Back in soggy Manchester!

The sun was actually shining and the sky was mostly blue in Vigo when we got in a taxi at 8.30 this morning to go to the bus station to catch a bus the Porto airport and wend our way homewards. It wasn’t forecast to last for the whole day but it was there - a welcome break from the grey and soggy, even if only for a few hours. It is November after all!

We drove through some patches of mist or fog on our way to Porto but mostly it managed to stay reasonably fine. About time too!

As we got into the queue for boarding our Ryanair flight I reflected in the strange reversal brought about by the airline’s baggage policy changes. It used to be that “priority boarding”, permitting travellers to take two pieces of cabin baggage on board, was the short queue and “non-priority boarding”, for those cheapskates like us who stuffed all our stuff into our one permitted 10k, regulation-size little suitcase, was the longer queue. With the excuse of speeding up take-off and preventing the free-for-all competition for locker space in the cabin, Ryanair’s “non-priority” boarders can now only take one small piece of hand luggage onto the plane and it must fit under the seat. Consequently almost everyone now tries to book early enough to get one of the “priority” places. The queue sizes have been reversed. I was amused to watch people arrive and join the shorter queue only to discover that they needed to be at the end of the queue that went almost all the way down into Porto town. Of course, you could simply pay the extra fee and check a bigger bag into the hold, which ironically enough automatically gets you onto “priority”. You pays your money and you takes your choice!

There was plenty of time for queue observation as we were called into our queues and then stood for ages and ages until the plane eventually turned up. We set off at least 25 minutes late but the pilot must have pedalled really hard for were only about 10 minutes late into Manchester.

Manchester airport is just about the unfriendliest place imaginable. At least Terminal 3 is. At least for dropping off and picking up. (Although, on reflection, inside Terminal 3 departures there are fewer shops and food facilities than in terminal 1. Is this because it caters for budget airlines?) I remember the occasion when my daughter and I went to meet my Spanish sister and her daughter and grandson at Terminal 3 and got thoroughly lost. They have tried to improve matters but it is far from perfect. Today our daughter was collecting us by car and for the sake of speed, and for saving money on the charge form time spent in a vehicle in the airport compound, she suggested picking us up where she had dropped us off a couple of weeks back. Thus, confusion would be avoided as we all knew where to go.

But, no! This was not possible. Large unfriendly notices warned that this was a “drop off” zone and that if you tried to “pick up” in the “drop off” zone you would be liable to a £100 fine!!! So we phoned her and warned her that you had to go to the designated Terminal 3 “Pick Up Area”, following the directional arrows. For arriving passengers this meant a five minutes walk. Well, five minutes for fast walkers like us. With plenty of scope for getting lost. Not to mention plenty of scope for getting wet in the torrential downpour! For drivers coming to collect they had to go into the multi-storey short-stay carpark and make their way round the ground floor and out into the open area, where we had eventually found a bus-shelter like construction of metal and perspex, large enough for about half a dozen soggy pass, most of whom were on their mobiles explaining to their lift-providers where they were!! Given that Manchhester is one of the rainiest places in the country you might have though a more sheltered system could have been arranged.

Eventually we found each other and set off in the pouring rain and heavy traffic. A journey that should have taken maybe three quarters of an hour took a good two hours. Progress was slowed by standing water on the roads. Some roads were closed because of flooding. Again, one might have expected newish road systems in such a rainy area to have better drainage systems.

And we thought it had been dull and damp in the north west of the Iberian Peninsula!! We’re back!

The hummus crisis. Unknown (to me anyway) politicians. Influencers. And rich men.

When I retired from teaching and we came and spent a couple of years living in Vigo we were unable to find hummus anywhere here. My Spanish sister down in the south of the country tells me that her sister in law, yoga expert and something of an alternative lifestyle enthusiast, used to make her own, long before eating hummus was a trendy thing, but whenever I tried to explain to people here in the north what I was looking for they were mystified. Mind you, that does not surprise me given that Galicians seem to be extremely Galician in their eating habits - lots of fish and shellfish, the best potatoes in the world (in their opinion), greens (grelos) and cocido for a special treat.

Nowadays you can buy an excellent hummus from the Mercadona supermarket nextdoor to our flats. How things change! You can also buy cold coffee-flavoured drinks to take out and packs of unappetising-looking sliced-bread sandwiches turkey, cheese and spinach was the combination that caught my attention this morning. Who buys these things?

However, the UK I read is still one of Europe’s biggest consumers of this delicious dip. And now there has been a hummus crisis with supplies to certain UK supermarkets being recalled because of a salmonella scare blamed according to the supplier on contamination from “an ingredient supplied by an unnamed third party”.

Is it very childish of me to be amused by the fact that the suppliers of the recalled hummus involved in this crisis are called “Zorba Delicacies”?

And the UK now has a new Speaker in the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle. At the point when I read that Chris Bryant and Lindsay Hoyle were supposedly front runners for the position I had to look up both of them! Am I getting out of touch?

I read a lot about “influencers”, social media personalities whose instagram and twitter accounts are followed by many and their ideas presumably copied by their followers. One of the anomalies of modern life. Now parents are being warned of a fresh online threat to children from social media influencers who look real and post photos of themselves with other celebrities, but are in fact digital creations of the advertising industry. How are you supposed to work out what is real and what is not?

 “Advertising industry sources said that within two or three years, artificial intelligence would allow virtual influencers to generate their own fresh Instagram posts using machine learning to analyse data about followers and work out how best to manipulate them.”

I find this science-fiction type stuff worrying and frightening. Artificial intelligence is taking over! I am a lot happier in a world where all I have to worry about is the group of women sitting in the corner of the bar speaking all at the same time and much too loudly and excitedly. At least they are real people. 

In this article Owen Jones writes about the need to get rid of the billionaires. Not really self-made rich men at all but inheritors of wealth and exploiters of seriously underpaid workers, there are too many of them and we need to remove them  An excellent sentiment, for how many cars and dwellings does one person need? How much money does one person need?

Putting an end to greed is a fine idea but how to do it?

Back in Vigo. Photos at last!

Back in Vigo, after some preferential treatment by the driver who took us and four or five other people to Porto from Figueira. He discovered that nobody actually needed to be at Porto airport, knew that we had the chance of a bus from Avenida Aliados at 1.30 and therefore made us his priority. We caught the bus, by the skin of our teeth after almost getting locked in the loo at Aliados MacDonalds, and we were back in Vigo by late afternoon.

Time for some Figueira photos at last:

 Sunshine on the autumn colours in the trees.

Crazy Figueira pavements.

Fabulous fungus.

Casinos old and new in Figueira.

Great gateways.

Rapunzel’s Castle - aka Ingenheiro Silva’s castle. 

And work being done on the building next door to it.

Going to the lighthouse.

The Atlantic

An excellent “perfumaria” turned into a pub.

The actual eponymous Figueira da Foz - the Fig Tree on the Estuary.

Farewell to Figueira!

4.00 am. I am woken by a high pitched electronic “beeeeep”. What the ...insert rude word of choice... is that? All goes back to being quiet. I am almost back to sleep when “beeeeep”, there it is again! And again! Then I realise it must be my cheap Spanish mobile phone telling me it is out of battery. This is one of life’s mysteries. How does it manage to beep if it has no battery left? My British iPhone just quietly dies when it runs out of battery. But this thing does an annoying noise, like a demanding baby who wants feeding.

So there I was, scrabbling in my suitcase, almost completely packed for departure this morning, in the dark for charger. Only after I had located it and plugged it in did my brain wake up enough to,think that I could simply have turned the ...insert rude word of choice... thing off!

So it goes!

After yesterday’s sunny, but still blustery and windy, interlude, today is back to dull and grey and damp. But despite the rather disappointing weather, Figueira has been good, as usual.

When Phil eventually appeared, triumphant, after a long but victorious game yesterday, we went off with a friend to the Centro Sportinguista, a kind of worker’s collective restaurant we make a point of visiting, with this particular friend, at least once during our stay in Figueira. They serve a “mista de peixe”, three grilled fish, mackerel, horse mackerel and sea bream, for €9. Served with potatoes, it is such a copious dish that we suggested that maybe two portions and a mixed salad would be plenty for three of us. But no, the waitress insisted, it was their policy that everyone had to have a main course. So be it. I selected another fish dish, this time only one fish but still quite large. And we ate and ate and ate. And drank white wine. No dessert. Just coffee. A splendid feast.

Then we went back to the chess venue for the prize-giving, because even if you are not receiving a prize it is only courteous to turn up and applaud those who have won. One of the prize-winners must have been unaware of his success for he was not there to accept his cash envelope and his bit of ceramics. For all the prize-winners received ceramics of some sort. Even the local dignitaries and the arbiters and the lovely Patricia received ceramic boxes. All very nicely done.

And that’s Figueira over for another year!

Figueira - day 8.

We have a routine when Phil is playing chess here in Figueira da Foz. We arrive at the venue, he goes off to set up his things at his table and perhaps introduce himself to his opponent. Meanwhile, his assistant -i.e. yours truly - goes to the bar and asks the bemused waiter to fill the flask up with white coffee. For most of the years we have been coming here this flask-filling has gone on in the bar on the first floor. This year on the first day I was told that this bar was no onger operating and I should go to the bar on the ground floor. Okay!

So this morning, final round, we arrived. Phil went off. I went to the bar. Only to be told that I should go to the first floor as they had run out on the ground floor. Really!! In a huge, fancy hotel? (This “running out”, by the way, must be endemic, the other evening we asked for two draft beers in the hotel where we have been staying. They had run out but could get some from their restaurant, just across the other side of the carpark!) So up the stairs I went. The bar was closed. Back at reception on the ground floor, the person who had sent me upstairs in the first place explained that I had to go the breakfast room, which I duly did.

After a while someone came to help me out and filled the flask. What was my room number, she asked me. Upon which I had to explain that I am not a guest at this hotel, etc. etc. The whole story had to be related and then we had to go to the bar so that she could open the till and taken payment for the coffee. I did not have quite enough small change and offered a €10 note, whereupon she had to go and find change. Play had been going for about 15 minutes by the time Phil received his coffee!! What a palaver!

Today’s last round game is a morning game, allowing time for the prize-giving later this afternoon. It is also the first morning when the weather has encouraged me to walk out to the lighthouse. It’s a good walk but not in the rain and fog. The sun is shining today and the sky is blue. The wind is a bit fierce but not quite meriting the comment from one chap,out walking: “parece o inverno” - it’s like winter! So I walked along the boardwalks on the beach and eventually onto the causeway leasing out to the lighthouse.

It’s a good job I had my hat as the spray was amazing!

Fishermen were out in droves. Does everyone have fish for lunch on a Sunday around here.

The waves were really rolling in, carving great sculptures in the sand. Masses of people were videoing the spectacle. It’s very hard to catch the full effect in a photo.

The lighthouse itself is quite small but still looks good as the waves break behind it.

As I walked back I snapped Ingenhiero Silva’s castle, which for me will forever be Rapunzel’s castle. Work is going on at the building next door which has been gutted, leaving only the facade standing, just like in the bit of renovation work I saw earlier in the week.

Finally I went to have a look at the Figueira da Foz, the eponymous Fig Tree of the Estuary, just to check it was still there. It was! But it looked as if some radical pruning has taken place. Smaller than I remembered but still nearing some fruit. And it now sports a little stone plaque telling people what it is!

Photos of all of this as soon as I can master the technology!

Figueira -day 7.

This was going to be a blog full of photos. A whole range of stuff I have not got around to adding this week because I have still not worked out how to add photos when I post from my iPad. And yes, I know there must be a way but whatever it is escapes me.

So I wait until I get my hands on the laptop. Which is nominally our laptop but is in practice Phil’s laptop since he uses it far more than I do. Consequently I have never learnt how to use the thing properly. Oh, I can do what I want to do, such as add photos to my blog, but outside of that level of activity I am as clueless as can be.

So when I went down to reception in the hotel, where we can normally actually connect to wifi and the laptop wasn’t cooperating I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t even find “settings” so that I could ask the receptionist to assist me.

So here’s some other stuff instead. And I feel like a total numpty!

Sitting last night in the bar of the hotel where Phil is playing chess, I listened to their Saturday night Live Music offering: a competent guitar player singing covers of loads of English language songs:

Wonderwall, My girl, You’ve got to hide your love away, among others. Why so much in English? Are there not enough songs in Portuguese?

It seems we are having an election before Christmas.

Jo Swinson has been waxing optimistic on the chance of winning hundreds of seats.

“Our polling show that we are within a small swing of winning hundreds of seats, because the political landscape is so totally changed by what has happened in our country post-Brexit.”

 “Within a small swing”, hmm!? Swinging can be dangerous!

Parliament is about to be dissolved because of the upcoming election. Over the last few months parliament has been on a summer break, been prorogued and now dissolved, does it ever function?

Then there is Labour’s optimism! “McDonnell said that while Labour had initially been resistant to an election, the party was ready.

“We wanted to give the government a chance to bring forward its bill. But they curtailed the time, and so all we could say was at least let’s get no deal off the agenda, and that’s what happened. So, let’s bring it on,” he told BBC One’s Breakfast. Asked about poor poll ratings for Corbyn, he said: “So many people have tried to write Jeremy Corbyn off. They tried to write him off before the last election, and he transformed the campaign. And I think that’s what he’ll do this time. We’re up for it.””

 In the lap of the Gods, I fancy.

Figueira - day six. All Saints.

Walking past a Figueira primary school yesterday at what must have been mid-morning break time, I was struck by the noise, as usual. Nowadays children everywhere seem to play much more noisily than ever they used to. Were we all repressed by the “children should be seen and not heard” thing? Is it modern parenting? Do they watch so much on-screen noise that they feel the need to emulate or at least compete? Goodness knows.

More particularly I was impressed by the hallowe’en costumes. I was very tempted to take some photos but you have to be so careful these days. I didn’t want indignant parents and teachers chasing me down the road as if I were the wicked witch of who knows where. But just about every child was dressed up as something otherworldly: ghosts, witches, red devils, ghouls, zombies, skeletons, you name it, it was there ... Hallowe’en!

So I decided to do a little digging into what has become a whole industry of commercially produced costumes, Youtube videos of how to carve a pumpkin, Hallowe’en greetings cards and lots of people busy partying in a way we did not do 50 years ago. Anything and everything is an excuse for a party, so why not Hallowe’en? At least it’s been around a long time.

Of course it all began with the Celts and the celebration of Samhain, on 31st of October, bringing in their new year on November Ist. I doubt they called the months October and November - that came later - but it marked the ending of anything remotely resembling summer and the beginning of winter and its short, dark days and long, cold nights. And in the crack between the old year and the new, on the night of the 31st spirits and ghosts were around, getting into houses and causing mischief.

The presence of all these spirits supposedly made it easier for druids to make predictions and, of course, they needed a bit of ceremony and hoohah to go with that. So bonfires were lit and people dressed up in animal masks, some of that to frighten away any malign spirits who had slipped through the crack between the worlds of the living and the dead. Fires in individual houses were extinguished on “samhain”, to be relit with brands from the communal ritual bonfires the next morning, bringing good fortune and protection for the household for the new year.

They like to go on a lot about samhain in Galicia, claiming that their benign witches, “meigas”, are part of their Celtic heritage. Which is odd as most of the records say that the Celtic lands were mostly Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the north of France. That’s why there is a connection between the minority languages of those countries, while gallego is most definitely a Latin-based language. It’s hard to prove or disprove Galicia’s Celtic heritage and if it keeps them happy to be Celts, then let them be so.

When the Romans came along they combined samhain with a couple of festivals of their own. If you can’t stamp out local culture incorporate it into your own, give it a new name and gradually the locals think they always had your festivals. The Roman ones were Feralia, a day in late October commemorating the passing of the dead. And the second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. Her symbol was the apple, hence such traditions as bobbing for apples and peeling apples and throwing he peel over your shoulder to see if it will form the initials of the man your are to marry one day.

(I love these guess-who-you-will-wed traditions. As children, when we had plum pie we would line up the plum stones and count them - tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, richman, poorman, beggarman, thief - to predict what sort of husband we would get.
And even the skipping rhymes had romantic connotations:-

There’s a party on the hill. Will you come?
Bring your own bread and butter and a bun.
So-and-so will be there, kissing such-a-body on a chair,
O U T spells out!


There you go.)

 And then came Christianity and a bit more cultural appropriation took place. In 609 A.D. Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honour of Christian martyrs and so the feast of All Martyrs Day came into being. This was in May but when Pope Gregory III had his turn he expanded the festival to include all the saints as well and moved the feast to November 1st. And by the 9th century Christianity had largely spread to all Celtic lands and blended Celtic festivals into Christian celebrations. Even the timing of Christmas and Easter are influenced by this. I even wonder about Guy Fawkes Night - bonfires, fun and games, even a tradition of going round playing tricks on Mischief Night, November 4th. Hmmm!?

When I was a child and we built our bonfire for Guy Fawkes Night, we always had a guy to burn on the bonfire. Some children wheeled their guys around for a couple of weeks before Bonfire Night in old prams or on bogies, asking anyone and everyone for “A penny for the guy”, money to be spent on fireworks, especially “bangers” for Mischief Night. Disappointingly my mother would never allow us to do such a thing, which she regarded as parentally-sanctioned begging.

No doubt she would feel the same about “Trick or Treat”.

The whole “Trick or Treat” thing might be the result of November 2nd being dubbed All Souls” Day, with parades in medieval England. Poor people would beg for food and wealthier folk would prepare “soul cakes” to give to them in return for a promise to pray for deceased relatives. As well as that, and reverting a little to more pagan rituals, food would be left out on doorsteps on All Hallows’ Eve, now called Hallowe’en, to tempt the ghosts and spirits to feast and therefore not enter houses and maybe interfere with attempts at fortune telling and matchmaking. Pumpkins on doorsteps?

And now the dressing up to frighten off evil spirits, leaving food out to tempt them, providing food for the poor of the parish has oddly morphed into the very American “Trick or Treat” ceremony, no longer the domain of naughty big kids (we once had our front door graffitied for refusing to give a treat to a large teenager) but sanitised into mums and sometimes dads escorting their cute little kids in  cute fancy dress round the neighbourhood to ask for sweets from all the neighbours.

A curious custom at the best of times but especially now that we are so concerned about childhood obesity.

Our daughter tells us she “trick or treat”-proofed her house, by making it look as if there was nobody at home, while they sat in a back room watching Hallowe’en movies, the little one dressed as an evil fairy princess!!!