Wagner moment

A "Wagner moment" is what we call it at 5RdA when you momentarily confuse two very different people because they have similar names. As for example Richard Wagner (19th cent. high-brow opera composer) and Robert Wagner (1970s B-movie star).

We had a great one the other night and, not for the first time (remember Robert and John Altman?), it involved the cast of Eastenders.

 
By way of background, David Wicks has made a return to the Square after 15+ years. For actor Michael French (pictured above), it must be a welcome relief from the purgatory of "Casualty" (British equivalent of ER) to reprise the role of son of the late "Fat Pat" Evans, father of Bianca (Ricky!/Strictly) Butcher and brother of - I forget his name but he was whatsname in "Heartache".

So, we were watching Easties the other night and Carol says "Do you think from the number of times he gets mentioned, they're going to bring back David's son Joe as well? You remember, he was a bit strange. Played by Paul Nicholls."

No I didn't remember. And it was one of these moments when you don't want to open your mouth for fear of making a total prat of yourself because I was thinking Dancing with the Captain ...

Eventually, I cracked and said "Wouldn't Paul Nicholas be a bit old to play Michael French's son ...?"

Aahhhhhh! Paul Nicholls! Why didn't you say?

Not to be confused with Nick Berry

Hang your head in shame if you can (a) name another Paul Nicholls hit apart from Dancing with the Captain; and (b) kill yourself now if you remember the name of his character in "Just Good Friends"

I remembered he was a bookie and her name was Pen. Carol remebered the name of the actress (using the term in its loosest possible sense) who played her was Jan something that's a first name. She's right.

Progress resumed

Fajã Grande's Avenida Marginal sounds awfully grand but in fact it's just the dirt track which winds along the rocky shoreline. And to be honest, that's all FG needs by way of a thoroughfare along the rocky shoreline because there's not much there apart from, well, rocks.

But the Câmara Municipal thinks differently. They have a vision of doing up the Avenida Marginal so it can take its place with Cannes' La Croisette, Havana's Malecon and Nice's Promenade des Anglais amongst the great seafront boulevards of the world. These ambitions were first announced as far back as July 2009 by a billboard under the the slogan "O Progresso Continua" (Progress Continues).

The timing was in no way related to the forthcoming elections to the CM and the billboard further advised that work would be starting "brevemente" (soon). But six months later - and in no way related to the fact the incumbents of the CM had won the election in the interim - Progress had stumbled:-

That was two years ago. The remnants of the sign finally blew away in a storm in March 2010. Progress had not so much stumbled as been knee-capped and thrown down an abandoned mine shaft with its head and limbs chopped off to prevent identification. Progress was floating face down in the water. Quite like the billboard. Somewhere off Tristan da Cunha, I expect, having been dragged thither by the Humboldt Current - a force which moves with the same sort of sinuously inexorable lethargy as (but perhaps with greater predictability than?) the sluggish machinations of the Câmara Municipal das Lajes das Flores.

But Thomases of the world, doubt ye not for I can report that Progress (if not the billboard) has been fished out the water, given the kiss of life and resumed! Work on the Avenida Marginal has at last begun and bits of it are looking quite promising - particularly this rather fine drystone retaining wall along the seaward side:-

Although other parts of the project are looking a bit like the border between Israel and the West Bank:-

I assume that's going to be clad with natural stonework as well. Although "assume" is a very dangerous word to use in Portugal. We regularly find ourselves "assuming" a bit like people in London in 1940 lit lights. For us, the equivalent of "PUT THAT LIGHT OUT!" is "NEVER ASSUME!".

 
So I'll rephrase that as "I hope that's going to be clad with natural stonework." I'll keep you posted.

Sailing to the Azores

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

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 ...

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 ...

... 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

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.