Not a Roman bridge. Eating out. The perils of big cats for pets.

 I ran past the so-called Roman bridge this morning,

The Romans were certainly here. They called the place Ossonoba. The Moors came along and ousted them in the 8th century. They called it Xelb. Then along came King Sancho in the 12th century. There”s a lot of history here.

The current stone bridge, as we largely see it today, is widely attributed to medieval reconstruction, likely in the 15th century, possibly incorporating older foundations. This rebuilding effort would have been necessary after centuries of use and conflict, cementing its importance as Silves transitioned from Moorish to Christian rule.

It seems to be undergoing work at the moment. 

And it looks better from the other side where yup can’t see the building works. The boat we can see moored on the rivet Arade is called Psicologo. I suppose a boar on the river is as good a destresser as a session with a psychologist.

Yesterday we lunched at the Marisqueira, sea food restaurant.i sampled the sopa de peixe, a fish soup almost but not quite up to th estandard of the Caçarola restaurant in Figueira da Foz.

We also had salada mista and salmon grelhado. Very good. Here are before and after pictures.

When I was growing up in Southport, at the time when Southport had a small zoo, located firghteningly close to the fairground, which must have been rather disturbing for the animals, the owner of the zoo was known to walk a lion on a leash along Lord Street. Here’s a link to a story about somoene in Germany who kept a tiger in an enclosure on her garden. It got out and terrorised the local allotment holders. In the end it was shot dead, because the police had no tranquilliser darts! I read somewhere that lions can be  quite placid, so long as they are well fed. So they can make good pets. There are stories of lions released into the wild recognising the person who rearsd them from cubs and having emotional reunions. Tigers pn the other hand are much more unpredictable. 

Regular readers know I am not a particular fan of domestic animals at the best of times. So I find it hard to understand anyone having big cats as pets.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Kites and storks. Restaurants. Thinking about mass shootings.

When we visit our son in Buckinghamshire I marvel at the red kites soaring on thermals above his house. Here in Silves I watch storks. Large birds are amazing!

It’s another fine morning here in Silves.

Yesterday we investigated the Nova Mesquite restaurant at lunchtime: another place worth a second visit or more. The photo shows it after lunch. It was full earlier of people I did not really want on my photo.

Phil had baby squid, while I had a rather copious salada rustica, with a huge amount of goats’ cheese! Very tasty!

I was reading about yet another mass shooting in the USA. It seems that two teenage boys attacked an Islamic centre in San Diego, “fully armored” with handguns and rifles, authorities said. According to the FBI the teenagers were “radicalised” online. They both died of self inflicted gunshot wounds. What a waste of young lives! 

The weapons were apparently registered to their parents, but the young men clearly had access to them. Investigators found 30 firearms and a crossbow after searching two residences in connection with the investigation. Remily said agents also seized tactical gear, ammunition and electronics.so maybe they managed to acquire more stuff online. But what are parents doing keeping dangerous weapons where their children can access them.

And the parents, or atvleast the mother of one of them, knew that their son was  disturbed and up to no good. “On Monday, the mother of one of the shooters alerted police soon before the shooting occurred that her son, a 17-year-old high school student, was suicidal and potentially armed. Officers were looking for the 17-year-old and his 18-year-old friend in a neighborhood near the mosque as they opened fire.”

Something needs to be done about gun culture in the USA.

Just another aspect of the madness of the modern world.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Out and about. Coffee. Eating out. Radio mistakes. A bit of Orwell.

 22° when I ran this morning. Pleasant! Note too hot! It’s supposed to go up to 27° or 28° later according to my weather app. 

Now I’m sitting on the balcony of our hotel room contemplating the distant hills.

I think we sussed out the coffee machine in the breakfast room this morning. Yesterday it wasn’t working and we had to use an inferior system but today the main machine was back in action with it’s confusing display of choices! Caffe latte + a shot of caffe corto seems to give a combination to my satisfaction. 

We lunched yesterday at Tasca Béné, a place we frequented quite a lot the last time we were here. One of the things we like is that it is clearly used by local people and the staff are friendly, prepared to let me practise my halting Portuguese on them. The decor is interesting too, if you igore the inevitable two television screens!

We had sopa portuguesa, which is remarkably like a typical Galician vegetable soup, followed by grilled mackerel and a variety of vegetables. We requested chips instead of boiled potatoes - what is it with boiled potatoes on the IBerian peninsula? - and were rewarded with a mountain of chips! All very good!

Here’s an odd news item:

“A radio station has apologised for “any distress caused” after accidentally announcing that King Charles had died.

The erroneous announcement was made on Tuesday afternoon due to a computer error at Radio Caroline’s main studio in Essex.

Station manager Peter Moore wrote on Facebook: “Due to a computer error at our main studio, the Death of a Monarch procedure, which all UK stations hold in readiness while hoping not to require, was accidentally activated on Tuesday afternoon (19 May), mistakenly announcing that HM the King had passed away.

“Radio Caroline then fell silent as would be required, which alerted us to restore programming and issue an on-air apology.”

I didn’t know Radio Caroline still existed. And I wonder how Charles felt when he heard that he had died.

Here’s a quotation from “The Road to Wigan Pier” by George Orwell, dating back to 1937:

“English fascism, when it arrives, is likely to be of a sedate and subtle kind (presumably, at any rate, at first. It won’t be called fascism) probably a slimy anglicised form of fascism. With cultured policemen instead of nazi gorillas, and the Lion and the Unicorn instead of the swastika.”

I wonder what he would think of Tommy Robinson and co, and the outbreak of “patriotic” flags, not to mention elderly people being hauled off by our “cultured policemen” for protesting peacefully about Palestine. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Running - of sorts. Sunshine. Technical nonsense. Disappointing restaurants, the usual chaos.

 I organised myself to go out for a run this morning. The last time we stayed here in Silves I never sorted out a running route. So this year I was determined to do so. Out of the hotel, down to the corner, across the road, over the river, along the main thoroughfare and eventually a path through a park and a children’s play area. Not ideal but satisfactory. 

It was already hot at just after 8.00. A beautiful morning - blue sky and purple blossom.

I say I went for a run but a number of people overtook me walking smartly! No wonder my Fitbit thinks I just go for walk. 

Yesterday I complained about NHS app security. Last night I tried to access mu Fitbit app. It’s just a bit of nonsense, checking if I have met the arbitrary goals for steps and exercise and burning calories. Definitely not to be taken seriously. Normally straightforward, last night it demanded that I sign in with my email address and my password. Did I even have a password for Fitbit? If I did it was long forgotten. I tried to sort out a new one - too complicated after a day’s travelling! I’ll try again sometime soon.

Middle evening yesterday, we went out looking for somewhere to eat, looking forward to some nice fish. I had  a notebook with records of places we had found last year and so we set off to we fresh our memory of where they were. We dd get rather lost in the labyrinth of little back streets but things began to look familiar. However, some places were closed, disappointingly. Lastvyear we enjoyed splendid fish at a place called the Taberna Portuguesa. Portuguesa no longer, it is now a Brazilian churasqueira, offering a selection of meat, fish, chicken, with various salad and vegetable dishes - all you can eat for €16! Finding nowhere else to our liking, this is where we ended up.the food was rasty but not quite what we had planned for a meal to celebrate our return!

So it goes.

Back in he UK we have left behind the political chaos of Starmer’s will-he won’t-he resignation, Andy Burnham running for parliament and pundits predicting the continued rise of Reform UK. That last despite Reform UK councillors resigning their posts for various scandalous reasons. And it seems the whole Brexit - Europe debate rumbles on. We are well out of it!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Do swifts and swallows make summer. Minor grumps. Travelling.

 There were swifts or swallows - I couldn’t decide which - at the millpond yesterday. Nobody seems to have told them that summer has not yet arrives in the Northwest of England. But still it was good to see them swooping low over the water.

Summer hasn’t arrived in the UK but temperatures are forecast to rise. This is because we are travelling to the Algarve today! 

Here’s a little annoyance. My phone told me yesterday that I had a new message from my GP. Please look on your NHS app, it said, in order to read the message. So I opened the app, put in my email address, added my password and then had to wait for a code which would be pinged to my phone. Finally I was able to read the message:

“Dear Ms Adams,

We will be closed for training from 1pm Wednesday 20/05/26 and will reopen at 8am Thursday 21/05/26. Our phone lines will go through to the out of hours service during this time and in an emergency please ring 999. Did you know that we are on Facebook & Instagram where we share information and updates from the practice. Thanks

Admin Team

Saddleworth Medical Practice”

Well, really! So much security checking for such an innocuous message! I know we need all these security checks in the modern age but surely there must be a way to vary the levels of security! 

By contrast, we breezed through security this morning at Manchester airport. No,longer do we need to get our electrical gadgets - iPad, Kindle, hairdryer, straighteners, in my case - out of our bags. Similarly our bags of liquids were able to remain in our bags. Amazing!

And now we sot on the airport, waiting for information about which gate to go to for our plane to Faro in Portugal. So far, it should be on time! Gate infprmation in about 40:minutes.

We had planned to purchase one or two items from Boots the Chemist. Mosquitos are a possibility in our destination. Phil has a bad reaction to mosquitos. They ignore me. So yesterday I rummaged through our supply of anti-mosquito stuff, antihistamine creams and so on.  All well out of date, in some cases dating back to-our last trip to Italy years ago. So we planned to buy stuff in Boots in the airport. Unfortunately the Boots in this terminal is closed for refurbishment! So one of our first jobs tomorrow is to seek out a  chemist in Silves! 

I can’t post this yet as I am not connected to internet. It will wait intil we reach our hotel. 

Updates later.

We had an uneventful flight but quite a long wait to disembark … into warm sunshine in Faro.

We had a car booked to take us from Faro to Silves, where phil will be playing chess from Saturday onwards. Our instructions were to go to the Vodaphone shop in the airport where a driver would be waiting for us. Minor panic! No driver! We had a difficult conversation with the  company but eventually the driver found us. He had been waiting in the carpark and had apparently sent a WhatsApp message to that effect! Sometimes I hate WhatsApp!

Alls well that ends well. We arrived at the hotel. Later we’ll venture forth for something to eat.we’re in a limbo time - too late for lunch and too early for dinner!

Life goes on. Stay sFe and well, everyone!

Ken Loach - films and opinions. Not going on a cruise. Odd expressions. Royal security nonsense.

 It’s a long time since I last watched Ken Loach’s film Land and Freedom, the story of a British communist who travels to Spain expecting a united anti-fascist struggle, only to encounter bitter ideological divisions between competing leftwing factions – tensions Loach believes remain deeply relevant today. I used to show it to my A-Level Spanish students. Strangely I now seem to have two copies of the film on DVD on my shelf. 

Back in 1995 Land and Freedom received prizes: Cannes’ Fipresci international critics prize and the Ecumenical jury prize. Now it has apparently been restored in 4K (a system for giving a sharper, clearer image using more pixels - I looked it up) and will screen in the festival’s Cinéma de la Plage strand on Tuesday, which Loach will be attending. He says the story of the fractured left is important and went a long way to the Spanish Republicans losing the Civil War. He’s been criticising Your Party:

“There was great hope when Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana joined forces; 800,000 people expressed interest – that’s three times the size of a political party,” he said. “But I’m afraid some of the behaviours were very poor and they lost a historic opportunity.”

So it goes! The story of the left!

I have almost certainly expressed my lack of enthusiasm for cruise holidays on more than one occasion. Here’s a link to an article in which Dave Schilling gives his reasons for not being a fn of such holidays. The hantavirus business further convinces me that I don’t want to be trapped on a floating hotel, swapping germs with strangers. Swapping germs on a short flight to Spain or Portugal is  quite enough for me. Another ship has been having problems off Bordeaux in France: stomach upsets rife among the passengers. However, they have allowed passengers without symptoms to disembark and presumably visit the city. I find myself wondering how many them are spreading their germs among the French population. You never know!

Our Granddaughter Number Two has the habit of saying “Bite me” when something annoys her or goes against her opinion. A curious thing to say! I googled it:

“The phrase "bite me" is an idiomatic expression used to convey defiance or dismissal, similar to telling someone to "leave me alone." It can also be a taunting remark indicating that the speaker does not care about the other person's opinion.”

I doubt that I will take it into my own conversational repertoire.

Here’s a little oddity in today’s news:

“Police officers accused of being asleep when they were supposed to be protecting the royal family at Windsor Castle have been placed under investigation.

An unspecified number of officers from the Metropolitan police’s royalty and specialist protection team are being investigated after concerns were raised, the force confirmed. The Sun, which first reported the story, said up to 30 officers were involved.

The allegations include officers leaving posts unattended and sleeping while on duty.”

Well! Who’d have thought it? Not my problem, fortunately.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!