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.

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 ...