If you stand in the same place long enough, sooner or later you’ll suffer some, to that point, unknown consequence – a piano could fall on you or an earthquake fissure could open up under you. So we keep moving. Not like some sharks which must keep swimming from cradle to grave – we are allowed, in fact required to occasionally pause for breath. Notwithstanding our active aversion to and avoidance of disaster, shit happens. This next point specifically and others generally will demonstrate this immutable fact.
This post outlines a number of things that have happened or been observed thus far on our Iberian Intervention. By writing it now, with quite a while to go is tempting fate, I know. But this section could turn into a book so let’s cut it into bite sized chunks.
We may mock Liverpudlians (those of us who don’t come from Liverpool) but their seagulls, (or one of them at least) are prescient it seems. The CB and I and Cuz1 and Cuz2 were leaving the Slave Museum when I felt a distinct thud as something hit my shoulder. One of their huge seagulls picked me out from the crowd and dropped a wad of seagull shit on my left shoulder. Thank god cows can’t fly. And I hadn’t written a word at that point about the fact Liverpool has never won the EPL and the inhabitants are all thieves (not everyone thinks this). So I decided to go easy on them lest something more serious happen. So I only gave them a serve for a complete failure to understand the concept of hygienic rubbish disposal.
Moving right along, on our first night in Madrid we had a group dinner to meet our fellow travellers and discuss plans for the coming days. As the old saying goes, “when in Rome…” or in this case Spain, you know the rest. So we were all served glasses of sangria – a fruity red wine based local drink. Unfortunately I was seated in the exact location where a waiter carrying a tray of sangria-filled glasses was fated to trip. Fortunately my back or more specifically my shirt prevented much of the icy liquid from reaching the floor. So for the rest of the night I was reeking of red wine without having partaken of the pleasure of actually drinking any.
The next story takes place in Obidos, a cute little walled town in central Portugal and is more about attitudes than actuals. It highlights the difference between our nanny state scolds who’ll be prosecuting six year olds for climbing trees without bash hats and safety harnesses before we know it and the manana of this part of the world which despite the laid back attitude expects common sense and personal responsibility to be exercised by its citizenry.
The medieval castle walls of Obidos are accessible but also quite high. The stone stairs to access the top of the walls do not have guide rails and neither do the walkways at the top of the walls. And both are quite narrow so when you have to pass someone going the other way there’s a bit of a stand-off as to who gets the wall side and who gets the death inducing plummet side. It’s quite refreshing to think you can recklessly do yourself a serious injury without some clipboard clutching bureaucrat issuing an on-the-spot fine and making you sign a blame disclaimer. And the local council would bitumen over the 15th century cobblestones to prevent litigation inducing slips. ‘Elf and safety trumps history every time if you’re a process nazi.
While on the subject of elf and safety, we went to a particularly boisterous seafood restaurant in Lisbon a couple of nights ago. The gypsy fight outside was nothing to the carnage inside the restaurant. Everyone (and there were at least 60 people inside) was provided with a hammer to break crab shells and this task was taken to with particular gusto resulting in pieces of crab shell flying through the air like those metal stars ninjas fling about.
And finally, last night the CB and I had taken leave of our travel companions and were having dinner at a place called Doca which is a series of restaurants and a marina almost underneath the only bridge over the River Tagus In Lisbon. This bridge was built by the same people who built San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and it looks exactly the same. There are two transport levels. Cars above and trains below.
There was obviously an accident of some sort on the bridge because we could see thick black smoke billowing up as well as darting flames. Then the sirens stated and we could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles and then eventually cascades of foam pouring off the bridge and down the many tens of metres into the river below. And through all of that the trains kept on passing immediately underneath. Individual common sense mentioned above may not extend to systemic common sense it seems.
And of course there was the dog shit incident which has already been covered.
That’s enough for now.