March 2024

Hello March!

No apologies for the utterly indulgent picture at the top there. It was taken on the 3rd of this month from our balcony in one of my favourite places on the planet. I know, Olhos is totally over-represented in these blogs but it is an astonishing place. I think I have to wait until December before I can visit again.

The attraction though is only partly to do with climate and availability of good quality fresh food. It’s about the company that we share while we are there.

We’ve been going for a few years now so the manager and assistant manager are on nodding terms with us but there are also a lot of other people working  there and stopping there who are also familiar: Michel, the bar waiter; Ana Rita, who does everything from breakfast fizzy wine to late night restaurant duty; then there was my German friend, Jürgen, who I bonded with over the debacle that was brexit. We got quite teary over it. And my new German friend, Axel, who remembers talking to me last December and greeted me with huge enthusiasm. Then there’s the touchy-feely young Portuguese waiter, Prince, from the Restaurant Versatile. I consider all these people my friends including many more whose names I can’t recall. I was sitting in the bar, sipping a Passion Fruit Caipirosca, thinking how welcoming this all was and how homely it all felt and I let the chatter around me filter into my thoughts: French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Asian and Spanish languages all around me. It just felt right and I felt part of all of it. And then I remember one of the reasons that people voted for that debacle that myself and Jürgen bonded over: being in a situation where you rarely hear your own language spoken. I know, I was abroad so it should be expected. But I just loved it. I loved that international feel and, more than that, I loved how all these people, who didn’t share a language, managed to nevertheless communicate with each other. It’s special and I wish it was like that at home. And yet we were groomed to treat it as an imposition, as an affront to our rights.

I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now.

But, as Robert A. Heinlein said: ‘You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic. It doesn’t have to be a prejudice about an important matter either.’ [If This Goes On— Chapter 10 (p. 426). – The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)]

We have a fairly regular driver who takes us in his van from Faro to Olhos whose name I can’t recall but he, and his wife, Louisa, are incredibly friendly (and he plays Pink Floyd on the journey). Anyway, the terrible ‘B’ word came up when I last saw him. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you were all lied to.’ Which I don’t think is any longer a contentious opinion. So I asked him if there was any underlying animosity towards the EU within Portugal. His answer was short and sweet:

‘Nope.’

I appear to have reached a particular age: the age where friends start to die. I mean, I’ve had a few depart this mortal coil over the years but they were far apart and usually unusual, if that makes any sense. A few of those were suicides which are particularly painful and a couple of accidents or definitely ‘before their times’. But now, all my friends, most of my friends, are in their sixties and seventies. And even though they were all most definitely ill, there is still a worrying pattern developing. I remember my parents and my grandparents often having discussions that went along the lines of, ‘Did you hear, old William in the village has died? Must the third this month.’ That sort of thing. And they often talked about scanning the obituaries in the local rag. So I shouldn’t be surprised that the time has finally come around where I, too, would be reeling from the frequency of departed ones. I think it’s four in the last few months. I know exactly where to park at the various cemeteries and crematoriums in the area which is another worrying development. But the thing is, apart from the understandable sadness, each time someone goes, I seem to experience a weird disconnect. It’s a cliché to repeat the mantra, ‘There’s a (insert name) shaped hole in the world now.’ But I have felt it. It just so happens that each of my friends were a particularly large personality so maybe that’s part of it but I’ve also come to realise that the ‘hole’ is actually in me. Or in my memories or the stuff that makes me and the rest of us what we are. It’s a bit like a familiar experience that suddenly isn’t available anymore. We’re changed by loss in different ways and I guess everyone has their own version of how they are affected but I don’t like it very much. It is also a reminder of my own mortality and that definitely doesn’t need reinforcing after the past couple of years.

I got ‘cancelled’ by The Guardian the other day. I’ve heard the term used (often by people who are outraged at not being allowed to be explicitly rude to a particular group of people) but never really understood it. I think I do now. I often comment in The Guardian, or The Grauniad as it is often referred, and I comment under the name of Frank Vine. That’s a story for another day. And every so often I say something that is a little off colour or slightly offensive and my comment is replaced by, ‘This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards’. I don’t mind it when that happens but it is usually a bit of a surprise. I never set out to be offensive but I can get carried away at times. However, on this occasion, I didn’t get that message, it just disappeared completely. No trace at all. I immediately assumed that I’d messed up so I posted it again. The same result. I tried to post a third time after which I was prevented from posting at all. I tried a different comment and that was blocked as well. It was like being spied on and interfered with at the same time. It must have been a really serious offence, yeah? It was this, prompted by that arsehole Tory donor, Hester:

“Fill in the blanks: ‘… you see ****** ****** on TV and… you just want to hate all ******* women… I think she should be shot. I’m sorry for being rude.’ The cheque’s in the post. As long as you remember ‘sorry’ and the cheque, it’s all cool.”

Now, I hadn’t actually said what that appalling racist said. I just wrote similar words with gaps in. But that obviously set someone off despite The Guardian reporting on the exact words that were said and that the government and most of the British press insisted were harmless but rude comments. So how come mine were so unacceptable? No, I don’t know either.

In truth, I had expected some bother.

I suppose this all swings back to where I started, with racism. It reminds me of a comment I made to an Afro-Caribbean friend of mine during all that upset over ‘taking a knee’. I honestly thought that we’d put all that nonsense behind us. There will always be jokes and snide remarks about ethnicity just the same as there are about body image or gender but I didn’t realise that there were still people out there who actively hate ‘the other’. As my friend said, ‘It never went away.’ I guess it was hidden in clear view and those of us who had moved on (and those of us who didn’t even have anywhere to move on from) couldn’t see what was staring us in the face. It was just sitting there, waiting to be weaponised by unscrupulous pseudo-politicians. And there, right there, is a deep, deep irony. We have the most ethnically diverse cabinet in the history of British politics and yet it is they who are desperate to convince us to hate and fear Johnny Foreigner. It simply goes to prove that none of them have any principles or scruples whatsoever. They will do and say anything, no matter how hurtful or harmful, in order to retain power. They are put where they are to serve the people and yet they are no better than cruel, abusive parents.

Anyway, it’s Easter and all the grandkids are full of chocolate (and all the furniture and carpets undoubtedly covered with it) and I have a Sunday dinner to do and wine to drink. So that’s it for March.

I guess I’ll see you all again in April. Meanwhile, why not take a peep at my Website where you might very well find out who exactly that Frank Vine character is.