Church update

We happened to be in town yesterday so I can update you on what seems like quite quick progress on the church:-

Note that the gable has now been replastered and painted. Also the roof has been taken off the annex to the right and, if you look closely, the chap with the jeans and white shirt and the tab in his left hand is Soo-Lucino. Below is a close up (tab now in right hand):-

On the left is the chap from Cape Verde who, with his daughter, stole the show at the Noite dos Sabores Internacionais. I've since found out he's known to everyone as Tio although there's some doubt as to whether that's his real name as tio is just Portuguese for "uncle" (although I believe it has a wider connotation - on this island, anyway - of an older person held in high esteem).

Anyway, there's Soo-Lucino up on the roof doing what he does best - smoking. And, looking at the picture again, I feel a caption competition coming on and I'm going to start with "Which one of you plonkers accepted this contract without ascertaining whether or not the church could pay for it - what is a colcha em lã anyway?"

Santa Cruz Church - my stake in its future

... 2 Euros as a result of having bought a couple of raffle tickets this afternoon. Let me explain.

The renovation of the church in Santa Cruz, the main (indeed only) town on this island, is the obrasprazotory to end all OPs. I've been meaning to add a post on the subject but now I have a personal stake in it, this gives it added urgency.

The church is a huge landmark in SC. I believe it has the third largest church façade in the Azores (a rather big fish/small pond claim to fame) and I gather they started work on it in 1783 but didn't finish it until 1859 due to the project keeping running out of money. Anyway, despite all that provenance, it's been looking decidedly scruffy recently.

So I was very pleased to see when we were in town a couple of weeks back that a comprehensive renovation of the church (inside and out) had begun with signs of quite quick progress. Let the pictures do the talking:-

Above is that third largest facade and you can see how tatty it's looking although note the right hand tower dome for a sign of things to come.


Above, you can see the back of that tower all freshly painted and also how all the plaster has been taken off the gable pending reapplication.

It was also rather piquant for us that the local building firm doing the work on the church is the same firm who did our palheiro - i.e. our little studio apartment in our garden (see http://www.fajagrande.com/). So it was funny seeing the same guys who'd been round our house for four months in 2007 involved in a rather larger project.

Allow me a quick digression into Senhor Lucino Lima's building company. We'd heard he was the best on the island but difficult to get hold of due to being so much in demand. We bearded him in his den a couple of times where he expressed a willingness in principle to do the job but when it came to the fatal "w-question" (when?), there was much sucking of teeth, lighting of cigarettes, shuffling of paper, scratching of foreheads and the utterance of that phrase which should really be Flores' motto: em atras (delayed).

Long short, we eventually managed to coax Senhor Lucino round to a site visit and a few weeks and phone calls (made on our behalf by the ever kind Jose Antonio and Linda down at the shop) later, we even got an estimate for the works. That led to a meeting in Senhor Lucino's office. (I should say "Senhor" is pronounced "Soo" on this island and people like Soo-Lucino call me Soo-Neil and vice versa). It was an epic encounter involving Linda the Shop along as translator and led to two memorable conclusions (1) Linda saying "Soo-Lucino wants to say he has learnt his first words of English which are "which option is cheaper?""; and (2) we asked the W-question and try to get me pregnant (an uphill struggle, I can tell you) if Soo-Lucino didn't suck his teeth, light a cigarette (the 15th of the encounter - particularly vexing as we'd just recently given up), shuffle some papers and say "Next Tuesday".

And next Tuesday, at an ungodly hour of the morning, Soo-Lucino's boys duly appeared, lugging in bricks and cement and stuff and promptly got to work.

When I think back on this two years ago now, it was almost surreal because - due to the language barrier - I had no real idea as to whether these guys truly understood what it was we wanted: did we know ourselves? But much as it would be amusing to do a "Year in Provence" type rave against the horrors of southern European builders, I'm going to have to disappoint you and report that Soo-Lucino's guys were just amazing. They almost seemed to be able to read our minds as to what we wanted communicating by a combination of gestures and thumbs ups. Never once did we have any of the problems traditionally associated with builders like leaving a mess or not doing what we asked or going off the job or charging too much etc. OK, it took a month longer than expected but the final bill was actually less than the original quote. And the quality of the craftsmanship was superb. This is the guys putting the velux window in the roof of the palheiro:

At the end we were almost sorry to see them go. In the last few days of the job, Cesar the painter was around a lot, not because there was painting to be done but because he spoke immaculate English and he'd been sent by Soo-Lucino to co-ordinate the last jobs and be sure that we were happy to sign the job off.

The only picture I have of Soo-Lucino is this one of him pirhouetting (sp) at the top of a ladder by our palheiro. Like the good boss of a construction company that he is, he came round to the job every now and again to get his own hands dirty. I can't remember what exactly he was doing at ours this day but I do remember when I took this picture he was asking down, not for a screwdriver or similar but for a cigarette lighter!

I've digressed a long way from where I started this post - buying two 1€ raffle tickets in aid of the restoration of Santa Cruz church. It's a cause I'm happy to support whether or not I win the top prize of a Colcha em Lã, whatever that is (I just hope it's not a piglet or something like that).

But I couldn't help thinking about Soo-Lucino - does he know the church hasn't yet raised the money to pay him for the job? Will the Colcha em Lã, whatever it is, be enough to raise the wind to pay his bill? Having bought two 1€ raffle tickets, does that make me almost like a debenture holder? I feel another meeting with Soo-Lucino coming on ...

Don't mention the War

I undertook to keep you updated on the external redecoration of the village shop-cum-bar.

As obrasprazotories (OPs) go, it's proving to be a bit of a frustrating one for the reason that it's proceeding very slowly - agony for those of us who suffer from premature obrasprazoturation.

It's not because of sloth or indolence on the part of the workmen - I'll rephrase that - the workman for it's just one guy doing this. Quite the contrary. The apparent lack of progress is because the job's being done so thoroughly. In particular, not only is the old paint being taken off with a blow torch but also large chunks of the plaster as well. I believe the position we're at just now is waiting for the new plaster to dry thoroughly before any new paint can be applied. Anyway, this is what it presently looks like with the all the old paint off (on the left).

In the foreground, you'll note a phalanx of German tourists (is that the right collective noun for German tourists? Perhaps it should be a "korps" or a "bunker") striding with teutonic discipline through the village: they'll be at the gates of Krakow before you can say "Baden-Württemberg" (and they'd have advanced to the Urals by the time you could spell it). That chap on the right is clearly still smarting over the Sudetenland.

Anyway, as if to make up for lack of anything much to report on the shop/bar, I'm able to report the commencement of a new OP in the village. It's the external redecoration of a nice house down the road between us and the shop which has been looking decidedly scruffy for a while. This time it's a complete removal of all plaster job:-

And by the following day:-


And at this point, all work has stopped on this house. It may be that the stonework beneath the plaster has to breathe and dry out again but, whatever the reason, it's an excruciating case of obrasprazotorus interruptus.

Us

That's me and Carol but this pic calls for an explanation which is very distinctively Flores.

We were down at the village shop-cum-bar for our usual beer and glass of wine at the back of five yesterday but it was the fortnightly Thursday when the ship has come in and Big Joe, the landlord, had been over to the harbour at Lajes to pick up the fresh fruit and veg. They were carting the boxes into the shop and they included rare treats like strawberries and cherries. So BJ's wife, Linda (who was grew up in California, daughter of Azorean emigrants) comes through with these forbidden fruits and insists we do a mutual strawberry eat. I got her to take a pic but I forgot to set it to flash so it came out all blurry. We also slittered strawberry juice all over each other.

Awww ...

History of Scotland Part III - A big map and a regular pope please

I'm going to whizz past most of the first two millenia BC during which humans living in Scotland transited from using stone to bronze to iron - rather in the way you upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP to Windows Vista except (a) slightly longer time frame; but (b) not quite as painful because IT consultants hadn't been invented back then (although imagine the scenario "Residents of Skara Brae are reminded that the use of iron axes is forbidden until you have attended mandatory training. Bronze axes will continue to be supported meantime subject to appropriate risk assessment...")

Anyway, in 55BC (although it might have been 55AD, I can never remember) the Romans landed in Britain to find it peopled by a race called Celts. Which ought not to have come as too much of a surprise to them because a lot of western Europe was as well: France (Gauls - Asterix et al) but also what's now Spain and Portugal was Celtic then too.

But in the British Isles, the Romans found two distinct types of Celts: "P-Celts" and "Q-Celts". The former lived in Great Britain and the latter in Ireland (although the Romans never attempted to conquer Ireland).

The distinction was linguistic. Apparently P-Celts could not pronounce a hard "c" and replaced it with a "p" whereas Q-Celts could do a hard "c" - as the actress said to the bishop. Anyway, while an Irish Q-Celt would have no bother ordering a Big Mac and a regular Coke, a benighted British P-Celt would be asking for a "Big Map and a regular Pope". Thus, Welsh princes (P-Celts par excellence) had names like Rhodri ap Llewyllyn whereas Q-C Irish princes had names like Fergus mac Erc (ap and mac both meaning "son of" in their related Celtic dialects)

Here I was hoping to be able illustrate this post with a picture of Rhodri ap Llewyllin but - possibly due to not being able to spell Lou-Ellen (can anybody?) - all I got from a Google search was this:

That's Rhodri Morgan, the leader of the Welsh parliament but am I the only one who thinks he looks suspiciously like that Serbian bloke who's about to be had up before the International Court in the Hague - not Mladic, the other one? Would you vote for him in a Euro election? I wouldn't.

Anyway, back in pre-Roman Britain, my mouth may have gone off-line and the backup aperture I sometimes speak out of may have tripped in because, as I type this, I realise that place names such as Carlisle, Cardiff and Lanark are quintessentially P-Celtic despite being loaded with hard c's. If you think about it, how similar does Lanark sound to Llanerch which could be in Wales or - that other hotbed of P-Celticism - Brittany? It's not a coincidence. So it's maybe not as simple as P-C's not being able to pronounce a hard c to save themselves. But I do know that the ap/mac was a shibboleth between the two races of Celt. It maybe changed over the odd millenium or so - I would remind you, I'm not looking any of this up.

Now, at the risk of confusing things even further, it used to be believed that there was a third race in Great Britain at the time of the Roman invasion - the Picts living in Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde line. We don't know how they ordered their fast food but historians used to judge their enigmatic symbols carved on stones to be aboriginal pre-Celtic. More modern scholarship, however, deems the Picts to be definitely P-Celtic - albeit maybe with stronger elements of earlier races still influencing their culture compared with other Celts.

Which is a relief because we can sum up this episode by saying 55BC (maybe AD) P-Celts in GB and Q-Celts in Ireland. Next time, I'll explain how Q-C's and macs came to Scotland and how we were spared being Welsh. Meanwhile, here's a nice picture of a Pictish symbol stone:-

Honi soit qui mal y pense

If there’s one thing that gets on my wick – I’ll rephrase that – of the dozens of things that get on my wick, one of them is people who say things like “I’m no lawyer but ...” and then proceed to launch upon a very complicated legal argument and make a plonker of themselves.

That’s the equivalent of me saying “I’m no brain surgeon but I've watched enough episodes of Holby City and one thing I do know is you should never cut the cranial nerve before you’ve sutured the ...”

The latest offender to pass under my radar is a chap called Stuart Hill. He has declared an island the size of a tablecloth in Shetland (in the channel between Papa Stour and the Mainland of Shetland to be exact) called Forewick Holm the independent “Crown Dependency of Forvik”. This is what it looks like on Google Earth:-

And this is the flag of the Crown Dependency:-


As I understand it, Stuart, an Englishman (i.e. not a native Shetlander) with a beard you could lose a badger in, professes loyalty to the Queen but not to the UK. This was all given a huge draught of the oxygen of publicity on that rather nice programme on the tellybox with Martin Clunes (for my non-British readers, a TV actor) going round British islands which involved such pranks as Martin having his passport stamped as he disembarked on Forewick Holm/Forvik from a rowing boat etc. Stuart also attempts to defy the pretensions of British sovereignty in Shetland by such stunts as not sending in his UK Tax returns (for which he’s been fined by HMRC) and putting an old Landrover on the road on the neighbouring Mainland of Shetland with a Forvik number plate and tax-disc (although, importantly, he has not attempted to drive said vehicle and all that’s happened is the thing got towed away as constituting an eyesore). He’s attempting to goad the British authorities into crushing Forvik’s pretended independence and, quite sensibly, they’re not rising to the bait.

You can read all about it on http://www.forvik.com/. It’s all harmless fun and it seems that the authorities in Shetland have responded with the good humour these eccentricities call for but Stuart Hill genuinely believes that Shetland (and Orkney as well, I think) are not part of the UK due to quirks of history 500 years ago.

He’s seizing on – and trying to make too much of – the fact that, in the mid-15th century, Orkney and Shetland were still part of Norway. In 1469, the King of Scots, James III, was getting married to a daughter of the King of Denmark who also happened to be the King of Norway. That called for a dowry but as the King of Denmark/Norway couldn’t actually lay his hands on the stipulated number of gold florins or whatever, he pawned Orkney and Shetland to Scotland pending being able to raise the readies. As it happened, Norway never coughed up to redeem the pawn and Orkney and Shetland have been Scottish (British from 1707) ever since.

As Stuart says on his website: “My research over the past 6 years or so into Shetland's unique history leads me to the inescapable conclusion that it [i.e. Shetland becoming part of Scotland/The UK] never happened - and that it could never have happened. If I am right (and so far, nobody has proved me wrong), the implications are simply huge.” Well allow me to be the person who proves you wrong. The following is a text of a message I left in the Guestbook of Forvik.com:-

"Stuart

"We’re all entitled to our lifestyle choices and “English Eccentrics” stamping Martin Clunes’ passport makes for great television but as for your legal arguments on UK sovereignty over Shetland I have to say this:-

"It’s one thing to take a political standpoint that Shetland should be independent of the UK (or Scotland). I have no view on that personally but if the people of Shetland were to vote unequivocally for independence, then I expect the politicians in London and Edinburgh would take due account of that as a political bridge to be crossed when they come to it. I do not dispute your right to advocate Shetland’s independence meantime.

But your “legal” arguments that Shetland has never have been part of Scotland or the UK are – apart from being politically irrelevant – bunkum, not to put too fine a point on it.

"I’m always amused when people say “I’m no lawyer but ...” and then go on to advance esoteric legal arguments. Well I am a lawyer (retired now) and I what I would say is this:-

"Your three letters – CCT – conquest, cession, terra nullius – omit a fourth letter: P for Prescription. This is the legal principle that, irrespective of how dubious a claim to sovereignty may have been to begin with (the pledge for the dowry in 1469, the Act of Annexation in 1472 etc. etc.), this all becomes totally irrelevant with the passage of time if Scotland/the UK asserts its sovereignty and Norway/Denmark doesn’t lift a finger to object. I think you would have to agree that’s been the state of affairs for 200+ years, no?

"So, given that the UK undoubtedly has a sovereignty over Shetland which is not disputed (or disputable) by any other country (inc. Norway/Denmark), what is the situation as between the UK Crown and its subjects within its territory which includes Shetland? I hear all your arguments about the applicability of feudal or udal law in the Northern Isles - “I say feudal, you say udal, let’s call the whole thing off” - but what you seem to be overlooking is the legal principle called the “sovereignty of Parliament”. This is the legal concept that, as the UK has no written constitution to limit what Parliament can do, it (i.e. in practice the government of the day) can legislate anything it wants. That includes abrogating udal law in Shetland. If you need any clearer example, just look at how the Scottish Parliament (which derives its powers from the UK Parliament) abolished feudal law in Scotland in 2003. So the UK Parliament is quite within its rights to declare a state monopoly over oil under the sea-bed as far out as will not get the UK into trouble with other countries.

"In the absence of clear legislative provision, of course you can get into grey areas over the niceties of udal/feudal on the foreshore and a fish farm etc. but let’s not imagine that King James III’s dowry has anything to do with the UK’s right to licence oil exploration within its territorial waters around Scotland because that has been declared by legislation by Parliament. (I can’t name you the exact Act but I’m sure you will know it.). And as far as udalling or feudalling (calling the whole thing off) the foreshore is concerned, any debate about that can be settled by parliament if the political will exists (Was there not some Task Force into the Crown Estate recently to make recommendations to the Scottish Parliament?)

"Happy to debate this with you here or in any other forum.

Neil”

So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Azores Low

That's tonight's Atlantic weather chart from the BBC.

For anyone not familiar with the black art of synoptic weather forecasting, in the most general terms a series of tight concentric circles with "LOW" in the middle and lines radiating out with blue triangles and red circles on them such as you see near the bottom of the chart is a bad thing weatherwise whereas areas with fewer and more relaxed lines with "HIGH" in the middle like you see up near Iceland is a good thing. The infra-red satellite picture from the Portuguese Meteorological Institute (http://www.meteo.pt/) shows it more graphically. That's us in the Azores right in the middle of the swirly bit:-

The point of posting this is that tonight's chart/sat. pic. is upside down. Normally, the High Pressure and the good weather is down here and the Low Pressure (swirly, spidery bit) and bad weather is up over Iceland. So much so, that there's a semi-permanent weather feature called "the Azores High". You hear it mentioned by TV weather forecasters and it's one of the few reasons 95% of people have ever heard of the Azores.

Anyway, the fact that the weather chart has gone upside down is explaining why we've had such bogging weather the last few days and why it was looking like this out the back door yesterday:-

and like this down at the sea:-


It's not supposed to look like that when tomorrow's the first day of June, I can tell you. Now, as for the forecast, Carol asked me earlier today "Go and get the weather forecast up on the computer, will you?" So I cued up the BBC Atlantic Chart with the Portuguese Meteo Institute's satellite pic standing helpfully by in a subsidiary window for corroboration and added information - what more could someone interested in weather prediction ask for? But the response was (as it always is) "No, not that shit, I want the one with the pictures, you know - with the suns and the raindrops and clouds and things ..." Gah! Philistine!

Carol's pictorial weather website of choice also includes a predicted percentage chance of rain. Every time it predicts, say, a 75% chance and it doesn't rain, the following conversation ensues: C - "They got it wrong, it didn't rain." Me - "Au contraire, they got it absolutely right. They said there was a 25% chance it wouldn't rain and that's what happened." C - "You know what I mean ..."

I wonder what the respective percentage chances of rain on Venus and Mars are tonight ...