We
have now been in Portugal for 5 days and at last have settled in to the pace
and way of life in Fuseta. To say that it is laid back is an understatement
and, as the Young Allotmenteer so accurately declared on his return from a stay
here in September, "You just can't spend money in Fuseta!".
For
example, a glass of draft Sagres or Super Bock is 0.70p in the quayside bars
and bottle of eminently drinkable red or white wine from the local shop is
£1.00 for a litre! So reassuring to know that my current Internet employers are
paying me 12½ litres of red per hour to update one of their websites.
Eating
out is also ridiculously cheap in the local bars, cafes and restaurants. A new
establishment, O Buda, has opened since our last visit serving a daily dish of
meat or fish with starter, sweet, coffee and a beer or glass of sangria or wine
for £7.00 a head!
The
weekend before we flew out, complete with hangover and Delhi belly after a
night out with The Young Allotmenteer, last month's birthday boy Digger and
respective other halves, we returned to Ipswich for the first time since my
mother died in 2010, to stay with my old friend Mike Harrison and his wife Dawn
on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
We
had a great weekend, celebrating Mike's big day in true Ipswich tradition, (i.e.
loads of beer), on the Friday night and continuing where we had left off on the
Saturday night.
In
between times, we met up for lunch with another old friend David Kindred and
his wife Anne. Mike, David, Anne and I were colleagues at the East Anglian
Daily Times for a couple of hectic years in the late sixties.
David,
who was a news photographer, was best man at our wedding in 1968 and since we
left Ipswich in 1971 our meetings have been few and far between.
Here's
a reminder of what we looked like in those days:
I'll
leave you to decide who was Rodney and who was Terry, but here's clip to remind
you of life in the 60's.
Must
sign off now and read a few more chapters of "The Brentford Triangle",
the second novel in the nine book "Brentford Trilogy" featuring the exploits of John Omally & his bicycle Marchant, Jim Pooley, Professor Slocombe, Neville the part-time barman, Norman Hartnell (not to be confused with Norman Hartnell) et al, set in the Flying Swan and the Butts Estate
allotments, written in the 80's and 90's by English humourist Robert Rankin, in
the Flann O'Brien mould.
They
were recommended to me by one of my faithful Bloggers, to whom I extend my
thanks, and are inventive, entertaining and very funny.
Here's
a snippet from the "Brentford Triangle":
"There was something very odd about
Camelus bactrimus, the Common Egyptian camel. Norman squatted on his haunches
in his rented garage upon the Butts Estate and stared at the brute. There was
definitely something very very odd about it. Certainly it was a camel far from
home and had been called into its present existence by means which were totally
inexplicable, even to the best educated camel this side of the Sahara, but this
did not explain its overwhelming oddness. Norman dug a finger into his nose and
ruminated upon exactly what that very very oddness might be.
Very
shortly it struck him with all the severity of a well-aimed half-brick. When he had been leading the thing away to his
secret hideout, it had occurred to him at the time just how easy it had been to
move. And he recalled that although he, an eight-stone weakling of the
pre-Atlas-course persuasion, had left distinctive tracks, the camel, a beasty
of eminently greater bulk, had left not a mark.
And now, there could be little doubt about
it, the camel's feet no longer reached the ground. In fact, the creature was
floating in open defiance of all the accepted laws of gravity, some eighteen
inches above the deck.
'Now that's what I would call odd,' said
Norman, startling the hovering ship of the desert and causing it to break wind
loudly - a thing which, in itself, might be tolerable in the sandblown reaches
of the Sahara, but which was no laughing matter in an eight-by-twelve lock-up
garage. 'Ye gods,' muttered Norman, covering his nose with a soot-stained
pullover sleeve."
Later tonight, at
10.00pm, we're off to Bar O'Farol for a late night blast of heavy rock from
Domingos e Amigos:
I think I could quite happily live here!
Hey Ho!
Hey Ho!
