Equal Opportunities

In yesterday's post about recolha seletiva, I described Flores as an island without newspapers. That's not entirely true. There are, in fact, two monthly newspapers, As Flores and O Monchique. I have to confess I don't buy them with any regularity because you can catch up with news more easily online via Forúm ilha das Flores. And, as regards the non-news articles, I don't find Portuguese an easy read due to their habit of writing in such long sentences that you've forgotten how it began by the time you get to the end. (You think I'm bad?)

However, I came by a free copy of April's O Monchique because José Antônio at the shop used it to wrap a wine glass I'd bought to replace one that got broken (and which, of course, I am precluded by current regulations from recycling). I was intrigued to note from this that, as well as recycling, equal opportunities have arrived on Flores in the form of the annual Miss Flores competition having become, for the first time (I think), Miss & Mister Flores.

According to the report, nine raparigas (girls) and five rapazes (guys) took part and there are 107 photos of them to be seen on Facebook. Below are twelve of the competitors pictured against the backdrop of Flores landmark, the basaltic columns of the Rocha dos Bordões:

Picture credit - Associação Jovens

The winner of the coveted title of Miss Flores was Tamara Sousa:-

Picture credit Associação Jovens

Picture credit Associação Jovens

While the inaugural crown of Mister Flores was carried off by Gustavo Alves:-

Picture credit Associacao Jovens

The grand final of M&M Azores is on Terceira on 27 June. I'll need to break another glass in late July to find out how the Flores team gets on. Let's hope there's a Flores story from the event to report - muito boa sorte pessoal.

Picture credit  Associacao Jovens

Recolha Seletiva

Q. When is glass not glass?
A. When it's a glass.

Let me explain. You know how men don't read the instructions (whereas women read the instructions and then ask their husbands how you do it anyway)? Well I was caught red-handed on this front last week for having blithely imagined that the glass pictured above (free gift with bottle of juice hence urgent need to dispose of the wretched thing) would be eligible for removal on the glass collection day of the new recolha seletiva (literally "selective collection") regime in place on Flores and whisked off to the brand new Centro de Processamento e Valorização Orgânica de Residuos das Flores so big it can be seen from space.

 
As is no doubt the international standard, it's paper in the blue bucket, glass in the green and plastic and metal in the yellow. Glass and plastic/metal is collected every Wednesday whereas paper is every first and third Thursday of the month (not too much of a problem on an island with no newspapers). Collection of indifferenciado organico ("miscellaneous organic") - i.e. potato peelings - continues to be every Monday and Friday.

Anyway, what we've noticed is that the vast majority of our cack is plastic and metal (once a week) whereas very little of it is indifferenciado organico (twice a week) on account of how Carol composts the potato peelings. Don't for a minute imagine from that we're some sort of hippy-dippy, tree hugging, Independent reading, lah-di-dah, namby-pamby, lefty-liberal, don't send our children to school (if we had any which thank heavens we don't) eco-warriors - very far from it. It's just that Carol thinks the compost is good for her tomatoes. Personally, I think compost is like spinach - you start out with great armfuls of the stuff but once it's cooked, you're left with a teaspoonful and wonder why you bothered. But I digress, where was I?

Oh yes - I was somewhat taken aback last Wednesday when there was knock at the door and the chap who's second in command of recolha seletiva pointed out that there had been extracted from our cack and left neatly on the pavement (I wish I'd had the presence of mind to take a picture) the glass at the top of this post along with a bunch of plastic flowers (stiffened with metal wire) and a metal grill thing. He pointed out (perfectly politely and slightly apologetically) that these items should be put out with the indiferenciados organicos (potato peelings) on Friday.

I was so astonished, I didn't argue but when I got back inside and consulted the instructions (above) - which I hadn't bothered to read - I found the chap was quite right. It's only plastic and metal embalagens - wrappings - which are allowed (hence the plastic flowers and grill being vetoed) and specifically excluded under the vidro (glass) section are copos - glasses.

Does anyone know the scientific reason for a drinking glass being any less eligible for recycling than a perfume bottle (specifically included in the instructions)? I wish now I'd gone along to the sessão de esclarecimento which was held in the casa de povo (village hall) on the day the recycling was rolled out to find out.

I have to say, we'd taken to recolha seletiva with fair gusto but this set-back has sort of inhibited us a bit. Only today, I had to rebuke Carol for having put a plastic dishwashing brush in the plasticos e metais bucket instead of the indiferenciados organicos - it's plastic alright, but not a wrapping, you see? I wonder if there have been any empirical academic studies about whether the pristine purity of a melange of Coke tins and shampoo bottles is really so badly tainted by the odd dish brush (or plastic flower) that it's worth disheartening folk in this way and risking distracting them from the cause?

  

IKEA comes to Flores

When I used to live in the Athens of the North, I vowed never to go back to IKEA after the time I got caught in the returns queue behind a woman who'd bought a lighting solution FUKKA by mistake and wanted to swap it for something else.

The item in question was a light bulb and it reminded me of the scene in Blackadder about potatoes which goes:-

Blackadder - "What's this?"
Baldrick - "I'm surprised you've forgotten, it's a potato"
Blackadder - "I haven't forgotten, it's a rhetorical question."
Baldrick - "Nah, it's a potato."
Blackadder - "Look! To you it's a potato, to me it's a potato! But to Sir Walter-bloody-Raleigh, it's more women than his tongue can handle."

So, to you it's a light bulb, to me it's a light bulb, but to IKEA-bloody-Home Furnishings it's an ambience option FRIGGIN-BASTAD.

It's a measure of how far we've come, then, that when we had a day to kill in Lisbon last December, did we spend it culture-vulturing round the Torre de Belem or the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos? Or get on a bus to take in the architectural delights of Sintra? Did we co-co, we got in a taxi to go to an industrial suburb called Amadora wherein resides Lisbon's IKEA.

IKEA, Amadora - visible from space

This is due to the fact that, although the best iron-monger's in the world is Avila, Fraga e Cie in Sta Cruz das Flores and Helder and his wife (I'm sorry I don't know your name!) at "the yellow shop" carry a very good stock, there's no getting away from the fact that the shopping for household items opportunities on Flores, an island of fewer than 4,000 people, are necessarily limited. Hence even I find it quite engaging spending an afternoon browsing storage solutions WANKA and dining options FARTTE.

There were two highlights of the trip. The first was the pneumatic wooden buttock in a glass case (complete with button to press like in a museum to set the mock up steam engine running) demonstrating how robust the world famous IKEA Poang chair is:-

The other highlight was the display they have of a complete mini-apartment with sleeping, living and kitchen areas and lav all crammed in to something like 30 square metres ("living option SHAGGIN-PAHD"). It was fantastic and we were really choked we had a hotel room booked because I would have liked to stay the night there and perhaps invited some people round for supper.

Now you may be thinking this is all noses up against the window for us on the basis how would we get this stuff out to Flores anyway, considering we're usually hard up against the 20kg baggage allowance of SATA (that's an Azorean airline, not an IKEA product). We did, in fact, use up the remaining 100 milligrams of our allowance by buying on the day - of all things - a doormat (shoe wiping solution SAAD). But in reality, we were on a fact finding mission because there is a way to bring IKEA to Flores.

He's called Manuel Viana, the owner of a company called SAIrei, Lda. The SAI stands for Serviço de Apoio Insular which translates as "Island Assistance Services". Manuel's business is sourcing stuff on the mainland which you can't get on the islands and sending them out to you. Thus, we got our car from Manuel (who speaks very good English). We basically e-mail him an order from IKEA and he goes and gets it and then goes to the port at Lisbon and puts it on the ship which comes out here. Also car parts - the glass of the wing mirror got cracked and, not surprisingly, these aren't kept in stock on Flores but it's no problem because you e-mail Manuel and he'll get it and send it out. His own fees are very small (although the carriage, which is out of his control, is always a consideration but that's just part and parcel of island life we have to accept).

So that's all by way of a long introduction to the fact we had an IKEA delivery from Manuel yesterday which for Carol was like opening the presents on Christmas Day

I personally can't get too excited about cushions (bottom solutions SOFTI) or towels (cleft options SKRATCHE) but as Carol so appositely points out, a wife HAAPI is a husband less GRUMPE.

How TROO.

PS, I am rather cock a hoop with my LED (=light emitting diode, not an IKEA product name) reading light you clip to the headboard of the bed. Projector c/mola JANSJO. A snip at 9,99€. I'm finding I'm remaining awake at night reading because I can due to spouse option TORN-FASE not complaining about big light BRITE remaining on.

      

Athens of the North

Brilliant line in this week's Economist:

"In the 18th century, Edinburgh’s fine architecture and its Enlightenment role earned it the nickname “Athens of the North”. It would be a shame if that name became apt again for less positive reasons."

That may need some explanation for non-British readers.

The Economist is a British weekly news magazine that believes everything from climate change to global poverty can be solved by democracy and the unrestrained application of the free market. Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland, the autonomous regional government of which is now dominated by the Scottish National Party (SNP). It wants to hold a referendum about whether Scotland should secede from the United Kingdom. The Economist is agnostic about Scottish independence except in so far as it affects the economies of Scotland and the remainder of the UK (England, Wales and Northern Ireland). Athens is the capital of Greece, a country that's economically up a certain creek without a certain instrument.

A central plank of the SNP's economic argument for Scottish independence is that the UK's oil reserves in the North Sea are all off the coast of Scotland so would become Scottish in the event of independence. The British government's riposte is that, if you're going to play at that juvenile sort of game, you can have the Royal Bank of Scotland's £187 billion worth of toxic assets we (the British government) picked up the tab for in 2008. And we'll withdraw the Royal Navy's atomic submarines from their base in Scotland leaving an unemployment blackspot that would make a nuclear winter look quite cosy by comparison.

Again for non-British readers, that's the leader of the SNP, Alex Salmond. He's got up to look like MacBeth, an 11th century king of Scotland about whom a famous English playwright, William Shakespeare, wrote a play. A scene in the play has MacBeth unable to wash his hands of the blood of his predecessor ("Out damned spot") his ambition compelled him to murder.

Back to the point, who would bank on North Sea Oil nowadays? At current oil prices, the recoverable reserves in the North Sea are almost finished while the cost of decommissioning the rigs and pipes and what have you has only just started. If all the kit isn't humanely disposed of, it will start washing ashore in Arbroath and you'll have dirty Greenpeace types setting up camp and piddling in St Andrew Square again. The economics of North Sea Oil look like this:-

As I understand it, the British government has agreed to bankroll decommissioning through tax breaks so the oil barons are frantically dragging their rusty old toot out of Scottish waters as fast as they can. It's all totally x + y = 0 unless the price of oil soars due to another "oil shock" such as Israel nuking Iran. That probably explains why you won't be able to get over to Rothesay this summer - Salmond's got the entire Caledonian MacBrayne fleet patrolling the Straits of Hormuz waiting for the balloon to go up (although doubtless there will be a disappointment when the MV Isle of Eigg's ramp doesn't fit the slipway at Bandar Abbas any more than it does at Eigg).

Mind how you go with these nukes now, Lachie!

The more serious point is that, although "Scotland's oil" has flowed into the UK's treasury, Scotland has been receiving a disproportionately high share of funding from London as a result. Do we really want to swap an annual triple-A rated cheque for the dubious privilege of a flutter on the spot markets? I don't. 

Of course Fat Eck isn't putting all his eiggs in the oil basket. Oh no! Due to Scotland having totally bogging weather, he's pinning a lot of hope on Scotland becoming "the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy". (This quote explains why the SNP has become known in certain quarters as "the House of Ibn-Salmond".) You mean all these windmills and that wave machine off Ultima Thule that keeps breaking down ...

The picture above is of a landmark in Edinburgh. I can't remember what it was supposed to be for but it was never finished and it's known as "Edinburgh's Disgrace". I do know it was modelled on the Parthenon. Be careful what you wish for ...

Farolim

If you've been tuning in recently for an update on progress with the Avenida Marginal or perhaps to hear how the first week of the Recolha Seletiva went (remarkably well!), then sorry I've been off air but it's been because I haven't had a camera to illustrate recent developments.

Anyway, I've now got a new camera - a Canon Powershot SX220 (pictured above), since you asked. It's got 14x optical zoom which is camera geek-speak for "my reproductive organ really is quite large". Though not as large as anybody with 18x optical zoom. But thank heavens I didn't let Carol persuade me to get a gay pink one (the colour being her only input) or I'd be remaining in therapy for quite a few months to come.

 Anyway, how did I get on to that? Oh yes! I was out with the new camera for the first time today and unleashed all 14x of its optical zoom (Ooh! Suits you, sir!) and took the picture below of the farolim at Fajã Grande. I thought it turned out quite well considering I was about 3 miles away from it at the time. That's an exaggeration - I was about 100 metres away but nevertheless ...

The thing is, there's a Portuguese word for a farolim (it's farolim) but not an English one. You wouldn't call it a lighthouse because a lighthouse (farol in Portuguese) is one of these:-

Skerryvore

I'm not sure what you'd call a farolim in English and I'm a nautical cove as well and generally do know things like that. I think you'd just call it a "light". I can imagine non-nautical coves (and covettes) calling them "beacons" but that's not a maritme term of art. Just like there's no such thing as a "rope" at sea, there are only warps, halyards, sheets, braces (as in "splice the main ~"), painters - want me to continue?

But how interesting that Portuguese has a word that is effectively "lighthouse-let". And if you go to the excellent Linguee website (which is an online dictionary but much better because it gives you actual bi-lingual examples of words in context), you find that farolim can also be tail-lights whereas farol is headlights (although that could be Brazilian because they tend to refer to headlights as médios here).

Anyway, for those not so interested in nautico-linguistic trivia and more interested in the Avenida Marginal or recolha seletiva, I will report thereon shortly and leave you meantime with these pictures. Because I can.

 

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.