Endings!

So, our last day in Figueira da Foz for this year. Well, actually we don’t leave until first thing tomorrow morning but that does not really count as a day In Figueira. Yesterday evening I hung around at the chess event waiting to catch the organiser to confirm our travel arrangements back to Porto. Trains are possible but complicated, especially so at present as there appear to be on-off strikes going on. But the eminently kind Miguel organises transport for people with planes to catch, aware perhaps his town is neatly placed between Porto and Lisbon.

Naturally, because I needed to talk to him, last night he did not appear for an hour or so after the games started. It’s a good job I usually have something to occupy me.

Transport organised, Miguel apologised for the weather this year, as if he were somehow responsible for that as well. In previous years we have had really fine weather, with plenty of sunny days. Indeed, last year we ended up buying sun hats and sun cream, so strong was the sun! This year we have had some bright moments but mostly the weather has been dull and grey, with occasional spells of rain as well. There have been strong winds too but at least we did not have the storms of a couple of weeks ago. I am still amazed at the sight of huge, mature trees, with trunks of two or three feet in diameter, just snapped half way up, as if they were mere saplings. Still, as Miguel said to me, at least nobody died. Cars can be replaced, roofs can be repaired and new trees can be planted. The place just looks a bit battered and bruised at present.

 And we have had some excellent meals and long chats with a Canadian friend about the state of the world, dietary oddities, good books and tv series, and almost anything under the sun. Including, of course, chess and chess players!

One consequence of the weather is that I have taken fewer photos than usual.

So it goes.

In the online newspapers the other day I came across a feature entitled: Matt Hamon's best photograph: his daughter Lur feeding a beheaded deer.

It was a nice photo of a small girl, looking rather bewildered, trying to feed a deer’s head! Hippy trippy stuff from a man who shoots animals, mostly to eat, but even so:-

“Lur is my daughter. Her name means earth or homeland, the place where you’re from. She’s five now, but she was about three when I shot this. It was in the fall and that’s a deer I had harvested. Wild game is the primary source of meat in my family. We live in rural Montana, on 11 acres in the forest. Typically, when we butcher a deer, a certain amount of the animal is left around before it’s taken to be composted. I’m not sure if Lur took the head out there to where we chop wood, but that’s where the image was shot. She was picking grass, putting it in a yogurt tub, and feeding it to the deer, not yet totally understanding death. It was around this time she started to ask questions. Are the animals asleep? Do they wake up?

Usually, when we’ve hunted an animal, the first thing we do is put a handful of grass in its mouth, symbolising its last supper. We pause and thank the animal and the landscape for this opportunity to harvest that meat. Lur may have remembered me describing all that to her. And she would have talked to the deer. She still does. What has surprised me most about Lur is seeing how she has maintained not just a respect for the natural world, but also a sense of inanimate things being alive or having a spirit. She’ll say hello to trees and goodnight to the stars and the moon.”

Each to their own, I suppose, but Mr Hamon seemed a little over the top to me.