WAGS 04.11.2020: The Bubble bursts!

 

       At least it did in Lagos this Wednesday, as neither of the two pairs of bubblets managed a proper walk, and the potential 5th member, Peter has remained silent despite all the recent banter on WhatsApp.

    I spent most of the day trying to get a photo of a bubble bursting, and got through almost two bottles of Fairy Liquid (other brands are available), which didn't really matter as Myriam has copious supplies.

    I thought about claiming the one above as my own work, but here I am calling Trump a liar, and I haven't plucked the beam out of my own eye! It is from an article entitled 'How to Capture a Photo of a Bubble Bursting' by Richard Beech.  You don't need to Google it - It is next to impossible with a phone camera - even a OnePlus 7 Pro! Perhaps Yves will prove me wrong!

    I won't bore you with the reasons that neither the Whittles nor we ourselves were in the field on Wednesday, but all were deemed acceptable by the Lagos Bubble Committee.

   The question arose - what shall I do with the Blog - which everyone is waiting for with their breath bated?  As you can see I am padding ab initio. I could try and continue in Latin French or Mandarin. but I suspect readers are tired of having to go to Google Translate to find out exactly what Google thinks we were writing about!

   So another device as a filler is to insert a topical cartoon!

Check!

    The US elections have been dragging on for 4 years and 24 hours now, and I really don't care enough to mention that subject here!

  So I went for Google and input 'Ode to the Bubble'!  It spat back with : About 8,050,000 results in 0.54 seconds!   These included 

bubble tea

bubble wrap

bubble bath

helicopter

bubble gum

bompas

bell 47

parr

beethoven

johnny cymbal

bubblewrap

piano

milk tea

strawberry

lovin

aircraft

iced tea

aviation

boba

That should give me enough for the next 10 non-walking blogs! The one that caught my eye was actually the first item on the search page: It was an old article from Air & Space Magazine about what they, being American, called the Bell 47.

In the Royal Air Force it was known as the Sioux, and it took me back with mixed feelings almost exactly 50 years, when I first came across a Sioux at RAF Ternhill, the basic Flying Training School for RAF helicopter drivers. I had already done about 3 years of Flying Training in the Airforce by 1970, Cessna 172, Tiger Moth, Chipmunk, Jet Provost and a stint in Singapore on detachment to a Canberra Squadron and my first helicopter experience, the ungainly Bristol Belvedere.  

       The Sioux was the most difficult of all the helicopters I flew, which I suppose was why it was a training machine in the RAF.,(and because it was fairly cheap to repair if one of the tyros made a mistake and bent it!)   This was because in 1970, the rotor speed was controlled by a manual throttle, much like the twist grip on a motorbike, and any input on any of the other controls would affect the rotor speed, which ideally had to be kept within a narrow band to stay airborne.  I won't go into the technical details, but once you could hover the Sioux without disappearing over the airfield boundary - 'And which is more -- you'll be a Man my son!.'

But I digress, Antje and Chris had a late appointment, so Antje just took Sascha for her daily walk on the beach, while Chris guarded the couch;  we entertained the plumber for an absentee neighbour in the morning while waiting for the G Wagen to be delivered, which eventually didn't happen until 3 pm.. On inspection, about 10 minutes after the delivery driver had left, I discovered that a defect I had reported in August was still unfixed, but couldn't call the driver back in time, so he is coming back from Faro on Thursday morning (hopefully) to take it away again.

Lastly, I have been waiting for a fussy pedant to protest loudly about my deliberate misquote in the Title of last week's (28.10.2020) Blog Post, but alas no takers. Of course it should not have been  "Bubble Bubble, Toil and trouble....." as I wrote, but " Double Double, Toil and Trouble...."

The Bubble comes in the second line - "Fire burn and Cauldron Bubble..."

It is one of the most misquoted lines in Shakespeare, and even some internet entries have it wrong! Just the thing to bring up at a dinner party when we are allowed to have them again.

You won't seem at all pretentious!

PRETENTIOUS FACTOR

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.

Well, anyone could make this mistake. It does sound a lot like the witches are saying "bubble" while they're standing over that cauldron. Nothing fancy about that!

And now the adventures of the Silves Double Bubble. Over to JohnH.

Before we get to Rod´s report of our latest walk, let me remind you that last week´s blog comments contained an attack on our blogging style. I was asked to mount a defence. Here it is.

It is with some trepidation that I venture to publish this defence of our blogs, daring to contradict the opinion of SWMBO. If, as a result, those who are sharp-of-hearing catch the distant sound of frying pan or rolling pin on bald pate, so be it.

“Keep it simple, funny, interesting and straightforward please about the walk” was SWMBO´s requirement. She says she is not interested in French people she has never heard of.

Well, we few Bloggers can accept some of these demands. We do attempt humour but sometimes fail; we do try to be interesting but, as not all our readers share the same interests, inevitably we miss the target on some occasions; and we do base the blogs on the walks. But “simple” and “straightforward” ? If that means blogging the walk, the whole walk, and nothing but the walk - no, No, NO !

(cue FX: crash, bang, wallop, ouch!)

On my PC there are copies of blogs (AWW ones) going back as far as May 2006, and they have nearly always contained diversionary topics, whether it be: - comparisons of types of beers, scraps of poetry and other classical and literary quotations; dissertations by Mike Pease on the Wise and Foolish Virgins and the promised rewards awaiting the suicidal deluded faithful in their Paradise (not virgins but forty black olives, actually); the chit-chat of the Fabulous Four as overheard by the Assistant Blogger – re love nests in Berlin and Moscow for example; educational editions extolling the virtues of the Tilley Hat (not everyone´s cup of tea, it is admitted, but nevertheless sartorially important), etc. etc. There was also an epic two-part description of the effects of a common cold on a certain Lagos establishment which had us all totally riveted for a fortnight.

As the years passed by and creaking bones took their effect, the WAGS blogs took over from the AWW blogs; then in the summer months, the APAPS blogs also had their place. There we were fascinated to learn that the French for the Sony Walkman (remember them?) is Le Baladeur. Nothing to do with singing, but to do with wandering and roving. “J´ai l´âme baladeuse” means “I am a wanderer at heart.”. And so, for a brief while in those halcyon days when we had a French Blogger, the Algarve Wednesday Walkers became Les Baladeurs de Mercredi en Algarve.

Gradually, the walk statistics diminished in real terms as well as in importance. The post-walk refreshments demanded ever more attention. After the Tilley Hat came the Tillers Girls, and the Full English Breakfasts. We have recently had The Quarantine Diaries and their sub-text, The Guinea Fowl Chronicles, to help us cope with “these difficult times” (to ape the BBC).. We have learned about Belgian cricket and, what is more, learned about Belgian Women´s cricket, which not many people had known about before, not even the Belgians. We have even published pictures of flowers just because some people find them pretty. And only today we have learned things about helicopters that not many people know. Altogether, a myriad of things have embroidered our blogs.

And indeed, just the other day, one of Paul´s blogs referred to a lunch provided by a friend of his, Sergio, at a Lagos Café: Pastelaria Ruby Pedra Alcada. (I think actually that that should be Alçada with the cedilla). The food and the menu looked delicious and attracted Hilke´s attention. If the blogs were just about the walks – and this bit had nothing to do with walking - we others would not have known about this place. We must gather there one of these days.

This last week, the AWWs had four separate walks in four separate bubbles of five; and between them, they have put up fourseparate blogs. Well done; all credit to them for effort. The blogs contain reasonable photographs, give reasonable descriptions of the walks themselves and the challenges faced and, here and there, provide a touch of humour but they scarcely stimulate anything extra; there is nothing “piquant” (sorry. Terry) about them. There´s nothing striking enough in them to make one think “I would like to read that blog again in five years time.” They and all current AWW blogs are a trifle, shall we say, pedestrian.

Such pedestrianism is not for us. Αιέν Αριστεύειν (Homer´s Iliad, book 7) – “ever to excel” should be our aim. We will use our walk blogs as the springboard or launching pad for the occasional flight of fancy. “Thought is free” (Shakespeare: The Tempest. 3.2.)

And a closing thought; SWMBO says she has never heard of the French people Yves mentioned. In fact, she related the story of Voltaire who, notorious for being virulently anti-religion, declared that in his day the Bible would very soon be forgotten. A hundred years later, his Geneva mansion was the headquarters of a Bible distribution business. And if I can muse for a moment on one story from the Bible, the Sower in the parable did not give up just because some of his seed fell upon stony ground; he kept on going.

(cue FX again: crash, bang, wallop, ouch!)

So too will we Bloggers, even if on occasion our efforts fall on stony ears.

And now, at last, we can get to Rod´s report on  his record breaking walk.

John,

Paul indicates you might kindly insert pics in a blog format.  Feel free,  either or both of you, to embellish it with your usual literary, or other, irrelevant ( maybe irreverent?) wit.

Rod. 

AWW Walk 4th.Nov.
 Despite the absence of any directions, everybody..well that is John & Hazel, Maria,  even Yves indeed and me... turned up at the appointed hour at the Honey Cafe or rather the Taberna de Manel. Smartened up it was too...extended terrace,  special anti-Covid regulation layout and even a new menu. 

Masks On 

Masks Off

By the time we had generally caught up, consumed a coffee or two and fiddled around with masks for the kick-off foto it was past 10.30, so a bit late, off we set along the usual track opposite and then turned left up the hill through the fast growing medronheiros.

 

 Near the top we happened upon a most elegant lady exercising her dog. She was only too happy to stop for a chat.....well a bit more than a chat maybe since in terms of loquacity she was at least the equal of Myriam.

Having a chat

We quickly learned she was a Brasileira from the southern state of Sta. Catarina, of Italian extraction, married to a Swede, no children  and enjoyed the name of Palmyra. All this is of no particular relevance other than in the event you might  meet her again should you be walking these parts... she lived just below...it may provide you with opening gambits should you wish to engage her in conversation. 

Still chatting. In the background, Hazel was getting impatient

 She obviously knew the owner of the medronheiros who happened to be harvesting his crop nearby and gave him a shout. 

Product available at a speak-easy in Odiaxière at €25 a litre.
Knock three times and ask for Manuel

 Lugging a large basket of his precious fruit he joined us and thus started another chat. He explained that after the fire  3 or 4 years ago, he cleaned up the land and nurtured the surviving trees. He clearly knew what he was doing since the trees were really healthy looking and absolutely laden with fruit. They needed to be for it requires some 10-15 kilos of fruit to produce a litre of pure medronho.  So some half an hour or more later we were once more on the move and wound our way up to the perimeter fence opposite the hotel.  

The track beside the fence had obviously been well used by those wanting a free view of the F1 last week. No serious effort had been made to repair gaps in the fence, so through we went and wandered past the front of the always bleak looking hotel and the apartment blocks looking more like urban tenements. At which point we were confronted with something new..... an enormous, brilliant green sward; evenly grown, weed free grass being manicured by 3 chaps with mowers (sprang to the minds of some perhaps an old Nursery Rhyme....One Man, two men, three men etc.and his dog went to mow a meadow!)

 

This, it turned out after distracting one of the 3 for a moment, was the new training ground of Portimonense Football Club...presumably with rather wider commercial ambitions one day. 

One man a-mowing

From there over the top of the hill separating the hotel and apartments from the race track, crowned now with a rather unedifying corrugated steel water tank, and down to the stream separating us from the perimeter road. The obvious bridge was taped over so, fearing it might collapse and without Myriam to test it, we crossed further down  over a concrete dam with but a trickle of water (might have been a bit different a couple of days later!). 

Leaping like a gazelle

Less of the fancy stuff for JohnH

  We left the perimeter access road via a track we had used a year ago...now well worn by 4x4´s seeking unofficial entry to the F1 no doubt.  

We, or at any rate I, had  originally intended  to take the longer route back to base  but such was the time taken by various distractions and the fact that we had already covered more than 6k we felt honour was done   and we headed back.

Heading back

 This meant going through what was once a peaceful old partially ruined farmstead but now the centre of a vast dust bowl  used evidently as a parking area for the F1 event.  It was apparent the track back to Montes de Cima, now widened and much worn, was an important access road for the F1, as evidenced by a lengthy GNR tape which Yves felt would come in handy somewhere. 

Caught in the act !

And so back to the Honey Cafe. We were directed toward the new menu, where amongst a wide assortment of Tostas, we noticed a particularly new and alluring looking version...Tosta Mista Tropical. This we had to sample. The tropical element turned out to be a slice of pineapple  and was generally met with acclaim  as a new experience indeed. 

   At nearly 8k, the walk was of average WAGS length but the multiple distractions strung it out to 3 1/2 hrs ..... an average speed of not even 2.5kph. A new record perhaps?                                                                                                              

Don´t believe that moving time; but, yes, a record slow speed. Thanks, Rod.