Quiet Monday morning. The cradle of folklore The difficulty finding Sunday restaurants. Forgotten conflicts.

All was quiet on the alameda this morning. And considering how many stalls were there yesterday, there was remarkably little litter. Litter bins were full but that was to be expected. Street sweepers (of the manual kind with a large broom) were out and in some parts of the town there were mechanical road cleaners, spraying water around. 

The carpark in front of our accommodation, yesterday crammed to the gills with camper-vans, has almost emptied overnight. One of those remaining belongs to a Portuguese chess-playing friend who travels from tournament to tournament in his van. 

When we went out to lunch yesterday, there were even more stalls than when I was out and about earlier. One was set up by the Grupo Folclórico, with ladies in national costume (the gentlemen less so), models of farming implements, and large baskets of greens on sale, the kind that the Galicians call “grelos” and which are a quite important ingredient of “cocido”. Ponte de Lima calls itself ‘o berço do folklore’ - the cradle of folklore.m

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old town was heaving yesterday. There were queues outside all the restaurants we wanted to patronise. We did not relish the thought of standing in a a queue for thirty minutes in the heat. And it WAS hot. On the very edge of the old town we found a place with a few empty tables. They were running out of some menu items, a sign that they had been busy - indeed they still were busy, full of apparently local people. We had hake fillets served with what claimed to be chips but were in fact potato scallops. I really wanted a salad but, amazingly, they did not serve salad! 

There was so much food that once again we had to ask for a “takaway” - a foil container to carry our leftovers away with is. This seems to be standard procedure and appears on your bill as “um takaway” - €1.

So we had leftovers for lunch today. 

In the newspapers today, George Monbiot is warning us of the dangers of being conned into believing that livestock farming can be good for the environment. We are almost brainwashed as small children with stories of happy farms full of friendly animals, which are incidentally contributing to the carbon problems.

Elsewhere, journalist Nesrine Malik writes about the largely media-forgotten and media-ignored war in Sudan, her country. It has been pushed onto the background by events in Ukraine and, especially in the last 6 months, Gaza.

“One year ago today, Sudan descended into war. The toll so far is catastrophic. Thousands are dead, and millions are displaced, with hunger and disease ravaging all in the absence of aid. The UN has called the situation “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent history”, afflicting about 25 million people. The Sudanese people are suffering what has become the largest displacement crisis in the world.

On a political level Sudan falls, and has always done, low on the list of priorities for power brokers in the west, who have few interests in the country. They either crudely isolated it through sanctions or, after the revolution, naively and hastily tried to marshal the two armed parties to agreement and a de-facto return to a militarised, centralised status quo.”

It’s easy to put things out of mind.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!