When people ask me, as they often do once they realize that I speak Portuguese which leads them to believe that I have relinquished at least a part of my British heart, why the British are so awful, I really struggle to find an answer, as I generally don't think the British are that awful.  I lived with them for thirty years and though there are crappy ones and not so crappy ones, as a whole they're no worse than anyone else, and in many ways they're rather lovelier than anyone else (I'm biased, OK?). 

But I had to go to the Algarve for twenty four hours and I was reminded of quite how awful the British really really are.  Awful, fat, shiny, fluorescent pink people with bad Victoria Wood haircuts and a really bad idea of themselves.  They arrive at Faro airport thinking themselves all cosmopolitan because they're wearing barely any clothes and will spend their fortnight talking down to the "natives" and don't realise that they simply become moronic fools the second they step onto foreign soil.  How hard can it be to find a phrase book to teach themselves say "OBRIGADO"... it's not rocket science, you know.... "Is the sea bass a fillet?" "sorry?" "IS THE SEA BASS A FILLET?"....I wonder if I said at the top of my voice "FALANDO DE PEIXE, É QUE VOCÊ REALMENTE PARECE UM SALMÃO, " that they would understand it because I had said it at the top of my voice?

I was watching this happy band of six lobster people (I would normally do a quick drawing, but their various technicolour shades of skin cancer merited a bit more of a painterly job) and they just looked around them with their dead eyes of contempt and ignorance. "CAN WE HAVE A CARAFE OF YOUR CHEAPEST RED AND YOUR CHEAPEST WHITE?" "The house red?" "YES, DO YOU HAVE A HOUSE WHITE?...eeee, I really must learn some of this language before next year....  THANK YOU".  Not a smile, not a kind word, not a hint of humility.  I sat next to them with my half British children who watched these horrible people with a kind of pity.  

The odd thing is that if I met them in Britain they'd probably be perfectly pleasant.   

BRITONS: STOP ACTING LIKE WANKERS WHEN YOU GO ABROAD. IT'S PATHETIC AND YOU'RE EMBARRASSING ME.

Next time: some expats who aren't much bloody better. 

I hate to be all English about this heat, but lorks, it really is 'ot.  Actually, it's not that English of me, as the Portuguese complain just as much about this heat as anyone, and they're the ones who should be used to it by now.  It's in these very hot days that I miss those British summers of anticipation of just one or two days that might go over the 25º mark and the resulting summer long sense of mild disappointment.  I used to be relieved when mid-September came, and I could stop hoping for the sun.  And I don't even care about it that much.  It must be hell for people who really pine for sunshine.  

It's the kind of weather that's only good for lolling about inside, in the dark, in underwear, picking at the bowl of delicious yellow plums (mostly only delicious to me because there's an awful lot of them to get through... I find it quite hard to get through a lot of fruit, being more of a vegetable person, but when a girl's got 10 kilos sitting in the kitchen, with another couple of hundred kilos on the trees, waiting to be got, a girl's gotta think "mmm, plums") while not giving a damn about all the things that need doing.  

Which is what I am doing, except for the not giving a damn about all the things that need doing. 

It's five in the afternoon and only now are people starting to move about outside since about eleven this morning;  cars are driving past and people are slowly plodding along the pavement. I think it's about time to nip up to the farm and pick some more plums and apricots before they squelch into oblivion. 

Luckily, I like plum jam, plum pickle, plum chutney, plum sauce, plum duff, plum pudding.  I think I may have to open a stall.  

...watching the news on SIC sometime this week, I saw ten whole minutes dedicated to asking two old ladies on a park bench what they thought about Cristiano Ronaldo having some part of his anatomy operated on and going or not to Spain... people talking about sport is mindnumbing and dimwitted already (as is people talking about most things), but old ladies talking about football is idiotic and should be punished with pain and white noise.

...BMW and Merc drivers still find it necessary to try to hump my Saxo from behind at 100kph just because they can (and undoubtedly because they have small willies)... they deserve to have their own tail pipes stuffed... with manure and potatoes.

...my passport is in the process of being renewed at the moment.  It used to be a simple matter of taking it to Lisbon, by hand, and picking it up a couple of weeks later.  Now renewals have to be sent by post to Madrid to "Iberian Passport Services" and sent back two weeks later. If I want to speak to anyone about my poor baby passport, I have to pay €1.60 per minute for the privilege. 

...the enjoyment of watching enjoyable toss like LOST is marred by watching it with someone who spends the episode saying "this is such crap, why do you watch this rubbish? who's that? and who does that baby belong to? and how did they get there? this is such crap." Similarly, my guilty (very unguilty, actually) finishing of a tub of ice cream (cherry flavour) is wrecked when the ice cream denier ("no, no, I won't have any, thanks, ever...I don't even LIKE ice cream") arrives at my side with a large spoon and a greedy eye.

...wondering why I keep finding myself in conversations with people who deny, negate, refuse, turn around almost everything I say and in a really nuts way, like they've been at the silver polish... like/tipo: ME "Gosh, it's the holidays already!" THEM "Oh, don't be like that, holidays are great".... ME "It's been a long day... two end of school parties and a dinner tonight, all on the hottest day of the year! phew!" THEM "Oh, but it's all for the children, let them have their day!"  ME "the sky is blue" THEM "no it's fucking not, you English hellhound, I hate you and I'm going to try to show you up for the arrogant, cold, British, awfulness that you really are, the sky is PINK!".  Etc.  

...the world is full of eejits.  but you knew that already.