Sex and Bowls and Rock and Roll
by Alex Marsh aka JonnyB

Did you ever watch Northern Exposure in the nineties, and think "I'd like to live there in that hostile and cold, moose-filled place with those few and quite mad people"?  Or watch Hamish MacBeth and fall inexplicably in love with Robert Carlyle and his dimwitted villagers?  At a stretch, did you not entirely want to have the whole of Ballykissangel electrocuted with Dervla Assumpta Kirwan because you might like to move there and you'd need someone to be manning the pub?

Well, I have fallen for a little village in Norfolk, where there's a pub and a bowling team, and an 18th century cottage, split down the middle, where, in a shared back garden some chickens live.  In one half of the cottage lives Tony (who is short) with his wife and kids.  In the other lives Alex and his long suffering LTLP (long term life partner) who puts her head in her hands quite a lot and they have a very special bookcase.  This is where Sex and Bowls and Rock and Roll is set.

This little Norfolk village — the name of which we will never ever know, lest it befall the same fate as the village that was the protagonist of Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence" and gets over-run by twots in Volvos — is just like Ambridge in my head (only the interior of the pub is unlike The Bull and the villagers are far less preachy about sustainable farming) and I would like to live there if it weren't for the fact that I already live in a village that twots would like to descend upon in their Volvos. 

I laughed out loud and sniggered and grinned all the way through Sex and Bowls and Rock and Roll.  I never laugh out loud when I'm reading, rather like the fact that I don't drink on my own... although now I've discovered that laughing out loud on my own at chickens and lawn bowls and really quite brilliant musical careers is quite fun, I may start drinking alone too.  It is just really, really funny, gently funny, sad funny, hapless funny, and recognisably true funny.  Alex's account of being a London-leaving newcomer with a new job title of househusband and being a bit hapless and shit at housework resonates with this London-leaving newcomer housewife who is quite hapless and shit at housework.  It also made me feel extremely homesick for so much of England, such an English village, such an English story, such an English use of the English language. 

I love this book, loved it from the first page to the last and I shall be reading bits of it to those among my Portuguese friends who still need to be schooled in what is utterly brilliant about the English.

Bloody bravo, Alex.

There's an important thing in Portugal.  It's called lunch.

Yesterday I went on my annual trip to near Viseu to pick up my sogra* from the "termas" at the end of her two week stay.  "Termas" are hot spring spas, dotted about the country, much like Bath Spa, but still functioning as a spa and not as a railway station.  The "termas" and the experience of the "termas" is like something from another century... but that's for another day. 

I left home at seven thirty yesterday morning.  I had to be there by midday and with the inevitable stops ordered by my bladder and a quick trip to a shopping centre in Coimbra to grab something for my sogra, there was no time for meandering about, taking pictures, something I always swear I must do every time I drive anywhere beyond Lisbon.  Portugal never ceases to amaze with its beauty.  Decadence, yes, squalor, sometimes, but underlying all that, beauty.  

It was about 35ºC yesterday, overcast and humid... but I luxuriated in my air conditioning... something I wouldn't be able to use on the way home.  After the termas' treatments, my sogra can't get cold or draughty for at least two weeks, or the treatments will have been a waste of time (I really DO have to look into the science of the termas one of these days) and air conditioning is specifically a cold and draughty utility.

Every time she visits these termas, her special treat at the end is to go and eat leitão in her favourite leitão restaurant in Mealhada, which is just north of Coimbra.  So much of Portugal to see in one day.  I left home, drove up the ghost motorway that is the A13 (don’t use it, it’s MINE) to Santarém and Almeirim (birthplace of sopa de pedra), then up to Coimbra (birthplace of Coimbra University), then across to Cabanas de Viriato (birthplace of Aristídes Sousa Mendes, look him up), then back to Santa Comba Dão (birthplace of Salazar, look him up if you really know nothing of Portugal), through Luso (birthplace of more hot spring water) and finally Mealhada (the birthplace — and deathplace — of tiny cooked baby pigs). 

When I was growing up, the suckling pig featured in every illustration, film or cartoon that involved a banquet; that small pig on a silver platter, sitting on a bed of lettuce and, of course, it had an apple in its mouth.  I never saw one.  When you’re growing up you just hear the name.  It’s only when you’ve already grown up that it suddenly occurs to you that THIS IS A TINY ICKLY BABY PIGGY WIGGY!

Coming down the hill from Luso, another spa town, a beautiful one that is half preserved in aspic, you start to see restaurants with pictures of either happy rounded cartoon pigs or photographed dead and roasted ones — unappealling, aesthetically speaking — until you arrive in Mealhada, the mecca of the tiny roasted baby piggies, where it seems there is nothing to eat except those roasted baby piggies.   Everywhere you turn there’s another sign for “Leitão da Bairrada”, Bairrada being a name for this region of mid Portugal, the beiras.  The bigger restaurants along the main road have their own roasting ovens at the back of the restaurant… this is industrial scale roasting of the tiny baby piggies, with huge chimneys black with burnt pig grease smoking away above the buildings, an uneasy sight.

We went to the one we always go to.  It’s how the Portuguese side of this family rolls.  I pulled into the car park at 1.20pm and if there’s one thing that the Portuguese are punctual for (it is just the one thing) it is lunch: the place was already heaving.  Yesterday was August 31st.  This means it was the last day of the holidays and people may have just been paid.   As I did a quick tour of the car park,  20 more cars drove in behind me.  The car park was already full, but I waited until those who didn’t just give up (those who maybe didn’t belong to families who have to go to exactly the same place, year in, year out, and went to try somewhere else) had improvised an extra line of cars down the middle.  I improvised with them. 

Once through the door it was confirmed that the place was extremely full.   We saw a waiter in a big white apron scuttling past, saying to a bunch of about eight people "follow me, follow me".  We didn't follow him, because I didn’t think he was talking to us.  My sogra said who cares if he’s not talking to us.  But in our deliberating we missed the man-in-the-white-apron-train.

We went to ask at the bar.  “When you see a waiter in a white apron, follow him”.  oh.

We waited.  Every minute more and more people came in the door.  Hungry looking people.  There was no way that an orderly queue could form.  Firstly it is the wrong shape of restaurant for that, secondly, this is Portugal — people queue, but “orderly” is not a word in Portuguese — so we had to depend on the kindness of strangers that might concede that we were first, because there was leitão involved, because waiting for other people to be seated first would be a wait too long, because there was hot, crispy leitão with pepper sauce involved.   “We” were all hungry for our leitão.  I say “we” because I had become part of a crowd, a small mob of gently jostling Portuguese people, with the slight anxiety that they might not get their lunch within the next two minutes.  I don’t do being part of a competitive jostling crowd very well and I find clamouring for one’s lunch when one isn’t in a disaster zone quite undignified (I do do undignified, of course, but only when it’s fun).  My sogra was doing the talking.  Yes, we were here before the rest of you lot, she said, as nicely as possible.  I was uncomfortable.  For a few moments I pretended I wasn’t there and lost myself in twitter on my phone:

"Oh god. Leitao. Too many people waiting. Relative who WANTS baby roast pig. Losing myself in twitter."

Downstairs there must be a good 150 covers, upstairs another 100, and almost all covered by hungry baby pig eating people.  But we were lucky, it was a Tuesday and there were a few tables left upstairs.

Yes, we want leitão, said my sogra and we waited for a few minutes for our leitão to arrive, as the first rain in weeks started to fall outside, on the edge of what promised to be a spectacular thunderstorm, one that we had been driving away from for the last hour.  It was still tremendously hot, and fuggy enough to kill you, not the kind of weather, you’d think, for eating steaming hot roasted pork.

Within minutes the leitão arrived.  A dish of four or five large hunks of pork, a dish of home made crisps (i.e. the greasiest kind), a vinegary green salad, a sauce boat of pepper sauce and enough coke to replenish the half litre of sweat I had lost in the last hour when I couldn’t have the air conditioning on and only the merest crack in the window.

I’m kind of ambivalent when it comes to leitão.  It would be entirely ludicrous of me to get sentimental about it being made of tiny baby piglets, when I’m not SO sentimental about eating its mother, and I tend not to think like that…. but the fact that it’s a tiny baby animal makes it harder to disguise its animalhood, when you can be holding its entire leg or ribcage in your hand (and it’s not a chicken, who can get sentimental over a bird? not me, that’s who).  Soon after I arrived in Portugal, my father in law was once brandishing the leg of something as he spoke over lunch; picture Henry VIII and a big turkey leg that you always see (were there even turkeys this side of the Atlantic by then?).  It looked like that.  But when I got closer, I saw that this leg had tiny teeth and some eye holes.  It was half a head of a tiny baby roasted piglet. 

Roast pork is one of the best things in the world to eat.  The crackling from a proper well grown pig cannot be bettered.  The crispy skin of a tiny roasted baby piglet is something like that, but as thin as a wafer and not half as satisfyingly crunchy.  Similarly, the flesh on a proper pig, when properly cooked, is heavenly… but the meat of a leitão, especially when fresh out of the ominous looking ovens, is kind of slimey.  It’s okay, but I’m not crazy for it. 

What I AM crazy for is the pepper sauce.  On an industrial scale, I don’t know how they go about it, but when a friend of mine roasted a wild boar-black pig hybrid baby pig in his bread oven (now that WAS delicious, nothing to be ambivalent about), he baked it with ground pepper and salt, large quantities of both, sewn up inside the body cavity of the pig, making a natural sauce when it was unsewn once roasted.  This is a pepper sauce that really tastes of black pepper as well as packing the spicy heat at the same time.  The sauce in the restaurant is almost as good, but so salty that you can’t eat much.  I dip my incredibly greasy crisps into it.  I pour it over my green salad.  I dip my bread into it.  It is good. 

There was a chunk of leitão left at the end.  The waitress was about to clear it away when my sogra asked why I wasn’t going to eat it.  I replied that I may well puke if I ate another thing.  In that case, it’s a crime to leave it behind, she said, and asked the waitress to bring her a piece of bread to stick it in and take home for her dinner.

We left at three o’clock and when we got home three hours later (including several rehydration stops and no air-con on the way, before the more macho car part of you says “ugh! How can it take three whole hours to get back to Azeitão from Mealhada! Waaaah waaaaah! Waaaaaah!”) the large hunks of leitão that we had bought at the take out part of the restaurant were still hot, wrapped up in their wax paper, and making the car stink of warm pork. 

The kids had leitão for supper.

I shall eat it again this time next year.


*sogra = mother-in-law.... it's quicker to type... fewer hyphens.

just SOME people.

Now, shall we have a sweepstake on how many people will die on the roads of Portugal this weekend?
How many paraplegics and quadraplegics created?
How many drunks/uninsured/unMOTed caught by the 1700 moustachioed GNRs they've announced that there will be "fiscalizar-ing" the roads.

This weekend is the main going home weekend...  people coming home and people going home.... and there will probably be, as usual, carnage.

It occurred to me the other day that maybe the still disgraceful state of driving in Portugal is the fault of all of us living here.  How often do you shout at stupid drivers  from the safety  of your car?  Or shake you head in dismay reading the headlines in the paper everyday about road accidents

Do you have friends and relations who drive like morons?  Do you dare to tell them to slow down?  I don't. 

And what about the drinkers?  Do you offer to drive them home? Take their keys away? I don't.  I'd like to.  There some people I know who I'd like to call the police about, so drunk do they drive.  But then I'd be an antisocial pariah.

Some time in the eighties in Britain, drink driving became the really antisocial habit that it is now.  There are still people who do drive drunk, of course, but it's mostly just scumfucks and good old fashioned alcoholics who do it.  It's not embarrassing to say "I'm driving" and decline a drink.  It's not unheard of for friends to take the keys from each other, to prevent them from driving.   This social turnaround is still to happen here.  There have been plenty of campaigns but it doesn't seem to stick; everyone must know by now that drink driving is stupid, illegal and horribly dangerous, but we ALL know people who do it. 

(And sticking a load of police or GNR on the roads doing road side stops doesn't work very well.  Everyone knows where they are because they tell each other, and as soon as they're out of sight they just speed up again).

So, are the rest of us to blame for not bugging the shit out of them? I think we are.

Today I jumped back into the Portuguese blogosphere with ten inky toes and joined Pegada where I'll do... er.... stuff... stuff like I do here, but more Portuguese-ish.

Also, I did a pretty header for my friend De Olhos Bem Fechados.

I'm in danger of getting back to some serious overwhelming self indulgent life involving bloggery.  Bye bye washing up.

A drawing I found in the archives from 2004, because Portugal never learns and with yesterday's fog and drizzle it was inevitable that there would be a 100 car pile up with 6 dead, and 24 seriously injured, because everyone here knows better and knows that they can drive just as fast as usual when the roads are wet, or they are drunk, or their vehicle isn't insured, because Portugal is a just a bunch of macho idiots on roads (I include women in that macho).

I've been snorkelling in the Atlantic.  It's good, because I can see any sharks or giant octupodes that might be coming to get me,  the imagining of which normally prevents me from going out too deep.  SHARK!!!!

There are so many different fish, just metres from the shore, that you'd never notice with out a mask.  I have been amazed.

There are fish and bigger fish and not so big fish and small fish and tiny fish and REALLY tiny see through fish, a couple of starfish, some grotesque turd shaped sea cucumbers, loads of anenome, an urchin or two... but mostly default fish whose names I do not know.

It is remiss of me.

This week I am having a circular week (see the après-oh-god-they'll-leave-if-they-don't-see-something-bloggish final final final (for this month) rendition of the front portfolioish end of my website), so I'm sure Alice will forgive my circular rendition of her book, Dance your way to Psychic Sex

This is Alice's second book (different pseudonym, so I'm not telling you what was her first... suffice to say it was a very good read) and it has already had rave reviews from several reviewers. Alice is someone who has dedicated years to the art of writing and the art of encouraging others to write and the art of discussing the art of writing.  She is quite not normal in the same way that you might say I'm quite not normal.  Which is, of course, a good thing.  She is funny and clever and kooky and adorable and a bit nerdy (like me) and I love her.

Here are some reviews: http://danceyourway.co.uk/ReviewsAndQuotes.html

Here's what Graeme Talboys has to say about the state of the publishing industry at the mo http://grumsworld.blogspot.com/2010/08/dance-your-way-to-psychic-sex.html which helps to explain why Alice is self-publishing this one.

And I designed the cover, using a lovely Francis Blake illustration.

And here's where to buy it: http://danceyourway.co.uk/buythebook.html

BUY IT! BUY IT FOR YOUR FRIENDS.  You won't be sorry.  And don't delay!  The book needs to be sold NOW NOW NOW ( I know, I wouldn't get a job on QVC).

I have just got out of bed after getting home at three and spending half an hour scrubbing the shit (well, dust) off.  I still have grit in my eyes, my throat is coated in a fine layer of stoneware, and my snot is as black as a Londoner's.  This is what it is to go to festivals and outdoor concerts in Portugal - dust.  Not the knee deep squelchy mud of festivals in Britain, but all-pervading air-borne dust, this time from a mix between sand and earth in a big field near Lagoa de Albufeira, which is normally a twenty minute drive away from me.

Yesterday afternoon, it took an hour to get to Super Bock Super Rock, even taking the back roads that not that many people know about.  We left at five, because I was going to have a tantrum if missed Stereophonics at seven oclock. I have had fantasies about putting tiny Kelly Jones in a cage in my kitchen so I he can sing gravellily whenever I prod him .... but that's what ipods are for, I s'pose.  Driving in to the enormous car park field, it was impossible to see much other than dust.  Dust in the air, dust on the staff, already wearing facemasks and scarves, dust on the parked cars.  Me being the slob I am, I think this is amusing.  The friend who went with me is more Portuguese about dirt.

After a quick feel-up by a sour-faced policelady who confiscated the lid to my bottle of water ("Why?" "Because blah blah blah blah" "oh, ok..." well, she had one of those faces that you don't ask more than once) we were in with time to have a wander before Messers Stereophonics began.  It was all very Super Bock, BES, EDP, etc., and a shit LOAD of food.  One could have been forgiven for thinking that the only reason the Portuguese EVER go out is to eat (it IS the only reason the Portuguese do ANYTHING) .... where there's food, there's queuing.

Them there Stereophonics were great.  We were right up front, and I finally realised just HOW tiny tiny Kelly Jones is, but just as adorable and just as gravelly... I don't know how he manages to not lose his throat entirely.  The five of them on stage and the crew all had a great time between themselves,  which compensated for the not exactly huge (but enthusiastic) crowd and everyone was very happy that they played "Maybe Tomorrow" and "Have a nice Day".

When they finished, we wandered off to enjoy the dust a little more.

More dust.

Some more dust.

Then a beer.  OH, god, I shouldn't have, because then there was THE LOO, which, although not the latrine of the eighties, WAS absolutely grotesque, like an individual plastic sun-warmed latrine full of poo.

Some more dust.

Some sitting and some sitting and some sitting, which included a lot of taking the piss out of everyone.  We are bad.

As the evening went on, The Nationals and Spoon did their thing, which we ignored - I have energy enough for jiggling about and "woooooo-ing" for only two popular beat combos per day - and the crowds grew and grew, until there were a good 30,000 people there.... and the crowds WERE ALL OLD PEOPLE.

So, old means over 35.  But when we were 17, that was damned old.  That was "holy shit, who's that loser, why's he hanging round with US?, he's always got some dope, I s'pose, but damn, he's weird and creepy" old.  There WERE people under 35, but more fun to see were the older ones.  There were people in their forties (yes, me), a woman who I recognised from somewhere, probably some "famous people are great" magazine, whose teen daughters were incapable of eating with their mouths shut, plenty of leathery tias in their fifties who would be horrified if I told them that they looked like the gypsies they despise, gentle looking people in their sixties, and some in their seventies, looking at odds with their doner kebabs.... a very un-festival crowd.  It was funny.

Half past eleven, and we wandered down towards the main stage which was already pretty full.  We were close enough for Prince to be slightly larger than a large ant.  That was ok.

Just before midnight, that ludicrous symbol appeared on the side screens and the backscreen and WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

More WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! and some intro music played as the New Power Generation (they're STILL called that) got themselves onto the stage.... bear in mind that I had decided that this was going to be a heap of shit, that Prince has gone too far up himself and Jehovah to be even remotely enjoyable (see here) .... Prince stepped onto the stage and my mouth, entirely of its own volition, grinned like a mad box of dominoes (my mouth IS that shape).  I remembered all of a sudden that when your hero from when you were fourteen steps onto a stage in front of you it doesn't matter one fig roll that he is the biggest kook EVER and his apolitics and religion and conspiracy theories are kind of questionable and idiotic....

I had no idea what he was going to play.  Convinced he was going to do his latest album which I haven't heard, but hear is pretty much THE BIBLE, and that it was going to be a bit dull, I planted myself in my horribly gritty-on-the-inside shoes, prepared to be slightly bored but happy, because I was just a hundred metres from Prince... something I never thought would happen.

"Dearly belov-ed, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life...."

HOLY SHIT, everyone realised, he was actually going to do THE HITS, the good stuff, the sugar.....as he started on "Let's Go Crazy", did "Delirious", went on to "1999", "Little Red Corvette".... oh who GIVES a shit that he's a Jehovah's Witness Conspiracy Theorist Nutjob, he's still absolutely bloody well the best showman.... "You Got the Look", "Kiss", "Nothing Compares 2U" and some crowd pleasing stuff with the absolutely gorgeous Ana Moura (she's a fadista... but she's a GOOD fadista.  There's a difference) .... ok, things about his lyrics and style don't match up with his religion, he's weird, he's lost in Planet Prince (see Kevin Smith's talk about Prince on ytube) but FOR GOD'S SAKE, A FOUR MINUTE INTRO TO PURPLE RAIN HAS JUST BEGUN, I have goosepimples ALL OVER, and I KNOW that, as soon as he gets back on stage and starts to sing "I never meant to cause you any sorrow....", I'm going to CRY.

A huge paisley shaped tear fell down my cheek.

Prince thought it was a GOOD idea to get 30,000 people to do the "woooooooo, woooo, oooo, ooooo," bit of Purple Rain.... for about five minutes, until we all felt very VERY silly doing it.

After that there were a few more songs - he KNOWS how to work a crowd, that fellah, and his smile still lights up the stage - and he finished after two hours, having screamed out "DO I LOVE YOU, PORTUGAL???!!!"

"YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!"

"DO YOU LOVE ME, PORTUGAL??????!!!!!"

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!"

"DO WE ALL LOVE GOD, PORTUGAL?????????!!!!!!!!"

"er... well, yeah, well, I guess, meh.......kinda"

"DO WE ALL LOVE GOD, PORTUGAL?????????!!!!!!!!"

"yeeessss"

He is mad.  He is still tiny but beautiful in a not very-masculine-at-all way with a horrible taste in satin pyjamas.  He is still a total nutjob.  He is still quite far up himself.

But by god, he's still got it.

the rest of the photies here

[disclaimer: I am a musical know-very-little.  I can't and don't know or care what is "cool" or even "good" in music. I just know what touches me]

I'm a bit excited.

I'm very excited, actually, but I'm trying to retain a tiny bit of cool (the tiny bit IS quite tiny, I know, I know I'm the uncoolest person ever, I've been reminded of this regularly ever since I was a teenager).

I'm going to see Prince perform on Sunday, at the Super Bock Super Rock (pron. SoopAIR Bock SoopAIR Rrrrrrock) thingy, at Meco. Holding it at Meco makes it sound groovy for Meco has mysteriously attained a certain air of grooviness about it.... but the festival is actually next to Lagoa de Albufeira, which is not groovy and a bit icky, but hey, that's PR for you.

Stereophonics are also playing on the same bill on Sunday, which I'm equally excited about, but I'm not WORRIED about them....

I fell in love with Prince when I was fourteen.  In love with his music, at least.  I have never really been able to fall in love with him because he is TOO short for me.  I've rarely had boyfs who are much taller than me, but I feel like an ugly horse when I'm with someone shorter than me.  So I decided never to date Prince.  His music was never short, though, so I loved him for that.  It was the insane of it that I loved and the this-does-not-sound-like-anything-elseness of it... that is, until Sign of the Times came out and he went way to far over to the R&B scale of things for me.  Modern (80's onwards) R&B sends my head into a bucket for its dreary predictableness.  1999, Purple Rain and Around the World in a Day were what I loved and still love.

I've been avoiding reading any reviews of the shows he's done on this tour, because I don't like to be pre-disappointed.  I WANT to love it.  I'm worried that I'll hate it.

I'm hoping that he will have returned to doing stuff like he used to, pre-R&B-and-faux-rapping, making sounds that noone else could, being utterly kooky, and mad, and oh.... but he's a Jehovah's Witness.  Jehovah's Witness are annoying.  Jehovah's witnesses have some very silly ideas.  Prince has two hips that need replacing, but he won't because he's a Jehovah's Witness and they, as we all know, if we've ever watched an episode of Casualty or ER, don't do blood tranfusions.  Which is silly.  If they want to be silly on their time, FINE.  But this is Prince, my childhood musical hero and I want to be screaming "THANK YOU, PRINCE, FOR BEING GOOD AGAIN".

I'm almost certain that I won't.

I shall let you know how it goes.

Do the sub standard fashion designers of this world get together in a smokey room and think up ways that they can make the non stick insects of this world look really goddam stupid?

Ok, so this woman should really have looked in the mirror, but you know, I almost admired her for having the balls to go out wearing this tshirt.

Almost.

The history professor was invited by a friend and colleague who lives on Terceira, in the Azores, to go to a conference.  The rest of us insisted upon going too.

Although I adore travelling, I HATE flying.  My imagination is just too good, I'm afraid.  To get me through and up in the air, I'll usually knock back a few gins or pills, but this time we were flying at eight in the morning and I was going to be driving as soon as we got there.  No gin.  No pills.  I always have a sketchbook with me (it is the law if you have ever been an art student, even if you hardly touch it when you're out and about (like me)) so I scribbled instead.  I used to do this for every trip when I was younger and thinner.  I'd forgotten what a good aide memoire it is for later.  From the scribbles you might think we had an AWFUL weekend, though.  We didn't.  It's just the flying bits and the occasional German child with his hands in the cereal.  It was one of the best weekends away I have ever spent, and I am hopelessly in love with Terceira.  We're going back.

To SEE why, here's a flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/unkemptwomen/sets/72157624272348482/

or READ why here:

Last time was when I last went to the States.  Hmmm, need to go back there too.

So odd, when one is used to only going to other countries, to see animals on planes.  Poor little buggers... can't know what's going on.  What must they make of the hour's time difference??

The bulk of the tourists (in more ways than one) were busload excursions of mainland Portuguese, the kind that will decimate a restaurant buffet (be it breakfast or dinner) in seconds, like a team of highly skilled piranhas.  Then there were the Germans.  Germans are some of the nicest people in the world, but on holiday, they become weird, aloof and a bit sullen.  Which is weird.  Ugly haircuts abound.  Then there was a small Saga-load of English who were pleasant, light pink and grey coloured and quite shy of foreigners.  Luckily, on Terceira, tourism is quite a small business, so the tourists that were there were well absorbed into the island, although it wasn't hard to bump in them in passing.

Well, you would be, wouldn't you?

The more I looked at it over the four days, the more it resembled a mix of mid-Scotland, Cumbria and Devon.  The dry stone walls were made of black volcanic rock, that were a hot haven for thousands of small lizards.  The walls seemed to wriggle as you got close to them, with the lizards scurrying away from humans.

See the photos (above)

As a rule, don't do anything with a Portuguese family if you want to be punctual.  It goes against the laws of physics.

I'll say it again: Portugal is being destroyed by itself, by people with no taste and too much money, rubbish EVERYWHERE, lack of care, show-off architects, and dog poo. And squished cats on the roads.

The girls tried out the indoor pool.  But with the outdoor one being a salt pool by the sea and the air temperature being a pretty constant 20º, outside was the winner.

These are the Ilheus das Cabras.  Just off shore.

One of only two empty volcanoes in the world, and this is the only one you can go inside.  It was only discovered in the fifties, when someone noticed that cows were disappearing.  They were falling down the hole which was covered by bushes and undergrowth.  Kind of funny (poor cows).

My favourite bit of taxidermy EVER.

Little bastard.

The people of the Azores (Açores, really) really are the sweetest, friendliest and funniest people.  They treated us as visitors, as people, not as stupid blood sucking tourists.   It's quite expensive to get to the Açores from the mainland, so most people have never been.  I wish I could buy them all a ticket, to go just once.... especially the grumpiest ones.

Oh dear, getting distracted.

It's humid, and not hot.  Perfect for sleeping all night with the windows wide open, listening to the ocean. The Atlantic Ocean.

And really AWFUL plaid it was too.

And then, we had to come home...

Terceira will be seeing us again.  We're going back.  We're going to São Miguel, then Terceira, then São Jorge, then Pico.  Don't know when, but I've decided.

It is done.  I took my girls to Rock in Rio to see Miley Cyrus and I will never have to do it again.

My friend, Filomena, and I arranged to leave home yesterday with plenty of time to compensate for the inevitable traffic and queueing, with a picnic in her people carrier and pep talks to our four girls (8 to 16) about getting lost and "calming the hell down there in the back, we're more wired than you lot" (and for different reasons!).  We drove across the big bridge into the Lisbon, sure that we would immediately hit traffic once onto the ring road, safe in the knowledge that we would arrived at the gates well after the ghastly D'Zrt (a trying desperately to be hard and tattoey boy band who produce the blandest of "hard" pop, who were created in the equally ghastly kids' telenovela, Morangos com Merda), having had to drive an hour away from the park, get the metro, keep the smaller ones entertained, and queue for hours in the baking sun, willing it all to end.  But no.  We got a parking space ridiculously close to the venue, and the walk up the hill was the fasting moving queue I've ever seen.  We were inside the gates at ten past four... ten minutes after the gate opened, or rather, two hours earlier than we had hoped.

It was supposed to be prohibited to take food and drink into the park, and the sixteen year old's friends had assured her that everyone got pretty much strip searched on the way in, so to avoid the disappointment of getting our sandwiches taken away, we left them in the coolbox in the car.  As we sailed in through the gates without so much as being looked at askance by a security guard, I mourned my sandwiches that were now a mile away, imagining just how much we were going to have to fork out to eat later.

A sea of marketing was inside waiting for us, Millenium bank, Vodafone, Pepsi, with piles of plastic rubbish to wave in front of us and make the kids go a little bit madder.  At one point the girls were given some glasses in the shape of crossed guitars.  After a while we had to put them away, so fed up was my eight yr old with the envious glares.  Even what would normally be sober looking parents came up and asked in a frenzy "WHERE'D YOU GET THE GLASSES!!!!!?".  There were wigs, glasses, straw hats (the only one we growed ups actually would have liked, with our burning faces) inflatable guitars, tshirts, inflated plastic things with "Brasil" written on them to bash together and make a noise, LED lit finger rings and the worst: Vodafone were giving away inflatable armchairs that soon became the scourge of the whole thing.  Couch potatoism soon became the festival goers' mode of choice.  Families all around were setting up their own living rooms on the dusty dried up old carpet of fagends and dead grass.

The sixteen year old and my ten year old, our respective "cool" children, were abandoned in the growing throng in front of the stage by the thirteen year old and my eight year old when the latter two finally understood why I wasn't going to allow my smallest to stay there once it hotted up, a good half an hour before D'Zrt were even going to start, with increasingly stroppy peri-pubescents gathering around them.  The sixteen and ten, though, were NEVER going to leave... because they are so cool.

At first, it was ok.  We were hot.  We weren't hungry yet.  And no one wanted the loo.  I had banned the eight year old and myself from drinking except in exceptional near death dehydration.  We suffer the same bladder.  I still have the terrible memories of the Glastonbury latrines from the eighties, so the loos were going to be the last resort.  It was a blazing hot afternoon for a while, and people kept walking past me with glistening cold plastic cups of Sagres... OH, I WANTED ONE... but I knew that I'd be in the loo queue five minutes later... beer does that to me.  Pathetic, I know.

D'Zrt came and went.  Dull as dishwater.

The first "I'm HUNGRY" came soon after.  Filomena and I braced ourselves.  This was going to cost us.

There was KFC and Pizza Hut, in two or three huge long marquees.  Normally I refuse to buy the girls Pizza Hut when we're out in some food court or other in some mall or other.  Firstly because it's AWFUL and because it costs SO much money for a bit of dough and slathering of cheese-shaped lava.  4€ for a slice of pizza and some watered down coke is too much for me. At Rock in Rio, however, the consensus among the girls was, of course, Pizza Hut.  Get this: €7.50 for a slice of crap, a cup of watered down crap, and a bag of crisps.... OR €28 for a whole pizza and three cups of watered down crap.  F and I steeled ourselves and handed over the cash.  This "hey, we've got a captive audience, we're going to fleece them" attitude really REALLY makes me sick.

[like being part of a Where's Wally book]

Amy McDonald was being unimpressive on stage as we ate off the top of a rubbish bin [super classy, that's us] and watched the huge queues about us for a big wheel, a slide and stuff.  It was still only seven o'clock.  I was missing Eurovision for this.

Then McFly came on.  "Meh", I thought.  Just "meh".  They were passable in a McFly kind of way (I could have sworn they'd already given up) and teenage girls seemed to adore them.  But kind of dull.

I was still watching the glistening half litres of Sagres going by...  We'd been to the loos once by now, and it wasn't TOO traumatic, so I weakened, and snipped off to buy myself a beer.  OH GOD, IT WAS SO GOOD.  I came back to F and the two girls (the cool two had buggered off again to be cool in front of McFly).  The beer had cheered me up a bit.  McFly started to play "Fight for the right to party"... which was a fuck awful song when it came out in my youth, but oh lord, was it good to hear something familiar and I screamed along in a half litre of beer brave kind of way.  My eight year old looked at me... askance.

At the very end, one of McFly burped into his mic.  Rock and Roll.

About three quarters of an hour to go until Miley Cyrus was due on.  Eight year old was easily persuaded that being able to see at least one screen and having room to breathe was preferable to being crushed in between thousands of people and not seeing anything, so the two of us moved back behind the mixing tent thing.

She was SO excited and I had to tell her a minute by minute countdown.  I was aching, my feet burning, exhausted. I wanted to go home.

"25 minutes"

"25 minutes"

"25 minutes"

"25 minutes"

"24 minutes"

"24 minutes"

"24 minutes"

"24 minutes"

etc.  untill finally, 10:15pm finally happened (I must say that yesterday was REMARKABLY punctual, this IS Portugal afterall where nothing has ever happened on time EVER)....

... and Miley appeared.

I knew she was going to put Hannah Montana in the bin, but I thought there'd be a vestige of her.  But no.  Miley looked liked she'd "gone Britney" in a chartreuse one piece and a tiny leather biker jacket... and shaggy uber-Shakira meets Farrah Fawcett hair.

80,000 little girls went mad.

She started to sing some stuff.  New stuff that no-one knew well enough to sing along with (by osmosis, I know pretty much her whole Hannah Montana catalogue... ugh) including the one where she's trying to do a Lady Gaga in the video, what with being a bird in a cage, trying in vain to be sexy and with some big CG wings.  I was immediately bored.  She sang three songs before stopping to say for the first time "Hi y'all, it's wunnerful to be here in good ol' Lisbon, it's such a privilege that you let me play here for you.... yadda yadda blah blah, off a script, I don't even know where Lisbon is and I can't be bothered to think up anything gen-u-wine to say to y'all because huh, y'all don't unnerstand English and do I sound bored to you? because, y'know, I am" before launching off into something else noone knew.  I was SO bored.  She carried on.  Being SO dull.  The girl CAN sing, but the songs are so unbearably dull and she does lack charisma.  But, hey, she's seventeen.

She has a Hannah Montana move that she has evolved for her grown up Britney-Miley, that's kind of cute once or twice, but it's her only move.  It's a diagonally down and up hair flick, right to the ground and back, and when she does it over and over again it's reminiscent of Janis Joplin on a bad night... but she was doing it during some unfeasibly dull ballad or other and it started to irk.

Miley went off for a quick change and her two guitarrists did an unbearably unimpressive soloists duel that delightfully the crowd of eighty thousand eight year olds didn't understand, not realising you were supposed to cheer them on.... the first guy had to tell them to cheer him.  hahahaha.  Awful.

Miley came back in some sub Shakira leather cave girl top and some hacked up tights, wearing the same godawful shoes she'd worn for the first bit... those dreadfully ugly shoes that are all the rage, with open toes and heavily clad ankles.

Just like when McFly did "fight for the right", Miley's band suddenly played the intro to Joan Jett's "I LOVE ROCK AND ROLL" and the terminally bored parents all around me all perked up and as Miley sang, we YELPED it out, joyous that finally there was a. somehting we recognised and b. it was something good.  All our children looked at us again. ... askance.

She only sang half of it, part of a medley of "old people music" I guess.  The next bit I didn't recognise and the last was a very famous song that my poor addled brain now can't remember... (I've just remebered it was "Bad Reputation"...sigh).

FINALLY, it was pre-encore time and Miley went off, having spouted the same script in a bored kind of way about being a privilege to play here (what on EARTH does that MEAN?) and went off.  The 80,000 eight year olds didn't know the encore etiquette, why would they?  Some parents tried to get "Miley! Miley!" chants going just so that we weren't embarrassed.... but it never really took off... and Miley had to go back on stage without really having been called back... it was just expected of her.  I was amused.

She sang ANOTHER song noone knew, and then finally sang "THe Climb", the schmaltziest schmaltz fest ever sung by a country and western singer's seventeen year old daughter that everyone could sing along to, for we have all learnt the words by osmosis.

AND IT WAS OVER.

We met up with the sixteen year old and my ten year old who regaled us with stories of the pizza-strewn floor and parents who told them off for standing in front of their children, who couldn't SEE MILEY.. if ONLY I'd been there.... I'd have had a field day.

100,000 thousand people left all at the same time, and F and her girls held hands, I and my girls held hands and felt quite threatened for the first time.  People really can be hideously stupid.

All day I had bumped into one friend, Isabel, spoken to another, o Arcebispo, on the phone.

As we sat in the back of the people carrier, waiting for the traffic to calm down a bit and eat a couple of sandwiches, my friend Claudia and her kids crawled past into the traffic jam... I knocked on the window and we whinged about the whole day for a couple of cathartic minutes.

We drove home and arrived at 1.30 in the morning, the girls full of tales about their first ever concert, and me, my nose full of black snot.

[the air of rock in rio]

"Oh, alright then: 

For an 8 inch or there abouts flan tin, lined with shortcrust pastry, baked blind:-

4oz butter
14oz caster sugar
4 large eggs
4 large lemons

Soften the butter, zest and squeeze lemons, then mix all ingredients together. 

Add more lemon juice if not very lemony. 

Pour into pastry case and cook in oven - 180C,  till wobbly like a jelly and brownish on top. Best eaten at room temperature.

Now you know why I could never write a cookery book!"

No, mother, that is PRECISELY why you SHOULD write a cookery book.

@katynewton, @miketd and @nonworkingmonke are to blame for this, after a VERY silly twitty afternoon watching the Nick and Dave show.

On May 15th, I'll be hanging out with my book, "O Livro das Receitas Nojentas" at Lisbon Book Fair at the Guerra e Paz stand, from 4pm.  Come say hello, if you have a strong enough stomach!

No dia 15 de maio, vou estar no stand da Guerra e Paz na Feira do Livro de Lisboa a partir das 16h.  Vem dizer olá, se tens estômago forte!