Red Wine Express

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.

Our cross over into Portugal is off to a smelly flier. First stop, just over the border between Salamanca, in Spain and Oporto, in Portugal, I (and one of our lady fellow travellers) stood in some dog shit. Portuguese dog shit smells as appalling as any other dog shit and when you walk it into a bus you’re in a world of trouble. It was like everyone took off their shoes at the same time. Fortunately that brief sensory assault didn’t spoil our introduction to Oporto which is breathtakingly spectacular.

Before I regale you with our Oporto exploits, more road stuff. Our very knowledgeable and enthusiastic tour director who is as good at cat herding as he is informative (and he’s a Spain based Aussie) has asked everyone for a song to contribute to a tour group compilation. He has uploaded it to Spotify and it is now on continuous loop in the bus. Fortunately there are 30 of us so it’s at least a couple of hours before your song comes round again.

The choices are quite instructive in respect of origin and disposition. We are quite an eclectic bunch ranging from the devout (Amazing Grace) to devil worship (a thoroughly unwarranted characterisation without foundation but the song is Black Magic Woman). A couple of Aussie selections are Cold Chisel and The Bee Gees. We have John Denver and Bob Seger, blues, soul, rock and roll, old and modern. A blessing is that no one has chosen a rap “song”. I’m going to digress here as I am want to do and as regular readers will understand. Do you notice how these rap talkers like to come over all tough and cool with their bitches and hoes (is that the gardening implement spelling or the abbreviated prostitute spelling, I’m never sure) and guns and gangsta personas. But their “musical” genre is called hip-hop which to me sounds like cuddly, bunny rabbit music. Tough guys! HA!

The CB chose Easy Living by Uriah Heep, a particularly appropriate choice on a range of levels. I chose my favourite song – Hotel California – but the 1994 version on the Hell Freezes Over album. This sounds extremely wankerish I know but there is a reason. That version’s intro and outro guitar solos have been done in a Spanish style. Very clever writing and very skilful playing.

One of life’s little pleasures PK (pre-kids), was the occasional glass of port. In fact that’s a significant understatement. On Friday nights during our mining town interludes, especially Zeehan in winter, we would polish off a bottle of port with friends. We had a saying that once opened, the cork could not be put back into the bottle.

So we visited the Sandeman port winery in Oporto and, amongst other things found out that once opened, a bottle should ideally be drunk inside two days. Vindication!!! And the best part about this visit was that many people on our tour don’t like port so when it came to the tasting I let it be known that I liked it so much, I bathed in it. So after tasting many more than my share I had the wobbly boots on when we left and I had to stay well away from the River Douro lest I join the idiots jumping into it off an impossibly high bridge.

During a couple of hours of free time the CB and I decided to go for a walk. Turn left out of the hotel, we were told, and that road will take you down to the river. If you’ve been to Oporto you will know this is the place for scenery, beer (and port) and food. So left we turned. There was a left and a slightly left of straight ahead and of  course we took the wrong one and finished up in the same place as Harry Potter when he didn’t say “Diagon Alley” properly in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. You’ll have to look it up or watch the movie. We gradually worked our way back to civilisation past the loitering locals. I hummed Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wildside” to placate them but seriously, never felt threatened as I know for a fact I can run much faster than the CB. Only joking. ONLY JOKING.

The CB and I are sitting in one of the very many tapas bars in the middle of a bustling pedestrian thoroughfare in Salamanca. This town’s very much smaller than Madrid so the even smaller old town where all of the nightly action is, attracts everyone from barely mobile seniors to barely born juniors.

It’s only 8.00pm so we are the only ones eating at this particular place. This allows the waiters to lounge against the the restaurant wall and smirk as the jail-bait flounces past in their barely there cut-away shorts and midriff etc baring tops. We were expecting rain tonight and it’s about 20degC, around 15 degC lower than Madrid so you have to admire these girls’ dedicated following of fashion despite the elements. The boys buzzing around them seem pretty happy too.

This place is famous for a frog. It’s a particular little frog perched precariously on a skull half way up an imposing and incredibly detailed mural carved into a sandstone wall above a 16th century door in the University of Salamanca founded in 1218. It’s the 4th oldest in the world (the university, not the frog) after Bologna in Italy, Paris and Oxford. There are various legends relating to one’s ability to find the frog. These relate to good luck (of course), fertility (of course), passing exams (doubly of course – it’s a university after all) and lust for prostitutes and resultant exam failure (it’s a university after all). It would be virtually impossible to know it’s there if someone (the sculptor perhaps) hadn’t pointed it out at the start. From the ground it looks like a pimple. Until we were told about it I wondered about the obsession with frog themed souvenirs in the tourist shops.

And here’s a conspiracy theory to end them all. Salamanca has an “old” cathedral (building commenced in 1102) and a “new” cathedral (building commenced 1513). In amongst all of the ornate carvings next to one of the main doors is a carving of an astronaut who is the person closest to God – stands to reason why he would be there right? He was originally reported as being on the old cathedral but that was the 12th century so that would be ridiculous. They didn’t even have flip phones then. It’s next to the new cathedral door which makes 400 years more sense.

So this is a mystery that has baffled experts since it was discovered in 1992. Were all of these magnificent gothic cathedrals scattered across Europe built by time travellers or spacemen? Or was the astronaut added in 1992 when the cathedral was refurbished. A truly confounding mystery.

I just found out there are no advertising billboards within 150 metres of the highways in Spain. But there are bulls – very large black ones, all of them 14 metres high. About 90 are scattered around the country. They used to advertise Osbourne’s Sherry until the advertising ban meant Osbourne had to take their logo off the bulls. But the bulls stayed and everyone who cares to know what sherry is, knows what the bulls represent. And in a country like Spain, the significance of bulls is up there with the pope. Osbourne’s 1 authorities 0.

Before getting into the road trip we need to consider Madrid, a truly magnificent city. But when we arrived, something was amiss (and amister). It took me approximately two minutes to be struck by the prevalence of crutch hugging cut away shorts and tiny, tight tank-tops. Sure, it’s summer but then I realised it’s also Gay Pride Week. There were stereotypes everywhere. And the straight girls were doing their best to compete in the skimpyness stakes.

Incidentally, and I digress (again), does Gay Pride Week only cater for the “G” in LGBTQ etc etc?

Now I’m as heterosexual as they come and I have absolutely nothing against homosexuals but opportunities to take the piss were everywhere. And I come from the Ricky Gervais School so if there is an opportunity to make a joke about anything, the default position is to do it and bugger the consequences. There is nothing quite as pathetic as a woke comedian whose alternative (to my and Ricky’s) default position is to abuse straight, white conservatives and ignore the absolute treasure trove that is the ridiculously idiotic green left (witness the current Democratic primaries in the US). If you’ll excuse my mixing my metaphors, this theme is not a minefield, it is a veritable goldmine.

In some virtue signalling quarters this would get me labelled homophobic and every other “phobic” under the sun. But I’m not the least bit scared of homosexuals which is what the word “homophobic” actually means (think arachnophobic or agoraphobic but not islamophobic, another stupid word which doesn’t mean what it purports to mean).

Anyway, the Spanish government would have been pleased to see an influx of big-spending, rainbow flag waving gays. Spaniards have this thing about electing socialists and obviously didn’t learn the hard lessons of 1936-1939 when this predilection with the left precipitated decades of fascist dictatorship under Franco. A rather extreme response to an exercise in democratic self-determination it has to be said. So instead of a vicious civil war with contributions from various scumbags from across the globe, now we have destruction of the economy via renewable energy. But this week we have seen a cocktail-led recovery.

What we most definitely haven’t seen is a hat-led recovery. It’s been stinking hot in Madrid with no cloud cover. My head would explode if I didn’t wear a hat in these conditions. So tell me why the current gay fashion of shaved head and 70’s porn star mo or beard alternative, with no hat, won’t result in an explosion of cranial melanomas in a few years that will make the AIDS epidemic look like a paper cut.

We can’t go to a new place without considering the food. Tapas has to be the best dining invention since barbecued mammoth. The CB and I sampled a few of the thousands here in Madrid. A bit of this and a bit of that interspersed with ice cold beers or lightly chilled Rioja (room temperature is for coffee and tea in this climate). The dining experience on this trip may result in a new gastronomic methodology in our household.

Well the child bride and I are sitting in one of the more depressing airports we’ve ever passed through – Manchester – waiting for our Ryanair flight to Madrid. The airport’s teeming with my fellow north-countrymen (and women – my fellow north-country people sounds silly). I say “fellow” because I was born here sometime back in a more innocent era when airports like this one weren’t full of people looking forward to their annual week of debauchery on the Costa del Sol. We’ve seen two brides and their entourages so far. We know they’re brides to be because the headdresses give them away. They’ll all be having a wild old time I’ll wager before settling into a life of wedded bliss. That’s the theory anyway.

The clusters of youngsters scattered round the bar area all seem animatedly happy and the old ones appear as miserable as the weather. To be fair, the weather was exceptional for the three days we spent here but it’s now raining – a perfect mood predictor it seems.

We’ve just had a day in Hong Kong and the aforementioned three days with Cuz1 and Cuz2 of Rheinube River Ramble fame. We gave our respective livers a thorough caning so the next few days will be relatively quiet. But back to Hong Kong. We arrived the day after a very large mob of protesters trashed the parliament so figured it would be prudent to stay on Kowloon side as I didn’t fancy a tear gas sandwich. The highlight of our Hong Kong stopover was sitting in a restaurant at the Ocean Terminal watching a wizened old man exercising with one hand against the guide rail while the other hand clutched a cigarette. Actually, that’s unfair. I love Hong Kong and just looking at that harbour (which I have previously reported is getting narrower) is always a highlight.

After Hong Kong it was Manchester then a day in Chester followed by a day in Liverpool. God knows what the Liverpudlians would do if the Beatles hadn’t originated there because their influence is everywhere. Revert back to what it was like pre-Beatles I guess – a stepping off point for Irish immigrants because the slave trade had been abolished about a century and a half before. Restaurants, buildings, streets, taxi companies and pretty much every other going concern are named after a Beatles song. The local landmarks that feature in numerous Beatles songs are now treated like the shrine at Lourdes.

The authorities have done a great job tarting the place up. Pity they can’t convince the Scousers to pick up after themselves. The amount of rubbish in some of the parks would put a Philippino rubbish dump to shame.

Chester has a city wall. We walked round it. It also has a lot of great old pubs. We went to one of them. We also had lunch at an American franchise restaurant which we wouldn’t normally do in the holiday-mode circumstances but the beer was ice cold, the food was great and the view was pleasant. And we got there at lunchtime which was rather fortuitous.

Chester also has a first century BC version of UFC. The ampitheatre’s contestant variety was somewhat more eclectic in the Roman version however.

Now it’s time to hit the cervesas.