EVIL REAL REVISITED

HAVING ONLY ON TUESDAY DECLARED my lifelong intent to never set foot in the vile city of Vila Real, it is a tribute to the powers of persuasion possessed by my wife that I found myself there once again, early last Wednesday morning. The justification was easy to understand: we travel without the burden of the modern automobile* – something which has ups and downs – and the stinking city of Vila Real is a major road (and previously rail) hub.

 

THUS WE BRIGHT AND EARLY LEFT THE HAVEN of the Upper Douro at Sabrosa once again; once again we boarded the bus with the gentleman who has been our driver on so many occasions recently, in the company of the same schoolchildren on their way to do exams as boarded the bus yesterday. Our bus driver, a man with the handlebar moustache of a master of ceremonies at a Victorian music hall performance, gave us our last feeling of comfort before we entered the hated “civilization” of sinister Vila Real.

 

WE PERHAPS DID NOT FEEL so comfortable about this gentleman last week, as we waited outside the railway station in the little riverbank town of Pinhão, where, feeling lucky after a good lunch, I left my wife stationed with the suitcase and bags and went off to a bar to try my luck at the new-fangled “Euromillions” lottery-style betting event, as well as to sneak a little glass of Port wine.

 

THE CHANCES OF WINNING THE PRIZE in this lottery are basically nil; but the chances of drinking an excellent, homemade Port Wine are one hundred percent in our favour in this region. Next to me at the bar in the tavern, having been served an enormous glass of red wine, was the man whom we soon after discovered was our bus driver. He then drove on a route unknown to us through mountains and on the edge of ravines that would probably make a Tyrolean sick looking down. Hearts still in mouths, we bade him farewell.

 

THAT WAS LAST WEEK. TODAY, HEAVY-HEARTED, we did the same as we arrived to change horses in the evil city at Vila Real bus “station”, with just over an hour to kill before our trip home to our country residence in Celorico da Beira, passing through Régua, Lamego and Viseu. The trip was wonderful, but that one hour and twenty minutes in the hated Vila Real was more than I could take.

 

MY DESCRIPTIVE AND ANALYTICAL POWERS are more than enough to relate what happened during that short time, but I would rather adopt a Brétonesque, Woolfian or Joycean cop-out style of writing to give one an idea of the events:

 

BUT INSTEAD: WE HAVE:

 

No left luggage office (which left us almost immobile)

No ramps outside the station for those with luggage

Imperfectly cobbled streets which were a chore for a wheeled suitcase

Spitting in the streets to a scale which suggested there might be some kind of municipal prize for the best spitter

Milk watered down with water at a breakfast café

Margarine instead of butter on toast

No air cooling system in the station

Mis- dis- and lack of information about bus times

Panic after our bus left empty and without us – without anyone explaining that there had been a change in plans and another one was on its way.

 

IN THE END, I CHECKED THE EUROMILLIONS results in a little tobacconists shop while we were still at a roadside café watching and listening to people spit on the pavement. Ostensibly I won nothing, but in the end, when the bus started moving, about to leave Vila Real behind, I felt like a millionaire.

 

*(My wife has her own view of life under these circumstances: www.acarlesslife.blogspot.pt . My picture shows the head offices of the local governor -- on the left) 

LAND OF GREATS

 

WITHOUT BEING FULLY AWARE of what was in store, I have found myself of late on a journey throughout the wine-rich lands of the River Douro in the north of Portugal. I have lived in Lisbon on and off for over thirty years; yet this area is a novelty for me.

 

THE TRAIN UPRIVER FROM OPORTO, then the short boat-ride to the waterside hotel at the confluence of rivers in the Porto Antigo hotel in Mosteiró, where the only sound that could be heard was the lapping of waves, the clanging of metal rope fixtures against flagpoles as the wind hit them, and then – in the late evening – the porcelain and steel noises of the waiters and cleaning staff in the restaurant below us as they washed up and closed down for another day.

 

THEN THE CHEERFUL HAPPY-SLAPPING and giggling of two couples of otters, coming to see what was going on after lights were dimmed, and to find out whether the restaurant had served shellfish for dinner today.

 

THE ORGANISATIONAL SKILLS involved in all of this was in the able hands of my good lady wife, who had wished to surprise me after almost six weeks of intense work, which is why I have not been writing of late. Despite being utterly and totally against this in my view unnecessary trip, I am grateful to her for being able to enjoy the stunning scenery, the wonderfully honest and real food, the spectacularly fresh white wines and the renewed tenderness that can only be brought about when one is away from reality and only hears otters and swallows during the early morning period when we wake up in a queen-size bed.

 

THE SECOND STAGE OF THIS TRIP was to here, where I am now, writing this, in the little village of Sabrosa, the birthplace of Ferdinand Magellan, the first captain to circumnavigate the world, and whose (ruined) house I can see from where I sit, on the second floor balcony of the Solar dos Canavarros hotel. A little further along the main road has brought me to the house of Miguel Torga, one of the most famous Portuguese poets and novelists of the last century.

 

BOTH OF THESE GREAT MEN are remembered by the local people through plaques and monuments of varying taste and quality, but there are other men of renown who hail from this region, and it would be wrong of me not to mention their names.

 

YESTERDAY MY GOOD LADY WIFE AND I took a trip to the city of Vila Real, often termed the capital of the north of Portugal. My opinions about the city of Oporto have been made clear in Sunday Mornings passim, but nothing had prepared me for the nightmare of the view of this soulless, centreless, heartless and, in the end, useless city. It appears that every local handyman, mechanic, plumber and electrician had been granted a plot of land on which they could build a construction of their choice, but never imitating their neighbour’s work.

 

THE RESULT IS THE WORST MISH-MASH of construction and urban planning I have ever witnessed over three continents. Without wishing to be didactic, I would like to suggest to anyone who reads this: Do not go to Vila Real. It appears that no one there has a clue about what is going on: we asked for directions to the centre. A young lady in a shop said she had no idea. We then found out we were less than 200 yards away.

 

THIS CITY IS THE HOME to the current Portuguese Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho. You ask him from one day to the next what his policy is and he has no idea. You ask him the way to the future, for Portugal, and he will say it depends on the situation in the future. Or not. Thus we have a leader who is a reflection of the shithole from which he comes.

 

ON ANOTHER OCCASION MY WIFE and I decided to take a little excursion to Alijó, a small town close to Sabrosa which was the base for the famous Baron de Forrester, an Englishman who helped grant such greater visibility for the Port Wine trade that he was made a Portuguese noble. His table wine is delicious and costs about £1.50 even in restaurants. The best white wine I have ever tasted.

 

BUT I WAS NOT SO HAPPY about, on this journey from Sabrosa to Alijó, passing through the little village of Maçada do Caralho, which is the birthplace of the previous prime minister of Portugal, José Pinto de Sousa, also known as José Socrates.

 

THESE LATTER TWO GENTLEMEN have probably done as much damage to Portugal and the name of Portugal as the generations of explorers, poets, writers and chroniclers did it good. I am not sure what picture I should use to show the combined effect of Passos Coelho and José Socrates, but whatever I think of will be displayed above.

NO PAIN, NO GAIN

DAVID CAMERON'S INABILITY to keep in touch with the people who have put him where he is will no doubt lead to his downfall sooner or later. As the situation is, of course, he will just have to put up with the rather considerable swathe of Conservative members who are not happy with "Johnny foreigner", "Johnny-come-lately" or even "johnnies" in any shape or form. With the ribbed ones for extra male-to-male stimulation being both taboo and unknown to these good party faithful activists.

 

YET EVEN THE MOST OBVIOUS BENEFICIARY of the blanket abandonment of the Conservative Party, particularly after dour yet dependable Jeremy "the" Paxman has today stated that the term "mad, swivel-eyed loons" was and is in regular use by the upper echelons of the Conservative Party to describe the hard-working (and misguided) chaps and ladies who spoon out the party's politics, may want to watch his rear. This beneficiary is the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage.

 

IF HE PLAYS HIS CARDS RIGHT, FARAGE will probably disturb politics in the United Kingdom in a manner unseen since 1911. Yet he will have to deal with some of the more extreme elements of a party which, after all, is built on the sharp end of The Daily Mail and on drunken discussions after closing time by people who have either no money to go on to a club or have a beer gut so large that they would feel uncomfortable; added to this are the Surrey Sect of people who have never really seen a foreigner, "unless one means that swarthy chap who does the roses".

 

FARAGE HAS TO FEND OFF the probably orchestrated attacks suggesting that Lincoln UKIP Councillor Chris Pain had described illegal immigrants as "sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-fucking, ragheads". Mr Pain has taken pains to point out that his Facebook page was hacked.

 

WHILE ACCEPTING THAT HOMOSEXUAL ANAL AND ORAL SEX could be termed "disgusting" if anyone wished to see it this way, thus allowing us to at least feel what we like in the privilege of our own minds, Farage was keen to point out that racism will not be tolerated in his UKIP Party, now two percentage points behind David Cameron and his "college kids coalition".

 

(My picture shows UKIP Councillor Chris "feel the" Pain)

SWIVEL-EYED LOONS

I AM PLEASED TO SEE that I am not the only person to have a strong opinion about the unfortunate state of the British Conservative and Unionist Party. According to both today's Times and Daily Telegraph, a close ally of David Cameron has called party activists "mad, swivel-eyed loons" who are forcing Conservative MPs to take reactionary positions in Parliament. The unnamed "ally" suggests this is ridiculous, and that Conservative MPs should follow Cameron's lead.

 

THIS PRESUMABLY MEANS that Mr Cameron's friend is unaware of the British electoral system, under which elected MPs are supposed to do what their constituents and local party activists want them to do -- that is, an MP elected for a constituency in rural England, if he or she wishes to be returned to Parliament, would be best advised to vote for a return to fox hunting, vote against gay marriage and vote in favour of leaving Europe. As well as lower taxes for the upper-middle classes, etc..

 

EQUALLY SO, AN MP ELECTED in a run-down, working class urban area in the north of the country would be wise to support a robust social policy. What, I wonder, is wrong with that?

 

MANY CONSERVATIVES ARE UPSET with Mr Cameron's "modernising" (ie, leftish) policies, and would like a return to stronger, more traditional values, with over half of Conservative MPs voting against the government last week in Parliament. This obviously means that Cameron will have to get his act together and behave more like a Tory, or he will be facing unemployment at the next elections.

 

(My picture shows David Cameron and George "Boy George" Osborne showing contempt for the swivel-eyed loons who are members of their party)

FARAGE TAKES THE HIGH ROAD

IT IS BY NO MEANS A SECRET that I would vote for Britain to leave the European Union in any referendum even though I have never voted in any elections in my life and feel in no way political. The fact is, however, that I am attracted by Nigel Farage's UKIP party for two reasons.

 

THE FIRST IS THAT THEY PROMISE to leave Europe and put Britain back where it should be; ie splendid in isolation and with close ties to Switzerland and our former colonies, including the United States of America. How this could be worse than a financial and economic agreement with the likes of Slovenia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Romania I fail to understand.

 

THE SECOND REASON IS THAT THEY appear to be a group of well-minded buffoons. Indeed Mr Farage himself is the closest I have seen to a likeness of Hugh Laurie when he played the public school-educated upper class twit Bertie Wooster alongside Stephen Fry's Jeeves.

I AM SOMEWHAT DISTURBED, however, at the fact that some sections of society are happy to call him 'racist'. Proof of the fact that this is not true is his recent visit to Scotland, and his willingness to accept the Scots within a future 'independent' Britain. The very fact that his party is charitably called the United Kingdom Independence Party is testimony to this.

 

YET I AM NOT QUITE SURE he will be making an early return to Scotland. On his well-intentioned trip to talk to the angry hordes of spittle-mouthed Picts he was attacked to the point of having to be escorted by two anxious policemen and barricaded in the Canon's Gait pub 'for his own safety' as the anti-English racist natives were far more than restless.

 

I AM SURE THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME that Farage has enjoyed a stay-behind, but the serious point here is that the Scots have no idea what their future will be. It may well involve being independent from a Britain that is no longer in the European Union, which would leave them with a future sharing poverty with Iceland.

 

BUT MY OWN HOPE IS that Britain leaves the Europe and Scotland gains its independence but remains in the hated European Union, just like the idiots in the Irish government ended up doing. Scotland would go straight into bailout territory, particularly after the oil-rich Shetland Isles vote to reclaim their independence or join Norway under the buy-out clause established by Christian I of Norway in 1469. Then we will see hordes of Scots taking to the low roads again and looking for work.

THERE AIN'T NOTHING LIKE A DAME

IT WOULD BE SOMEWHAT AMISS of me to allow a state ceremonial occasion, such as the incinerating of the last remains of Britain's most important prime minister of the XX century, to go without a fitting word of recognition. And thus, as I feel it my duty to do so, I would like to add my words to those of so many who have committed key to screen over the last, upsetting days.

 

IN A GOOD WORLD, prime ministers would die in office, whether killed by lunatics who had ill-will toward them, or due to old age, having been good, decent, knowing and sensible folk for a long time. Dame Margaret Hilda Thatcher never had the chance to choose her end, having been beaten into submission by the very people she had promoted to power. This is a matter that those who have strong feelings on this issue should consider.

 

IN THE MEANTIME I THINK I SHOULD suggest, for those who have short memories, or who never go to the musical theatre, an excerpt from "South Atlantic", the famous Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II production, with its book by Joshua Logan:

We got sunlight on the sand,
We got moonlight on the sea,
We got bilberries and raspberries
You can eat them off your knee,
We got volleyball and ping-pong
And a lot of dandy games!
What ain't we got?
We ain't got dames!

GEORGIE PUDDIN 'N' PAYE

 

GORMLESS GEORGE 'GIDEON' OSBORNE, our dear and beloved Chancellor of the Exchequer, has admittedly been somewhat at a loss to endear himself to the great unwashed, an issue which is relatively unnecessary in his Cheshire constituency where the majority of voters favour footwear of the green-Wellington kind and appreciate his pig-snorting laughter version of 'haw-haw-now-lets-see-where-the-tottie-have-got-off-to-and-give-them-a-bit-of-a-feeling-up-the-bum-before-the-hunt' sort of "chappish" behaviour. There is indeed nothing to be scoffed at in this.

 

HOWEVER, IN THE BIG, BIG WORLD of today's politics, David Cameron, who used to be his friend at university and is now his boss at the new college they all frequent, occasionally wishes for George to 'show a bit of a leg', 'muck in', 'knuckle down' and 'get in there' with the working classes so that these unfortunates may like him, and -- although this is a long shot for Osborne -- want to re-elect the Conservative Party as the government.

 

OZZIE'S MAIN DIFFICULTY in touching base with the working class is his voice. His voice and his accent. His voice, his accent and his pronunciation. His voice, his accent, his pronunciation and his intonation. His voice, his accent, his pronunciation, his intonation and his delivery.

 

WHILST IN THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT the above attributes may fast-track him for a position of some note -- as it has obviously done in the academic world -- these attributes are a drawback when talking to 'real' people. Today Mr Osborne gave a speech to supermarket staff in Kent, and appeared to have undergone some sort of radical change in the language and style with which one associates him.

 

BEYOND THE DROPPING OF THE 'T's and the rather clumsy introduction of glottal stops (i', instead of 'it', "that's better inn'it"), there was no real incursion into Estuary English, and one does tend to imagine that if one ventures into these fields one should really go prepared. I suspect that even Georgie's political advisors, should such creatures exist, have no idea about the difference between the type of relaxed English spoken by supermarket workers in the south of England and the English spoken by gangsters of Italian descent in New York City in films from the 1970s. Thus we had to hear Osborne stating that things would be reduced by 'twennny percent'. And stating that the coming fiscal and tax policy may be "wannadebest" of recent years. Can no one help poor, misguided, inarticulate urchins like George? Surely education is the best policy?