell you that, until about a week ago, that was a sort yawning chasm of a Health & Safety nightmare since they dug up the previous concrete pavement some months ago that would have British council officials running for cover and American lawyers licking their lips. Out here, they say Pode ser no proximo barco - "maybe on the next ship". It's Azorean for manana - I'll explain that in another post as well as I'm on the verge of digressing again ...

Mobile Home

Further to my previous post on the topic of the transportation of one's staff in flat back trucks, I snapped this the other day which seems to take the art form to its peak of perfection. I shouldn't be at all surprised if there weren't a mini-bar and a plasma screen in there. And it's as well there aren't any low bridges on Flores.

What the Full"k"?

Does anyone remember shortlived British pop band Hear'say?

They were the first ever winners of Pop Idol and one of them was Myleene Klass (someone with too many letters in her name like Jamie Foxx). She's now more famous for something else although I can't remember what it is - she's in Hello! mag a lot, though.

Anyway, I digress because the point is that, with that apostrophe half way through, how did one pronounce Hear'say? Was it "Hear-huh-say" with the "huh" sounding like an intake of breath? Well, if you thought there were pronunciation issues around Hear'say, what about -

- Full"k"ords?

Now maybe it's just me but, if an otiose apostrophe half way through a word should (I think we can all agree) be pronounced like an intake of breath, then I reckon incongruous quotation marks must be pronounced as close as is humanly possible to a tinkle of high notes on a piano keyboard. So Full"k"ords must sound something like "Full-plink-k-tinkle-ords". That's a phonetic transliteration of something that trips easily off the tongue of a Kalahari bushman - those chaps with dinner plates in their lower lips who whistle and click at each other - but when I attempt to pronounce Full"k"ord I have to be very careful about my gag reflex: only try it on an empty stomach.

The picture above is of a poster advertising last Friday's attractions at "Hotel Cafe" in Santa Cruz. This is what passes for the only night club on Flores - it's universally known as "Toste's" after the name of its owner. Before I get too snotty about it, I have to say I've never been in and I can't see me going any time soon either because I gather it doesn't get going much before 2am. Santa Cruz is a 25 minute drive over the other side of the island from us, taxis at that hour are like hen's teeth and my days of sleeping on park benches/strangers' floors are long past.

But Toste is obviously a shrewd kind of guy on account of where he posts his posters - right next to the cash dispensers. I don't know if they do this in Britain or other countries nowadays but Portuguese ATMs always make you aguarde um instante for a word from their sponsors which you can never see anyway due to the angle of the light shining on the screen. So, almost as a reflex, for 20 secs or so you look at anything else at all but that ad on the screen. Toste has cornered that particular span of attention on this island.