MUCH FADO ABOUT NOTHING
We were flying over the outskirts of Setubal when Dr Gorbals, my 48-kilo Glaswegian attorney, announced he had just seen Jesus. This took me slightly by surprise as to my knowledge he had only had one beer prior to takeoff and it usually took at least four before he started talking out of his arse. I looked up from "Portuguese for Dummies" and followed his finger pointing excitedly to the ground a thousand metres below. There indeed stood Jesus, Cristo Rei, with arms outstretched, and a "Hello, Lisbon!" bubble coming from his lips (in the cartoon which my attorney, also an amateur illustrator, later drew). The plane banked over the mighty Tagus and prepared to land at Portela International Airport. Bom dia, Portugal.
My mission was to scout for a region of Portugal that would allow me to live out my final years after retirement in a manner to which I might like to become accustomed. Dr Gorbals' mission was to stop me handing over any cash directly to some opportunistic Portuguese peasant trying to offload a pile of crumbling old bricks, by sequestering said cash into his own pocket. After recent events of 22 March, Brussels was starting to lose whatever charm it may have had and I was looking towards a retirement in the sun in (hopefully) four years with impatience.
Getting out of Brussels had been a long and arduous business, five weeks after the bombings. We queued through the car park, through the makeshift security under tents, then made our way up flights of stairs, along miles of corridors, to finally arrive at the proper security control where we were checked again.
As you may remember, I visted Lisbon last year with the KNOB* and was quite smitten. This time I wanted to explore parts of the city I hadn't had time to see last year. Dr Gorbals had never been to Portugal and was up for anything. Affecting a kind of Yorkshire-mafia look with wraparound shades and a cloth cap, he took to Lisbon like a duck to water. Within 24 hours he had learned that a 'tulipa' was a half pint of draft lager, an 'Imperial' was a pint, and his two new best friends were Sagres and Super Bock.
Alongside the main avenue Liberdade runs rua das Portes Sao Antao , a narrow street packed with little shops and restaurants and ginginha shops, tiny little concessions doling out thimble sized glasses of the local cherry brandy. I usually have a rule that I do not drink until the sun is over the yardarm (although sometimes I mean the Tokyo yardarm) but I broke it on the first day and had a cheeky ginginha at 11:30. The year of living dangerously!
The weather was favourable for our time in the capital. We went on the famous Lisbon cable cars, although the historic trams were too packed with tourists, almost exclusively French. We visited the castle, the Alfama district, which took some finding. I am not very good at reading maps off phones, but Dr Gorbals infallible nose for a bar homed in on the fado capital of the world. I have to admit I'm not a big fan, I rather prefer the sturm und drang of flamenco to the maudlin dirge of fado, which is music to slit your wrists by. We avoided restaurants which were hosting fado concerts, where the price of the menu would be bumped up x 5, but it was impossible to avoid it completely, so loud was the man singing in the nearest restaurant. I would have preferred a bit of light jangly Amalia Rodrigues, but every now and again our meal was interrupted by a loud declamation of how his soul yearned for the old homeland during his enforced exile on a Paris council estate and how he dreamed of his childhood sweetheart waiting for him by the lighthouse even though he knew she had run off with a buff Brazilian pool boy called Nelson and was now working as an exotic dancer in a Rio nightclub. O misery! O the pain! Gorbals said fado was like Portuguese blues, but without the lighthearted element.
In the Bairrio Alto we met up with lovely Luso adoptee Lucy Pepper who took us to a fab restaurant where Dr Gorbals had an emotional reunion with his appetite, AWOL for 20 years. We tasted specialities such as Queijo de Azeitao and Moscatel de Setubal, Bacalhao a Lagareiro and Lucy kindly brought us a copy of her book "Eat Portugal" which she dedicated right there in the restaurant. It was so exciting, and much more fun than queueing up in Waterstones. It was so exciting in fact that I couldn't remember what I had eaten and had to get Lucy to message me later. See "Daphne's Dinners" for the comestible part of our trip. |
| Another UNESCO world heritage site ticked off |
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On the Thursday we checked out of the hotel and went to pick up the rental car at the airport. Anxious to get value for money I had booked through an outfit called Goldcar, who were suggested by the airline we flew with. 9 euros a day sounded perfectly reasonable to me. And to everybody else on the recently arrived Vueling plane, it appeared, as there was a throng waiting at the desk, where two staff were taking half an hour to process each customer. After waiting for fifteen minutes I noticed others clutching small tickets with numbers on, and realized I was supposed to take a number. 45 minutes later I got to the desk, by which time I was ready to sign up for the various extra charges which were explained in fluent and rapid English, but eventually we were behind the wheel of an Opel Corsa bearing only slight traces of damage caused by its previous occupant, and heading south of the river over the 13 km long Vasco da Gama bridge across the Tagus estuary, in driving rain.
We made a one-night stop in Evora, a small and pretty town with a Roman ruin, views over the Upper Alentejo and not much else to speak of. Luckily there was a free concert of Iberian-American music in the town square that evening and the rain had stopped. In the main square a long-haired Chilean singer was entertaining the crowd with songs by Victor Jarra and sentiments of freedom and democracy, to general approval.
We witnessed an incident which may well have made the front page of the local paper had there been a journalist present. Three elderly gents, spruced up for the occasion, were occupying a bench with a view of the stage. A chap in a hoodie standing in the arcades kept shouting "Olé!" loudly and clapping enthusiastically. Care in the Community possibly. One of the old chaps took serious umbrage. He'd either had too many cheeky ginginhas or was an old Salazarista who didn't like the Chilean lad's left-wing sentiments. He approached Hoodie quite aggressively, and at one point I'm sure I saw him briefly point a small pistol at him. Could have been a cigarette lighter, I suppose, Hoodie didn't seem perturbed. Another of the old men tried to restrain his friend, unsuccessfully. It was like a Portuguese version of "Last of the Summer Wine". Dr Gorbals was enjoying it immensely, especially when the enraged pensioner pulled a large screwdriver out of his pocket and brandished it in the direction of Hoodie, who roared with laughter. Next thing, Compo is on his mobile phone. Within five minutes the filth were on the scene. Three extremely reasonable cops listened patiently to Compo, then went and listened patiently to Hoodie. After another intrepid foray by Compo when he got within twenty feet of Hoodie, a young policeman took him by the arm and gently steered him out of the square. A posting to Evora must be the worst thing that can happen to a young ambitious Portuguese cop.
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| Is this what is meant by Portuguese rock? |
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| Thinking of Bert |
After a lunch stop in Beja, an underwhelming little town, we headed for Faro the pretty way, over the mountain. And then over another mountain. And another one. And then two more. And one last one. By the time we rolled into Sao Bras de Alportel, in yer actual Algarve, I was exhausted.
Finally in the Algarve, we found ourselves with an evening to kill in Faro, and explored the town. It wasn't exactly kicking. Apart from a quite agreeable restaurant which Dr Gorbals turned up on his magic app, and a pleasant little bar where I had a cheeky ginginha, not much to report (although I quietly clocked the modern shopping centre near our hotel). We were due to pick up one of our guests at Faro airport the next morning, but after he changed his flight times we found ourselves with the best part of Saturday to kill so pootled off to Olhao, a market town recommended by Lucy Pepper, and bought provisions for the villa.
On the motorway towards Carvoeiro, where our villa was situated, the skies darkened and it started to rain slightly. There were flood warnings in place for Faro and Albufeira. The villa was straight out of 'Sexy Beast' or 'Mad Dogs', a real gangster's hideaway. We dashed off to the local supermarket to stock up on basics. The local Intermarché was a shopper's dream, with wide aisles, good lighting, floors clean enough to eat off, and a vast array of British, French, German, and Scandinavian products as well as Spanish and Portuguese brands. The wine section was rather how I imagine Heaven. Who knew there was such a vast range of wine in Portugal? Vinho verde, branco, tinto, vinhos from the Alentejo, the Minho, the Dao, the Douro, the Algarve ... The ultimate Euro supermarket. We had to stock up with litres and kilos of stuff, which would no doubt end up with the cleaner - someone should design a Villa Pack of small quantities of condiments and toiletries to last a week. We returned to the villa with a week's basics, to find The Blonde and Chef waiting outside the gates.
The Blonde used to be a Paris boiler room queen in the 1980s, a kind of Ladyfingers for the overheated financial derivatives sector. Now retired on her ill-gotten gains, she had acquired a mortgage-default hacienda up in the spaghetti-western lunar landscape of Andalucia, and lived there alone, except for three dogs, two cats and an irascible French chef called, er, Chef. Chef had some shady history involving Algeria and some missing gold. He acted as her driver, bodyguard, cook and wine merchant.
As they settled in, I had to return to Faro to pick up our remaining guest, Metro. Metro was a suave, urbane, metrosexual (hence his nickname) confirmed bachelor and ladykiller from London. He decanted from the plane with a suitcase the size of a house. "Supplies," he whispered conspiratorially. It took us half an hour to get out of the airport car park, due to minibusloads of tourists loading up their golf clubs and blocking us in. Eventually we were on the road back to Carvoeiro, by this time the heavens had opened and I could barely see in front of me on the unlit motorway. The windscreen wipers were going faster than the car. We finally made it back to the villa around 9 p.m. to find Chef three sheets to the wind and nothing on the table. Metro decanted his "supplies" which consisted of several bottles of high-end gin and mixers. Dinner was served Andalucian style, i.e. around midnight. Made mental note to remind Chef about the hour's time difference.
Chef was a bad-tempered Gascon who hated everywhere and everyone outside of France, and most of France as well. The only parts of the world he liked was the parts where they play rugby, and even then he bitched about the food in most of them (except in one village in the south-west of France). He was particularly scathing about Portuguese food. French cuisine was superior to everything else, and was treated with religious devotion. Thus there was the twice-daily mass, heralded by a short prayer: "Bon, c'est l'heure de l'apéro," followed by the taking of communion, in the form of a cocktail concocted by Metro from one of the many bottles he had brought in his voluminous suitcase. Then would follow a three-course lunch or dinner, with wine. As soon as the dishes were cleared away, Chef would start planning the next meal. He lived from meal to meal. We started to feel like fatted geese by the end of the week, and didn't get out of the house much.
Although the villa was perfect and exactly like in the photos, the famed Algarve weather did not live up to expectations. A weather front was rolling in from the Atlantic, and continued to roll in. For the rest of the week, the weather changed from one minute to the next, resulting in Chaplineque scenes around the pool, running sunbed cushions in and out, Metro seizing every opportunity to top up his tan and Chef grumbling that only French weather was reliable. The barbecue was abandoned by Tuesday, as the charcoal was so damp.
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| Cataplana - Algarvian kitchenware |
The only thing Chef was not gastrofascist about was coffee. I made a point of preparing fresh cafetière coffee every morning, even though I am a tea drinker, to keep him happy, only to see him return from Intermarché one day with a jar of Nescafé. He also had a penchant for instant mashed potato, which he admittedly gussied up with cheese, but even so I was shocked. I wondered where he had learned to cook. I believe he was in the Foreign Legion for a number of years. One night he was sulking and went on strike, so I rustled up one of my leftover pasta cheese bakes with powdered cheese sauce. He asked for seconds.
All in all it was not an unpleasant week, although I have learned a lot about villa holidays and about weather fronts. My mission to investigate Portugal as the next and final stage of my international wanderings is still ongoing. As Dr Gorbals tactfully put it: Portugal would be a good place to die.
* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band
